An Ode to Porcelain and Electricity

We have just returned from a relaxing and productive Easter break at the block. We packed up the car, lightly this time, and headed off with the pups on Friday morning nice and early.

We arrived to find that once again, the grass has grown, and the world at our place continues to be just beautiful!


We had decided to create a more minimalist camp by placing ourselves close to the shed, so got to work flattening larger grass tufts and tidying up the paving at the front of the shed.


The tent and tarps were up quickly and Gypsy got settled into her favourite place!


BJ spent the first two hours camped out in the shed...we thought he was crazy as it was so hot in there, but then Dom realised, that the concrete was cool... dogs are smart!


So are humans, occasionally, I suggested that we bring the bathroom basin cabinet out of the shed into our camp site for an instant camp kitchen! Perfect!


We had gotten to the block by taking a different road this time. A couple of visits ago some friendly RACQ people had come to take a look at Linda's car, and had approached the block from the north. So I took a look at a map and saw that if we continued to head directly north from Crow's Nest rather than turning right so early, we could approach the block along Midddle Road, coming out 1 km north of our place. So this is what we did! The distance is almost exactly the same, the road has a little less tarred section but is in general straighter and less mountainous. In fact you bypass the whole range, except for a small ascent and descent, making it a better option for daily commuting I think.

The side effect of going this way, was that we drove past what we had thought were our Northern Neighbours, rooftops that can be seen 50 metres away from our block to the North. But no! Our northern neighbours turned out to be the famous Anduramba Hall!


A beautiful country hall with the most spectacular outbuilding I have ever seen. It was small, and blue and divided into two halves. A feat of modern architecture, a sight for sore eyes, yes, a toilet block! And not the expected bush drop toilets...but beautiful, shiny, porcelain flushing septic toilets! All of a sudden it seemed possible to stay at our place for extended periods of time without that toilet stress!



So, facilties used and appreciated we went back to our block for operation fire place.

Our last fire pit was now too far away from the camp, so Dom got busy digging a dip, and I worked on transferring the rocks. We had not brought any camp cookers this time around, the plan being to cook neanderthal-style! So Dom created a lovely figure eight pit ready for gourmet delights!



With my convenient camp kitchen all stocked with food we spent some time collecting wood, got the fire going and commenced relaxing! We took the dogs off for a scamper down maria creek road - probably one of my favourite things about being there is we can decide hey, let's take the dogs for a walk, and up you get and start walking! No leads, no fuss, no nothing. I hope that doesn't change. On our walk we found a mushroom pushing itself out of the road side! That is pretty cool! And goes to show there has been a bit of moisture around...


One of our plans for the weekend was to conduct a ritual planting. I had originally planned to buy a 100 or so tubestock natives and whack them in the ground, but once a number of experts and some laypeople had told me they would die, I decided to give up on that plan. We went to plan two. About a year ago a beautful grey leaved native sprung out of the earth at the front of our house, and grew at an amazing exponential rate which now sees it reaching three metres into the sky. A month or so ago, a clone popped its head out of the ground a few metres away next to our driveway. If it had continued to grow like its mother it would have blocked the driveway, so it had to come out - and we decided to send it to a whole other climate zone! Dom prepared the ground, fertilising, adding water crystals and collecting mulch. I talked to the plant, let him know he was going to be ok and in he went! He seemed happy! We will see how he has gone when we get back next time.



Right next to where we planted the native there are two stumps... and low and behold in a crevice in the smaller stump we found a lovely little green tree frog, hiding away from the heat of the day. He stayed there for a few hours, but eventually the proximity of us and the dogs sent him scurrying and off we went.


Day one ended sipping wine by the fire, and we spent a night of not much sleep with the dogs in the tent and the camp beds seeming much smaller than I remembered!

Up nice and early on Saturday, to a delicious full breakfast cooked on coals. The big plan for Saturday was Operation Lantana. There were a number of lantana bushes on the block and Dom was determined that this time we wouldn't just complain about them, but remove them! So with jeans and shoes and long sleeve shirt, hat and gloves off we set to the fence line adjoining Tom's place, where most of the bushes were. Tom had put his two horses in the paddock next to our place, and had popped down the evening before to set the fence, that is, to turn on the electric fence! He had done this, he said to keep his horses out of our block, but the fact that BJ sprinted straight through the fence and tried to make friends with his working dogs when we arrived may have been a motivation for him also. Anyway, BJ, being the smart old boy that he is, didn't stress about the electric fence and no harm came to him. But, of course, we have two dogs... our rambunctious puppy, Gypsy, struggles with being away from her couch and tv for any extended period of time, doesn't like the giant dogs (horses) that live next door, and previous to this day, could not leave the side of her parents, ever, at all, nope never. So Dom and I were busy yanking and chopping and sweating and Gypsy was doing what she does best, getting in the way. Next thing, she had sniffed her way over to the fenceline, and I suppose, with our backs turned, sniffed a little too close and received a decent shock to her face! We didn't hear the zap - it would have been drowned out by the extended yelping! This was a whole new world of shock for our white great dane x - never before had she been so terribly assaulted! The yelp went on, she squirmed, she shook, and she looked at us in shock. Then she put her tail between her legs and bee-lined it back to the camp site. Not to be seen again! I went up to check she was ok - and it was a fence that bit her not a snake, but she was fine, feet firmly planted on the tarpauline with a 'hell no - I am not going back THERE again' look on her face. Dom and I happily worked away for the next 45 minutes without being bugged once. And Gypsy didn't stray more than 5 metres from the camp site again for the next two days. Blessings go to electric fences!


We popped into Crow's Nest for some supplies and lunch, and had planned to make use of the showers in the National Park campground. The town centre was busy busy with everyone getting their Easter supplies together, and when we approached the camp site, a sign said 'pre-paid campers only' - so obviously Easter is a little busier than Christmas around those parts. We headed back to town and snacked on delicious homemade hamburgers and headed back home. Dom got back to work on some more lantana and wandered around planning out what to do where, what to build where, what to plant where, while I read, and read some more.

As evening approached, we headed out to our favourite spot and with stakes, hammer, flouro string and measuring tape we marked out our latest home plan. Then stood and tried to imagine what it will be like to stand in our rooms! All very exciting!


As we went to bed on Saturday night, we decided to leave the dogs in the front section of the tent, not right by our sides, and low and behold they accepted that and a peaceful night was had by all.

We woke in the morning, and decamped, having decided to spend a day at our Gold Coast home before heading back to work. Had a great run home, avoiding Sunday's bad traffic and are back in reality. Half way home, however, we realised we had been a little too smart for our own selves...and had left food in the camp kitchen/bathroom cabinet and locked it back in the shed! D'Oh! We hope that it isn't too much a mess when we get back again.

With help of the measuring tape and a trundle wheel borrowed from my work, we were able to get some accurate measurements and Dom has put his efforts into an excellent plan of the block with its separate working and non working areas. I will scan this, and our current house plan at work and post them here soon.

How to build a house?

This past weekend we took an almost flying visit up to the block. Dad was going to be in town to attend a party in Toowoomba, so we were keen to show it off!

First stop however was to check out the latest in Manufactured Homes technology at Transtate Homes in Toowoomba. We have been casually researching different building concepts over the last month or so. Anybody who offers an alternative to the Brick and Tile monstrosity is what we are after, and if they can do it cheaply, with as little hassle as possible, in a way that easily incorporates our sustainable house ideals and looks good too then that is what we are after.

Transtate offer five stars in convenience. You design a home, order it, they build it at their site and turn up one day with your entire house on the back of a truck, complete down to the curtains. That really appeals to me! We had a wander around their sales site and took a peek inside two of their display homes. I was expecting to be unimpressed, to feel like I was walking into a glorified caravan, but was pleasantly surprised. The finishes were fine, the houses felt like homes and we had a good chat with the friendly reception girl who told us we could have whatever we wanted!

We arrived in the Crow and spotted our good mate Geoff (the real estate agent) cruising by in his 4x4 munching on a pie. We hadn't been able to catch up with him since the purchase so scampered over to his office to say hi. He was blown away to see us, he actually hadn't met Dom yet, and had barely met me. He was such a help during the purchase, going out of his way to smooth things over between us, our dodgy lenders and the grouchy vendor.

Geoff invited us in for a cuppa and we had a chat about our plans and the area and he even tried to sell us some more land! The best pick up was that he told us that his Aunty lived one country block away from us (ie about 5 kilometres or so) and that she is the last remaining 'original' of the area. She runs a farm with her 'boys' (I'm assuming these farm boys would be in their forties at least!) and Geoff suggested we pop over and introduce ourselves and pick her memories for info about our block, the church and the burial. We definitely plan to do that - there is no better resource than the people themselves.

We left Geoff's and headed into the local takeaway for lunch. Delicious big country burgers and snacks, then as Dad still hadn't arrived we popped into the pub to watch some cricket and drink some beer...

Dad still hadn't arrived, so we drifted over to Bullocky's Rest, a Bird Sanctuary/Rest Stop at the entrance to town and tried to wait out the two hours! I developed a friendship with a nice old tree and did some costings on the Transtate Homes.

























Dad rang at last, saying he had taken a wrong turn somewhere near Esk and ended up on a crazy dirt road. We thought perhaps he had come up past our place, but after filling up at the friendly neighbourhood petrol pump in some lady's back yard and heading out to the block we realised he had come another way.

Dad and Letty both loved the block, soaked up the serenity for a while and enjoyed the breeze out of the west. The place changes every time we go - this time, thanks to the large amounts of rain that have been falling in the area, the block was awash with knee high grass and the cicadas appeared to at last have moved on to not so green pastures...

On leaving I took the opportunity to show Dad the Transtate Homes we had looked at in the morning, and offended his Builder's Pride! Was that my plan? Only I could know!

We showed Dad what it is was that we really, really want. That is a modular style of home, with a small 'pod' that contains our bedroom and ensuite (no toilet), and a larger 'pod' containing another bedroom, bathroom with composting toilet, the kitchen and living areas. These two pods would be connected by a large deck area, perhaps larger than the internal living area of the two pods. The plan being that in Summer we live primarily outdoors on the half covered/half uncovered deck, and in Winter we withdraw into the small living space, which is economically heated by a pot belly stove. Something like this concept from Gateway Manufacture.

Dad loved the plans and took them away to do some pricing! Could my dream of having my Dad build my home be about to come true? He says he can do much better than any of the quotes we have seen so far. We will wait and see...

We headed off back home and another weekend away was over, back to reality.

First Stay at the Block

We have just returned from our first stay at the block. We took up tent and tarps, dogs and tins of food for a few days leading up to New Years.

We arrived on Saturday morning after a bright and early start and dream trip up, and picked up Linda and Ray in Crows Nest. We drove out with them in tow and set straight into setting up the home-away-from-home. Battling against a gale rushing up through the valley we got our tarp and tents up, equipment out and set in to relax. Ahh the serenity....NOT!

Cicadas are lovely, but thousands of them, all screaming at the top of their lungs, or should that be wings, can be a little unnerving! Barely had we got the camp set up when a white ute (there is an unnamed (as far as I know) white ute club in the area... we shall have to find out the initiation process so we can get one too) pulled up at the gate and a cowboy and his two dogs got out. Turns out our neighbour Tom, had heard about our purchasing the block from our mate, Geoff (the real estate agent) and popped over to say G'Day when he saw us setting up. I love it already! He gave us a welcome and was off again, into his white ute.



Dom got a lovely fire going and we settled in for a night of alternate flame and star gazing.

Off to bed next with two large dogs and two humans in a small tent. We survived until morning, that is if you can call 5:00am morning! Some may call it night! We had a little breakfast then off into town to meet Bethany, Alex and the kids.



With them in tow, again back to the block for some walking about and bragging and walking about. After they left it was time for fire-pit-phase-two with the help of some local rocks and another roaring blaze of warmth.

Linda and Ray joined us in the rough that night and we awoke to the patter of rain on the roof, I mean tarp! We released the dogs from the confines of the tent, only to hear Woof, Woof, Snarl, Moo! The neighbour's cows had approached the fence adjoining our properties and one had escaped out onto the road. BJ and Gypsy did their best intimidating run and bark but were called off and Dom made his best attempt at cow wrangling, to no avail. Apparently he doesn't speak cow! It turns out also that it wasn't in fact a cow, but a grumpy young bull, which explains the shaking of head, stamping of feet and general grumpiness. It's owners were down shortly after to show us how cow-wrangling should be done. Which apparently involves lots of walking about with dogs, opening and closing of fences and exasperated hand actions! Dom wandered down and met the female half of our neighbours. He found out that the grave site on our block is not that of an elderly lady as we thought but of a young child who had died from Diphtheria in the late 1920's. The roads were too wet for her to be taken to be buried in Crows Nest so she had been buried on the church block.

With the news of bad weather on the coast that Alex had brought, in our minds, we decided we had had the best of things and home was calling.

It was fabulous to stay there for a few days, great to meet our lovely neighbours. Every time we go the land seems to increase in size and so do our dreams! Here are some lovely panoramas that Dom took of the block. If you print them out wrap them around your head and spin, you could imagine you are there! Larger versions can also be found here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=15839&l=0d0d0&id=572593433

First Weekend in 'The Crow'

This past weekend we had our first visit to our block as owners. It was quite a nervous start to the journey, with our car playing up and a quick visit to the friendly mechanic on the way up. Way to boost the confidence when you have a 2 hour drive and a mountain climb ahead of you. Luckily, we recently joined RACQ with these soon-to-be-more-frequent trips in mind so off we confidently traveled.

Only to become lost. Yes it is possible for two adult professionals to become lost while driving along two major motorways, that are very well signposted. We got an up close view of the Amberley Air Force Base, but not too close I hope! and then we were back on track and heading for 'home'.

Here is the road between Toowoomba and Crows Nest:


And my pink dashboard monkey! A beautiful treelined road draws you into town, via Highfields. We stopped off to see if we could shake hands with Geoff, our local friendly real estate agent but couldn't track him down so headed out for the ceremonial shed opening!

The road between Crows Nest and our block is a weaving, winding, climbing, dropping, sometimes gravel, sometimes bitumen road with the most glorious views (and some cows) for about15 minutes:


And to prove that we didn't just snaffle those pics from the web:











We turned the final corner and arrived at Our Place! First impression was, 'Wow this is bigger than we remember!'. We clambered through the fence past the friendly sign left by the previous owner:


and spent a while just wandering around, soaking up the serenity and dodging the dozens of locusts (!) that sprung up into the air with every step. First lesson learned - don't walk into the wind while locusts are trying to flee you, unless you like locust-in-the-face. We tried the various views on for size as to where the house would go, visualised the rows of garden beds dutifully providing us with food and well being and then came the time to open the shed! With our keys in hand (hastily couriered down to us on Friday as the solicitor 'forgot' to post them to us....) it was time to bypass yet another friendly sign:



and to our great surprise we found not an empty shed full of spiders and webs but a shed full of things and spiders and webs!
It would appear that the previous, friendly sign-writing owner had intended to fit out the shed for living. Inside, seen through the webs and spiders and if you avoided looking at the mutant, three and half legged-huntsman on the basin top (no - he wasn't dead, he just faked like he was until we started moving things around, and then he proved that three and a half legs are better than none!) were a bathroom basin, sideboard full of plates and cups, baking trays and a plastic bag full of matchbooks! Also, a shower base and fittings, miscellaneous containers, lots of water containers, mirrors, windows, chairs and an umbrella!

So we are now the proud owners of a lot of 'things'!











After exploring the shed a little, with one eye on Mr Mutant in his 'i'm dead therefore I am harmless charade' we went back out to take some photos:






And there it is! Once we realised there really wasn't much else that we could do, we made our way back to town and dropped in to visit the world famous Salt's Antiques, the most incredible antique shop I have ever been too, and future source, I would think, of a number of our prized pieces!




Across the road to The Grand Old Crow for a 'pint' was next and ten minutes were spent evenly divided by being stared at and ignored by the locals as we downed our bevies in solitude.

Then it was off to the Crows Nest Motel, where the friendly owner hooked us up with a room and we relaxed until dinner, back at the Old Crow for a delicious steak and choose your own vegies, followed by a game of pool.

We also checked out the Crows Nest National Park camping area, but saved the walks for one of our spare days some time in the rest of our life!

Sunday morning, we awoke, enjoyed our breakfast, thanks to the friendly motel owner once again, and made our way to the once-a-month markets in the showgrounds. We started a chat with a local nursery man, his array of berry vines and fruit trees was enough to get Dominic started, and made a new local friend. Dom is now comfortably happy that his dream of bowls of fresh berries for breakfast will be a reality.

We headed home from there, and managed to get back without any sidetracks. Home again now and at least five degrees hotter! Missing the silence and the sense of belonging, but motivated to get started on research and planning and some more research. There is so much ahead of us, the scope of what we have planned to do is now visible, and somewhat frightening. But do-able.

We would appreciate any comments, questions, advice that you would like to provide, and plan to update here when things happen, or when we have an inspiration or when we are screaming in frustration. Hope you enjoy the ride!

See you at the Crow!

Katrina and Dominic