Modern Conveniences and other stories

Electricity - check.

Fridge - check.

Washing machine - check.

I think we're good to go.

Its been quite a few weeks what with Christmas and all. We had a splendid time down the Mornington peninsula with Jo's family, feasting and ibibing merrily as you do. We took a week off from the shop - which was busy enough for us before chrissy, and now we're back into it at a relaxed pace. And quite frankly i'm still recovering from the excitment of the weekend entertainment in Wangaratta: A Heritage Truck Show AND a Rodeo AND County Legend Lee Forster! Holy cow. We didn't and still don't know who or what Lee Forster is cos we didn't see him. But here's a snippet of the vibe -

So many cowboy hats. And cowboys. And cowboy music. Check the DJ up in the booth. You get the idea.

My personal favoutite truck - old blue eyes.

We'd never been to a rodeo before. It was bonkers. For example - a steer runs out of a pen, a bloke on a horse charges after it, leaps off his horse, literally grabbing the bull by the horns, and in the same motion rolls the cow over and gets all four feet off the ground. Nice one. They call that steer wrestling. Most of the blokes didn't catch up with the steer though. Hurrah! And there were bucking broncos, bull riding, barrel racing (not actually racing barrels as it turms out, just running around them. On a horse of course), lassooing, and all sorts of really dangerous things. I'll stick to my knitting thanks.

On a more sedate note we found the source of the evenings grumbling and growling and carrying on. Mr K. Bear is living across the street.

Might have to ask him to turn the music down though cos he sounds like a donkey being pulled apart by elephants.

We had a bumper crop of apricots just before christmas. Jo tends to the garden mostly. I stick to chainsawing and other manly pursuits. Like making chutney.

Yummo. There all finished now though, we're waiting on the nectarines to ripen, and the plums and almonds to kick in. Yummo x3.

stay tuned.

interesting...

Oh this? Its a rocket tractor. Obviously.

Landed Gentry

Welcome to 246 Griffiths Track!!

50 acres (or 20 hectares if you're french or metric - but 50 is a bigger number so it sounds better) of bush and animals and general good times.

After a few months of indecision about where to spend the next little bit of our lives - melbourne? auckland? somewhere else? we decided that we liked it around here, went looking for a property and found this wee gem! So we're very excited about doing lots of stuff to the house and the land, having some chickens, using the shed for making things, perhaps having a couple of pigs one day (they taste delicious evidently), going a a bit green with the water and power and so on, and generally living, as the name suggests, like hippies. Neato.

So, a pictorial introduction.

The letter box. Rustic rural charm meets modern efficiency. Mostly just rural charm though.

The house and the front yard. Bit of a garden there, nice fence to keep the roos out of the veges, bit of shade, bit of grass (theres more than you can see actually, and one day it will be a lush oasis-like paradise) and a shovel for bashing snakes.

This is the view up the back lawn to the house. Lots of fruit trees there - apricot, nectarine, mandarin, apple, peach, almond. Lovely. Soon there will be a couple of filter ponds to filter the grey water from the house down the lawn, through the trees and ultimately down to the dam where the animals come to drink (pond/reservoir for our new zealand viewers) at the bottom.

Still working out where to put the cricket pitch - there is flatter ground around the other side of the house.
Next up a trio of sheds. The top 'shed' (right of picture) is the house, the middle shed is, um, the shed, and the bottom shed is the currently unoccupied chicken coop.

The pool (!!!!!) is behind the corrugated iron fence next to the house. More of the pool later.

The big shed is awesome, room for about 10 tractors i reckon. Or a dozen pool tables. But more importantly loads of space for a future meat cool room and a micro brewery and a kiln and general making-stuff-space. Theres a play room built into the roof and lots of space that you can't see here. And and and, i'll be able to chop wood inside, which has to be good for winter. Check it out:

And here is the chicken shed and the fruit trees. We're thinking of not only having ponds near the trees but building some furniture so we can sit in the shade and sip beer. (and wine i guess) I reckon we can 'train' a tree so that it grows like a chair. We'll see.

Inside the chateau - this is looking through the lounge (bedrooms on the other side of the wall on the right, more rroms behind) towards the kitchen. Its got a really good fire there, a funky red light shade, and, well, not much else. We haven't actually moved in yet. The floor will change, walls will change, ceiling will change, in short, its a blank canvas waiting for our brush strokes of creativity and design.

And into the kitchen. Combustion stove!! Cool.

And out the kitchen window we see..... the pool! Nice doily curtain eh.

And my apologies for the more visually sensitive out there. Me in the nude. Ahem. First pool use though - needs to be documented surely. And for the record i tucked into a nice bomb a fraction of a second after this shot was taken.

Moving right along...

Obvious benefit of living in the bush - kangaroos on the lawn to keep the weeds down. Lovely. And you can't really see it but the one in the front has a joey in her pouch and the joey is having a nibble too.

And there are lots of other cool things too like grass trees. These beauties grow on average 1.3 cm per year, and the ones in our area are bigger than the ones found in other parts of the country evidently. We love them. There are koalas somewhere too, we could hear them growling the other night.

So thats what the bush sort of looks like. Some of it is quite clear and other parts quite overgrown. And when we went for a wander the other day we found this hill. We're still not sure if its on our land or not, but its good anyway. You can see for miles out to the west. We got lost on our exploration which is a bit of a worry.

And as if buying a ranch was not enough Jo has opened a shop. Too many dickheads in the teaching world so she stuck it to the man (actually it was the ladies that were the problem mostly) and has opened a fair trade, wooden toy, hand made, gift and interesting stuff shop. Its awesome. Come and spend money next time you're in 'wang'. (thats local longo for wangaratta)

Its in a beautiful old building, got the nice double front bay window, in a perfect location, so she's onto a winner i reckon. Its called The Lost Sock Office. And yes there is a sign with the name on it but its out of shot.

The centre piece is an old pool table Jo tarted up.

And now for christmas there is a more christmassy display. There's more stuff in there now too. Its chockas.

So there you have it. We like it all, hope you do too. Come and stay once we sort out a few 'comfort' issues with the house. Like furniture and a fridge. Might not be any blog updates for a while cos school finishes next week and the internet at the shop is slow until they upgrade the 3G network sometime next year.

Merry christmas in anticipation.