All Is Revealed
This is not easy. A
lot of people when writing in with suggestions have said I should include a page
on the site which tells people a bit about me, easier said than done, I'm a whip
maker not a writer , but I'll try.
I'm 55 years old,married,2nd time around
and Christine and I have been married for 22years this year, jeez , I hope I
don't forget our anniversary this year, been there and done that, wasn't very
pleasant. For all of that 22 years, except for about 9 months, we have lived
here on our property at Western Creek in the state of Tasmania in Australia on
50 acres of bush, half way up the side of a mountain at an altitude of a bit
over 2000 ft and we love it.
We first came here it was just
a bush block. No House, no road to the property, just lots of bush. We did have
a map telling us where the access road to the property was supposed to be but
because no one had actually lived on the place before, it was once part of a
dairy farm, the road had never been fenced off or defined in any way. That was
all worked out in the end with the help of friendly neighbours and then we set
about making a camp and settling down to building a house before winter set in
and we all froze to death. Apart from Christine and myself we had two teenage
children with us, Shayne and Donna, who didn't think this was very funny at all.
Back in civilisation this was all very romantic but when it came down to the
nitty gritty it was a little different. I grew up in the mountains of New South
Wales and was in the Army for three years, but Chris and the kids had never been
out of the city or even camping for any longer than a weekend so they didn't
really know what hit them. One minute a comfortable little house almost in the
heart of the city with all the modern conveniences, the next, tent and a shovel
to dig your own hole for the toilet.
I had decided on a log cabin because I thought it would be
relatively easy to build and quick. Just cut down a few trees, pile them one on
top of each other and Bob's your uncle. Did I forget to mention I had never used
a chain saw in my life and I had brought with us the biggest chain saw I could
buy because we all know big is better don't we. The biggest tree I had ever cut
down was when I was a child of about 10 and I cut down a wattle tree which must
have been all of 6inches through. The first tree I had to cut down here was 4
feet through and about 150 feet tall. Entry in diary for Saturday 6th February
1982,"Dropped first big tree today, very dicey business". Very dicey
business indeed. It becomes a bit intimidating when you front up to a tree that
weighs 15 or twenty tons and while your getting ready to fall the tree you
remember all the stories you have heard about trees falling on people, limbs
coming out of trees and killing people and all the other horror stories you have
heard. It tends to make you very careful.
We cleared a site for the cabin and then started on the
task of building our new home before the winter set in. We started on the 8th of
February 1982 and finished
on 17th of April 1982.At last a roof over our heads and some protection from the
weather. We still didn't have a kitchen or bathroom
and the toilet facilities were still a shovel and a walk in the bush. We found
this a bit rough not long after when we all ended up with a tummy bug, from the
water I
think, we weren't used to untreated water, and it decided to rain and
snow at the same time. It's not easy digging a hole holding an umbrella, in the
snow and trying not to get the toilet paper wet.
We discovered toilet paper
isn't much good when it's wet. As you can see things were pretty basic. Four of
us had to eat sleep and cook in space 16ft by 36ft.Sounds like a lot at first
until your there for awhile. Also had to work there which took up a bit of room.
As I said no kitchen so all our cooking was done on the Franklin stove. All nice
and cosy in winter but in summer it gets a bit hot. We ended up building a
kitchen in time for Christmas that year. For a change in diet when we were
burning bits of wood and rubbish outside to clear up the surrounding area, we
would stick a leg of lamb and some vegetables in a camp oven, just a big caste
iron pot with a lid, bury it in a hole in the ground, cover it with coals and
come back in a couple of hours to a roast dinner. One weekend after a hard day
cleaning up around the house we pulled out the camp oven, really looking forward
to a nice roast leg of lamb with veges, only to discover the coals had gotten a
little too hot and all that was left of our roast dinner was a black leg bone
and the vegetables had become so hot that they were still little glowing red hot
coals. Toast and peanut butter was a poor substitute. In the photo you can see
how the cabin looked from the air at 1000ft.
This
was taken about a year after we had moved in. You can see the beginnings of the
concrete slab for the house we live in now.....
26/09/2007