Noosa Bound

August 5th 2019 Since last we are putting the finishing touches on preparations to move the caravan this coming weekend.  So we have: Moved the Water Tanks: - This entailed prepping the site and foundations of one tank only, we don't need both tanks working at present; - Moving the tanks from their prominent and temporary position right in the middle of the block; that was fun :) - Getting one tank filled with carted water; - Setting up one pump and associated plumbing to get this water to the van site. - We also moved the smaller tank we bought much earlier to a position which will accept direct water run-off from the (to be constructed) roof of the container which itself still needs to be moved); Big bugger !  BTW we did find the outlet :) Motoko works Mr Mitarai, together with girl sound effects. All nicely in place for the time being. Set up a Portable Loo: - Ordered and had positioned a port-a-loo to save the undignified trip to the local ...

Its Stopped Raining Please note: If you wish me to email you when I have added content, please email me and I'll send you the link each time it's updated. Haven’t updated the blog as we have been busy with long days and home to the van in the dark and too tired to blog. None-the-less the dry weather as allowed us to move ahead with a number of things which we can do prior to submitting in the BA. So since last entry we have: - Built a temporary driveway crossing from the street to the front gate, which entailed earthwork and tucking in gravel; - Cut down some trees which shouldn’t be there (according to Cheryl, our garden consultant) and taken them to the tip; - Cleaned up around the creek and pond with a whipper snipper, and cleared under the Morton Bay Fig; - Returned from a dump trip with a trailer load of mulch to spread under the fig tree; - Planted about a dozen trees/shrubs Cheryl (our garden consultant) had bought around to start the screening off of ...

Big Day out for Mr Mitarai Busy day. Got a call from the water tank folk asking if they could bring forward our delivery... yeah no problem as we planned to be at Marnie to paint the inside of the container and try the BX on Marnie soil for the first time. So to start the day I had, the previous evening, loaded the BX onto the trailer after Jamie towed the ute from the bog.  All good and 1st attempt at loading the BX up on the trailer all went well except when I went to move the ute and trailer, the trailer brakes were binding.  Too late to sort last night so tackled the problem 1st thing this morning. Not sure the cause but we just backed off the tension in the trailer brake cable and all good. Next task was securing Mr Mitarai for the 20 min ride to Marnie.  This was a bit difficult due to finding tie down points which would allow good lashing angles to solid points on both the trailer and tractor. After a few tries and re-familisation with how to use those b...

Waiting for the rain to stop: Well things have been a bit slow over the last couple of weeks here at Noosa.   It seems (according to locals) we are experiencing unseasonable seasonal weather, of the wet variety. Given the early stages of building generally entails a lot of negative changes in elevation, wet dirt or mud as we know it, is not ones friend.    Mr. Mitarai and the ute in particular don't cope well. We have had heavy downpours followed by sun, then heavy downfall, etc, etc.  The ground never gets to recover before the next deluge. One afternoon's shower drop. So what's been happening?   I have had two flat batteries, one on the Merc and one on the ute, plus a flat tire on the ute to give me something to do.  And as I worked on making our temporary caravan surroundings a little more pleasant, I got the ute bogged in the paddock, and beyond redemption until the ground firms. I got into the paddock with a 1/2 ton of gravel, but ...

Saturday 15th June 2019: Today I did a 2 for 1; I got some practice with ' Mr Mitarai ' digging trenches and at the same time relieved (or hope too) some of the poor drainage around our current site for the van at Jamie's (my son's) place. There was some PVC piping lying around the back of he's shed, I bought some excess stock of a retired plumber (via FB marketplace) and a trip to Bunnings secured the rest required. At present the two water tanks catching water from the shed roof have their overflows just dumping straight to the ground at the tank bases.  This is not ideal and on top of the heavy rain of late, the rear paddock is very spongy; adding the roof runoff doesn't help.  Then add our grey water runoff from the van, and the situation is far from ideal. So the plan is, to pipe all that water down the paddock to an existing swale about 20 meters away, which then will disperse the water further down hill into the paddock I cut pipe and added app...

Wednesday 12 June 2019 Today was busy, with the morning deciding on specs for two purchase, a Mud Bucket for the tractor and water tanks for the site. A Mud Bucket is the business end of a backhoe but has a wider bucket or digging width compared to the typical trench digging bucket you see on most excavators.  As I'll be using the excavator to form the driveway, together with the front end loader (typically called a FEL), the trenching bucket would be painfully slow when required for certain digging actions. So after advice from the dealer where I bought BX, I got onto OzBuckets to order a 800mm wide Mud Bucket.  It'll take just three days to fabricate and paint (I'm going for black, not orange) and I can drive down to Brisbane and pick it up if delivery is more expensive than diesel. Below is my own birthday present, a Kubota BX23S compact tractor.  This tool is remarkably capable as a Swiss army knife. It can do so many things, carry stuff, dig holes or tr...