It's hard to believe its been 5 months since the last update. There have been many months of very little progress re building as we have navigated our way through the building approval process- many new regulations - revegetations plan, sediment control plan waste water plan  - the list goes on. Finally we jumped through the  second last hoop  and were able to start building out shed.  Its construction  is now complete and over the next couple of weeks solar panels, wiring , plumbing, septic (including a HOT WATER SYSTEM - ) will happen and we will move into the studio section of the shed. Construction  of the house should start next week. Lots of water has passed under the bridge, but living without  240volts, (apart from 2 solar panels to charge USBs) , running water  and a toilet has had its challenges. Despite that, we have had the experience of living pretty much completely outdoors for 16 months, and that has really been a. treat in so many ways. Two floods and a few scorcher days during summer were no fun at all, but most of the time we have enjoyed the outdoor life.  It has been impossible to live a 'normal' life as such a lot of our time has been spent just living (everything takes longer -  drinking water  collected  in jerry cans from our awesome neighbours, washing water collected from the council pipeline in  our 1000 litre container then decanted into our other 2 1000 litre containers , firewood to collect and cut up, human waste to deal with, covering  our tools etc with tarps every time it rains are just of few of the time chewer uppers.
But ,we have prevailed and should be in our temporary palatial new digs in about 2weeks.   Here are a few pics of our habitations over the last year and a bit.

A week ago we marked the anniversary of the fire.  Sometimes  it seems so fast- other times it seems like an age. We are still camped. Had to move from our nice little camp on the old house site to make way for the earthworks for our new home. We decided back in May to rebuild  and we engaged a local builder to get us through the Development  Application process.  It has taken til TODAY to get approval to build - At last!~

Life has been pretty goods to us- although the outdoor life , as much as we love it, can be a bit much when there is no choice involved. A lot of time is spent  just managing basic necessities. carting water, collecting firewood (although now summer is nearly here this is not a daily chore) watering the garden and continually working on removing fallen and felled timber. Bruce aka 'my lumberjack', has been  working the chainsaw pretty much continuously for m onths,. We now have a tractor to help move some of this. That's a big help. The work is physically demanding   but on the whole n ot a bad way to pass time. 

90% of the time we are happy as clams, but it is getting a little harder as the time stretches out.   Nevertheless, approval for the build is a big turning point, so seeing building actually begin will be a great  boon.

We have removed many many trees tyo comply with the new bushfire regs which is fine by us, but the earthworks have left us with a big revegetation job. Luckily we like this sort of stuff and are busing propagating plants via cuttings and seeds.  

Anyway folks I have posted a few pics from the last few months and will try and do  a few more sometime soo.

 Much rain! 

People keep asking us if we are planning to rebuild. Not long after the fire, Bruce and I decided that it was such an unsettling experience, we should not make any serious decisions about our future until some time has passed. We have set a 12 month wait and see timeline- meanwhile we will set up a comfy camp, go to the US for my last work trip ever (March / April), come back and decide what our next step will be - maybe do some more work on our camp, maybe take the camper up to the tropics for the winter, maybe go and live in Sri Lanka for a few months - just play life by ear and not commit to anything permanent.  Just take it easy and enjoy life. 

It was super hot Sunday, so we took off and visited Bruce's aunty in maclean and then went for a drive along the coast to Woolgoolga. When we arrived homeat about 4, I got a message from another volunteer who had offered to help us chainsaw up some of the many fallen and felled trees (this is a gargantuan job). He came up to look at the site and said, "Maybe I can do some while I'm here", so he and Bruce spent the next 2 hour cutting up and clearing one huge forest red gume that was covering a very large area of ground.  Yet another wonderful human just helping.  

Monday afternoon, we drove up to Coffs and on Tuesday, we finally got the new camper legs (they come in pairs). Wednesday our wonderful neighbour Nathan, helped up put the new leg on, and then helped us level the site for the tent and camper. FInally,  we had  all the pieces of our camp in one  place.  
Thursday we set up the new camp, and Friday we started preparing for the rain that was forecast. 
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A lot has transpired in the last 2 weeks since we returned.  We had a new leaf put on our car springs before we headed up to Hervey Bay  Queensland (7 1/2 hours drive )  to buy our Palomini Camper. We spent 2 nights there and left with our shiny new camper to drive back to Nymboida.  The night before we left SE  QLD. had torrential rains, but we managed to miss it all - apart from seeing immense floods all the way home. Nymboida had also  had 200 mm of rain ( neary 8 inches) . We stopped at the  canoe centre 7 minutes from home  on our way through to find out if our creeks were flooded and of courese YES - they were, so we had to camp out at the canoe centre that night. We got through mid morning as the water level dropped.  After fires and flood, we wait with bated breath for the plagues of locusts to descend!
Since then we have had our blocked cleared (it should be finished this afternoon)  with a 21 tonne excavator clearing all the fire debris . It is good to have the ruin gone. There is also such a lot of germination and shooting of trees with new growth . It is truly mazing. Unlike the US forests , Australian forests have evolved with fire and many species of gum trees (eucalypts) reshoot after fire. Some plants even need fire to germinate.  
Here are some pics from the last couple of weeks.

 For those following our story,  we ended the year with Christmas with my family in Adelaide. We also caught up with numerous friends  during our stay. Christmas was particularly good , not only because we were cocooned in love for the whole time, but we had both my niece Jade  and her partner Mitsu as well as my nephew Locky and his partner Winnie together with us, which was a first for Christmas. 

 We finally arrived back home on Sunday Jan 12th . We have set up our initial camp (pics below) . . .
We took a long walk to the top of the ridge where our house is located. Before the fire we had never been able to get through the thick lantana and bush to see what was there, but with the clean sweep of the fire all of our land, and that of our neighbours is visible.
​Four days later we are on our way to Queensland to pick up our new camper.