Rain
Much rain!
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Well friends, a lot can happen in 11 days. We had planned to take things a littel slower, but when we heard about a large excavator being close by, it made sense for us to use this enormous machine to clear our debris ( saving money by not having to float the machine here from Coffs Harbour.) Thus, since then we have had our house remains trucked away and while the excavator was here, we had the operator do spme site leveling. It is the nature of these things that one experiences the occasional setback. Last Thursday, as we were preparing to move from our neighbors place back to our newly leveled campsite, we had a glitch. After years of backing the ute (truck) under campers, we managed to hit the lovely new camper and bend at least one leg out of whack. Following several bouts of teeth gnashing, we choofed of to a motel in Grafton for the night, taking time to sit in air conditioning and recover our equanimity. New legs were ordered and we planned to run down to Coffs Harbour on Tuesday to collect them. That Thursday we pitched our little tent again , but not before ordering 2 truckloads of crusher dust (fine gravel) to drop onto the level pad. This will provide a clean non dusty surface for our camp . Its Saturday and Jarrad from Mt Zion Quarry, about half an hour away, dropped off the crusher dust. Bruce heroically ( it was 38 degrees C) started barrowing, shoveling and raking the first pile, when I got a phone call from a man called Don, who lives near Couuts Crossing. I had seen a post he put on our fire survivors FB page offering the use of him and his tractor today for anyone in our community. I posted that we could use a tractor with a bucket to spread out crusher dust, and lo and behold Don turned up about half an hour later and took over the manual labor with his tractor. Just another example of the goodness of humankind. While the excavator was here, we had home level 4 areas on the block. Two are for rainwater tanks , one is for our camp, and one is a potential house site. 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. .  On Friday we started putting everything away that could get wet, and the rain started. We had 90 mls on Friday (nearly 4 inches) and spent a good deal of Friday evening digging trenches to drain the new pad. We did not want all the crusher dust and soil that had been shifted to wash away, especially as all our new gear (and us) was sitting on top of it all. |
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May 2021
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