At Work!

Well yesterday l discovered that wallabies are really quite wonderful things! You know why? Because they eat grass! With Treeka now in residence (who could be scared of that!!!?)

l think the wallabies are coming into the garden less and less.....so the grass grows.and grows...................so l began to mow and realised there is a lot of it!! Admittedly its flat and not exactly hard work.....but there is quite a lot!!!

The orchard WAS hard work! The grass is lush and thick and the poor mower struggled a little bit! We do have plans for geese to go in there. l think the plan will be moved forward... the area designated to them will grow and the amount we wanted might double!!

As its quite a bit cooler up here the trees are a bit slower to bud so we were very happy the other day to see the first bright green shoots of our beautiful walnut tree starting to unfurl. We are so looking forward to having this enormous canopy of green sheltering us in the hotter summer months.

Oh and this by the way is our library! Not in the house yet as we want to probably reinforce the underneath of the house before we subject it to a ton of books. So here it all sits in the apple shed....unread and unpacked!!

Soggy Hollow!!?

Wow, it sure is wet up in these thar hills!! We have water washing down through the paddocks and bogs and frogs galore!!! If we had a dam (which we will dig next year) it would have filled up overnight!!l am also wet and soggy after saying goodbye to our last load of rubbish from Glen Huon! Just the floors to clean and the carpets too. Oh and the lawns to mow and the garden to tidy. Nearly done. Cant wait!!
Lilli loves her morning slosh about in the morning but is never so happy afterwards when reality hits and she is cold and dirty and wet!!

Possum showing off the loading ramp.

Top of an old fence post. Sort of a whole little eco system all of its own!

l spend (waste??) so much time every morning taking photos!! l need to get up an extra half hour earlier just to compensate for it!! The hills around the house this morning were all shrouded in mist it was just stunning

And lastly just had to steal this photo from some very dear friends of ours who came up to visit at the weekend. Love this photo. Geoff added the water tank the other day and it makes the chook house look quite sweet if not a little sad!!

 

At Glen Huon

Ahhh the bliss of three bars on the broadband gauge!!! Down at the old house cleaning up for the tenants to move in on Monday. Hard leaving the farm on my day off l must admit!Haven't done much up there yet as last week  we were madly unpacking and this week its madly cleaning up this old place for rent! Next week hopefully normality will resume!!

Our front paddock. Be prepared! l am NEVER going to get tired of taking photos of this beautiful tree!

Cosy, messy, colouful and comfortable.... getting there!!!

Geoff and Mum and Dad's dog Archie asleep in front of the fire. The fireplace is a very dark wood, is just beautiful. This particular corner of the house somehow reminds me of an old Welsh farmhouse. No idea why as don't think l have ever been into an old Welsh Farmhouse!!

Pushka and the sheep all posing beautifully!

One of my greatest joys l must say is being able to take the dogs (and cat!) for a walk every day and not have to worry about dodging cars and crossing roads. Bliss!

Family time......................isnt this what everyone does???

Last Resort!

Well here l am a work in my lunch break dribbling my spag bol over the keyboard! Better then sitting in Woolworth's car park but equally frustrating!!Anyway, life is good. We seriously love this place! Of course there is always the small problems to overcome when you move into a new place. How do all the water tanks work and connect? Why does the washing machine flood the laundry? Does the oven have a thermostat?? How can we stop the Rivulet flooding the hay paddock and HOW do we stop 100 wallabies eating all the grass!!! Lots of challenges to look forward to!
Possum loves it!

Geoff setting up his workshop in the Apple Shed!

Getting ready for the ducks!

Hard work and Bliss!

Well the last few days have been spent shifting more of our years worth of 'stuff!" from Glen Huon to Franklin. We still have so much there!!! l think we will be going back every day of the week for the next two weeks! It wouldn't have been possible without this wonderful man in the photo below  who gave us two full days of his time as well as his enormous trailer !! Firewood, kayaks, pot plants...you name it he carted it. And all for a cup of coffee and a sausage!!! You are a legend Martin and we both love you!

Kel and Sandy were amazing as well! Kel never stopped nor did Sandy but she also made coffee BROUGHT us coffee....toilet rolls....everything you could possibly think of!.........and cleaned and tidied and was generally our angel of the day!  What great people to have as our new neighbours!!!

This is Geoff and l in our new sitting room (taken about midnight) We worried it might be a bit bit small but  we actually love it and find it very cosy and inviting and very easy to fall asleep in!

The next day (Sunday) was breakfast on the front veranda in the glorious sunshine

Then a walk across the paddocks which Lilli loved due to all the mud!We are going to need a non stop supply of doggy towels l think!

 We discovered we have a few massive trees on the place

 Our very own platypus/swimming waterhole ,mossy rocks and a beautiful tumbling stream (we also have blackberries, gorse, bracken and broom but that doesn't sound quite so nice does it!

This morning was very frosty ,totally different to Sunday morning but equally beautiful.

Lilli found her favourite spot in the sun.

 Unfortunately Pushka thinks its an ideal spot to sunbathe too!! Who will win?

Oh and l saw my first Wedge Tail Eagle, way up in the sky over the paddock behind the house!

In!

Wow! That's all we can say! Huge two days.Amazing help from some wonderful people. What can we say except the biggest of thank yous The place is fabulous. We love it! Finally got around to connecting back to the outside world tonight. Just a few photos as its definitely bed time!

 The view from our garden down the drive

The first of several truck loads!!

Moving Day!

Got the keys today about 12.30pm. Zipped into Hobart after work to collect our removal truck and filled it up with our first load just as the sun went down. 

We then loaded up both cars and headed up to Franklin about 7pm. Seemed to fill the little house with just two cars worth! Had a wander around in the dark and enjoyed listening to Fleurty's Rivulet in the distance. Called into the Franklin Tavern on the way home and now sitting down to eat dinner at 11pm.
Very exciting and looking forward to tomorrow. Its going to be big!
Our new local! The Franklin Tavern!

One Day!

Another grey wet blustery day today.Not a great thing when you have sheets and towels all sitting in soggy heaps around the house! A beautiful rainbow over the garden late this afternoon though.

Our few days of opulence and wealth are now over. This afternoon l took a rather large bank cheque into Hobart to the Conveyance Office in readiness for Settlement tomorrow afternoon. Ahh well, it was fun while it lasted!!

Possum seems to be taking this moving stuff in her stride. Even to the point of checking out her transport! Not a problem she seems to think!

l took this photo of the living room today and couldn't help but compare it to how it looked only a few months ago! A big difference! Minimalist living is not my cup of tea!

Oh and how is THIS for great news!!! Look!!!!!!!

l couldn't get very close mainly because it was raining and secondly because as soon as you step one foot anywhere on the Oval they scuttle off to hide under Mum! Isn't that wonderful! And look how big they are!
l told the Mower/Roller Man from the Council that they have hatched and survived his machines and he was very chuffed that his care has paid off!

Two Days!

Today was a flurry of  final activity! l can't believe l managed to extract about another 10 boxes out of the kitchen alone!! Am l just a really bad packer or do two casserole dishes really take up one whole box on their own?
Good news today on the rental front with a lovely young couple from Adelaide very keen to rent Watson's Road until it sells. A great relief to know not only do we now have rent coming from this place to help with the mortgage, but also knowing we have a decent tenant in here at the same time. Phew!
Someone confused the weather gods today and plunged us back into mid winter. 
So much for my plans to wash all  the towels and sheets and hang them on the line to dry! They are still a sodden heap in the sitting room. Hopefully tomorrow is better?

Oh and here's Pushka just double (quadruple???) checking we don't go without her! Can't say l blame here. The house is pretty bleak at the moment!

I'm not going to miss THAT hallway carpet!

Wrapped up to be a cold wet wintry evening . A good night to be inside in front of the fire with a bottle of Lambrusco!

Three Days!

Three Days to go! l now have the next two days off so there will a final flurry of activity l am sure! The Real Estate Agent is bringing prospective renters around tomorrow morning so hopefully this place can at least be rented out until it sells.
Geoff and l went up to 'Bonnie Doon' last night after work as the owners have moved out already. The place was definitely smaller than what we remembered with the hallway having at least 6 square metres shaved off it somewhere!!! The Apple Shed was just as large though,the bedrooms smaller, the carpet pinker! ( l thought it was terracotta) and more blackberries in the paddock than we remembered!!! Set off initially nervous, gazing about the skyline for those darned eagles but Lilli had an absolute ball until the blackberries got so thick she had to be carried!
We are heartened when we look at this photo which was taken about 3 years ago  which show well kept  paddocks compared to the neglectful state some of them are in now due to no grazing and no slashing. We hope it wont be too hard to get at least half of it back to this stage before too long!!

 Itching to get out there with a slasher!

Dad dropped off a dog carrier for us today (thanks Dad!) to house one of the cats during the  move.

 

Pushka took one look at it and chose her own mode of transport thank you very much!!

The Workshop....The Last Frontier!

That's the trouble when you work with paint......... you tend to amass it. Half tins left by customers, dented cans for a fraction of the price, gritty paint returned for credit but easily strained through a stocking! l have to go through all this stuff and decide whats not coming with us! ....its going to be hard!!

Then after the paint its the final corner......It doesn't actually usually look this bad. it does have a lot of  half packed boxes in front of it. But still, its a challenge!

Funny thing yesterday when Geoff took an electric guitar down that's been hanging on the wall for a couple of years, and  discovered that it had left a perfect image of itself on the pine behind!