Sunday, January 24, 2010

Woolgoolga

Went to Woolgoolga yesterday, about an hours drive away, met a friend of Toni's, Annabella, a lovely woman.  We had lunch at Woolgoolga and then all headed to Emerald beach for a swim, water was superb !  So different having waves, something all the locals take for granted but living in NQ all my life, where the reef protects the beaches, we rarely had waves of any significance

Annabella lives in Bellingin, a bigger version of Nymboida but not to far away so we may see her again sometime.

Bom Bom Forest - Minne Water

17 Jan
Took the mountain bikes to Bom Bom Forest, the local MTB riding area around Grafton, unfortunately they have a lack of single track so it;s mostly riding on firetrail and 4-wd road.  Never mind, had a bit of a look around, then headed to Minnie Water, which is a small coastal village, not far from Grafton.




Has some great camping spots, it's surrounded by Yurangir Nation Park., which also has many beautiful vistas vistas.


Plan to come back and camp some time, take the snorkelling gear, looks like a protected area not to far off the rocks where we can snorkel.  As well as plenty of beautiful beaches around the headland to explore.  

The beaches are all beautiful down here and you can swim in summer, as opposed to NQ where you can't swim in Summer because of the box jellyfish.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Worm Farm and other jobs

Constructed the enclosure for the Worm Farm today, nothing special, scrounged the wood from bits around the property, a bit of Alu. cladding for the roof, and old bathtub I managed to find in Grafton, a piece of carpet scrounged from the local carpet shop .. anyway, you know the drill.

The shade cloth is held taut at the bottom clipped into place and can be rolled up out of the way if you need to get in the side, as well as serving duty to give the little blighters shade from the afternoon Sun.
Managed to finish the dam, cleaned the ends of the intake for the pump for the veggie garde3ns (goes up to a tank on the hill, then gravity feeds the taps for the veggies, orchards etc) As well as installed new flots (20l oil drums cleaned out) and bricks on the bottom to stop the wind moving them about,  Toni did most of the work in the tube in the dam itself.  She looked quite the picture, fighting the duck weed !



Monday, January 18, 2010

Moved in and underway

Moved in mid December 2009.  Finally settled in a  little, just had satellite internet installed so am able to update the blog.

I had started building mountain bike trails on the property, there is a separate blog for that here .  All the chores associated with getting a small rural property up and running  have to be attend to.  Taking into consideration the place is self sufficient in water and power.

I have my wonderful new partner with me, she tries hard to understand me and truly loves me but I can see her struggle with how I feel, hopefully she will be satisfied with acceptance one day and be able to leave her own sadness behind..

Solar PV (Photovoltaic) Electrical  System
The solar system is only small-ish, (15 panels at 70 watts)

so I am looking to upgrade it to something a little beefier to allow a normal refrigerator to run, along with a couple PC's through the day mostly as well as equipment like pressure pumps for house water etc and maybe light power tools.  This will take some time to sort out and will be relatively expensive $20,000 +

Veggie Garden
The veggie garden is well underway, with plantings of radish, corn, carrots, eggplants, a variety of melons, passionfruit, black russian tomatoes etc already added to the established veggie garden

Orchard
The small orchard has been added to with another avocado and 2 blueberries bushes.  With plans to add raspberries later in the year