Driveway DONE!

Well - the drive is done at last!!!
Several tons of soil shifted, more tons of pavers laid, cut, wacked and more soft sand brushed into the gaps - we did it! I can see why the professionals charge so much - they'd need a new back after every one! The pic below is of the girlies standing on the last shovel-full that we shifted to lay the crushed limestone and sand.
Once the lime stone and sand was done, we went to collect the pavers. Phoebe came into her own again, with two trailer-loads of pavers, each weighing over a ton!
The first few were easy... My back was intact then!
Nearly done!
At least the winter weather held up for us! This was the last of the soft sand brushed in!
There - ready to move in and have the landscaping done! (When the bloody bank pulls their finger out and allows the builders to give us the keys!!!)

Little track to York

Yesterday (Thursday) we had a beautiful English summer's day, weather-wise, so made the best of it and went 4WDing with Finn, from work!

This is the start of the track, from Mundaring Weir road, where we turned off the bitumen, onto the start of the power-line service track, which goes almost to York, which was the first inland town of WA. We've done some of this track before, about 5kms of the 30km track, but Finn has done it several times. He even towed his son home from half way through it!!! This is a real trick as you'll see from the pics of the terrain!

This is only part of the track - yes, it goes beyond where you can see! and it gets BUMPIER!

A slippery part of the track, which was a bit demanding, so we went up the track just to the right, which was a bit less slippy?

Some of the 'smaller' lumps?

We finally arrived at York after 4 hours of fun off-roading. It's like stepping back in time, with architecture from years ago and shops to match.

This was a photo, asking to be taken - it's inside a bottle shop, of all places, so it'd be rude not to go in, wouldn't it? (Talk about discouraging drinking n driving!)
A closer look at that sign on the front of the car! Worrying how I agree with most of 'em!

The motor museum, which used to be in Freo.

Main St.
The Court House

Cross over started

We STILL don't have the keys yet - The bank are not known for their speed, so I decided to go it alone and lay the rest of the drive (known as the cross over, as it crosses over Council land (where they could put a pavement)) myself!
I had two fantastic labourers (Noonie & Nutty) help me move about 5 tons of sandy soil. We then needed to lay 60mm of crushed limestone, which we fetched locally with a trailer. That was another two tons! I then used the free trailer (from the limestone place) to collect a wacker, but had to do this myself, as it was a little noisey for the girlies! (and it was lunch time!) so that's where we are today (Thursday) Next is another 2 - 3 tons of sand and the pavers, which will need to be brushed in with washed sand (another 1/2 ton) and all this is moved spade by spade!!! I'll be fitter than ever!


btw, the wacker was so heavy, I couldn't lift it back on the trailer, so I used the pavers as a ramp (arranged them in a triangle at the back of the trailer) to slide the wacker up!
Where there's a will....

House Inspection Done!

We did our Final Inspection of the house today and have signed it off as COMPLETE!!!!
We now have to send all paperwork to Bank - they send money to builder and then we get the keys!
All in 10 working days MAX!!!
We hope to have 'em before 10 days, so we can move whilst we're all on our hols!! (We go back 20th July)
Wish us luck, so we can get in sooner rather than later and if anyone's available to lend a hand.......?

Btw, MIDDLE OF WINTER HERE!!! and still sunny!
but bloody cold! (18 C) We're sooooo SOFT!




We did our Final Inspection of the house today and have signed it off as COMPLETE!!!!
We now have to send all paperwork to Bank - they send money to builder and then we get the keys!
All in 10 working days MAX!!!
We hope to have 'em before 10 days, so we can move whilst we're all on our hols!! (We go back 20th July)
Wish us luck, so we can get in sooner rather than later and if anyone's available to lend a hand.......?

We could be moving!!!

We move even closer to the handover of our house!
We've heard that they expect to do a final inspection of it early next week, although they haven't been able to lay carpets, put up blinds or the fence yet, but that should only take a couple of days! so we hope to be called there by Weds or Thurs next week!
Once we're happy with the quality control, we have 10 days to get the bank to pay the last payment and then we get the keys...
...that's when the hard work starts! We have to MOVE!!! Anyone available to give us a hand???

Oh, and Noonie has been building her own blog in her maths lesson - It's great, so leave a comment or two for her at hew blog here: http://ep4049.montblogs.com/ but bear in mind that her friends and teacher will see what you write?
More news as we moves!
Cheers, Jcp

G'Day to Eire from Oz

We know that Mum n Dad have gone to Skerries for a few days and that they'll be showing our blog to a few of you...
...They'll be having a great time with you all, so we'd like to say a big G'DAY! to you all from the land down under!
We hope you enjoy looking at our blog, and maybe you'd like to add a comment or two, as we love hearing from everyone, to know how you're all doing.
Looking forward to 'hearing' from you.
All our love,
P,J,E n C xxxx

Moore River - Near Lancelin

Camping in June again!
You'd think we'd learn!!!
But this time, we went NORTH, a little bit (about 1 1/2 hours away from home, along the coast) to Moore River, or GUILDERTON camping park!

What a dump!
As you can see from the photos, we had a terrible spot, just off the beach.
We went with our good friends Linda, Murray and gang, so we weren't alone (as in Albany last year!) and we had great fun!
Just putting the tent up again was a laugh in itself!
PP and the girlies set to putting the new larder and kitchen area up, which worked super-well.
We even have a roof box, to double up on some storage, so we were well-set!

This is the River, which reminded us of Dartmouth, a bit???

It really wasn't THAT cold!

Three amigos, enjoying some winter sun? and our tent in the background
Linda and Murray have their trailer tent all ready to go! Hot & cold running water, Barby, Elastic Trickery - even upstairs to the bedrooms! and the wine cellar underneath, with "Jeeves" the butler paying the odd visit, to see if the silver needed polishing! lol
Told you it was a rotten place! This is a natural sand bank, that protects the river for fishin'
Gorgeous!
and the view is not bad, either!
On Sunday, we went to Lancelin (one of our favourite places) for a spot of sand-boarding! Here, the girls were climbing the bus tyres again!
Jcp havin' a go. It's harder than you think to stay straight!

Phoebe did us proud again - making short shift of the climb over the dunes...
..."Convoy" You're singing aren't you?

They left the door open!!!

We drove by the house today, to see what else they'd done and found that they'd left the door open, so we went in to take a few snaps! They'd painted the front veranda metalwork and the render, so the colours you see are the colours it'll be!
Nutty, washing up!!! Yeah - right!

Washing up all done!

Gone to her room!

In her room!

Not finished the en-suite yet! Just a bit of painting, tiling, fitting the shower, fitting the shower screen - etc, etc, etc
Oh - and whilst waiting for PP to come out from work, I noticed the autumnal colours on the tree at school. Yesterday (1st June), which was MY BIRTHDAY, and thanks for the wishes etc! was the first day of winter here, so if winter is like this, we'll not do too bad!

Off roading with Linda, Murray & gang

We had a wonderfrul day yesterday with Linda, Murray and children, when we decided to have a go at finding a 4WD track as listed in a book we bought a few months ago.
Well... The book said it was off of 'Dingo Road' at 'Nanga Mill', which is near Dwellingup (an hour or so from us) so there we went!

After a little 'searching' for Nanga Mill, we finally fell upon it and saw a sign saying that the gate was closed!

That didn't stop us - we thought it was just because it was end of season, so went a different round, to find that almost all 4WD tracks were closed as it was raining!!! RAINING!!?? That's why we went 4WDing in first place!

Not to be deflated, we had a look at all the 'happy campers' anyway, to see if we could go there AFTER THE WINTER!!! (remember our trip to Albany last year!?!)

Fantastic place to camp - so we'll be going back!
See pics
The road in
PP looking fine!!!
The cook-house, where we cooked rissoles and snags.
The girlies
The 10 second pic, where we set the camera to self-take and told em to RUN!!!
Onagain road - REALLY, that's what its called.
Local wildlife
And, as the rain had stopped, the mist formed over the lakes and river, which was AMAZING!