Chapter 3 More stages & Camping on site

I will keep writing as I remember stages and if I find I have omitted some I will go back to edit.......

Each time we would travel up on long week-ends we worked that much more to improve the property to our satisfaction...

As I had retired in April 2006 I was more available to go when ever I felt like it, but James was still working where he was unable to go as often as he would have liked to...
I would on occasions take the dogs and go up by my self, once was in between tenants,where I was able to stay in the house.
Here I could do somethings by my self being the creating balsa wood patches for the holes in the pine timber walls.
It became an arduous task so I stopped doing it, not being able to reach in high places.

I had gone back to Sydney and waited until the June 06 long week end when James was able to come back to the farm with me.
This was about the time the working couple from town had moved in.

It was a wet week end, by this time we had now taken delivery of a demountable building which was James's old office from his work site.
Having this building made living so much more comfortable in not having only the caravan to be housed in.Especially with 2 dogs.

We had erected a camp shower.
I had purchased large plastic drums for our water supply at the site.Using bottled water for drinking.
With one of the drums filled with water, we could heat a large boiler of water,add to the drum for a shower. At this stage this shower was better then the house shower.

A battery operated vamping shower purchased from K-mart was attached.
An end was placed in the water, the shower head hung above then press a button for a small motor enabling warm water to flow down was quite sufficient for us.
We had also purchased a Port-a-potty....camp toilet.(It's amazing how heavy this can get)

Night times were great with us building a BBQ and also having a 44 gallon drum cut in half for a fire to sit in front of to enjoy.
Often we would invite neighbours for a BBQ and cold beer.


It was wonderful being out in the bush,taking early morning walks before the heat set in.
But as this was a wet week end we'd still go for our walks around the property inspecting different areas every time.
It was on one of these walks to survey the perimeter that we found an abandoned shack....we were excited thinking it was on our land but on further inspection we realised it wasn't, it was just over our boundary.

The fences are in bad order and will require a surveyor to mark out our perimeters to repair the fence line.
On our way back to the caravan one morning on our walk,it started to rain.
As we were already wet we decided to inspect the creek that was fast filling up with water.
We observed that in heavy rainfall, another creek would surface well with-in our property
We followed it's path to find that the creek was filling up due to the over flow of the dam.
When rains falls, a lot of the rains totally miss the dam, as well and end up in that creek
Poor direction of fall towards the damn, where water from the back of the property runs right past the dam.
This has to be rectified at a later date.

We had made enquiries with the counsel, as to what permission, if any, was needed to be sought to extend the dam.
We were informed that we were unable to build a dam but were able to build a duck pond....inset laugh.....knock knock,hello....
Well, that's exactly what we want isn't it?A large duck pond?

As the damn was quite dirty & murky we purchased 6 bags of Gypsum to throw into the dam to help clean it out.
Due to it never being cleaned it didn't do all that much to to water and we'll have to do again.
The damn houses creatures such as Water Dragons and Yabbies.

We do plan of creating an island in the middle of the dam to encourage the ducks we will introduce.

It was on one of our early morning walks we had veered in into the thickness where I had spotted what appeared to me to be a "path" of sorts.
We followed it in about 50 metres where we came across a small compound that was fenced off into a small area where we climbed in and found about 6 deep holes dug where it was obvious that some sort of "plantation" had been established.....evidence of this were also empty pots, empty water bins and other paraphernalia pertaining to growing marijuana....
we had already known this as behind an old shed near the house was also evidence of a production of old....

The time we searched the internet for the property where we found the photo,it had displayed a lovely green bush in front of the house of which I had not noticed any thing untowards until it was pointed out that it was a large marijuana bush.
He had contacted the owner who in turn arrived and pulled out the bush which alludes us to believe further activilty had been occurring on the property prior to our purchasing it