Wednesday, 10th August …..

Les and I had a very busy day yesterday trying to finish the back verandah enclosure before the rain set in again. We’ve had lots of rain over the past few days and it’s great to have a break in the weather to finish off this project.

We tried on Tuesday but didn’t get much done before we were forced inside by a heavy shower. I had discovered that we needed a bit more Hardiplank so we decided to take our tape measure and saw into the local hardware to cut what we needed inside their big shed. The stuff comes in 4.2m lengths and that’s a bit long for a little trailer. We needed lengths of about 2m and I can fit that in the back of the Territory so off we went. The rain was still teeming down when we got back to Dilston so work was abandoned for the day.

Wednesday morning was clearer although the ground was a mess. Our house is built on clay (what does the bible say about the man who built his house on clay?) and the area around our work site was a quagmire (lovely word!). Wellies were the order of the day. I couldn’t get the music of Billy Connelly’s song about wellies out of my mind all day.

If you didnae hae yir wellies
Where wid ye be
Ye’d be in the hospital
Or the infir-ma-ry.

It’s a joy working in soft clay. The legs of the ladders kept sinking, climbing clay-covered rungs was dangerous and we were delighted to attach the last piece of Hardiplank and call it a day. I’ve attached a picture or two of the work in progress.

Good management(or good luck) meant that we had very little left over and almost no waste. There’s one more window to put in but it’s still attached to Les’s house. When he comes back from his holiday in Bathurst he will remove it, replace it with a heavier model more able to withstand the occasional flood he experiences, and deliver it to us. However, for the time being he has departed and it’s over to Jamie and me to finish the job – painting, tidying up the approach to the verandah, etc.

Tomorrow’s job is to clean up the tools, pressure-clean the verandah floor and start planning for the paths, etc.

In the meantime, Simon and Trevor are erecting the shed. We left them this morning just as they were starting and expected it to be complete when we arrived home. Not so! There is a rectangular piece of framework on the slab, one portal seems to be complete but there’s a long way to go before we can move in. Maybe tomorrow will be a better day. I’m sure even the pharaohs had to deal with days of little progress when they were watching the pyramids being built.