After the fire

Towards the end of our 3 month trip in October we passed by the Warrumbungles.
There was a huge, truly huge fire here at the beginning of 2013.
A friend who is an RFS volunteer and witnessed first-hand the utter devastation here, asked if I could post some photos of the area now.

Here is part of the main camping area.

About 80% of the national park was destroyed as well as thousands of hectares of farm land.

One thing I'd forgotten was that there was an equally devastating flood mere days after the fire, which washed away topsoil and the seeds from vegetation which needs fire to regenerate.
So they have no idea what will grow back where!

By the side of the road you can see the gum trees sprouting again.

They say some areas will never be the same.

The radio telescope at Mopra where G spent a lot of time.
The dish survived, but the roof of the facilities partially collapsed. Amazingly the guts were still intact.

Just down the hill is our friends' house -

This is it during the fire!

photo by Mark Barrow

How to turn a butt ugly shipping container into a butt ugly shed

A shipping container turned out to be the cheapest storage shed option.
It arrived by truck one day.

Talking of butt ugly.....here is the gorgeous container-delivery-man!

He did a great job unloading it onto the supporting tyres with rims that G scored from the reuse shop at the local tip.

This is what it looks like now -

We scoured the local area for old corrugated iron.

When we saw a decrepit old shed we tried to find out who owned it and asked if we could take the iron.

We struck gold the first time with this beauty -

Unfortunately the old farmer who gladly let us demolish his old shed, (which was in fact the original cottage on his farm) died a couple of weeks ago, but his memory lives on through this side -

and the roof corner pieces which were the ridge bits from old Snow's shed.

G made a wooden frame to attach the iron -

but we still didn't have enough sheets of iron, so off we went on another iron-hunting trip.
Eventually we found the owner of this -

and on another hot day G climbed on it and removed nails and I stood around and tried to be helpful - collected the nails and things like that.

We found a few more sheets at the wonderful local re-use shop at the tip - narrowly missing out on about 15 excellent sheets there.
Anyway these longer sheets were perfect for the roof -

With the door open you can see the wooden battens.

The door posed a greater problem as we still had to be able to operate the handles!

G solved this - No screws into the container itself. All done by wedging and screwing wood bits in various places...

....and screwing on spacer sections to avoid interference with the metal bars...
 

 ...and to hold the battens that hold the iron which is screwed on.

 These virtually new leather belts, judiciously cut up to hold the iron that covers the handles, were on special at the Red Cross op shop yesterday...$1.50 each! We'll be back there today no doubt.

Looks great I reckon!

Bike rides and other exploration

We've been ensconced on our land for about 7 weeks now and there is movement at the station! Or at The Carrads!

But in the meantime we have been getting to know out new 'hood.

The local bike-shop guy organises social bike rides once a month. In fact he just started at the same time we arrived back, so we tagged along. It seems like a nice social thing to do and we get to see some new places around here.
We are called the Macleay Meanderers.

 1. Ride to Euroka.
This is funny because we lived near Euroka Clearing in the Blue Mountains!
This is a bit different.
It nestles in a curve of the Macleay River so it is a fertile little spot.

2. A gentle dawdle along the left bank road and the right bank road next to the Belmore River which joins the Macleay River at Gladstone (NSW not Qld).

Another attraction of the Macleay Meanderers is that we finish with afternoon tea at a refreshment establishment.
On the Belmore river day we went to The Old Bank Cafe in Gladstone which I failed to take photos of but totally deserves a story of it's own.

We also do a a bit of venturing into the Maria River National Park which nearly borders our property.

It's a fairly low-key national park which is quite hard to get into, but is perfect for some low-impact activities like walking and bikeriding.
We have also driven in and put the canoe into the river which is blissfuly peaceful.