Forever House #12

Friday 17^th May, 2013

Three rows of mud - a weekend's worth or work



Another long weekend here at Currawinya. I did get my three rows of mud completed on the last visit. Can't imagine over what time span it took me to do the previous three rows. The rock in this picture replaced the glass window shelf I had put in – the window didn't last the night, I found it shattered into a squillion pieces when I went to work on the Sunday morning. I had a lovely time mudding various things into the walls over sunday and Monday last visit. There is the manifold candle holder to the right of the pic. I left myself with no prepared materials to go on with this weekend. Realistically, I aim to get 2 rows done this weekend.

I have come loaded up with lots of extra curricula options this time. I did take home all those bottles. And on the way home I dropped in to see my friend Susan at Mallanganee. She and Bill are mad collectors of all things old, interesting, beautiful, historical, Australian. She took me out into the shed to see what she could find to contribute to the mud walls. She gave me a lovely timber piece which was once the top of an old dressing table that held the mirror. It has a cut out design and a couple of shelves. I bought five clear glass balls from her that may have been fishing floats originally. She also has a chest full of pastel glass light fittings, and I am hoping to relieve her of almost all of them – for a price of course. Susan is collecting very specifically to build a stock for the wonderful shop she and Bill are planning to open next year. They live in the most gorgeous old building in Mallanganee that was the bank. There’s a great big room at the front – the bank – and the business is called Bankhouse Originals. I am prematurely grasping at some of her stock! Like a kid in a lolly shop. 

bottles with the necks cut of f

Anyway, over the intervening two weeks I have watched a few youtubes on cutting bottles. The cut edges will be inside the walls so there is no great need for a perfectly straight cut. And I didn’t want to wait for a bottle cutter to be purchased and delivered. So I opted for the demo by a young girl where you wrap wool several times around the bottle where you want it to snap, and tie it off. You’re supposed to take that wool off the bottle and soak it in nail polish remover, but I leave it on and drizzle the nail polish onto the wool until  soaked. You have a sink full of cold water at the ready, light the wool and turn the bottle slowly as it burns, keeping the warm air in the bottle; just as it starts to extinguish you submerge it in the sink and voila! Just below the wool, the bottle pops apart with a fairly clean straight edge. Close enough for my purposes anyway. Over several nights I cut eighteen bottles, the first nine pairs for the design. The are here at the farm now ready to go in the wall. I bought some clear tape to bind them together at their cut edges.

I have also been Googling ‘whitewash recipes for mud walls’. I have a number of different ingredients to mix and trial while I am here this time. I was given a recipe years ago but have lost it and the little notebook that has lots of mud house building snippets of interest. I must have another look – I would have put is somewhere safe! That recipe uses ‘snot’ as the binder – snot being the product you get when you soak prickly pear in water for an extended period of time. I may get some soaking to try next time I’m here in three weeks time. It should be snotty enough by then I hope. Though I think I was told it soaks for eight weeks. I’ll do a bit more research about that.

On this occasion I don’t have any snot soaking to trial so I’ll be blending ingredients such as milk powder, linseed oil, PVC glue, lime, water and possibly Bondcrete. Not all at once but in combinations, to see which works best. I’ll paint them on to the wall below the kitchen window, which will eventually be under the kitchen sink behind  cupboards.

And I have a paint brush and green paint to paint the loo door.

Tomorrow’s plan is to dig heaps of dirt, cut heaps of straw, cart many buckets of water, and collect a load of sand from down by the river. Then I think I’ll paint the first coat on the toilet door and start playing with whitewash. Sunday and Monday will see two full rows of mud laid. I’ve brought the metal wheel out to put back in the wall between the second bedroom and the dining room. Dave can hopefully help me with that when he comes over to chat about the order of things.

Dave and Gab are going home to SA for a family fix over June. He plans to get a bit done on my place before then, completing the metal wall where it meets with the block wall near the front door. I’ll get another four day weekend mudding while he’s away. Jeff is hopefully coming with me on that occasion to do a power/water/insulation and ceiling reconoiter. Then in July, I am taking leave from work and coming out for ten days. Whoot whoot! Jeff will join me for some of that time; and by then Dave will be back from SA. I think we will be working on the ceiling/insulation/wiring. I’ll mud as I can, and my sisters Peita and Danielle are also coming out for several days each. It’s all happening. I think this blog is actually really helping me with the momentum. Peita wants to do some tiling – so I think she can make a start in the main bedroom. Not sure if Danielle has a particular activity in mind – she’s an artist so I imagine she might either mud with me or make a start on some of the mosaics for the floor. I have all the terracotta coloured tiles stacked up in the middle of the main bedroom – I’ve had them for years! My intention is that anyone who wants to should make a mosaic the size of one of those tiles to be laid randomly in the floor.

During the week, I followed up on a work colleague, Eliza, who said to me ages ago she had a couple of French doors she was looking to sell. I was hoping I could get a set in preference to that set of windows I got from Quan last visit. I did buy one of Eliza’s sets of doors and they are beautiful. It’s very helpful having a Forever House Fund – which I’ve been  transferring one hundred dollars a week into for the past few months so that I can pay Dave and also buy what I need. The windows Quan gave me have another spot earmarked; two of the three will be turned on their sides and placed above the three point six metre sliding doors out on to the verandah. They will be perfect there as highlights. 

Daylight saving having finished sucks. It’s seven-thirty Friday night and I’ve been in the van for two hours already. I could probably do with a read and an early night. They reckon a frost is likely this weekend. Clear skies and westerly winds.



Forever House #11

 Saturday 4th May 2013

I was right about that nip in the air. At various times during the night I closed the windows by the bed, then I closed the door. I put on socks and a jacket – and eventually threw a doona over the existing blankets. Finally... sleep. But I got off to a slower start than I’d planned – I’d thought eight but started nine thirty after filling and laying out in the sun three solar showers to get clean by this afternoon. 



Bathroom/laundry walls very close to the roof

I probably had enough dirt to do me today but I decided to spend the first hour or two digging and sifting anyway. I now have enough to do me tomorrow, but again will get up and replenish my materials so that I can keep up my momentum on Monday. By Monday arv I hope to have done three rows of mud around a part of the house I haven’t worked on for a while. I’ve been working around the bathroom kitchen for the longest time.

On reflection that is because they are external walls and I have been working towards lock up, therefore trying to get those walls to the roof. I have reached as high as I can go in that area – the ceiling needs to go up now, and the wiring and plumbing. Then I will mud up to the ceiling – which will be interesting but I’m sure I’ll find a way.

I have to start thinking backwards and getting things done in the right order. Had I been really on to it I would have been mudding conduits into the walls to carry the wiring, and pipes for the plumbing. But I deferred that stuff believing it’ll all work out in the end. I was keeping things simple stupid. I do have a few ideas about the utilities and have run them past various people over time. I seem always to make up my mind about things as they come up in front of me, based on information I collect along the way. Don’t forget I have been doing this house for eight and a half years or more – so I have been collecting lots of bits and pieces of knowledge, ideas, and of course paraphernalia. And fortunately I am married to a very capable power and plumbing assistant.



Part of wall I am working on currently
between the dining room and second bedroom

Now I am mudding from the other end of the house near the front door, around the second bedroom which is also the dining room wall, and then along the wall between the second and main bedrooms. I need to bring these walls up to at least lintel height. Then the ceiling becomes the focus. I estimate I have about seven rows plus a bit to get these walls up. I can do a row per day, that’s seven days mudding left for the time being. I’ll have two more done by the end of this weekend – I calculate another two long weekends should do it. The 17^th to 20^th May is my next opportunity – I just put it in my phone calendar.

Now that I am mudding at a rate or knots, I have to find homes in the walls for the many items I have collected for the purpose.

Car window shelf  before it exploded overnight

For instance I had a car window, a flat sheet of thick glass that had one rounded corner. Today I placed that in the wall where I had earmarked for it. It’s a neat little shelf you pass on the left as you move through the front door and down a stair into the lower living area. Tomorrow I have a part of a manifold I’m told – not sure where I found that – which will be a candle holder in the dining room wall above where the glass cabinet I have been traipsing around with for the last thirty odd years will live when furniture finds its way into the finished Forever House. 

I also have a heap of coloured bottles and they will virtually all go in the wall between the two bedrooms. I am taking them home and getting myself a bottle cutter. I don’t want the necks of the bottles to stick out one side of the wall. The bottles in the bathroom have their necks to the outside, but in this current bottle design both sides of the wall are internal, and I want the glow of light to be apparent from both sides. Once the necks are cut off, I am going to tape two like bottoms together. They have to fit the 250ml thickness of the wall. I have made a design with the number of pairs of bottles. It will have a circle of clear flagon bottles around the circumference, with a coloured bottle between each of those, and then another concentric circle of coloured bottles within that – blue green and amber. There are I think fifty two bottles in all.

I had visits from Dave and Gab, Daphne, Stan, Karen Symons and Molly. My share, I have decided today, is the best location of any share. I'm on the driveway about two and a half kilometres in from the front gate; two-wheel drive at a push. I had a two wheel drive when I bought here. And I think once it is finished it may well become a pop in house. I don't think I've ever had one of those before. 



I'd never met Karen and her daughter Molly before - although they have been share holders since the early 1990's. They know well Tony and Vicky, the people I bought my share from. It was lovely to put a face to a name. Karen said she'd been reading my blog - very cool - and asked if she could hand the link along to Vicky. Of course! I'm hoping all interested Currawinyans past and present (and maybe future) will come to the housewarming on the long weekend in October 2014. I think my next Currawinya project after the Forever House, is to do an oral history of Currawinya - collect recordings and pictures from everyone who wants to share their story of Currawinya.

I finished late and had a lovely warm bucket bath. To complete my wonderful day, I went to Quan’s with failing light to see what I could find in the way of windows for where the arches were supposed to go in the lounge dining room but I’m using the arches in the new dining room at Tuckurimba. I’ve been on a mission for something appropriate to take their place in a thirteen fifty wide hole with no upper height restriction, times two. Well today I think I may have got what I need.  

A set of French doors in a frame with a stoop and all, for the front picture window, and a set of three shorter windows for the window beside the front door. And to top if off I found a lovely, if old and in need of some love, front door. Like the arches, I have had two other doors  previously earmarked for the front door of the Forever House, and both of them have made their way into the Tuckurimba house. So it was fantastic to find a sweet old thing today to grace the front of the mud house.

Everything I got needs significant work. I may take them home once Dave has the measurements, to work on them there on my other available weekends. Add them to the list of jobs I have for the dining room kitchen at Tuckurimba.

I am seeing the Forever House in my minds eye – beyond this structural stage which will soon finish, and into the whitewashing, tiling, mosaics, pathways, gardens, kitchen, bathroom, furnishings – and it feels so good. I love my loo – it is the beginning of the final leg.

Forever House #10

Friday 3rd May 2013 Well, here we are again - at the caravan table. It's just after seven at night - but it's been dark since 5.30 or so - daylight saving has finished so I doubt my musings here at this table will be when the sky is the colours of the setting sun. It is autumn and the days will get shorter for my next several visits.
I'm so excited. Even though the last time I was here was 24th March - work did not stop on the Forever House. I have a new loo! Thanks to Dave, my new Currawinyan offsider. He and I had a chat about that being his first project when we met in March. We talked of using saplings growing too close to the house, as the uprights and frame; and basically to use what he could find laying around the worksite to enclose and roof it. He also found a door in the shed which I need to paint to protect it from the weather. The rose bush (which is of the mean prickly variety) was saved and here is the delightful result.

I couldn't be happier. It is a strong and functional version of its old self. He even kept the original river rock effort I had made, and the painted besser blocks my sister Fran had done for the Andy-built version of the loo. Now it is my job to make a small panel of stained glass for the  singular window he placed at eye level as one sits.
After circling the loo several times, trying it out for comfort and taking pics from every angle, I unpacked the car, got into work clothes and set about putting the remaining two hours of daylight to good use. Actually what I did next was to take out of the ute the purchase I made at the Antique shop in Casino on my way out today. I have been eying it off for quite a while and had stopped to check the price on a previous trip. $65. So, on my list today was to stop, being a Friday during working hours, and purchase this stunning shower screen from an earlier age. It reminds me of Nellie Nana and Pop's bathroom, my Dad's parents' house in Putney Point on the Parramatta River in Sydney - with its etched screen and glass jar full of sculpted pink and blue shell soaps sitting on the end of the bath. I asked the Antique Shop for their best price and got it for $60 - very happy with that. I am in love with it - I have saved it as my screensaver on my phone. I can see it in the Forever House bathroom already.

The 44 gallon drum that sits at my mudding station for the straw was empty, as was the blue water drum. There was no evidence of cows having been in the house I was pleased to find. I remembered to bring out the axe so chopped the remaining straw - which filled the drum. And I did a good number of trips back and forth from the water tank with full buckets of water. I might add to the pile of sifted dirt by digging first thing in the morning, then I will get as much mudding done as I can during the day. Dave is coming over around ten to talk about what next. I'm excited to thank him for creating a dunny totally in keeping with the Forever House aesthetic. It took him twenty two hours and all he had to buy were dyna bolts for the stirrups at the bottom of the poles. My $340 loo.

My friend Susan, another Currawinyan with her partner Bill, lives at Mallanganee - a little village I drive through on the way out to the farm. She has invited me to join her at Keith Cameron's property on Plain Station Road Ewingar for some kind of creative festival. Way back in 2004 I bought all my metal from Keith for the Forever House roof and a couple of the front walls where a metre-or-so-high stone wall had survived the fire, and my brother in law Andy built a metal wall on top of the stone. Keith sells metal and farms cattle and soy beans. But he is also a prolific metal sculptor, facilitates metal workshops and has other sculptors working in residence in his massive shed. I am looking forward to going and seeing what this festival is all about on Sunday. There are stalls, food, music, art exhibits. I am going to invite Dave and Gab to join me for the outing. I'll have to work hard that morning before I go.

I also have made a plan to go and visit Quan tomorrow (Saturday) arv after I've done six or seven hours of work. Quan lives on Currawinya about 2 wild kilometres drive away. She and her late husband, Peter, arrived here from the Riverland in South Australia around the same time I did. Peter circumnavigated the world twice, according to my cousin Christine, with the number of miles he drove back and forth between here and the Riverland, bringing his many and varied (and I mean many and varied) chattles onto his and Quan's share. I'm not quite sure what he planned to do with most of them - he could have built a small village and provided vehicles for twenty families. But we will never know really what he might have done with it all, because sadly, he had an accident in an ultralight traveling home from SA at the end of 2010. He passed away in a manner fitting a man who was into everything. Quite a character was he.
Peter had taken aluminium windows and doors that were excess to my needs after I bought a job lot from a recycled building materials place on the Gold Coast. In return, Quan is going to let me look for a front door and some windows suitable for a couple of unaccounted for window openings we left in the block wall in the lounge room. I have some cedar arches which were bought on ebay from Melbourne especially for these openings - and the openings were made especially to fit those arches - but the arches are now being used in the new dining room at our house in Tuckurimba. I have in mind to use sets of French doors as windows in these spaces. I need to get something suitable so Dave can get on with building the metal frames above the block walls. See the picture - we only had blocks to take the wall so high - so we have to fill in the gap above it.

A few big days coming up - into bed with an extra blanket - there's a nip in the air.

Forever House #9

Sunday 24th March, 2013

Morning sky

Yesterday's mudding clothes...

I suppose there are worse things than getting dressed in yesterday's mudding clothes - but at 7 o'clock this morning I couldn't think of too many. Silly ole' me set my alarm for 6am with good intentions of getting an early start... of course it was pitch black and how on earth could I start mudding if I couldn't see what I was doing? So I rolled over and slept till daylight and then wondered how the locals would appreciate the genny starting early on a Sunday morning. I figured most of them are early risers anyway, and they'd appreciate hearing the sounds of productivity coming from my block. My lentil burger from the night before was still sitting in my gut - so a cup of tea and into it by 7.30am. I'm loving the genny, starts first time every time, And I had made six loads of mud and was just  on the last bit of laying it when my new Jack of all trades Dave appeared with his two sweet dogs and a walking stick - not the usual walking aide kind, but the kind you carry in case you come across a snake or a rogue bull or something. This was our first meeting about the work I need help with in order to meet my October 14 housewarming deadline.

Slashed block thanks to Dave

Dave slashed my paddock on Friday, but had not yet wandered through the Forever House. I gave him the grand tour in random order and he can do everything I need.What amazing timing that he and Gabbi have arrived and had time to settle in and get their own place largely sorted; now when I need assistance he is able and willing. I am blessed.

He is going to start with the dunny. He'll cut down four iron bark saplings from among the many trees that are too close to the house and need to be go as part of the fire plan anyway. These will be the uprights, and will sit in stirrups on the concrete slab that exists already over the pit. I have some left over roofing iron for the walls and roof. I'll paint it green to match the house and other shed. Dave will find a couple of windows over at Quans to add light an character. I think our arrangement will work out great for me. I hope it does for him too.Off he toddled to have a swim and then he and Gab were heading to town to stock up on juicing vegetables . They are one week in to a two week juice detox. They are feeling great - although the first few days were tough - Dave said now he wants to run everywhere. They both look lean and well, clear eyed and fresh faced. I wonder if I could follow suit...

I got on with the last bit of mudding, expecting Mum and Dad to arrive around eleven. But that's all done, I've cleaned up ready for next time, and returned to the caravan to make a cuppa and wait... If I disappear down to the river for the swim wash I am so ready for, what's the bet they'll arrive. But it's now twelve and still no MaD. Mmmmmm...... I've just had my final sit on the dunny that is - wonder if it will be the dunny that was next time I come out... Better take a pic just in case. Dave is going to save the rose that is growing up the front of the dunny. I'll kind of miss this funny old thing.

I wrote MaD a note and pegged it to the trailer and headed down for my swim. I swam freestyle against the current up to my tufty grass island then let go to float back down. These moments in this place are my gift from above. I didn't dally though in case MaD had arrived after all. they aren't particularly punctual but they generally do what they say they'll do. As I crawled up and into my block there was no sign of their car- and then I notice the note had gone from the trailer, and as I pulled around the back of the humpy there they were tucked into the shade.
Mum had read my mind and arrived with a towel and no cozzy. So we all got into my car and headed back to the river. I was not passing up the chance of a special moment such as that with my nearly eighty year old Mum. Thunder was rolling around the hills and the sky was looking interesting. I parked the car behind a bush for a bit of privacy and Dad stayed in the car doing his crossword. Mum peeled of her gear and I dropped my towel and we tucked them in under a tree root to keep them dry. In we walked across the mostly sandy bottom. She took her time getting in and the raindrops began to fall, till the surface of the river was alive with the rain.

The drive home

Forever House #8

Saturday 23rd March continued

The minute I started today I was instantly filthy. Water and mud slopping all over my clothes and boots, in my hair, under my nails. I took my jewellery off and gave myself over to the mudpieness of it. It's fun. I made six loads of mud between two and six o'clock, and laid it. I placed a special glass prism and two blue bottles in the wall. My friend Billy made me the prism back in 2005 from stained glass and mirrors sikaflexed together  and today it found it's spot. It's quite close to what will be the ceiling but it catches enough light to give a lovely glow.

Redfern Terrace Interior

I also mudded across the top of a piece of glass that sits in the middle of three panes of glass with mud about four rows deep up either side... that's it you can see through the laundry/bathroom window in this pic (below). I closed it in by first laying a couple of bed springs across the gap for reinforcement and some support for the mud to hang on to until it dries.

Laundry/bathroom window

There are quite a few bottles and pieces of coloured glass in the walls, including the first stained glass panel I ever made back 30 years ago. The design is based on the interior of the Redfern Terrace in which I lived at the time with my first husband Paul. It features a staircase to the attic bedroom and bathroom, and a doorway under the stairs into the dining room with the table apparent and the windows behind.

Once the work was done I drove down to my swimming hole for a swim and wash. Always a tonic. dinner was a simple lentil burger with sweet chilli sauce, lettuce and tomato on a toasted bun cooked on the caravan gas cooker which is a little beauty. When I arrived today the caravan was clean and just the way I left it last visit, and Dave, my newly acquired helper, had kindly slashed my house paddock yesterday. He is coming over mid morning Sunday to talk about the work I need help with.

Mum and Dad are also coming out so I'm hoping to rise early and get a similar amount of work done as today before all my visitors arrive. I'll be really happy with that. I'll get MaD to take a few pics for me tomorrow - it's hard to handle the iphone while covered in mud. I'm hoping I might be able to entice my dear Mum, who will be eighty in August, to come in for a skinny dip in the river. She and Dad have enjoyed taking every opportunity for that over the years. Dad's not so able to manage the sandy bottom any more, but Mum can... We'll see...

Now for a bit of Cloudstreet before falling sleep.

Forever House #7

Saturday 23rd March, 2013

View west from Hogarth Ranges en route to Forever House

Finally I am again at the caravan table writing at twilight. A plume of smoke has just sprung above the trees across the river at Daph and Stan's - one of their two fuel stoves alight for the evening. I was at their place by ten this morning for a Currawinya General Meeting, to set the budget and the levy we shareholders will pay for 2013-2014, among other things. There were nine of us around the table in Stan and Daph's shed, and enough proxies from most other financial shareholders for the meeting to go ahead as planned.

Daphne and Stan's punt across the Cataract River

It was two o'clock by the time I was ferried back across the Cataract River to my car, and I spent the next four hours mudding, It's been so long you'd think I'd forget how... but I had a very productive afternoon. Unfortunately the cows that range through Currawinya illegally had broken into the house and stomped my pile of previously sifted dirt out across the lounge room, shat everywhere, and I assume it was they who drank half the forty-four gallon drum of water I filled last visit.

Bloody cows...

Jeff woke early with me at home, and helped me (or I helped him) to get the cement mixer into the trailer and tied on securely for the 2 hour drive to the Forever House - the last forty minutes being dirt roads of varying condition. I left home at half seven, bought fuel and oil from my independent petrol man at Casino, a coffee from Macca's because it was the only place open at that time of the morning, rang Mum and Dad from Macca's carpark to encourage them to drive out and say hi tomorrow; then was on my way in earnest to reach the meeting by ten. Jeff and I had a practice this morning as to how I would get the mixer off the trailer by myself. It worked a treat and is now set up in the lounge room alongside all the ingredients.

Checking the tie downs along Paddy's Flat Road

Before getting into making mud, I filled the watering can and clamboured up onto the scaffolding to wet down the top of the wall ready to lay the next layer of mud on. This is necessary so that the new and old become one so to speak. I watered it down three times to get it wet enough. I'm so close to the roof now that the watering can will hardly tip up enough to shower water out - I tipped it this way and that around the metal framework (top hats for those who know about such things), and as the skillion roof got closer to the wall I just tipped the watering can sideways and tipped it out of the hole at the top. (A skillion roof is a flat roof that has been inclined slightly. The house is split level so the roof gives various heights inside.)

Inside the wall where I am working

I filled the genny with fuel and hoped I would remember how to start it... The first couple of pulls got no response, so I looked again for what I might not have done - found the ON switch, flicked it into position, and the next pull started it easily. I shovelled dirt into the mixer, remembering fifteen shovel loads is the recipe; but then recalled it pays to have the water in first. Half a bucket of water, a tin billy of sand, four handfuls of chopped straw. As the straw took its time to bind through, straw soaking in water came to mind, and I did this ready for the next mixer load. With two mixer loads in the barrow and that noisy genny off, I wheeled the barrow through to where I am working, three metres off the ground by now. Alone on this occasion, I manhandled the mud out of the barrow in 'cobs' as large as my hands can manage, and stacked it up on the plank on which I will stand when I get up to mud. I have to place it as close as possible to where I need it while also leaving myself room to move when I get up there. There is a forty four gallon drum at either end of the wall upon which a plank lays; some besser blocks for more height, and another plank. The top plank is just below my shoulder height. Underneath are four pallets stacked on top of the other to step up.

Outside the wall where I am working

All the scaffolding inside and out has been refreshed of recent times to see me through the remaining mudding. I collected about eighteen pallets from around Lismore over a couple of days mid last year after deciding to name a housewarming deadline. Jeff came out with me and helped me cut down lantana that had grown through the existing scaffolding, and replace anything that had gone rotten. So here we are in March before I have actually used it... Currawinya time. And there's plenty more lantana growing up around it again. However the scaffolding feels good - safe - and I only have a few more rows of mud to go. I thank my lucky stars that I have regained my fitness over the past year - this work requires core strength.

Forever House #6

Cataract River in Flood (Photo by Kim Wiseman)

Monday 4th March, 2013 As I have already mentioned, Currawinya time is a lesson in patience. My next visit to the farm was to be last Friday 1st March, to spend the day mudding on Saturday 2nd. I had taken the trailer to the tip on Friday in the rain, to get rid of the results of the yard cleanup I had done back in November at our place near Lismore. Ridiculously, not only do I have the Forever House project to complete, but Jeff and I started extensions at our place in about August last year. We have a wonderful extended deck that was complete enough for fifteen family to be here for Christmas. And we have the roofed bones of an extension which will eventually be an open plan kitchen dining room. In amongst pacing my self with the Forever House completion, I will be chipping away here too doing my bit to get this house built and painted.

Our fantastic verandah ready for Christmas 2102

The trailer had to be emptied so that I could put the mud mixer in it to take out to the farm. And then I thought, with all this rain maybe I should check how things are out at the farm. A couple of weeks earlier I had rung Dave, the most recent Currawinyan to move out to his share with his wife Gabbi, to talk to him about my brainwave that he could work with me on my place and be paid for it of course. He said he was happy to take on whatever work he could to assist me to meet my October 2014 deadline. We made an arrangement to meet on Saturday 2nd March to discuss my ideas and check in with him the how what and when of it. So on Friday I rang Stan first to see how they were all fairing out there. He sounded pretty stressed really - he had been flooded in for a week and a half and when I was speaking to him he was busy trying to sheet the shed wall to keep the rain out. He is on the Western side of the Cataract River, and I am on the Eastern side. Dave and Gabbi and Brian Beetson are also on the western side - and when the Cataract comes up, and the Clarence beyond that they are all on an island - unable to get out other than by helicopter should the need arise. There have been stories of helicopters taking people out, and doing food drops over the years.

Cataract River near Daphne and Stan's (K.Wiseman photo)

Poor Stan was on his own because Daff was in Qld having an op and couldn't get back because of the flooding. Dave Gab Brian and Stan had been looking out for each other and tramping between each others places for the odd lunch and to assist each other. Daff has an amazing vegetable garden, and Gab and Dave have done wonders in their garden in a short space of time, so with the stores of dry and tinned food they all keep on hand, they weren't going to starve.

Half of one of the Kitchen Windows I am making for home

Suffice to say, there was no point in me venturing out there to the farm to do my mudding - I probably wouldn't get past Emu Creek on the way out along Pretty Gully Road anyway, and then Yellow Creek on our driveway in would have been impassable as well. So I decided to do something proactive towards the home extension - and did some stained glass for one of the kitchen windows. I am doing a pretty simply designed series of windows around the new extension. Leaving clear glass to enjoy the outside, but making sure there is colour for the sun to shine through and brighten up my days. I do love coloured glass - I quite like simple designes - it is the colour that I am most interested in, and the satisfaction of creating what I think are items of beauty.

I also put together some pre-cut and copper-foiled pieces of glass that were intended for making earrings at some point - they are now a mobile which I will post to a brand new little bundle called Eva - she makes me a stepnana and my kids Uncle and Aunty, 

The next date I can get to the farm is  the 23rd March. We have a Currawinya General meeting that day so I hope the weather is on my side to get out there for the weekend and make some mud. In between times I will revisit the tip where I saw a couple of gorgeous old solid timber doors - one may become the front door of the Forever House, the other I may put glass in and sell.