The Shed on the Bush Block

While he was living in the tent on the bush block, Dave started work on a shed. At the time his aim was to provide himself with better walls than a tent, plus somewhere to store his gear out of the weather (he had stuff in storage in a friend's shed up the road). With a noisy old generator and a cement mixer, he poured the strip footings for the shed, embedding the poles in the corner. The poles are from trees off the block. He didn't have much spare cash so he'd buy materials as he could afford them. He collected secondhand roofing iron (for walls and roof) from a shed he dismantled for a friend. Of course, once he started spending most of his spare time at my place (then moved in, then we got married), 40 km away, he didn't get anything more done on the shed until recently.

This photo of the shed was taken in late 2006, showing the fenced-off garden patch on the right. The cars in the distance are on the northern entry/access track.

Late last year, 2007, we moved into town and we no longer had the drama of first driving 22km in to town to buy materials then turning around and driving 40-ish km back out to the block. Dave took down the bush poles and we bought radiata pine to frame the roof with, and started.

Last weekend we camped overnight and Dave worked on the shed roof - I'd have helped, but we "lost" a step ladder when the rental house was being painted by contractors, so so only one of us can work on the roof at a time. So I set up the tent, made the tucker, and hammered in star pickets where the house/verandah/tanks/carport are going.

In the next photo, taken a couple of weeks ago, you can see the new road on the right of the shed. Bushfire regulations say you need dual access, so the access road is a U-shape. Northern end of access track bends up to the left in the distance on this photo. Behind, the Southern end bends up to the left to the "main" road - which is a council-maintained dirt road.

Photo at left is the Southern entry of the access road, Littlemiss is the person-shaped dot in the distance!

We have about 10km of dirt road till we hit the tar, then about 12km of unmarked (no line markings) sealed road that takes us to the highway at Glencoe, then 22km to Glen Innes - about 44km to town! The kids will catch the school bus 3km up the road from the house, at 7.30am and get home sometime after 4.30pm. The Feral Teenager will have left home so Littlefella will be 11 and Littlemiss will be 9 when we move.

We really need the shed finished, the sooner the better, for storing tools and materials for working on the new house. Mind you, that will be several months yet. Thanks to everything taking far longer than one would hope, we'll probably be ready to pour the slab for the house smack in the middle of the frosty depths of winter. So heaven only knows if we'll have the house ready to move into by December!