Hard Labour

First of all my apologies for being so long between posts. Life has been busy here but not in a fun way and it has kind of suppressed the blogging mojo! I have had complaints that there has been no new posts lately! More than one and that thrills me no end. Not only do people read this drivel, they actually miss it when it is not forthcoming! That makes me very happy.
Which is more than I can say for selling a house. It has been on the market for 5 weeks so far and although we have had lots of inspections, no offers so far. It has been supremely neat and tidy during this time. Coupled with the fact that it has rained almost constantly in that time, making the pool be less than sparkly and perfect. This creates work for KISA as it must be constantly mnitored and tended to keep it inprection ready. Usually we just leave it till the rain clears and then clean it up the once. The constant rain means the grass grows 6 feet a week, meaning it needs mowing every weekend. We have had open houses every weekend. Over. It.The rain stopped briefly one evening and we spotted this out the front window. We have been holed up inside in the air con as the humidityhas been just intolerable, high 90s most of the time. The river flooded a couple of times and washed all this debris onto the beach, causing its closure. Imagine swimming and getting hit on the head with a tree! There have also been many many box jelly fish caught in the nets so aanother reason why the beaches have beeen closed. For the last two weekends we have been working at the unit. The land is not big enough to warrant a lawn, so we have been ripping up the turf and replacing it with river stones. Then we will place our statues etc and potted plants for a low maintainence garden we can leave alone for long stretches.
It was very hard work though.

Once the grass was up we were left with the soil. It is sandy so drains well.

The grass had knitted and put down roots. We should have done it earlier it would have been much easier. Once the stones were laid it looks much neater and will survive all this havy rain.

It all looks kind of dull inthe pictures but riverstone is dirty once it is laid. It rained that night and washed the stones all clean so you can see the different colours in the stone now. We did the front bed too. All up 8 ute loads or 4 cubic metres of river stone. That is 6400 kg of riversrtone or 6.4 tonnes. No wonder we were pooped!

Debs Last Week

Our resident backpacker is heading off to Sydney tomorrow for a few days before flying back to an island far far away next Thursday. We will miss her a lot as she has been with us a while and has slotted in here rather well.
So we have been trying to squeeze in a bit of sight seeing in between rain storms and cleaning the house for an open house tomorrow.
On Monday we went to the Sarina Sugar Shed, a miniature working sugar mill, which demonstrates how the sugar cane we are surrounded by in this fair city, is turned into sugar. They offer little tastes along the way. They also show us the distellery and offer little tastes of that too. (hic!) We both really enjoyed that.
On Tuesday, Debs and I went for a long walk at Harbour Beach, one of 32 beaches around our little city. As you can see it was very crowded.
Then we went to the lookout on the hill in North Mackay. Probably shuld have done this the first week, not the last, but there you are. Why I am not a tour guide. This shot is looking east.

And this shot is looking south. Our place is this way. Not far from the hill itself.

Tuesday night we took advantage of the not rainingness of the evening for an alfresco meal of tapas at the marina. Pity the air was so suffocatingly hot and humid. Food was tops though.

Wednesday we went to a western clothiers to check out the Akubra hats and RM Williams gear. Also the shop has not changed since it was set up in 1932 so its a bit like a trip back in time.

Today was another lunch at Eimeo and tonight we are having ravioli and napoli sauce with cheese, followed by golden syrup dumplings. Debs favourite meal as it is her last one with us.

Tomorow at 9am we are having another open house then we can relax a bit. One good thing about these open houses is you get all the house and yard work done up front, then have the weekend free!!

Wish us luck..

Bon Voyage Debs. Thanks for sharing our lives this last two months.