Well hospital today

Yep Nambour Hospital here we come.
By this time tomorrow my hernia will be gone.
5 or 6 days in hospital then nurse Lyn can get me back to normal.
She may, however need a chain to keep me off the mowers. Lol

After the rains

The property does not look too bad after the last bout of rain.

After the rain

 Composite image during the rain.

 The dam nice and full. Needs fixing however, soon when the water goes down a bit.

 Our little waterfall.

 The dry creek at the back

 Our citrus trees loved it

Our new water feature, looking good

Not much damage, just rebuild the wall and grass now

And now, MOWING. OMG Lyn and I have so much to do.

What a couple of days make

Will tally up the rain later, but a huge amount so far.

Damn we have a new Dam

Well we have had 62mils since yesterday, so good and so lucky to get the work done before the rains came.

This was the last few inches of water we had left before the rains came - and there is more on the way!!!! The timing of the clearing of the dam was perfect!  It had just started to rain in the morning when they were finishing the clean up and now we have a nice big clear clean area to fill with water!!!! There has been 51 ten tonne truck loads of clay and 20 ten tonne truck loads of top soil taken away from the dam site. The clay has gone to new owners - to line their dams so that they too can retain the water in their own dams. Nice to be of help to neighbours.

 Before the rain yesterday we had soooo much dust. With each trip of the trucks another layer fell over the paddocks - and, unfortunately the neighbours as well. Our own cars and the house are also smothered in it but, for us, it has been well worth the effort and in the future will be of great benefit to us.

We will still be getting the escavator back again for some more work to be done but this time in the waterway. Behind the dam is a waterway which stops us from getting to the back of the property - we are going to be putting in some dirt bridges with pipes for the flow of water to continue. It will make working the back area much easier and safer to access. Hopefully in time we will also be able to make a feature of them to enhance the look of the golf course. But more of that in the future - our present has enough work for us for months in dealing with the earthworks that have already happened.

 Darren is in the escavator 'doing his thing' - he is very skilled at getting the most out of it and continued for most of the day without stop - the sheer volume of work that he achieved during the day was amazing. After work I went down in the car and watched for some time - great past time - watching someone else working for a change!!!

 The 20 ten tonne truck loads of top soil went into areas that we will be making into greens for the golf course - lovely rich black top soil without rocks or stones to hamper the process - Tom will be busy for months working the soil in to create the perfect greens! He hopes to sow the seeds before the end of the growing season this year.

During all of the process we have realised that our first predictions of a year or so for the golf course were optomistic in the extreme! We have added at least another year to the process of this - the hot dry weather has not helped our progress but even without that there was never going to be a chance to get it done in that timeframe. 

Our most productive day of planting trees has been 52 - and we were wrecked for days afterwards - and we need thousands of trees to complete the course. We also went away for two weeks over Christmas - we went to Tasmania (and got home one week before it all went up in bush fires) - and were not able to water the trees during a time of high temperatures and no rain. So far we have sustained approximately a ten percent rate of loss on trees but now we are experimenting with growing our own from seed and hope that we will be able to increase our production of seedlings for planting during the next several months.

I am now an avid seed gatherer and stop and collect in the weirdest of places - walking down streets in Brisbane, Dalby, Gympie and throughout Tassie too!!! Nowadays I only have to see a tree that I like and I start looking for possible seeds!!! 

Tom, my lovely computer programmer, has shocked and awed his family by talking farm issues while back in Tasmania - I think they will spend some time scratching their heads about the changes in interest in him!!!

The quad bike belongs to the neighbour who now has clay at the bottom of his dam and will also be able to hold in all of this lovely lovely rain that is falling from the skies at the moment. He was very happily watching the loads go into the trucks and off to his place at the top of the hill in the back of the photo.

 The photo below is the sorrowfully small amount of soil that our tractor is able to move in one go. Look 2  photos down and you will see what the truck can do in one load - no wonder we appreciated the professional efforts of these guys - they can do in one day what it would take months for us to achieve by ourselves!

The escavator cleaning up the mess that was created - Darren is a master operator and we greatly appreciate his efforts - what a difference a day makes!!! The rain had already started while he was finishing the cleanup but he laboured on and finished it before he left. Great work Darren!  The neighbours are so impressed with what he has done that they are now chasing him up for some work to be done on their places as well.

The first of many truck loads of top soil to create the perfect green! 10 cubic metres per load - what a way to go!

 Here we go again - another green with some lovely top soil! Spread the joy - and the soil - Tom has some work to do!!

 One of the many joyful moments of the day - we found - for the first time - that we have a resident tortise in our dam. Here he is having been caught up in the bucket of the escavator.

Only two days ago we had clouds of dust floating across our place with the trucks tooing and froing for the day and now we have water running down the grooves that they have created in the fairway - oh dear - more work for Tom on the tractor! Just as well he loves his boys toy!

fog

For the first time in months we have enough moisture in the air for fog! Yea!!

Onward

Today we have achieved a great leap forward in our plans - with the heavy work done we can start on the next stage - more plantings and more details put into the lanyd around the fairways.