Cottage update

Well it has been nearly three weeks since I posted an update on progress on the cottage.

Over the past three weekends I have:

Torn Out the side wall of the kitchen.

The small tank you can see here is for rainwater, for drinking.The rest of our domestic water comes from a spring across the valley.

Torn out the back wall of the kitchen;

Re-framed the kitchen walls for larger windows;

Put in a new back window

And a side window.

The wood-fired combustion stove is just out of frame to the right. We plan to have benches under the windows, the kitchen sink will ultimately be under the back window, and a gas cook top (for hot weather) under the window to the right.

Then finally, just so we could get a feel for what it will look like, I have put up our first sheet of cladding. For those of you who don't know it is a corrugated steel product called "Colorbond".
Corrugated iron has been a traditional building product in Oz. 
This is the modern version, it should last for 50+ years and never need maintenance. It is fairly quick to work with,
By the way the colour is called "Ironstone" 
And Lilli managed to sneak into this piccie to say hi.

Spring!

Most days I try to get out of the office for a quick walk at lunch time. For months now it hasn't been a very pleasant prospect. Melbourne has a reputation in Oz for a dreary, wet and cold winter.

This year it has really lived up to that reputation. In buckets!

We count the start of spring in Oz from 1 September, until today the weather has not been very spring like.

Today was different! For the first time since last autumn I left the office without my coat.

It was beautiful!
So nice I turned toward the Carlton Gardens.
So nice and sunny that I broke one of my rules (don't use a phone camera).


I just had to record it because the forecast from tomorrow afternoon is wintry again the rest of the week.

In the Gardens is the Royal Exhibition Building.
 
On my way back I paused to show how close the gardens are to the city (you can see the window to my office in this piccie).

“If you don’t like it” or Melbourne Weather

They say about Melbourne weather: “If you don’t like it, just wait it will change” or “Melbourne the city where you have five seasons in a day.”

Well Melbourne is living up to its reputation just lately.

This city is located on the south coast of Australia’s mainland and two major factors drive our weather here. The Southern Ocean and Australia’s hot dry inland.

Winds here tend to come roughly from the west. If they come from the South-West they come off the Southern Ocean so things are cool to cold. If the wind veers to come from the North-West the wind comes off the desert centre of Oz then things get warm to oven- like.

Just over a week ago, to be absolutely precise 10 September (we do the dates the right way around down here) I took these photos. That is right folks that is snow taken at the Upper Yarra Valley a week ago Saturday.

Spring And that road was closed because of snowfalls further up.

When I took those photos it was 12:00 in the day and the temperature was hovering around 0° C (30°F).

But yesterday we went back to the mountains these next few piccies were taken high up across the valley from my snow shots. No snow this week!

This weekend just past we had glorious spring weather, with the temperature climbing to a pleasantly warm 29°C (84°F). I say pleasantly warm because that is how I see it, basically almost warm enough to head to the beach. Remember summer temperatures here are often between 35°C (95°F) and 45°C (113°F) so 29 is “warm”

This cute little waterfall is called the La La Falls.As you can see it was just too bright to take really nice waterfall shots.

Bright enough to capture shadows of a certain Aussie, call this one a “self portrait”.

Just finally,
I had to share this boulder in the stream and this absolutely cute bridge in the trail on the climb up to the falls. The clever national parks rangers have built this little beauty out of dry-stone. There isn’t so much as a drop of mortar in this construction.

A quick poll. For my next post would you prefer:

A: More waterfalls
B: Some majestic trees
Or
C: Sunlight through clouds?