Late and what Al is up to

Well just a quick post tonight.
I have been burning the candle at both ends and have not had a moment to post.
So first up let’s answer last week’s WIIW

Well one person was bang on the money.
Old Kitty and Linda G thought it was a piece of knitting.
Nope, not wool but kind of what I hoped people would think …
Vicki thought “flowers”
Nope not nearly so pretty

But it was Marcy who hit the target with: “I was going to say snakeskin.”

Bingo!

On the way back from the cottage last weekend we came across this fellow lying across the track.  S/he is a smallish carpet python (Morelia spilota).
I measured him/her at 7 feet, they grow up to about 14 feet long.  These guys are non-venomous and farmers like to have them around as they clean up plenty of rodent pests.

I moved it off the road as they aren’t smart enough to get out of the way of cars.

So on to this weekend; for the past  three days I have been working on the cottage.
I will try to post an update over the next couple of days. Suffice to say I did not finish this evening until the moon was out and the sun setting…

Tired and WIIW

Well I have to say I am a bit weary this evening. It seems to have been a long week already.

I have struggled to come up with a WIIW this week but then I hit on this rather blurry image I took the other day.

I suspect it is too easy, but Deb said it was not so straight forward.

So what on Earth do you think this  might be?

Cape Bridgewater Lighthouse

Just a piccie of the day.

Al Gets Cracking

Well we have had a couple of glorious autumn days. Hardly a cloud in the sky and things are starting to dry out.
After a couple of weeks of gutting the interior of our cottage and measuring and planning we took it up a notch this weekend...

Because of the weekend nature of the work and the recent weather down this way we are proceeding in stages.

So yesterday I took to the weatherboard cladding on the bathroom corner of the cottage.

This first piccie shows the view from inside
 
All the boards and bracing gone just the studs holding up the corner of the roof.
By the way the unsealed track you can see in the piccie is the "road" from the cottage to civilisation.
This track weaves 5km (about 3 miles) down through mountain rainforest to get to a road proper.

The forested mountain you can see in the background is across the valley and is on the property the cottage sits on. More about that another time.


This next piccie taken from the outside shows the next step.

The studs are out now. You can see I have a trailer at the front to cart the old timber away.
The weatherboards are old, about sixty years old and they have to be replaced, they simply don't keep the weather out any longer.
Unfortunately that means I am going to have to replace chunks of the frame as well,
The little window in this piccie is one I have ordered a replacement for.
By the way the rather ugly little tank stand is the hot water tank. Water is heated by a slow combustion stove.
No mains power either.

First thing this morning I began the process of framing up the replacement wall.
 
This is a bit nerve wracking because I have jumped  ahead a step and am framing up for a replacement window before it has arrived. If I get it wrong I will have to tear part of what I do down again.

So this is what I got to when I finished tonight, the framing for the bathroom finished and  the corner wrapped in aluminium foil insulation.
 
 The aluminium will keep the rain out until I re-clad and will also be part of the insulation going forward. The wiring is the remains of an old 12 volt solar system that used to provide light here. Hopefully we will manage something more sophisticated down the track.

Enough for tonight as I have to be up early for work.

An answer

Well I have finally got back to this week’s WIIW.

People were kind of in the right general area.
Marcy guessed: “a close up of a snake's nostrils? Or some other amphibian, maybe?”
It is nostrils but not a snake. 60%

Old Kitty guessed “A bracelet! Tadpoles! A frog!”
Not so close, but I did say bonus points for wildly inaccurate guesses, so that earns 60% too!
Linda said: “The nostrils and mouth of an amphibious animal. Or me on a really bad morning. ;)”
Well it is not an amphibian, but it is an amphibious mammal and it is its nostril and mouth so I guess that earns 100%

Susan guessed: “A salamander face?”

We don’t have salamanders or newts in Oz, so I guess that earns 60% as wildly innacurate.

So what is the mystery beast?

A platypus!

I have only seen these guys in the wild a couple of times, so as you can guess I was happy to catch these shots a couple of years ago.

He/she was sitting on a rock scratching with a back leg.


Then s/he seemed to catch sight of me and shot back into deep water.

Piccie of the day

I have been working late on the cottage today, so just a quick piccie of the day.

Al Recycles

Unfortunately I am not at home with access to my piccie bank tonight, but it is Wednesday so I am going to recycle this WIIW image.

So does anyone remember what on Earth this is? If not are you prepared to hazard a guess.
Bonus points for wildly inaccurate guesses!