I am curious. Every time we've made the trek to or from our old place we have seen at least one if not several mattress-laden cars, trailers or utes. So what is going on? Are there that many people moving house at this time of the year? Or do people decide "It's a nice sunny day, why don't we take the mattress for a drive to air it out?". Whatever is happening it is starting to become a little disconcerting. Perhaps there is an alien directive, like in "Close Encounters" that is driving people to tie mattresses onto their vehicles (often very badly) and drive them to some as yet unknown geographic feature. Perhaps there is someone crafting a model of a mountain even now wondering why and yearning to take their bedding there.

Well for what it's worth - we've moved.

Sort of.

We're living up in the Pyrenees Ranges now - everybody is here - the chooks, the dogs and us.

We've still doing the rushing backwards and forwards to our old house as we dismantle hot houses, fox proof fences, pack up the final things in the house and drag everything up here. But for what it's worth the move happened.

It was eventful in that the truck arrived but they boys had only packed half of the bedding that we needed for guests on New Years Eve - so there was a mad dash back down there again on the day to get the rest of the bed!

There have been a few more runs backwards and forwards in the ute since (and we keep finding things that we've only moved half of - although we have found the telescope tripod now!), but we've another Truck booked for Friday this week so that we can bring up the remainder of the hot house hoops and odds and ends like that (with a trip down tomorrow for plants and final boxing up of odds and ends).

Of course, nothing ever goes according to plan, and on the way Clancy has ruptured his cruciate ligament - requiring an operation on Wednesday (tomorrow). We pick him up from the new vets on Thursday morning, so that is going to clip my wings for a few days.

Still - things are slowly getting there and I will try and take some more photos soon - but it's 36 degrees outside and I'm a bloody sook.

Well, with hearts in mouths and knowing full well that we've still got more dog fencing to go (we're going to have to lock them onto the deck and in the house when we're in and out for a few days after Christmas), we're ready to start moving in.

Excitingly for some reason the birds have left the Apricot tree alone

We didn't. Ripe apricots direct from the tree! Yum. We did some serious eating. Strange that the birds haven't really taken all of these, yet they have stripped the cherry tree. Let's hope the pears survive.

This weekend we finished the first round of adjustments to the chook house - it's got some ventilation, the nests have been adjusted, there are new perches (plus a ladder), there's a door in the side that Auntie Jack can fit through, and the edges of the closed in run have been reinforced. From here at some stage we'll need to cover the shaded end with wire and sort out an opening at the back that we can clean the shed out more easily than via the front door.

(Just to show that he does a lot of work up there - and you can actually see that Phoenix did get out of bed and outside on the weekend which was fabulous to see!)

New "Auntie Jack" capacity door:

One finished chook area:

And from Friday afternoon - waiting for Fiona to pick them up for their walk:

It absolutely bucketed rain in Southern Victoria yesterday.

It has rained a little at the new place - nowhere near as much as we battled through to get there yesterday mind you, but rain nonetheless.

It was raining yesterday morning when we loaded the ute with plants and outside furniture and took off.

Good grief.

It rained, it blew a gale, it rained, it blew. It rained a bit more.

It rained the whole way to Waubra and then it mizziled from then on. (The wind on the other hand, let rip).

We unloaded the ute and did some of the initial repairs on the chook house, but we were a bit twitchy about the weather back here so we thought we'd turn around pretty quickly and worry about chook house work on Sunday.

Only we didn't quite take into account the trip back. Which was long, wet, windy, slow and bloody hard work. The ute's not the easiest thing to drive at the best of times - and put it in a flood and it battles through bravely but it's hard work.

So we decided we wouldn't turn around again today - as it was we didn't wake up until well after 9.00am, but we also just heard that the Western Highway's flooded at Caroline Springs and, well, life's too short.

Adam's going to head up during the week for an overnighter and a bit of chook house work, and I'll go back to hauling loads in the 4WD.

Talking about it yesterday - after seeing how much outside stuff we couldn't fit in the ute in one trip (and with the kind agreement of our lovely landlords), we're going to slow things down again a little. (I know, hard to believe you could move house any slower than we can!)

He gets a couple of weeks enforced leave after Christmas anyway - and this idea of rushing around like bloody lunatics on the weekend before Christmas doesn't appeal to me - as much as he'd like to be in by Christmas. So we'll be in by New Year, and still coming and going from here until the end of February I'd imagine. We want to paint the front room here - you can see the brown spots where German Shepherds have leant against walls over the years, and there's some flooring to be laid and a bit of tidying up to be done around the place.

Doing it this way means we can take the time he gets off and use it to maximum effect, plus we're not trying to unplug servers, move DNS entries and cart furniture around "the day job" which will undoubtedly be frantically busy in the lead up to Christmas.

Of course - the other big problem is Christmas Day. I've done absolutely bloody nothing. Zilch, so I'll have to sort out a menu soonish (we don't do "traditional Christmas" here - we have a go at a different cuisine style most years and generally have a nice / relaxing / go nowhere / lie on the couch day). We were originally planning the great Australian BBQ at the new bush retreat - but the BBQ's up there and we'll be down here so I'll have to get the thinking cap on.

Well, thanks to Adam spending a few days up there last week, and a big Saturday finishing off the top edges....

THE PAINTING IS FINISHED.

Karen - whatever you do remember how this has gone and don't whatever you do, consider repainting for a long time to come.

We then started on the floor....... back ache central.

We had to pick up some stuff locally unfortunately, so we went up on Saturday just in the ute, which meant we had to turn around and come back that night to feed animals. So we headed back up again on Sunday morning - with dogs. We've nearly finished the bulk of the flooring - just got a little in the walk-in robes and then the edging to complete that part.

Hopefully that means that next weekend we'll finish the repairs to the chook house and finally be in a position where we can get serious about this blasted move.

Oh - and if any of you city people are wondering why Country Victorians are a little bit pissed off about the idea of piping water out of the regions:

I used to go swimming in this "lake" when I was a kid - and it was a very popular speed boat location.