Settlements Happen

Well - for our faults and with due consideration of how sometimes you can leap in with both feet and find yourself with no paddle whatsoever, settlement happened.

From the back looking across the house

We own a little piece of the bush looking towards the Pyrenees Ranges.

It's dry up there - but then it's dry just about everywhere. Even in the Dandenong Ranges, although the deciduous trees and things here make it "look" greener than it really is (try digging a hole around here and you're digging dust).

We've got some work to do on the top dam - it's currently basically empty, there's definitely something wrong with the way that the flows into it work, and probably with the walls of the dam as well - but we knew that.

The back dam looks fabulous - although the plovers that were there didn't hang around to say hello, the other bird did, although it did keep its distance. (This isn't the greatest photo but the sun was shining on the camera and I couldn't see a blasted thing - so I pointed it in the general direction and hey presto - there the bird was!)

The Back Dam and a welcoming committee

The vegetable gardens have obviously been glorious in the past - with a little orchard and signs of berry plants and grapes - all of those are dead now (the very last owners haven't done a single thing around the place as far as we can tell).

The Vegetable Garden

The house is a little tired inside (okay well it's a bit grotty in places, so we've decided a paint job, new blinds (what is it with bloody curtains - dust traps - hate them, so they are going as well). We're also going to replace the really grotty carpet - probably just with vinyl throughout. No point in fiddling around with floating timber floors at this stage, especially when we'd like to get started on the move.

I think I've got a glimmer of a possibility for somewhere to put the books - but more on that once we get started inside.

We've also found the perfect spot for the office building so we'll be ringing pre-fab people today to see what we can find.

It's a strange feeling though. Yesterday we drove up to Maryborough to deliver the cheques for settlement after The Patch sale was finished. We stopped for a very very nice lunch at a lovely little refurbished pub (obviously where the ladies lunch in town).

We met a lovely person in the Real Estate Agent, we wandered through 3 shops with beds and bedroom suites (we'd like to have a proper spare bed up there) and we spent some enjoyable time in a little paint shop. It's a great little town Maryborough (lack of a Vietnamese restaurant notwithstanding).

We drove out to Redbank and we looked at what has always been our dream - going bush. And we're both astounded to be feeling a little flat. Maybe it's the worry at the back of our mind that all the time we're away from here at the moment we don't know how Gryphon's doing (and he's struggling a lot at the moment). Maybe it's enormity of knowing that we can't just pack up and move straight in - there are things that have to be done at Redbank before we can and there are things that have to be cleaned up at The Patch before we can finally close that door.

Maybe it's that we sort of feel - in a bit of an odd way - that we're being forced out of The Patch (which is stupid because we both agree this area isn't what it was and we don't want to be here anymore).

Maybe it's just that we're 20 years older than we were when we moved in here, and yesterday it started to dawn how much work there is to be done at Redbank to make the house comfortable, get an office, set up satellite (and ensure that Adam's work capacity will not be affected), sort out the mobile phones that "sort of" work at Redbank (mind you, they've only worked here in the last 6 months so I'm not sure why we're sooking about that) and then fit all our stuff into places. (Actually I am sure - have you any idea how distressing the idea is of having to get a Telstra "service". Years of fighting with them to get them to provide the service they sold us, we escaped a few years ago and we've been unbelievably relieved since then. Alas it looks like we might be trapped back with them again. Profoundly disappointing to have to get back on that treadmill - they really are an utter waste of space when it comes to customer service.)

Then there's the ongoing work of restoring the gardens, fixing some of the general neglect around the place, restoring the bottom dam, building some soil and getting the place productive, sorting out a good water use regime and so on.

I think, ultimately, the problem is that the enormity of what we're doing has dawned, and knowing that in the middle of all the kerfuffle of a move, we've got a very frail German Shepherd to consider, it's all just a big surreal and flat around here.

Wait until we actually get some stuff into place, we get the painting and flooring done and we start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Then the relief of finally having a new adventure in life will undoubtedly cut in.

Then we'll start paddling like hell. It's what we're best at after all.

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