The House(s) of Fran_mart

Some years ago after a storm scoured our drive badly we bit the bullet and fixed up the bit from the Creek to the house. The first stretch has since eroded a fair bit and we decided last year to get Tim Gardner to weave a bit more magic on the top stretch. We had arranged for him to come round at 1pm on 17 February and I was at home waiting for him when I got a phone call suggesting I look at the smoke coming up from Taliesin.  Later than afternoon we - having evacuated to Canberra - got a text from Tim saying he wasn't coming as he was a bit busy bulldozing firebreaks around Carwoola Homestead! We then deferred action until the heavy traffic of rebuilding our stuff was finished but have now got the work under way.  This first image is the start of laying the recycled bitumen from the Creek upwards. Here's the bobcat prepping the road. A big truck, with a dog-trailer.  Noting my current skill level at backing a 6x4 box trailer I was impressed with Tim slotti...

The lack of an upper case 'f' should give a clue to any petrol-headed reader that this isn't about the exploits of a V8 racing car.  It is of course about our drive crossing Whiskers Creek. Matters were a bit damp here yesterday (and not exactly drought-stricken today).  We had received about 5mm yesterday morning and another 5mm when we returned from an excellent lunch at about 1600.  Then it rained steadily and by about 20:30 the total was around 25mm.  So I fired up my headlight and went to check the state of play at the ford. The Creek was about as full as it could get without going over the drive.  I didn't have my camera with me so this image shows the water level by the yellow line added to a photo taken on Sunday at 0930. At that level we can, from the house,  hear the Creek running.  It is definitely more a roar than the alliterative  "babble" beloved of effete Pommie poets where contemplating brooks. It continued to rain on and...

... pas de moi, mais un autre deluge! On Sunday 16th the day started with very high humidity (98%) but no sign of rain.  The closest dam seemed to have gained a bit of water, looking at the stick I poked in at the water's edge yesterday. Then a storm emerged ... ... and sat on us (roughly at the green arrow) for about 20 minutes dropping another 9.4mm.  Well done that cloud! This did generate some run-off as demonstrated by the water level in the dam at about 10:30 ... ... and various watercourses around the property. In the early afternoon I went for a walk in the top paddock (where a few kangaroos were loose) to see if I could spot any swifts over the Taliesin Hills and or any pigs driven down by the rain.  Neither of those targets were hit, but I was surprised to see that the Creek in that paddock was running  and the dam in the middle paddock, which has been as dry as something that is very dry for two months, is now reasonably ...

This summer has been rather strange for (our experience of) Canberra.  It has been very hot and very dry.  I have created a chart of Indicative Mean maximum temperatures for Canberra Airport. The current airport BoM site has only been operating for a short while so the 'all years' data comes from  a closed station with the name 'Canberra Airport Comparison site.  For the 2013-14 data the BoM site included the unwelcome words "This service is experiencing technical difficulties" so I calculated the monthly averages from the daily maximums. Even allowing for those inconveniences having the last year above the long term average suggests that things are warmer.  (Of course this may be due to the hot air emanating from the mouths of the owners of the airport, rather than global warming.) WRT rainfall I have a graph showing a 12 month moving average since we moved to Carwoola. The plummet of the average covering the last 6 months is very obvious.  The c...

I have posted a few times recently about the work we have had done on our drive , and the efforts of J Pluvius to continue to muck it up .  After discussions with our contractor and his colleague Steve, from Rocksolid Concreting , last Wednesday was the day for the concrete ford to be finished. It had been a bit of a surprise the previous day to find the formwork had been laid ... ...  but with a little bit of mucking about both houses that use the drive organised our cars where we needed them. When I took Tammie for her walk at 6:45 the ford was a hive of activity. About 7:15 (right on time) there was a period of much beeping of the nature emitted by a reversing truck.  After a fair time to negotiate a narrow and bendy drive a very large cement truck appeared - sensibly backwards so it didn't have to wait until Sunday to depart once the cement had cured.  Pouring happened. When we walked out to go on our ANPS walk I wondered briefly if this was Carw...