December 2011

The kitchen walls were disgusting! Apart from there being an open fireplace, with obvious recent use, there is an electric oven with rangehood. The only problem is - the rangehood is not vented outside!! So, whenever anyone cooked on the stove, all the fumes, and grease, went straight to the ceiling, and then dripped down the walls!

So, even though we will be installing a new kitchen later, the walls required a good scrub with sugar soap and scouring pads, and then a coat of white paint.

We take for granted having running water inside the house. Finding ourselves living here without it has shown us how you can economise if you have to. We bought 2 x 25L water drums which we fill up with town water when we are in town. We use that 50L for drinking, cooking, and cleaning dishes - and it lasts us 6 days! Now that the bore has been repaired, we fill buckets with that, and use it to flush the inside toilet - beats the camping toilet we used for the first 2wks. Sheffield Visitor's Centre (10 mins away) holds the key to a shower, and for $1 we can have a 3min hot shower - just make sure you get there during business hours.

Once every 5-6 days we drive to Devonport (20mins) and do our washing at the laundromat.

We went to Devonport RSL for Christmas lunch - a room full of tables where everyone had their own gathering, whilst having the meal served to you. Lovely - we take our hat off to everyone who worked to provide that service!

Our paddocks have been slashed (a tractor dragging a big rotating blade) and now we can have a good idea of where the fences are! There are still thistle patches visible, and it exposed some big patches of rock - Robert's mind is starting to tick over with garden designs!