Emerald city and a scrape

Just back from Emerald city, aka Sydney where we spent four days getting a few Necessary Things done.

In other words, not a pleasure trip. Especially for me as I had a horrible cold. Thursday 23rd was another appointment with David's neurologist to review his neuropathic pain situation.  No change in his condition or treatment.  All very upsetting.  The visiting pain specialist in Taree has a theory that it could be to do with David's cervical rib (up near his neck, he actually has a spare rib!) so more tests have been ordered.

The nice part of the day was meeting Derek for a coffee at what he describes as a "beverageatorium", in other words one of the many little coffee shops clustered like seagulls around the big food source of St George Hospital. Derek is still wearing a sling from his shoulder reconstruction, necessitated by a red hot attempt to deconstruct himself in the surf a few months ago. I fear this accident may have served as a demonstration to him that relaxation is a bad idea. He drives himself (or is driven?) harder than anyone I know. Mind you, I can't talk. I'm still in the workforce half time at 62 and spent Friday sick as a dog while attending a professional development workshop on the intricacies of the Workcover system in NSW. Riveting. But the train trip, with all those smart inner city commuters was quite fun and took me over the bridge, with this incomparable view.

Saturday was spent pounding the streets of the homewares district of Alexandria in pursuit of appliances for the new house. Limped home on Sunday, exhausted and now both of us with a cold.  But the new week saw a big step forward in the build process.  The scrape.

David shoots the first pass of the big yellow toy truck. The soil under that skin of grass is rich and brown.

 The driveway entrance is widened and topped with gravel.

The platform for the house is begun

House site from near the top boundary of the block, looking towards the road.

The cut is not very deep, but some cutting is necessitated by our wish to build on a concrete slab for thermal buffering.

 Electricity, water and telephone trench is dug, laid and closed again.

 Reinforcing steel onsite, ready for foundations next week.

The house will have a lot of glass to the north (left in this shot).  There are nice long views to paddocks and a line of trees  around a creek to the east (straight ahead in this photo) and there will also be near views over the dam (to right in this photo)

The cut is finished. Quite a lot of topsoil scraped off and set aside, and good looking shaley solid stuff under it for building onto.  That's what we want, the builder said.  That's the good stuff. No big boulders. Whew.

And then, it began to rain. But apparently, that's OK now.