Landscape changes

Now, just to let you know, this entry - though also dated the 28th of March - was written at the end of the day, whereas the other two were written in the morning. Not just sitting in front of the computer all day, but have been working hard at plastering the bathroom.

Whilst plastering, people from Midlands Contracting have been busy in our long driveway setting up electricity poles. They started the work yesterday, but didn't manage more than digging a couple of holes for the earth connection. Today they came earlier and have managed to put of four poles, three in our driveway and one at the other side of Cremorne Avenue that will be a backstay for the final pole to be done.

As was mentioned in entry no. 30, the electricity company - Aurora - has 8 weeks to complete the job after we make the payment for the installation. As it was more than one span that had to be installed, the job was tendered and Midlands Contracting won the job. As soon as we knew they would be doing the job, we contacted them to see when it could be done, hoping that it would not take a complete 8 weeks to get the job done. It turned out that Midland Contracting were not that busy and they also managed to get Aurora to give them the equipment early, so the installation job could actually done today, which is about 4 weeks after Aurora received the payment. BUT, and there is always a but, it will still take some time for our electricity to be connected. It turns out that the pole at the end of the driveway has to be shifted by Aurora themselves, as this is a live change, that is, the job is done whilst the electricity is still connected. The reason for this is that there is currently a pole about 10 meters away from our driveway. In order to get a streight line into our driveway and not having to cross our neighbours property (which would require easements on the titles, etc)  they will install a new pole in our driveway, move the cables over whilst it is all still connected, and then take down the old pole. Now the bad part here is that Aurora is rather busy (or they don't have enough people working for them) and they have scheduled the move of this pole for the 27th of April. Basically this means another month of extension cords......unless a miracle happens, which is rather unlikely.

The installation of the poles is our first major impact on the landscape in Cremorne, apart from the small scale excavations and building of the cabins. We had, as mentioned before, hoped to go solar or go underground with the power, but this would have cost us another AUD 10000 - 20000 extra, money which we do not really have available at the moment, so the poles were the final solution. And what does it look like? Well, here are a couple of updated landscape views

View from the veranda of our bedroom

View from outside the garage

And finally, something that has nothing to do with our building project.  Congratulations to Elaine and Brendan with their daughter Elsa who was born on the 25th of March 2006. 

Any problems, please email webmaster. This page was last updated 24/07/2008