Excavation, devastation or creation?

This week the site for the pad for the house footings has been dug/filled etc. Basically a big digger made a big flat space where once there was hillside. The transformation of our piece of bush is amazing and total.




Mount Lofty in the background behind the guestroom:


The master bedroom:




Hugo has his work cut out moving the excess sand....

20 tonne digger vs mother nature

Well we have site works. An earth moving contractor has come and dug an area for the tanks, the garage and built us a whopping, great-big-enough-for-a-CFS-truck-to-turn-around driveway. No major wildlife dramas this time, just one very annoyed koala who just wanted to sleep but was continually interrupted by the large noisy machine. Great toddler fodder, we met some of the neighbours who dropped in to check out what was happening on the corner.

We gotta lot a mulch....

Well the trees are down now, and there is a big empty space! Apologies to the little birds who lost their home tree, hopefully you will like your relocated nest and didn't find the toddler examination too stressful.

The cleared space is covered with stumps and logs and stuff. The trees and shrubs were all mulched onsite and so now there are many piles on mulch in varying sizes dotted around the place..... I would say about 10 trailer loads at least, enough to meet our mulching requirements for quite a while!

Poised for action?

It's only taken 16 months of designing and planning to get to this stage.... but we thinks something is about to happen. The pens are poised to grant the final planning permission, the builder is poised to start and today the trees begin to fall. It will be a couple of days work to remove the 50-odd trees and shrubs which currently stand where our house will (eventually) be. We have included some before photos, stay posted for the after ones!