I have been a bit quiet on the blogging front lately as we received the very sad news that Ian's sister Ann passed away suddenly last week. Ann was very supportive and encouraging about my blog and it feels odd writing a post knowing that she won't be reading it. I know she would be the first to tell me not to be silly and to get on with it so here goes;
The koalas seem to be out in force at the moment, this is good news because the local nature groups have been worrying that they are going down rapidly in numbers. The main cause for the decline is loss of habitat. Loads of trees were lost in the big storm and the local authority have now relaxed the rules on tree removal for a year to allow people to get rid of any dangerous ones. You are supposed to prove a tree was a danger to property or power lines but I am sure most people are just taking them down to try and improve their view.
However, we are starting to see koalas more regularly and sometimes two at a time, which is very unusual. Yesterday we walked down to a nearby street where we often see one and she was there, then we were told there was another one back nearer to our house. so we trooped back to try and spot it, luckily the lady who told us had given very specific details about the location and we found it. Two in one walk, we were delighted! As we were looking up the tree taking pictures a couple we have become friends with (well, our arch enemies from the quiz nights really) came out of their house to see what we were looking at and spotted that the koala was actually holding a tiny baby. So, three in one walk, unheard of!
We have made some significant moves this week towards partial self sufficiency or, at least greatly reducing our utility bills. When we first moved here I was amazed to discover all the lush gardens and grass and to see garden sprinklers and hoses being used liberally. I couldn't understand why there seemed to be no hosepipe ban here when, in England, there only has to be a slightly dry week in April and you can't use your hosepipe until October! Also, water is very expensive but people were using it on their gardens without a care in the world. There was also a strange pipe sticking out of the ground at the other house which we could not identify, until eventually someone told us it was a spearpoint outlet. There is underground water here and everyone has a bore and pump put in and, hey presto - free water for the garden! We got our pump fitted on Friday and it has rained on and off ever since (what a surprise).
The other giant leap forward was to finally select the company to install our solar power and hot water. We budgeted for this when we bought the house but it has been really difficult (and incredibly boring) trying to find the correct system and company to install it. What I don't now know about evacuated tubes and micro inverters is not worth knowing! The products and prices vary enormously and it is a bit of a minefield to negotiate. Each time we thought we liked the look of a system, something would get in the way and put us off, even down to basics like a salesperson not turning up or a company quoting a hugely inflated price then pretending to do us a favour with massive discounts. However, we got there in the end and the big install is on 15th September, stand by for photos.