19th September 2009
We spent the weekend out at the land and continued with some important jobs. The first thing we did was to temporarily connect our two water tanks together. At present we are only collecting into the smaller 33,000lt tank from the roof of our shed. Some good winter rains had left this tank close to full. Connecting the larger 77,000lt tank to the smaller one meant that both are now about a third full.

We also managed tidy up and to burn off a good amount of ground fuel that has been accumulating in the area around the house. This can only be done in the winter due to the risk of fires getting out of control in dry conditions so we need to make the most of the opportunity. It is very important to get this done to reduce the risk of bushfire damage to the house and shed in the summer.

Postscript - There has been a good fall of rain in the following week so this was a very timely intervention. Had we not balanced the tanks we would certainly have wasted water out of the overflow!!
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11th September 2009
After much ringing around we finally managed to find four builders who were willing and able to quote for our project. Although we are owner builders there are some elements of the project that we are unable technically and/or legally to do ourselves. These elements are the licensed trades (electrics and plumbing ) plus footings, frame and roofing. To avoid the risk of disputes between trades we decided to engage a builder who would be responsible for footings, frame and roofing. This means that if there are any problems we have a single point-of-contact and any issues with sub-contractors are the responsibility of the main contractor. We hope to have the quotes back soon so we can get the project started in earnest.
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31st July 2009
We completed a major milestone in our project today with the issuing of the building permit! This proved to a lot more involved than we had anticipated. Straw bale construction is not specifically mentioned in the Building Code of Australia. You can obviously build with any material you like as long as the performance requirements of the code are met but demonstrating this can be tricky.

We had been very close to having the permit issued but the tragic events of Black Saturday put things back in doubt. We eventually ended up agreeing to modify some elements of our design to meet the new bushfire code BAL19. We also agreed to some additional checking on the render application and to an ongoing site management.
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18th January 2009
We have had a couple of trips out West since the Xmas break. On the weekend of 10th/11th January we camped at the land with the dogs. Our objective was to demolish the old rickety yellow shed to make way for our main water tank. We managed to accomplish this and we are now ready for both tanks. There will be a 37,00lt tank to collect water from the new shed and the lower roof of the house and a 77,000lt tank to collect from the main roof of the house and the tower. The tanks will be steel with food-grade liner.
We had stacks of visitors and visits this weekend with Ian Burt coming over to discuss the shed and social calls from Andre on Friday then Michael and Louise on Saturday. Lou had been threatening for a while to bring a rubber dinghy out to go boating on our dam and this was the day... Alex and Lou had a small voyage while Colin and Michael looked on in amusement!!
The following week we headed out on Sunday with Diego mainly to take in the delights of the Talbot Farmers Market. We again met Ian at the land and saw that the shed is close to completion. The aggregate for the slab is all there and the concrete will be laid in the next couple of weeks.
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28th December 2008
After a delicious Christmas dinner in the City we headed out to Dunach with the Kanga on tow again. We spent the next 3 days doing some serious site-levelling and the house area is now good to go for footings once the building permit is approved. We submitted our updated application before Christmas so should hopefully find out soon if we have all the information we need.
The shed is coming along too. It has a complete frame, four walls, doors and guttering - just need a roof and slab now. It will be very handy to have somewhere secure to leave stuff and also a fixed roof over our heads at night while we build the house.
Once we had finished levelling the site we spent some time with the Kanga moving some soil and sleepers around as the basis of our vegetable garden. We will make raised beds using the copious corrugated iron sheets and wooden posts. The veggie garden will have four separate fenced areas and the chicken coop will be located centrally with doors so that the chooks can given access to different areas as required.
Another highlight was our first sighting of a Painted Honeyeater. The Painted Honeyeater is listed as threatened on the Victorian Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act (1988) but is known to frequent the box-ironbark forests in the Clunes area. We also added Brown-headed Honeyeater to the growing list of birds recorded on our land.
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16th November 2008
Just a lazy day out west! We posed out in the convertible to the Talbot Farmer's Market and filled the boot with all manner of lovely produce. Brief trip to the land. Added a new bird to the list when we saw an Australian Owlet-Nightjar - unusually active in the day.
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2nd/3rd November
We went crazy for a couple of days over the Melbourne Cup weekend and got so much done! We hired a stand-on "Kanga" mini-digger from Bylsma Hire in Ballarat and shifted tonnes of dirt around. We managed to finish clearing the old house site, including lifting all the remaining concrete slab and also constructed some flood protection banks for the house site (not that it ever rains so that was probably a waste of time!!). The machine is awesome and fun to use too! After a couple of days, however, our legs and calves in particular were very sore. You think that you'll just have the machine doing all the work but you have to balance yourself against the acceleration and deceleration so it like doing a workout!
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30th August 2008
This was a really long day tour of Victoria with trailer in tow. We started at 7:30 picking up a tandem axle car trailer in Footscray before heading up the Hume Highway to Glenrowan (245km). There we purchased and loaded a huge feed mixing machine which we intend to use for mixing clay render for the house. The machine weighs about 1.5 tonnes and towered over the truck. It was also wider than the trailer so we had to take off one wheel and rest the axle on the side of the trailer leaving enough axle overhanging so we could re-it the wheel later for unloading. We then towed the heavy trailer to our block (310km). When we arrived we constructed a ramp from concrete blocks and railway sleepers, jacked up the machine to replace the wheel and lowered it gently onto the ramp. By now it was pissing with rain but we enlisted the help of some kind friends (thanks Shane, Michael, Louise and Cooper) and managed to offload the Beast using some logs as rollers and the winch on the trailer. We were very happy to get it safely on the ground and even happier to get in front of the fire with a beer at Shane and Lisa's place! All that remained was the short trip home (155km).
We were glad to collapse at home after our 710km round trip for the day.... and then poor old Colin had to get the trailer back to Footscray for 7:30 the next morning :-(
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25th August 2008
EXCITING NEWS!! We have just received the results of the energy assessment on our house design 6 STARS ******!!
All new houses have to have this energy rating and must score a minimum of a paltry 4 stars. We had our assessment conducted by Bernadette at Homestar. She was very excited about our super- energy efficient house and has been impressing her associates at Sustainability Victoria with it. She wanted to get the name of our architects so she could put the house forward for an award and was astounded when Alex told her that we designed the house ourselves! ____________________________________________________________________________

12th July 2008
Been a bit slack keeping this blog up to date although Colin has been out of the country bird-watching in PNG! Since our last post we have been out to the land on several occasions. We have been continuing to dismantle the shack and also doing some good work clearing out and impoving the channels that flow into our huge dam. This weekend just gone we put in a couple of culvert pipes as the channel was obstructed by tracks so this should increase the catchment area of the dam significantly. Now we just need it to rain!!
We also have our structural and footing drawings completed and Colin has nearly finished the architectural drawings so we should be nearly ready to put in our building permit application. We have also been getting quotes for a shed so we will have somewhere secure to store materials and tools plus have somewhere to shelter when it rains.
We'll be back out on Sunday this coming weekend but probably won't get too much done as it is Talbot Farmer's Market Day. We'll be eating yummy bacon and fresh veggies most of the next week..... ____________________________________________________________________________

4th/5th May 2008
Out for more demolitions and we stayed a cold night in the tent! The house is nearly gone now. We took the glass out of the big windows and then took the frames down. We also took down the big beam that was formerly sort of holding the whole place up. Halfway through the day we got a visitation from soe smartly-dressed gentlemen in a new landcruiser. At first I thought it was the council coming to check on our progress but it turned out to be bloody jehovah's Witnesses. These people are crazy! Would you drive 3km on dirt roads and up a drive marked "private property" with a sheep's skull on the gate! One can only imagine what would happen if they stumpled onto someone's hash plantation or crystal-meth lab! Nobody takes much notice of gun-shots in the country!
On Sunday we worked early for 3hrs then headed into Clunes for the "Booktown" event before heading home listening to the mighty Western Bulldogs winning at the once-impenetrable SCG - Go Doggies!!!! ____________________________________________________________________________

25th April 2008
We headed out on Anzac Day for another day-trip. Once again we managed to get a lot of demolishing done and Alex also cleared up quite a lot of the rubble from our earlier exploits. We are getting close to completion of the demolition phase now. We also met up with the Structural Engineer earlier this week and are now reviewing the initial draft drawings that they have put together for the footings and frame.
We also managed to meet our nearest neighbours. They are a few hundred metres away on the same road. We saw someone on a tractor on their land as we passed in the car so stopped for a chat. They invited us over for a drink later and we had a great time. They've got 3 lovely dogs. Good job we'd left our crazy 2 at home. No doubt they'll meet sometime.... ____________________________________________________________________________

13th April 2008
Sorry folks. We've been busy actually doing work out at the land and have been a bit slack in keeping this site up to date! We have really been cracking into the dismantling and would now be at least 2/3 of the way through. It is back-breaking work but strangely satisfying. We also have the structural engineer working with our drawings designing the footings and frame for the house so things really are moving on. We have uploaded some more photos to the house construction and flora and fauna galleries. ____________________________________________________________________________

5/6th January 2008
We headed out on Saturday evening and spent the night before attacking some de-construction on Sunday morning before it got too hot. The old "upper-storey" is now gone and this section of the weekender will not be standing for very much longer. We are mostly dismantling carefully so we can re-use as many materials as possible. The mud- bricks used in this part, however, crumble to dust so will not be salvagable. ____________________________________________________________________________

16th December 2007
Took a drive out to the land to show Alex's Dad and Ann around. They really loved it out there. We did a bit of tidying up but no real hard labour!! ____________________________________________________________________________

6th November 2007
We took a drive out to the land on Melbourne Cup Day. No big plans - just relaxing and wildlfe watching. Colin recorded 8 new bird species and he also saw the first snake we have encountered on the land - an Eastern Brown (just the 2nd most venomous snake in the world!!). He managed a few photos of the wildlfe although not the snake which was fortunately scared of him and slithered off rapidly under a nearby log. We also saw two Stump-tailed Skinks (Shinglebacks) in the area around the house. ____________________________________________________________________________

25th September 2007
After a false start on the previous day we got our worm farm toilet installed by A&A Worm Farms. There is no house yet so we had to carefully mark where the tank needed to go. It was all installed to our markings and will be very convenient to have during the construction phase. ____________________________________________________________________________

4th August 2007
We went for a day trip to the land today to meet up with some new friends. We met Mike and Louise a couple of weeks ago through a mutual friend and found that they are looking for a block in the country. We told them about our land so they decided to check out some proprties in the area. They even found somewhere they loved so maybe we'll acquire some new neighours! We spent most of the day tidying up and doing some work on some of the existing "structures". ____________________________________________________________________________

28th July 2007
We headed out to the land to have a soil test conducted by Steve from Ballarat Soil Testing. Good news - soil is M-class clay 100-200mm below the surface which is ideal to build on. Great service - report received by e-mail next day! ____________________________________________________________________________

18th July 2007
This was a real red letter day! We received notification that our planning permit has been granted. Very exciting but also very scary as this blows away most of our procrastination excuses! ____________________________________________________________________________

9th July 2007
Colin met with Miles from Land for Wildlife to discuss getting our land registered with this scheme. He loved the land, provided loads of great information and we're fully signed up. ____________________________________________________________________________

25th June 2007
We sent off our third submission of information relating to our planning permit application. This was a refinement of the native vegetation following on from our DSE discussions. ____________________________________________________________________________

16th June 2007
We took a trip to the land to put together the information requested by the DSE. We marked out a large string grid on the ground of 5m squares and then paint-marked the footprint of our house plan. We then marked a 10m buffer around the house - any vegetation within this will be removed to provide a fire-break. ____________________________________________________________________________

8th June 2007
Colin met with Peter Woods from the DSE and had a very constructive discussion regarding removal of native vegetation. Clear guidance was provided on the information that the DSE require to base their decision on. ____________________________________________________________________________

4th May 2007
We sent off our second submission of information relating to our planning permit application. This was our second try at a native vegetation plan plus some additional information relating to waste disposal. ____________________________________________________________________________

20th April 2007
Received the response from the council to our planning application. More information required.... ____________________________________________________________________________

5th March 2007
After a lot of investigating and work we finally sent off our planning application today.