9th February 2012

9^th February 2012

Another week nearly over, looks like the plumber has finally finished the drainage and storm water plumbing and it looks terribly involved, in all two of them plus a person with a small excavator took three full days to complete it all. Surveyor was back onsite yesterday establishing more critical points and a couple of chippies are here today to mark out and prepare for the steel work. Ryan (Casey Jackson’s manager looking after this job) explained the procedure and showed me the extra plans they had to get produced for the steel fabrication and installation, at least they keep us informed and I can see why these early stages are taking so long to get established.

Steel will arrive over the next day or so and it is expected that a large crane will be here Monday to erect it all (Showers are forecast for next week). After looking at the construction plans once all the steel is standing passers by will think a heavy industry factory is about to be built. Ryan also thinks they should get the slab down by the end of next week (weather permitting), progress will then accelerate.

We had a massive downpour yesterday afternoon, it was like the summer storms we used to get in Brisbane about 45 years ago, absolutely bucketed down for about an hour causing plenty of flash flooding and traffic problems, a real nightmare for the RACQ people.

Our Landcruiser had been in a service centre overnight having a major service carried out and I had used the train for the first time in Qld in 47years to get into the city where I was to be picked up by a courtesy bus, of course it was right in the middle of all the downpour and my umbrella was naturally in the car at the service centre, so I got drowned just racing across the foot path to the courtesy bus, at least it cooled the atmosphere down. It was amusing to see so many people taking photos of the downpour, quite obviously they hadn’t experienced a typical Qld summer storm before.

A pleasant surprise was in store for me when I collected my car, I had been given a basic quote a few weeks prior to booking it in and there were figures of $1300 to $1400 providing there weren’t any problems. When I booked it in I requested extra checks to be carried out on three particular items, so I quite expected the service to cost at least $1400 not withstanding any issues that may have arisen.

It turned out everything was spot on, no issues and my extra checks were fine, because it was a big service they gave me a discount on both labour and parts and the bill came to $1135.08 so I was stoked. Must admit it was nice driving a nice high 4wd safely through those inundated roads on the way home.

Cheers for now.