Property Maintenance Carnage

Carnage at Trig Hill

It's entirely possible that I've never worked that hard before in my life.

Tree-felling/trimming/sectioning for firewood, furniture arranging (in accordance with as-yet-undisclosed master-plan), splitting of old trunk wood for woodburner, lawn-mowing and -edging, ditch-digging, drainlaying, gravel-hauling, weed-eating... before long my hands had swollen to the point that the ring finger looked like I'd married weighing 75kg and had eaten my way to a "Before" shot in a stomach-stapling doctor's catalogue without removing the ring. Topped the effort off by digging-out the evil spiky plant which once endangered the wellbeing of all who ventured too close to the Western end of the clothesline (have since seen neighbours execute removal of same plant from their place, but they used a digger and a dumptruck. I'd call them pussies if using diggers and dumptrucks for anything wasn't so inherently cool).

Swimming at the end of each day was wonderful (as was the one or two beers I managed each evening before falling asleep early) despite the agony of cuts/scratches/scrapes in salt. The water at Onetangi was (and still is) incredibly clear, and there were a couple of days with enough swell that folks with longboards were catching some good rides. At the end of our ten days on-Island I was exhausted, and in awe of how much we'd managed to get done.


Helpful in Mt Eden
If someone had sat down and designed a programme of reconditioning specifically to make us feel better about the amount of (all very useful and necessary) stuff we accumulated during our year at Karaka Bay, they'd not've come up with anything more effective than having us lend a hand to the Rustles in their packing endeavors.

The facts (as I choose to remember them):
- 27 years occupancy
- 4 people (1 relative non-hoarder)
- Largish house, with many:
- nooks
- crannies
- shelves
- niches
- cupboards
- etc
- Large shed, with smaller sub-sheds

The mandate:
- dispose of indisputable, unrecoverable crap
- put all small stuff/books/etc into boxes
- put all stuff into shed

In the three days we were there we hardly dented the job, but I had many opportunities to prominently display found photographic treasures on high ledges where short people couldn't reach them to take them down and re-hide them.


Next stop, Melbourne...