Completion Date

Its official; our builder Hasteen have advised us that the completion date for our house will be 25th March 2010, but this may change due to "legitimate delays and unforeseen circumstances".  We have already had a delay of 2 weeks with rain, and the builders will take 2 weeks off for Christmas, so the bet is now on as to when our house will be ready.  My guess is mid to late April, Jos thinks May.

Here is another photo, slowly the bricks are going up:

Did any of you notice the missing brick near the front middle window?  Cees was very observant to find this.  It still hasn't been replaced though - wonder why?

Jo

Something Missing....

Can you find it? (Hint:  its not the rest of the brickwork, roof or the scaffolding).

All of this rain has made the house sink to one side!

A Walk Around the House

Progress with the roof.....

and as we walk around the north side, we come across the laundry with an alcove

and then the living room from the outside...

and from the inside.

Jos inspecting the house as we walk around, passing the alfresco

and from the alfresco, looking inside to the living room (have you noticed all the windows - Jos promised he will regularly clean all the windows in our house - seems to be a favourite Dutch **pastime??!!)

Movie room

then looking down the south side, towards the garage.

Kitchen with butlers pantry

Two days later, the windows were in and most of roof was on

and then it rained.... and rained... for a week!

**According to Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/ the meaning of pastime is:

pas⋅time /ˈpæsˌtaɪm, ˈpɑs-/ [pas-tahym, pahs-]

noun - Something that serves to make time pass agreeably; a pleasant means of amusement, recreation, or sport.

Common Brushtail Possum

In my AUGUST NEWS post I told you about an animal which we could not identify when we visited Wilsons Promontory:

I had to satisfy my curiosity, so I asked a Ranger from "Parks Victoria" (the Victorian Government body that manage our National Parks) to identify this animal.  This is their official response:

"It looks very much to me like a typical Wilsons Prom Common Brushtail Possum (Trichosurus vulpecula).

Common Brushtail possums are 'very common' and elsewhere in the state have silver to grey / dark fur on the back and white to pale grey or copper on the belly.

There is a distinctively black / chocolate brown furred form on the Prom, perhaps descended from dark-furred individuals introduced to the park back in 1913-14.

These black possums are sometimes confused with 'Mountain Brushtail Possums (Trichosurus caninus) which do not exist within the park."

The possum is a marsupial.  Most of the 140 species of marsupials in Australia are found nowhere else in the world; some of them are also found in New Guinea which was connected to Australia in more recent geological times.  The possum is usually nocturnal, so it was unusual for us to see this possum during the day.  Interestingly, some websites state that the brushtail possum is no longer "common".  Here is another common brushtail, this one is dark grey with a copper belly:

For our overseas followers, here are a few links on Wilsons Promontory, affectionately known as "The Prom":

Parks Victoria official website: http://www.parkweb.vic.gov.au/1park_display.cfm?park=217

This is another link where you can find out more about the recent fires at the Prom and view photos showing how the park looks now and how the Australian bush recovers after a bushfire:
http://www.parkweb.vic.gov.au/3promfire.cfm

Jos has promised to do a post soon - maybe in Dutch - so stay tuned!

Jo

First Floor

The first floor is nearly completed, the roof trusses, roof and the windows will be completed by next week (you can see the windows on the ground in front of the house, waiting for the locals to help themselves):

Scaffolding around the house to prevent falls:

You can see our neighbour's house in the background which will probably be finished by Christmas:

Looking down the north side towards the acorn tree which will be removed soon:

From the first floor in the master bedroom, looking into our neighbours backyard (fortunately no large windows on this side):

Looking up the hill towards one of the new houses in our subdivision:

My Dutch husband convinced me that we should invest in double glazed windows which are standard in Europe.  Although expensive, we will save on energy bills by helping to keep the cold out in Winter and the heat out in Summer (our Melbourne Winters are quite mild in comparison with Europe, averaging about 5-16 degrees celcius, however our Summers can be extremely hot and range from 25-47 degrees celcius).


FOR THOSE that read our Blog "AUGUST NEWS":

There are no winners for guessing what the black animal was that we saw at Wilsons Promontory.

Cees from the Netherlands thought it was just a regular moggy.

I am still searching for the answer, but our guess is that it is a possum.

Jo

Finished House

This is a picture of what our house will look like (hopefully by May 2010) - with a few differences.  The bricks will be chocolate brown; the roof grey colourbond; window frames and garage door ivory - and the front door will be a deep red like this one:

Lady in Red, Commodore and shrubbery not included!!

Jo