The little tractor

After old mate Jed ripped up the front lawn to lay irrigation drip pipes, we had to do a heap of raking. To the rescue came the lawn mower with a custom blade fitted to make easy work of pushing soil back into the irrigation trenches. With a bit of a top dress in spring this garden area should maintain a green fire resistant swathe right through the summer months.

The little tractor

Raising the bar

Kath spotted a small advert in the local paper. Someone was selling a slab of timber that had been the workbench in the Yarrawonga Coachbuilders shop for 100 years. Close to 5 m long and 1 m wide this chunk of equine history had BHA written all over it. Now back at Spring Spur and awaiting a bit of a tidy up, this piece of timber will become the centre piece "bar" in the Riders Lounge.

The workbench awaiting it's new purpose.

Consulting the poofessor

Being entirely self sufficient on our own water resources, a key component of the project design was to recycle the waste water generated from the buildings as garden water. After considering various worm and reed bed systems we opted to install twin Taylex aerated treatment plants, which deliver all our waste water back into sub-soil irrigation fields. The first irrigation field waters the central garden areas between the stables and the other buildings, maintaining an important green band right through the summer months and acting as part of our wild fire  management plan. The second field will be installed in plantations to be planted along the colt paddocks, to create shade and suppress summer dust from the lane.

Clay checks the levels in the hole

Taylex plant in, filled with water and backfilled.

Barwon Heads Bridge

Our heavy timbers for the trussed area in the Riders lounge arrived today. Long straight sections of 200mm x 110mm stringbark, salvaged from the "infamous" Barwon Heads bridge.

Our supplier, Mark from The Beauty of Timber, a Kinglake business that was devastated in the 2009 bushfires, has put together this order for us from his re-emerging business. The timber was delivered by their new truck. Looking forward to working with this heritage timber and giving it a new life holding up the roof rather than the traffic.

Offloading the bridge

New Elevations

Spent a wet Saturday rendering new elevations of Spring Spur building cluster, using Google Sketch-up. Helps put form into the working drawings and even resolves a few details around roof lines etc.

West Elevation 

 South Elevation

East Elevation 

North Elevation 

View from above - NW 

View from above - SE

Christmas Feast

Beautiful surprise Christmas Eve dinner was prepared by our beautiful European and middle Eastern volunteer staff this Christmas. Complete with menu's courtesy of  Josh Campen, printed in Swedish Dutch French and Yes .... Hebrew.... What the?  Sarah joined in the family Christmas and bought to the table her favourite Jewish dishes. How lucky are we to have the opportunity to celebrate with these delightful young travellers!

 Christmas Day of course was prepared by the Men of the Household and duck terrain and asian salads and rice paper rolls were perfect for the tropical temperature in the North East here at Spring Spur.

Re-duce Re-use Re-cycle

With a commitment to sustainable building practice, the right choices in design and materials goes a long way to meeting or sustainable goals. Along the way there is unavoidable waste and the the creed of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle comes into play. All waste is separated into type, and dealt with according to best possible outcome.
There was a generous "estimate" in the supply of waffle pods used in this construction, and surplus material and offcuts were sent back to the supplier for reuse/recycling.

Waffle Pods awaiting backload in empty truck.