I Have made Fire

We got this Weber before the move but it has taken a week to get it together. Eventually the idea is to try it upstairs but for now it will remain in the courtyard.  I counted 50 boats fishing or zipping around earlier. Now we have the jet skis zooming along as well.  It's a never ending show out there.

Tested but not cured

Calm as

Torpedo Bottle

We have been down to the Dell numerous times, seen various bits of broken glass, even went to the local historical society.  The whole glass insulator adventure stemmed from that and today after deploying much of our garden ornaments, we found a torpedo bottle or what's left of it, in the backyard. The glass is thick. It has taken one week exactly but I can declare we are unpacked.  There are a few more boxes and the culling will continue. I threw out a huge bin of plastic today.  The public holiday has brought out the picnickers setting up right across from our house on the grass verge overlooking the water.

This bottle has been torpedoed

Sea Grass

We had the formal handover of keys to the Taylors after they gave our new house the thumbs up. (Otherwise they wouldn't have got the keys. haha) We were driving back via the Jetty Road which was blocked by a boat. A very large boat of the two hulled variety. It was stuck trying to get past trees and signage and other street furniture. A sign on the side mentioned Geelong Wildlife. We went for a stroll down to the Dell and found these balls of dried sea grass. We now have one in our back garden.

There are truckloads of dried sea grass

Aqua Beach Day

There can't be too many beach days left. Among everything else we walked out our front door and went to the beach.  Such a sensation is hard to describe.  I hadn't been able to try my new flippers since I got them for Christmas however we had not been to this beach with a North wind so there was some chop and visibility was poor.  I gave them a short try as the water was warm but I could see zero. We will have to build up an intricate pre-appraisal of conditions before venturing out. All in all this is going to be an interesting place to live. I believe this house will be warmer in brick.

Opal View

Final Collendina Report No 9999

First thing to record is that I am sitting on a seat.  The van has been an institution for 18 yar but it too has come to the end of the road.  The third delivery has occurred today and the van has also accumulated much stuff over the 18 yar of its use. This house keeps swallowing everything that is thrown at it but I was surprised at the huge amount we crammed into it, considering the larger items have been sold to the Taylors and will remain behind.
While we were there, trying to quietly load our car and not make it seem like we were moving out, all manner of activity was happening around the corner with yet more new neighbours being craned in.

Van Truckin

Surrounded by Sound

Two sets of surround sound speakers went in today thanks to Daniels sparky work.  Trying to install this stuff after the house is built is always a pain.  The Big Mother TV has been unveiled however it is rather precariously balanced on an old wooden box we used for the spa area previously. I unpacked another 30 or so boxes today clearing the way for tomorrow's delivery from the van.

TV with a view

Bose wireless for sound but not wireless for power

End of an Era

We called in for our last visit to the Woolley house.  From now on I will try not to do the drive past. Settlement number two occurred today so we have given back the last of the keys. That house has done its job now its time to proceed with the SeaChange.  My desk was delivered today among other stuff although I am sitting on a box not a chair. The house network is working well so far, we are accessing the internet from three points inside, two rooms upstairs and the lounge downstairs.

Dance Floor

The Clancy's have cleaned it spotless.

Olives and Lemons

These are probably the two tree fruits I don't eat but that is what is growing here.  There were scrapes and noises on the roof during the night from olives bouncing around.  I cut back numerous branches which has left the roof clear but now we have a bag full of olives.  The way has been cleared for tomorrow's truckload of stuff. There are only a few boxes left from the first three trucks. We have signed up for the Netflix show which is streaming well with the 32 Mbs we are getting.  The Foxtel dish has been rescheduled.  We have only watched a couple of Star Trek Discovery episodes but the production values seem to be a good quality.

Not sure what type these are - Ligurian?

Day Tripper

We had a circuit breaker trip but when I put it back it would pop down again.  Most appliances were not working including the air con.  I could see errors on the Solar unit so spent a half hour searching for the book to see if there was any other info. In the mean time Debbie went next door as we could see a sparky van parked there.  He comes in and the first thing is to put that same circuit switch back and this time it stayed and all the power came back on.  So simple but the trick is what tripped it in the first place.  Something to do with power leaking to Earth.  Before that many other boxes were unpacked and some time spent on the deck.

Long Day at Aqua Waters

It is incredible how much work you can put into one day.  Three truck loads, four including the piano man, plus the NBN man, plus all the sparky work.  There are many boxes to be unpacked but 50% would have been emptied.  We went for a short walk just on sunset and a few were in the water as it was still 29°. 

Reel Deal

Truckin

Sunset champers

5:00am start

It's 10:00 am and the NBN man has already called in and verified our internet is working on the upstairs phone line.  Daniel is currently putting holes everywhere to pull cables through.  I have tried the local store which seems to have a bit of everything. The main truck is loading back in Essendon and the eta is around 2:00pm. 

I broke a tongue!

We're all settled

Never been to a settlement meeting before.  In one year's time they will be a thing of the past due to all settlement documentation and payments going electronic.  We arrived 15 minutes early along with two other people who work in the office there, so we started and had our property settled in 10  minutes.  Another lady arrived with cheques relating to the settlement. So ours was done but there were two other houses to do on their end as they were splitting up  and moving to separate addresses. So the equivalent of our cheques were split into two amounts, each to go towards their new houses.  Eventually eight people came into the room and passed over documents and cheques.  No-one was allowed to leave until all the totals were corresponding.  The controller was on the phone for one last cheque and in the end there were over 30 cheques. 

That's a coffee

A key moment

CountDown

We called in next door as a farewell and end up urging them to give the retirement villages a serious consideration.  These guys are perfect candidates, sitting on a gold mine and do not know much about how these gated communities work.  The next venue was coffee with the cleaners.  The cleaning business is working well considering the overseas travel that seems to flow from it.  They jetted in from Indonesia last night and were cleaning again today.

Mary & Steve

Sharon & Julie

3hr drive

I am not convinced about the need for these final inspections but it seems to be a requirement.  We drove three hours for a half hour chat. We did meet the outgoers who gave us a few tips on the running of the house. They were going to their separate houses and it all seemed amicable enough while we were present.  As for the other inspection, there were questions about the security light switch, of which there is none and requests for instructions on how to keep the garden maintained also of which there is none, except for common sense. However we will be writing down a few bullet points like mow the lawns, trim the hedge and sweep the path.

Out with the old

SpeedTest

Internet access has become indispensable and when running a business it has to always be there.  We have had a consistent service for the last month and we had to persist with some service calls in the first month.  Our original Optus service was provided by a dedicated co-axial cable to the house with fibre components back in the network.  NBN came along which discarded the Optus co-axial cable and started sharing with the Foxtel co-axial cable.  Our problem with the new house is that there are only old style phone lines as in twisted pair, originally designed for voice and later tweaked for ADSL2+.  Now we are told this old phone line has to carry our NBN service.   I will install Foxtel I said, so we can share the c o-axial again.  OK but new installations are only via a satellite dish.  I have measured our current service speeds at www.speedtest.net.  This site will do a ping to your IP address, as well as measure your upload and download speeds.  The results can be stored in your history and referred to at any time.  We will be comparing this to the results via twisted pair. Streaming online video requires 25 Mbps download for good viewing. We need at least this.

Be Prepared

IL Parco - revisted

Right next door to IL Parco is the McDonald-Upton office.  I guess it is standard practice to give each customer, whose house they have sold, a voucher for $100 to IL Parco.  We have been there a number of times and maybe last night was the last time. There have been a few last times. I also went to the dentist yesterday for the last time. As well the very expensive hair dresser was foofing for the last time.  Not sure if we will find Bellarine versions of the same standards.  It so happens that there are 5 shops within a few minutes walk of our new location. One is a hairdresser.  Hopefully the foofing is not so pricey.

IL Parco - Taste of the Adriatic

This Immortal

Still finding time to do a bit of reading although this one was easier, being a large text font and one of the few hard back Hugos I have found so far.  It tied with with Frank Herbert's Dune in 1966, the only time a tie for first place was ever granted.  So this one is in good company but is not as good as Dune.  There were no chapters in this book, just 184 pages of story.  The story line deals with a post apocalyptic nightmare but at least they finish up on the beach.  Even immortals need a sea change.

The Bag

One of the more difficult items to move has been the pottery fired bag.  The first hazard was moving it out of the old office some months ago.  It's glass enclosure has been broken for at least 30 yar.  The physics of heat with expansion and contraction has broken one side of it.  It has taken some weeks to get a new perspex enclosure built. This arrived today and has now been placed around the bag.  The old glass one is still largely intact forming a three dimensional very heavy glass box which fortunately will fit neatly inside one of our cardboard removalist boxes. This in turn just fits inside our yellow recycle bin.
 
I have been gathering the outdoor ornamentation.  This was a two to three hour exercise and by far the heaviest stuff we are moving, except for the piano.  We have enough stuff to start our own garden centre. I counted at least 50 items, from heavy duty concrete ponds and columns, to outdoor mirrors and pottery wrens all in a row, not to forget the concrete welcome mat.

Concrete Jungle

Audio & Video

I seem to be buying tvs on a more regular basis in the last few years.  Even so the jargon and acronyms change quickly.  A new TV is required for our move. Some if these were so big it is a two person job to measure the diagonal.  We settled on a 1.4m model UHD LED LCD ABC TV 4 ME.  Some speakers are being left behind, however there is still a very good 5.1 channel AV receiver they were attached to.  I found a set of speakers that would be a good replacement however they were a bit chunky, so instead we have a Bose wireless system that can be extended, with additional speakers, into any room and the original AV Receiver is still on its lonesome.

Everything plugs into the network these days

SuperQuiz

For about 15 yar now we have been doing these Age question and answer sessions during those in between moments, perhaps drying off after you have been in the water or taking a rest from Plover spotting or trying to workout where the pilot boat is going next.  There were a team of four present on this occasion  and the way we do this is by allowing one answer per person, so up to four answers are placed on the table and anyone of them can count towards the correct total.  For the first time on Collendina Beach a perfect score was attained and the rest of the beach heard about it or they would have  if anyone else was there.  Answers for the below can be supplied.

15 out of 15

Collendina Report No 119

Drysdale is one of your historic towns that still has plenty of the old buildings. Curlewis does not have many buildings left except for a 150 yar old church now renovated for wedding receptions.  We went to the new Curlewis estates where Woolworths have built one of their hubs and in the prime location at the very top of the hill.  We had a quick look at the new house and could see they were busy packing as we spied them through the windows.  The Curlewis supermarket may be closer than Drysdale and have better parking.

We had coffee at Brown Sugar

Collendina Report No 118

Spent a perfect beach day in the Bell's Beach, Southside, Pt Addis  area.  Just a few other people dotted here and there and quite a few overhead para gliders swooping in.  I know what its like now, when an owl sweeps up some prey, as we were dozing about when huge black shadows descended time and again directly over our camp. They made us jump every time.

Morning mist rising

Parisol Moon

Towering Point Addis

Collendina Report No 117

We are leaving the Matador 2000 behind. It has served us well with many lamb back straps being served off it. Sam Kekovich would be proud.  However we have seen the future, The Matador 3200, with its own lighting system and soft closing drawers.  It seems we have new neighbours on both sides of the van. We have not met them and they will be the Taylors new neighbours anyway.

Barbie

Autumn Morning

Way Station

This book won the Hugo back in 1964.  A few concepts were invented here such as the holodeck made famous by Star Trek- Next Generation.  The premise here is that one person on Earth is picked to run a an Intergalactic bus stop.  But  he has to keep the whole thing secret.  Another gadget they have is a peace machine.  As long as you have a talmudic sage holding it, everyone starts to feel good. 

Info on Coins

The packing has unveiled a coin horde.  I did not want to pack an extra few kilos in coin weight.  This tub of coins has been accumulating over some years including 248 now withdrawn 1c and 2c coins.  I read up on the internet that dealers were selling copper coins for up to 50c.  The commonwealth bank has a coin counting machine which totted up about $50.00 worth of coin minus the copper.  As for the copper, they said a dealer would give me more.  So I wandered across the road to my favorite secondhand book store who is also a coin dealer.  They sell copper coins for 10c each but they buy them at $3 per kilo which is roughly face value and what the bank would have paid me.  However the internet article suggested mint copper coins were going for $15.  So the main prize in the cache I found was a mint roll of 50 1c pieces still in their packaging.  This has to be worth more than 50c.

Rolled Gold?

Coin Counter

Woolley History

We have been chasing up the Certificate of Title, which we did have our hands on for a 14 year period, when the mortgage was paid out in 1989.  However when we set up a line of credit in 2003 the bank took it back again.  That was right around the time when the whole Titles system went electronic.  I have now purchased the online copy but if the original still exists it would be good to have as we "owned it" the longest. 

In 1926 William Bradley split up his block into 15, 13, 11 and 9.  He hung on to No 13 until he died in 1942 when his wife Agnes took over and had it for another 14 yar until 1956.  At that time it was sold to Lionel Bowditch who had it for 5 years until Walton Sherriff came in 1961.  After some years he ran off with a floosie but Joyce Sherriff got the house and sold it to the Roberts in 1979.   So we have had it for 38 yar in it's 92 yar history.  I was planning a centennial party for 2026 however the winds of Seachange  have blown.

Short History

Body Corporate

That's two hours I wont get back.  How about this? What if the property developer who hires a building company to put up your apartment building, both eventually become investors in the building ie together they buy up and own the majority of apartments. But also the builder stays on as the maintenance contractor.  Then what if there is a falling out between these two and distrust develops and then it starts affecting the Body Corporate not only with its fee payment income but also how the maintenance is being done and what bills are being paid.  And what if one of the other owners just happens to be a bookkeeper and the books are urgently needing to be audited, despite whatever else might already be on the agenda.  My advice to would be property investors don't go for a property involving a body corporate payment.

Queen

In the words of Adam Lambert  "There can only be one Rock God"  but Adam Lambert is the perfect match for Queen or the two of them that are left.  Freddie made a few appearances on screen and it brought a tear to the eye of a lot of the crowd. Brian May was playing and did a song with Freddie superimposed on the screen.  Most of the iconic tunes were there, although Flash Gordon missed out. This would have to be one of the best concerts I have been to and well worth the $700 we paid although there was a huge extra fee from the Viagogo resale web site.  Don't use this web site.  Moral: if you can't get it via Ticketek then fly to Sydney and see them there. 

Opening scene

There was a fat bottomed girl sitting next to me - she flowed onto my seat!

Brian May all the way

I want to ride my bicycle

Golden Orchid revisited

If you need somewhere in the city to eat before a show then Golden Orchid is no fuss Chinese.  We have been a few times now and have showed up without a reservation. One Hung Low is always just inside the door.  There are many regulars and he knows them all by name.  We have had a two seater table each time and they bring cutlery out without asking. Maybe our chop suey stick skills are writ large.

Box City

Boxes are starting to pile up here.  I have worked thru two bedrooms with very large wardrobes which are now mostly empty.  The phone call list is being ticked off with the latest trying to sort out Internet and Foxtel.  It seems new installations of Foxtel are now only done via satellite dish so our new address will not be sharing both down the same cable as there is no existing Foxtel there however our IQ3 box, which we have had less than a month, will now be replaced by a satellite suitable version. A cable will be needed for the NBN though.

Stamp Database

I have purchased an Access Database for recording stamp inventory.  I am using the Microsoft file system to present a pictorial stamp database and now this Access method is primarily a text form with some mathematics for totaling values.  There is a visual component so, as I already have the images, they can be viewed here as well.  There is a link to a web page for each record which may allow for display of a google map if I can work this into it.  I have processed the first 21 stamps in the collection and they have a collective value of $213.60. 

King George V