Aftermath

Last night the builder emailled me a couple of photos, but as I couldn't relate them to anything (no landmarks in the photos), I couldn't really make sense of them.  They were just pictures of dirt and trees. They didn't look like my land. Today I went to see for myself.

Remember this picture from Monday last week:

Well here's how that looks today:

Slight difference? I wasn't standing in exactly the same spot, but I think you can tell there's a bit of a gap in the trees! The darker ring you might be able to see in the middle is a gravelled vehicle track around the site. Our house will be in the middle of that track.

Actually it doesn't look as bad as I had imagined, but a big part of that is because only the "inner zone" has been cleared. There is another 15m in all directions which was supposed to be thinned out significantly, but I suppose we can do that without the help of a bulldozer at some later stage if necessary. (And I wouldn't mind if no-one ever noticed and we could leave it alone.)

One of two piles of tree trunks:

The timber is not in great condition (many are rotten in the middle), but some may be able to be used more constructively than for firewood. The remainder will be keeping us warm for a few winters to come.

And here is the pile of roots, branches etc:

It is huge; about 4 metres high. Apparently the way to deal with this is to get the CFA (Country Fire Authority) to come and burn it! It seems a waste when we have so much need of organic matter in the soil, but there doesn't seem to be a practical alternative. Any suggestions?

And over to the side, the topsoil from the scraped area:

We can use this to establish some garden areas after the building is complete. But do you notice how small this pile is compared with the pile of branches etc? The topsoil layer is very thin in this area.

So there it is. I am glad I wasn't there at the time. I have watched time-lapse footage of the whole process, which was interesting but less horrific than it would have been in person.

Now on with the building!