Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Clearing the Land


When we purchased the land in 2007 it had been cleared and had a sparse covering of bracken (about 10cm high at most) over the majority of it.  As we've been coming back over the last three years to sort other things out we've been confronted with the ever growing bracken, as well as the growth of tea trees that have been taking over the lower part of the block.  So now that we have finally come down and are starting to sort things out in preparation for the build we have to re-clear the land.
Now, we could have done this by hiring someone to come in, but that would have been costly and not nearly as enjoyable [insert sarcastic tone :-)].  So instead, Derek has bought another new tool (I haven't mentioned he bought a sliding compound mitre saw the other week to build a bench and some shelves for the shed), a Stihl FS90 Brushcutter.  This thing is a beast of a brushcutter, but given what we're hacking through it is certainly not overkill.
So on Sunday we took our first venture out to start preparing the land, followed up with a few more hours out there today, and below are some pictures of our efforts.
A wide view of the land before the work commenced, you can see Derek just to the right of the car
Closer view of Derek and the new power tool - the tea trees to the left are the same level, but the stuff in front is on a rise
Clearing on Day 1 - the bracken in the middle is a pile of all of the cleared material from the house block, so about 9 x 29 metres worth of work
Clearing on Day 2 - this is where Derek was standing in the photo above on Sunday, so just a bit of work done
And on the house block part we did twice as much today as we did on Sunday (sort of got the hang of it now)
We probably have another two days of work to get the area cleared that we'll be building on, then of course the fun part of waiting for it all to die off a little before burning it all off (got to love Tasmania's burning rules).
Once it is all cleared we'll be getting the surveyor to come and mark out the land again (there are still some pegs from where the previous owners had it done).  Then Nigel, our designer, will go out with us and we'll mark out the house on the block and make sure it fits properly.  From there we can get plans drawn up and submitted to council, very exciting.
And yes, it is very rewarding and a great sense of achievement to clear to block ourselves, I was only joking :-)

1 comment: