Back in da 'hood

This week was an interesting week. We moved into (we're guessing)the 12-18 month rental accommodation we'll have whilst we rebuild.

Rather than "moving", we unloaded a container of someone else's furniture and appliances into a house that we had not seen until an hour or two earlier that same day. Quite strange really. We had very kindly been given the container load of goods by a friend in Sydney who was going back to the US to live - what timing and what an amazing generousness?!

We will be officially moving this weekend and we're looking forward to being back up close to our property so we can start taking care of our place more frequently and move ahead as quickly as possible with the significant task of rebuilding.

JB is both excited and a little terrified that our new place is between the local pub, the local hardware store and a tractor shop. He asks "What's a man to do??!!". Like, really... no fear, E-M has a list ;-)

We have had so many generous gifts and offers of assistance - and they just keep coming. Thank you to you all. We'll be organising several events for working bees of various sorts over the next few months. There's plenty of work to do including chain sawing, pulling out the pruned vines in late June, gardening through winter and especially spring, and possibly even some vineyard reconstruction work (we're still working out how much damage has been done to the vineyard itself).

Spring will bring mowing and more pruning, planting and ridding of *%&%#^ weeds and blackberry. Don't worry if you've offered some assistance and you haven't heard anything yet - your names are all on our hit list and you will be called upon - we are working out which things are priorities dependending on availability of time, skills, equipment etc.

Right now we are actively looking for someone who can build the kind of home that we'd like to live in, and one which would best reflect the qualities of the area. We're considering everything from kit homes, modular homes to custom built. If you know of someone you think might be good for us to talk to, please let us know?

We'll take some photos of our new abode and locale over the weekend and update more next week.

Thanks everyone for your continued messages, thoughts, concern and generosity. We know the best people in the world. And we've (more) sane and comforted minds and about 10kgs weight gain to show for it so far ;-)