Author Archives: Bill Hutchison

The $100,000 Tree House!!!

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As we have been getting closer to finally knowing what to do with the development of our own house (will tell you more later) my thoughts have sometimes wandered to the back corners of our yard and the tree or cubby house that I want to build for Caleb down the track.

I found what I thought was a pretty good plan from Mitre 10. I wrote about it in a previous article, An Amazing Tree House.

I must admit now that what I had previously thought of as a good tree house is not actually all that impressive. In an article on the New York Magazine web site they have some pretty impressive looking tree houses. They are professionally designed and cost upwards of $100,000 USD! Below is an image from their article and a link to the page:

I must admit that I am impressed, but I don’t think that I will be changing my own plans for Caleb’s own cubby house…

Broadband Internet in Townsville – Finally!

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RAW2PLUS Broadband Plan 1In the beginning of the year I signed up for ADSL2+ for our home. ADSL2+ can theoretically give us 20Mbit download and 1Mbit upload. Up till now we have been using dialup, which is a bit painful.

We got a phone call yesterday telling us that they had finally set-up the telephone exchange to handle ADSL2+ and we could go down and pick-up the modem when we are ready to. I am thinking about doing that before lunch today, but it may need to wait until tomorrow.

We went with a company called Regional Internet Australia, or RAWNET. The have wireless and ADSL2+ packages, both of which are being sold by quite a few re-sellers around Townsville at the moment. The broadband Internet packages have no contract and comes with a free wireless router. The no contract thing could be good because we can leave at any time, but it could also make it real easy for them to up the costs and change the contract if they want to.

The broadband package that we got was only $25.00 per month for 5GB downloads, which is way cheaper than most of the other options available here. We worked it out and we think that it may even be cheaper than dial-up because we have to pay $0.15 for local phone calls here in Australia. If we find that we are needing more than 5GB we can also upgrade to the 20GB package for only an extra $10.00 or so per month.

Now all I need to do is get my deck set-up so that I can sit out their with my laptop and enjoy the speed with wireless. Of course, I’ll also need a laptop that has more than 5-minutes battery life, but that’s another story…

Using a Cherry Picker to Cut Down our Tree

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After almost a month of pestering and chasing our tree lopper and trying to coordinate with our neighbour they finally showed up last week with the cherry picker to chop down the tree. Because we have a very narrow lot the cherry picker had to access our yard through the neighbours yard.

Using a Cherry Picker to Cut Down a Tree

Cherry Picker at Work

The main reason why they took so long is because their communication skills were extremely poor.

On the first day they were supposed to cut the tree down they apparently showed up and their was a padlock on our neighbour’s yard. Instead of coming to talk to us or talk to our neighbour, they just left. I had to call them the next day to figure out why.

Then the cherry picker broke down on two other occasions.

On the fourth attempt they were supposed to get back to us about if the skip in our neighbours yard had to be moved for the cherry picker to fit. When they never got back to us we assumed that meant that there was enough room for the cherry picker, but when they showed up they decided they couldn’t fit and just drove away.

Fallen Tree under the Cherry Picker

Messy Yard after Cherry Picker Cutting

Last week they finally arrived and cut down most of the tree, but the cherry picker couldn’t reach all of it, so now we are waiting for them to find a climber to cut down the rest of the tree. I hope that we won’t be waiting too long, but at least now the neighbour can move ahead with putting up their shed.

It looks like I might have to do something about the back yard grass now after the logs fell on it. It is extremely bumpy and uneven now. I think that I might have to cut back the grass and roll it back and then put down dirt or sand to smooth it out.

Does anyone out there have experience with doing something similar? Any other advice for what to do?

Aerial View of Our Old House

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Recently Google Maps updated the quality of maps that are available for Townsville, Australia. Previously the quality was horrible, but now you can actually get some pretty decent shots out of it.

Aerial View of our Old House

Here is an aerial shot of our old house. We had the tin roof painted with a white insulating paint, which is why it looks so bright. Also on the bottom of the house you can see the shade cloth that was over our deck.

It’s pretty amazing the quality of the photo, but I am not too sure how old the photo is. Most of the houses in the photo are now gone to make way for a parking lot, although our lot looks like it’s been turned into a dumping ground for fill.

If you have a decent computer with a broadband Internet connection head over and grab a photo of your house and then let us know in the comments below where we can check it out…