Tenders are finally out - bring on the 1st of October!

Well, you all be pleased to know that after almost 2 years in the making, our tenders have finally gone out to our prospective builders. The date for response is the 1st of October and we plan to break ground as soon as possible after that date.

Thank god for Mark Boyd is all I can say. His help and support through this process has been outstanding and friends don't come much better than this. He's not a bad architect either :-) As most of you know, we had hoped to have started long ago and the last few months have seen our frustrations rise to new heights - but it has been Mark who has kept us moving along and maintaining focus to reach this day.

As one of our other friends Annie put it, we're well on the journey to realising our dream and it's going to be truly fantastic. I'm with Annie... the way this year has flown it won't be long before we're all having cocktails on the lanai.

Fancy a Long Cointreaupolitan anyone?

Some things call for drastic measures!!

Scoffa, our favourite man with a bulldozer, arrived back at the farm this week (how he got the name Scoffa we'll leave to another time). We were expecting to see him 4 months ago, but he's on Carool time and better late than never I say.

So his latest challenge was to rid our property of the toxic Radiata Pines on our boundary. We have long debated the pros and cons of leaving these trees, but basically they suck the life out of Gareth's tropical gardens and nothing we have tried to grow under them for the last 3 years as made any progress.It was time to say - goodbye.

Remarkable what you can do in a days work in the country I say. Non of this stuffing around, no procrastinating, just bring the buggers down and you can see the result here.

Now for those of you who may be lamenting the loss off these trees, don't worry, we're planting natives that are local to Northern NSW on the boundary next weekend. And I'll leave the picture on the front page of our blog where you can see the pines in the background.

Such a satisfying weekend. No wonder so many of us Sydneysiders are foresaking our city life for the country. And on that note, we had some very exciting news this week, our friends Larry and Melissa from Enmore are moving to Mullumbimby - only 40 minutes away. You'll all be up here in the end!!

Have you ever wondered what our fabulous B&B will look like?

I was only saying to Gareth this afternoon, only a few people have seen how Escape Retreat will look. You've had a taste of the gardens (and by the way, I must show you some picks of Gareth's new succulent "hill".... more of that later.

In the meantime, here is a render. Sadly I can't seem to get the resolution better. But you get the gist. Check out the pool and pool house on the left.... and you thought NYE at Stanmore was fun!

It's days like these that make it all worthwhile....

I was just going through some old emails today, looking at when we first kicked off our project. It was October 2008 and here we are approaching 2 years and we've yet to commence building. Not that we ever lose sight of what we will realise in our beautiful part of the world, but you just get so damn frustrated with consultants, their complete lack of attention to detail and sense of urgency, regardless of how much you're paying them. 

And then, in the middle of winter, you have days like these..... 23 degrees....... just magic. You forget about all those issues and remind yourself how lucky you are and how much you look forward to sharing it all with old friends and new friends, sometime in the not too distant future.

A little piece of Carool history is gone

There was a tinge of sadness this weekend when a little piece of history on our property said goodbye. For those of you that have been up here, you will remember the old banana packing shed that was alongside the gate that we will be using as our new entrance to the B&B. Gareth and I have agonised for ages as to whether we would keep it - Gareth often fantasised about it being his 'Farm Shop" but in the end the decision was made for us by nature. The timbers were rotten from pest activity and it was becoming unsafe. Sad though to see this link with the past disappear. However, in the demolition we were excited that we came across the old template that Mr Conti (the previous owner of some 40 years) used for labelling the banana crates. We also came across some old crate timbers in perfect condition which we will keep in recognition of the history of this beautiful part of the world we are now custodians of.

Our new arrival

Meet Oscar, our new chocolate Labrador. We've had him for just over a week now and might I say early indications are that he will be most satisfactory in fulfilling his role as a guest welcoming committee member. He will however not be performing any bathroom cleaning activities. Whenever a toilet roll is around, he morphs on cue into the Kleenex labrador that graced our TV screens for decades. Must be genetic. Parents are still very proud with their clever little boy that can fetch, sit and respond to his name at 9 weeks.

A little Bali Inspiration

We recently made a last minute decision to head to Bali for a buying trip - you all know how much I hate shopping :-). Fortunately we were able to share  a container with our friends Eric and Josh from Villa 76 http://www.villa76.com/welcome/  and have bought some great new items to enhance Gareth's beautiful, ever expanding sub-tropical gardens (see stone water bowl and carved head in this picture - just one of some 28 items we purchased.

The villa that we were staying in Seminyak also gave us some great inspiration for our pool and we're bringing in the same tiles you see featured in this picture (in fact, we will be incorporating a number of design elements from this in our construction - which we're getting very close to commencing).