Under a hotter Sun; The old house; The burglary;

The Coldstream River;


We said goodbye to Reg, Ella and their family and moved for the time being into the old house.
Ted and Reg drove out to us and brought buckets and cleaning material to lend us a helping hand to clean up the worst. We thought how nice and generous it was of them; as they were themselves always busy and had a lot of work.

The burglary;
Sleeping the first night in the old house, we found out there were already some hidden residents. I woke up in the middle of the night. I was disorientated sleeping in a strange place. My heart was beating fast when I heard heavy thumps plunking on the wooden floor outside on a sleep out connected to our bedroom. I woke Peter and he heard the plunking too. We looked through the window yet did not see anybody outside. I whispered I think it’s a burglar. Peter whispered back, a burglar would not be so noisy. I whispered He might not know that somebody lives in the house. Peter opened slowly the door to the sleep out. Peter’s torch shone full on some very big, fat, grass green residents that jumped from an outside water tank into the sleep out that had its roof halfway torn away from a previous storm. They landed heavily on their bellies and than plodded along the wooden floor in search of insects. Relieved there was nothing to worry about we went back to bed. I dreamed of hundreds huge, green frogs tumble from the roof, jumping all over the bedroom and laughing at us!

The old house ;
The old house was situated not far from the river on a small knoll. It was an old Queenslander built on heavy stumps. It was badly neglected. Yet the timber walls, floors and ceilings were still in top condition. Nothing was rotten. It was a big house with a separate kitchen house that was connected via a small veranda. I liked it from the beginning. Peter had never liked timber homes and there was no negotiation about renovating and living in it. The option was only to live in it until our new brick home was built. We settled in to make it our home for the next six to eight month. In the house was also left some old junk or were they antiques? An old chest of drawers, an old cupboard filled with books and letters and stamps. I would have loved to go through all this but Peter in his haste was telling the owner to get rid of it and when we came back the next time all was gone. The last flood had come up into the house, one could see the rim on the walls where the water had reached and it also smelled very musty. We ripped out all the old carpets. Underneath were nice hardwood floors. We cleaned two bedrooms and the kitchen. The kitchen was in a sorry state, I cleaned and scrubbed and for the time being it had to do. Renovated it would have made a glorious kitchen with its soaring ceiling up to the roof and a small veranda in front. It still had a chimney with a wood-burning stove. When Peter cleaned out the stove he found a rats nest with tiny, new born inhabitants. He could not kill them as they were so utterly defenceless. He took them out and settled them behind a bush hoping their mother would find them.




On the veranda was also a makeshift toilet and shower, as the original bathroom which was also connected by a small covered gangway, by the look of it had not been in use for a long time. It still had an old claw foot bathtub but nothing else. Somebody with architectural flair and a knowledge of old Queenslanders could have made a splendid home. The only negative for me was that it stood on flood prone land .We were glad to have the shower. With the toilet we were not so lucky. It was not connected to a sewer system. So we had to use a bucket until this problem was solved.
There was so much rubbish around that we cleaned up. Jacky found an old rusty bucket under the house that was full to the rim. With her foot she stomped into it and found out that it was the bucket that stood under the toilet. We all had a good laugh and I said just as well she wore high gumboots.

The Veranda roof was torn away in a hefty storm; we thought the whole house would go!

When I moved into this old house that was build more than a 100 years ago I was thinking about the people whom had lived in the same house. It was said it was a prosperous family who owned the best dairy herd in the area that build this home.

When I was cooking or doing some chores in the kitchen the heavy door that always stood open, closed itself with a loud bang. I liked to think and we joked about it, that the ghost of an ancestor of the McPhee clan who lived in this house was hiding behind the door. We challenged him a few times but he just played his hide and seek game with us and never showed his face!
There was no garden left. Only a solitary old Camellia bush struggled for its life near the house. Two huge Camphor Laurel trees grew near the house. They were laden with exquisite, white perfumed flowers at the time. One of the trees had a beautiful, big Rock Orchid growing from a hollow. A brilliant green tree snake with a yellow belly had made her home under the orchid.

Cleaning up and....

more cleaning up!