Moonbi

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Hallo!

Sorry about the interval, its been a bit of a crazy year. Much has been done in the way of marrying off little sisters (congratulations Mr & Mrs Burling), aggravating the health services, welcoming the olds, and wearying of paying some other bugger rent. Mrs Eameswell took it upon herself to decide that I appeared to be playing too many computer games and needed some healthy outdoor living, DIY and jungle assault courses to occupy my otherwise slovenly self. "Hut two, hut two, YOO ORRIBLE LITTLE MAN, get yourself out of this flat and find me one of them there accomodations". Verily I didst but have the fear, for embarking upon such an adventure meant the trudging of the long road, 'Everywhere', the arming oneself with the weapon of uselessness, 'Agent', and the the slaying of the mighty dragon 'IDontLikeTheBathroomColourArgument'.

Prevalier! Admonishus! Asucceedinum! Hic! A property was found, and forthwith battle did commence.

Oddly enough it was only about the 5th one we saw. I thought we'd be at it for days, both having rather different ideas of where we'd like to park our middle-aged wobbly bits. The Manly Daily (a quality rag if ever there is one, heartily recommend it, especially if you've got caged pets because it's nice and thick) coughed up a 'renovators dream' in Frenchs Forest. Frenchs Forest because its a nice and leafy North Shore suburb 20 mins from the beach, and a 'renovators dream' because we couldn't otherwise afford leafy and 20. Sounds like a girl I once knew, anyway, I saw the ad and drunkenly told Deb we'd end up living at '12 Moonbi Crescent' because it was the daftest sounding address in the paper. Many a thing said in jest, eh Sheila? We're still not sure what happened to Moon A, though I think it might have been arrested for indecent exposure or drunk driving, we get a lot of that round here. Hoons. Can't take to the road without a naked MadMax on a VB bender providing entertainment to the masses by being pulled over by the booze bus.

Apparently Moonbi is the name given by the Butchalla Aborigines to the central part of their homeland, Fraser Island (Kgari), the enormous sand island off Queensland. Frenchs is named after another dull european, which is a pity because its right at the start of the Garigal aboriginal lands and Ku-Ring-Gai national Park and could've had a much better name as a result. Fortunately we didn't end up living in Tumble Down Dick Hill to the north, apparently named after a lazy bullock, go figure.

Lawyers. I shouted at the lawyer. Estate agent, yup, shouted at him too. Sellers, check. Government, special shout out to the government, y'all know who you are you scrofulous apparatchik pillaging turd-polishers. And me, I had a good shout at me. Who else would decide it would be a good idea to run the Sydney City2Surf race the day after we moved in? I've never been so knackered in this life. Not sure how knackering the next one is going to be, hopefully I've been good enough to avoid lifting sofas and slogging 14km up a hill in quick succession as a regular occurrence. Given Buddhism is the best religion I can think of (being a bit of a heathen non-believer) perhaps I'll come back as sofa, it sounds pleasantly sedentary, apart from the odd teenage couple. I didn't shout at Mrs Blackweames either, she was the designated truck driver, I'm not that confident driving a nail (more on this later) let alone a 3 ton truck. Neither did I shout at the new neighbours who came to say hello, mainly because the guys I'd borrowed from work to help us move were scaring everyone witless as it was and I didn't think they needed help. Ramesh is about 8 feet tall, and Matt was picking up the washing machine by himself and running up the hill with it. Actually I think they were less scared than having a good laugh at us for buying the streets bomb. It's customary to go round when the house next door is on the market and have a good poke around, so they knew what we were letting ourselves in for. According to the agent 180 people came through this place and we were the only people to put in an offer. The Saturday we viewed it there was another couple our age wandering around looking sick and trying not to touch anything, we, on the other hand kept bumping into each other round various corners and squeaking like teenagers who've just discovered, er, other teenagers. Without the sofa, it was on the truck and there were people watching. Don't be dirty.

So, one financial destitution later ( I think it may have been us as sub-prime borrowers that brought the world markets down, if not it was a pretty good coincidence) we are the proud owners of something that no-one else wanted, how comforting. Not as comforting as our living room, which is a delightful shade of patterned nicotine yellow and colonic irrigation brown, set off by a floor varnish that contains dead flies, pubic hair and nails. I kid you not. If you re-varnish your floors, good readers, use something called a brush, it's a stick with hairy things on the end you use to remove the hairy things from the floor with. Then use a different one to put the varnish on with. The previous owners have to have been the dirtiest people I have ever had the misfortune of running into the evidence of, and by this I mean I don't understand how they didn't kill themselves. Take our bedroom as an example. There's a print in the carpet that's had 30 years of sweaty feet running a track into the pile. It's sticky. The hoover started complaining after it had removed 8 full loads from the carpet. It still fills up every time. And you haven't seen the kitchen yet.

Larry (for it was he who owned Moonbi before us) did do me one small favour. He left me a lump hammer, which is, for the uninitiated, a 2lb block of steel on a short handle. I already own one, so now I have 2, perfect for acts of wanton destruction. Not that I really want you to know but when I was younger I played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons. Pretending to be Thor with my dads lump hammer caused a regrettable accident in the shed involving the fluorescent light, some paint thinners and a small fire, which fortunately he never found out about. (12,000 miles can be useful sometimes). Anyway, I still haven't lost my Thor powers and set about the ancient manky kitchen units with double-thwacky-Mjolnir cum Hong-Kong-Phooey kablooie. Ok, so the kitchen now looks a bit tatty but its less likely to kill people. And that's only because I took out all the nails.

Larry (for it was he who built the kitchen) had what one can only call a nail-fetish. I've just looked this up and apparently its called Maniphilia. I think I got the wrong kind of nail, most of the sites are a bit odd to say the least. Surely they get in the way? Anyway, Larry liked the other kind of nail, the one you clout with your Scandinavian weaponry. We have seriously removed a good hundred nails from the walls all over the house. The kitchen units were hedge-hogged together with a couple of hundred. The pergola outside (now a pile of wood in the shed), probably a good thousand. The man had a problem. Me, I know my problem and I keep the lawn mower petrol and the paint thinners in a different shed to the wood. Deb locks it. No, not really, they have this thing here where if you like fires and 'accidentally' burn down Australia they stake you out over an anthill with treacle on your unmentionables so its not that much fun any more. Sorry about the shed mate.

Debbie cleaned the walls upstairs before she painted our bedroom. The grey tuned to light blue. The thing that looked like the bastard offspring of a hand grenade and Billy Connolly's hair turned out to be a light fitting covered in spider webs and dust. I jack-hammered the yellow slate tiles off the new kitchen floor. The first 30 minutes were fun, the next eight hours weren't. The hill we are on drains all its water under our house. The guttering makes a racket when it rains. The ramp to the garage is near vertical. The garage chews the car every time we try to park in it. The downstairs toilet was designed by an Andy Warhol wannabe and plumbed by god because its the only way we can figure out there isn't poo in the front garden. We absolutely love this place to bits. We really do. :o)

It's got trees. It's got trees like Spielberg would want for the making of Jurassic Arboretum. Is that right for tree park? It sounds right, hang on, ...yep, cool, Wikipedia says it is, and the Thesaurus also suggests Xylotheque. Rock on, sounds like a bunch of trees having a good time. Do you think if they get lucky they leaf with a lady tree? I think I'll stop there. Think about later on in tree wooing-world and acorny puns about wood and rooting.... Er, anyway, to make you forget how angelic I am it's also got Possums, scroll down and have a look at the last 'awwwww' cute picture. We found her nesting on the rotting pergola which had to come down,so she and the fuzzy backpack had to move house unfortunately. And her friends used to play racetrack on the roof at night which was kind of fun, but they don't do it so much now the easy access to the skyway's been pulled down. I still don't get why people think they're vermin. Spiders now, there's a different matter. Haven't met any of the really nasty buggers yet but did manage to find our first Huntsman, which sounds unpleasant but isn't, even though they're as big as your hand. Mrs Moonbi said she could quite definitely see it from 15m away and no she didn't need to come any bloody closer, thank you very much. I sympathize, I'm not looking forward to putting out my first one. We've got parrots and lorikeets, although sadly Boris & Sue have decided to stay in Willoughby where there's a surfer in a flat who can't understand why there's a pair of lorikeets in his doorway giving him the eyeball. We also get some wacky yawping bird, about the size of a turkey which hangs about occasionally making the oddest (very loud) noises. And ducks, they seem to like our front garden and come up from the creek every night to go quackers. Nature on drugs, so it is. Come and see, we might even have a new kitchen. No more nails, its the way of the future.

love
the Underpodeans

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Photos

12 Moonbi Crescent
Looks lovely from here dunnit?

Local tradesperson
Just can't get the staff

God help us
The satan of decorators has come