I know, I know! Its probably been about 2 solid months since anyone has heard boo from me, but I cant get my head around writing on the computer. Its partly the fact that at the end of each day I am exhausted and busy with the kids, but I think mostly its I don’t like to use technology whilst I am here. I really like the idea that we are so cut off here, from all the modern convenience of our life in Oz and I like also like to keep things really simple here. I love the fact that my days and weeks are governed by the sun and the cycles of the moon.
Enough of the pathetic excuses for being slack. Where are we up to in the building? Well if you look at the property there is no visible change as we have been waiting for the tip truck to be finished its repairs, which finally happened last week. This means that yesterday we were able to bring the last loads of rocks from the piggery, and hopefully finally finish the retaining wall. The sand which will be backfilled into the new area, has also been delayed for the last 6 weeks as the government truck thats meant to bring it has been to busy. This is an island in the Pacific, nothing happens quickly and no one dies of stress related heart disease. Although I often think it would be nice to see a little bit of stress or worry over something. Despite the delays we have been busier than ever with cutting up the 40 plus trees we knocked over in the past 2 months. We have cut up the bulk of the trees with just the mahogany and the hefau tree remaining, which also happened to be the 2 biggest trees that we cut down. The hefau tree was massive, it would require 3-4 of us to join arms to go around its circumference. It smashed everything in its path when It came down. By the way standing right next to the trunk when it came down, chainsaw in hand, caused a little tightening in the back passage. I must say that with about 60+ trees under my belt now, I feel quite confident when it comes to felling most trees. Where I think it will land is pretty much well where it ends up, which is gratifying to see. We have been using 2 methods to cut the trees up into slabs. The main method has been manually sawing the tree into slabs with the chainsaw and the other method is the original idea with the chainsaw mill. The mill is very slow and takes a little while to set up for the first cut, as we have to use a set of rails so that the mill and saw have something to run across. Once the first cut is achieved, the rails are removed and the mill and saw run on the smooth surface of the first cut. The advantage to the mill is that it is very accurate. So with that in mind I have decided to use the mill only for the floorboards and the walls of the house. These will be only 25mm thick which is difficult to get an accurate cut if done manually. The manual method requires us to do a first cut perpendicular to the ground, then we roll the log over so that the first cut is on top and parallel to the ground, and then with our chalk line we mark out the size of the slabs we are to cut and start sawing. Not quite as easy as it sounds as the saw weighs a tonne and has to be kept perfectly in line with the mark on the wood. I must say we have become surprisingly accurate with our cuts. In the front yard of the house we now have a shite load of 25,50 and 80mm slabs of beautiful tropical hardwood timber, waiting to be cut up into dimensioned lumber on the tablesaw. When the camera arrives on the next boat I will start taking photos of everything I have described.
As you probably already know, Nadine and the kids have gone back to Oz for a break, not for the kids sake, but Nadines. I wasn’t exactly thrilled about it at the beginning{ major understatement}, but it has actually worked out really well. I now no longer have the stress of having to worry about how Nadine is coping with the day and also am actually getting a full nights rest, as I no longer have Saulei needing to be nursed in the middle of the night. It was tough going there for awhile when I was working very hard physically and then getting up several times a night to see to Saulei. The other major advantage has been I get to go to the sea at will. This meant last week I went fishing 6 times, on Saturday I went twice. The disadvantage is that I miss the them all a lot. The house seems empty without the kids running amok and making noise. Every one here really misses the kids, and cant wait for them all to get back.
As for the fishing. As I have been staying at my uncles place in hapmak, another village, and his house is on the oceanfront not the bay, like our place. So the routine has been work until about 3pm, down tools and clean the chainsaw, and then get changed into fishing outfit and head out for a couple of hours of spearfishing out the front of his place. We have met with success every time we have gone out and have managed to eat fish for dinner every night. One of the afternoons I saw a massive fish that I was little scared to spear as it was so big, also I didn’t know whether it was edible or not and don’t like to kill things unless we plan on eating it. This thing was like a small car. I screamed for my uncle and cousin to come over and identify it for me, they also happened to be towing the rope with the buoy on the end of it, handy if you come across a big fish as you clip the rope to the gun and hang onto the buoy after you shoot the fish. They looked at the fish and were a little taken aback by the size of it, but both said shoot it. I clipped the rope to my gun and dived down. By this stage the fish had decided to slowly make its way to underneath a large coral outcrop. I could see its tail and its mouth but couldn’t get a good shot at its head, which is vital with a fish this big, to try to kill it with one shot. I dived down 3 more times and decided to leave it be as I would almost certainly have trouble extracting the thing from under the rock, even if I was lucky enough to kill it with one shot and not just piss it off. Now every time we go fishing there I go back to the same spot to check if it has returned, no luck so far. The other bit of sea life that we have encountered quite a bit has been 2 large manta rays, that are very curious. They usually come within a couple of meters and spend quite a bit of time just hanging out, following us around. It was a little disconcerting at first as they are forkin huge, 2-3 metres across. But as I have got used to them they have become beautiful accompaniments to the afternoon expeditions.
My cousin Jione and I will be going back to hapmak for the next 2 weeks as the slabbing of the mahogany is taking a little longer than expected. The timber even in its rough form is starting to look beautiful. Amazingly it starts out white and then as it seasons it changes to a deep red. We have probably got about 6-7 more trees to cut down and then we will have all the timber we need for the house. When slabbed manually we can have a tree down, limbed and slabbed in about 3-4 days, which is pretty good going as none of us previous to starting had ever touched a chainsaw or slabbed a tree before.
I sometimes look around and take a mental note of what we are doing and still am amazed that its all happening. This was just an idea in my head[ not a very good one originally] 4 years ago. Most people that I mentioned it to thought it was a crazy idea especially considering you can get very good timber in Fiji and have it shipped over to Rotuma. Also the fact that I had never used a chainsaw before and also have never built a thing in my life, made the idea not just crazy but a little on the stupid side. We are nowhere near finished yet but looking at what we have achieved so far, makes me believe what my parents told me and my siblings when we were young. Put your mind to anything and you will achieve whatever you want, or something to that effect. All these years I thought that they were pissing in my pocket, but in fact they were right. As I mentioned this maybe a little premature as all we have is a pile of hardwood slabs and nothing quite resembling a house yet, but we have made it this far...
On a bit of a crap note Ben a mate who is in Fiji awaiting a boat to here, cant wait any longer and has to go back to Oz. The shipping company oversold tickets to the tune of about 150. The boat left on time, and amazingly arrived on time but no Ben. As my Pa used to say, “you wouldn’t feed these people”. They sold Ben a ticket so he organised all his flights around the itinerary of the ship, but at the wharf on the day of departure they said they couldn’t take him and 149 other pre-paid passengers. Useless bastards!! Welcome to the 3rd world. Its ironic really, as it has taken Ben3 weeks to unsuccessfully make it to Rotuma, yet Nadine and the kids were able to book a flight one day before leaving and arrive in Australia on the same day they left Rotuma, which Is unheard of. You would be lucky to arrive in Fiji on the same day you left Rotuma, let alone Oz.
Thats enough from me. If history is anything to go by you probably wont here from me again until about xmas , hopefully this year.
Take it easy and much lOve..
Carlos..
p.s. We have started planeing and sanding the mahogany slabs. All the hard work of felling the trees and cutting them up into slabs, now seems all worthwhile. The timber is absolutely beautiful! I cant wait to walk on these floors.
