Beautiful Timber

I have recently been preparing the large red iron bark lintels for the new house.
These pieces of timber were sourced from trees that my Dad located on Private lands. One was due to be removed to allow someone to build a shed.

The role of a lintel is to support the brick work above an opening. So you find lintels above doors, openings and above windows.

They were cut by my Dad's life long friend. He is an amazing craftsman. The timber he cuts at his Mill is of incredible quality. His lifetimes experience in dealing with Australian Timbers shows through in the finished job.

We have 23 of these in the new house. They are 200mm wide, 180 mm high and some are up to 3300mm long.

Australian Red Iron Bark is a very dense, very heavy and extremely hard timber. Handling these pieces of timber can be a challenge as they are heavy and a squashed finger could easily be amputated by the sharp edges.

I have been belt sanding these monsters. It is a slow, painstaking job that removes the saw marks and really brings up the grain. As they age they take on a lovely red colour.

Some of the larger pieces required more than a full day each to sand. I think it is easy to see how I have recently spent "a Month of Sundays".

A sad, sad child.

Our Children are devastated. The other night either a fox or a quoll managed to get into our chook pen. The method of entry was devious and we had had no advanced warning of their presence.
I awoke late the next morning thinking the rooster may have slept in as my avian alarm clock had failed to sound.
I took off to work not realizing what had occurred.
At work I received a phone call full of the sounds of wailing heart-broken kids.

All twelve chooks had been silently killed including a large strong young rooster.
The only thing the kids discovered, as they were ready to depart for school was two headless bodies. The other ten hens including some big old girls who were on the pension had all been carried off to who knows where?
The strength required to remove ten birds would have been amazing. I just don't understand it. School was canceled for the day.


Boy4, when he finally settled down, was determined to hunt down the killer of his beloved "Queenie" hen.
A search that went for a long time failed to find the culprits lair.
It is just so quite now, no friendly curious hens rush up to see what scraps you have on offer. There are no early greetings from the rooster, just silence and sad children.

Boy4 remains upset and Boy6 has his sad crying moments. We have an excess of kitchen scraps and no eggs.

It just doesn't seem right.

A promise has been made. The next hen house will be stronger and will prevent this sort of tragedy. The Boys want to help in the design and construction.