Th' shed can no'l old er capt'n

Gotta begin somewhere.. On the seach for as many bits as we could find.

It seems that my unwritten rule is never turn down a good project. Especially when in the guise of a 1936 Royal Enfield motercycle. My shed now has very limited standing space now and the benches have disapeared under a sea of Holden and bike parts. It's getting scary to go in there at night in case some creature has morphed out of the rusty steel and mixed hydrocarbons.

The Enfield came from the father-in laws out at Ivanhoe and there is still some hunting of parts to be done through the red dust on the ground of the old sheds for extra bits. At this stage restoration has involved coating everything with a liberal splash of WD40 and finding out more on what type of bike Im really dealing with here. The engine turns over, the gearbox is free... there is even the hint of compression.... who knows...

More at a (much?) later date. ....

The piling of parts and stocktake of what we need within the inner sanctum that is 'the shed'.

...and here is one I have prepared earlier..... Nup, no such luck... This is what may lurk benieth the oil, rust and congealed dirt after a bit of $$$ and some heavy duty elbow grease.

Deniliquin via Ute

Friday sunset in the dust

How better to spend a long weekend than to roll the swag, fill the back of the ute with things that may come in handy and roll down south to the 2006 Deniliquin Ute muster. (Before I get on with the story, for all international readers a ute is basically a sedan based pick-up, but the term gets carried from every thing with a rear tray, bed, or bin, big or small. If a owner calls his truck a ute, thats fine). Deni(liquin) is located down toward the NSW Victorian border and is about a 6 hour drive for us. The yellow HQ never missed a tick and seemed to enjoy the warmer weather.
The muster this year attracted about 6200 utes (officially counted) and there was probably another 2000 parked in the (not-counted) family camping area. HD & I picked a nice grassy camp site on the eastern boundary of the masses and watched them roll in. By mid-Friday afternoon the dust was laying thick and everybody was out for a wander and a yarn.

Winning Ute for 2006. FC Holden sedan/ ute hybrid. (Not a circlework hack)

Evening entertainment on the stage was a fairly good line up. Enjoyed James Reyne, Daddy Cool, the Flood and the Sunny Cowgirls. Between the big screens and stage, we caught most of the action. Ben Dark was welcomed warmly with everyone remembering his Bundy Rum antics from last year.
The muster runs a bull ride, tractor pull, mower racing and ute displays so you just take your time and find a seat when your legs get tired.

Dancin' in the dust, but keeping fairly shiny at the same time

Traditional muster line-up. A bit of the everything

What surprises me from year to year is the muster is such a cruisey, laid back weekend. You can stop and have a yarn with anybody and everybody, I havent seen any agro or in-your-face egos. You make the weekend what you want. We spent a bit of time wandering the rows of utes and camps, time in the entertainment arena or time just kicking back with the boots off back at our camp. Saturday evening across the site was bizare with thick dust and the smoke of 1000+ campsites hanging in the air. Occasional flares and fireworks and keybangers going off well into the night. Sunday morning we packed up and headed into town and watched the endless convoy pass on by. Downtown Deni was deserted by 2.00 in the arvo with nearly all Mustergoers outta there. Yep', It's a HQ ute.... plus a bit

Everybody recons we are a bit crazy to head such a long way for a ute muster, but all in all it is a good time and so much different to what we would usually spend our time on. Next year we will be lining a few friends up to come along and get them out of their comfort zone for a little fun. Home away from home standing out with the yellow

All Holden Day

Crikey! August already! I missed a few months in there somewhere.
Anyway, first weekend in Aug, we headed on over the sandstone curtain into downtown Richmond (near Sydney NSW) for the 21st All Holden Day. Took the Monaro (what else?) and payed $45 for the parking experience. I should have really done a bit more research on car shows. If we had pre-paid, it would have only set us back $33 and we would have scored some Holden Event gear too.
Without rambling on and on, the day turned out alright with sunny skys, a huge line up of shmicky cars (some 700 odd) and lots of people having a cruisey Sunday. We 45 degreed the HQ in the line-up and did the rounds. Its always interesting to look over a car or two like your own. There was also several that I would like to see sitting in my own shed. The day comemorated the 50th anniversary of the FE Holden (Holdens 1966 Model). There was alot of shades of blue back then!.
& heres a few more car pics from the day.

1973 HQ GTS Monaro (with the 350 Chev motor). The sports version of the HQ Monaros. Colours reflect the many cool hues available in the day.

1973 HQ LS Monaro (253 motor). Just like ours but green and oh sooo smooooth!

1953 FJ Holden Ute. Very rigged up with matching caravan and canopy. I walked around this set-up a few times so it must have stood out.

Another angle on the FJ touring pack. Slimline canopy and spats. He/ she's a lucky P plater.

This red thing was really a head turner amoungst all the originals and emphiphises the nature of the all-holden-day where everything goes as long as it has Holden heritage. This started life as a FC sedan and with a huge amount of cutting and shutting, very nice retriming and a subtle paint job to match the new V8. Alot of work!

The grey colours of Winter

Cold nights work

Almost for the third winter running, the dry and the cold have merged to create a grey, brown landscape around home. It is probably no more evident than first thing at sunrise when the fog is lifting and the frosts are beginning to subside.

The days are warm for our Winters (18 deg C) and the nights dip away to Minus 1 or 2.
The rain just hasnt come for nearly 3 months straight now and even the younger trees are starting to look pinched.

Receeding house dam and Ribbon Gum.

Over 85% of New South Wales is back into drought conditions. Some areas havent been out of it for over five years.

Sunrise lifting the fog.

It will only take a few inches of rain later in the winter and things will start to come round. The grass will shoot away green and the oats will finially get a chance to grow (what is left of the crops). Hopefully it's going to be a good fall of rain, and give the trees a drink too.

Pauls oats doing it tough.

I got out of a warm bed a few times over the last couple of weekends at sunrise and went for a walk in the Uggies to take a few photos. Misty-dog loves frost and ice (frost for rolling and ice for crunching between her front teeth).

Crimson Rosellas in the Hawthorn

Kicking back on Holidays

Narooma caravan park......(hey, you cant hear the screaming teenagers from this distance.)

Every now and then you have just got to leave the cold country behind and get a bit of salt air up your nose. So we packed up the Monaro, left the dog to be pampered by my parents and hit the road down the south coast to Narooma (which lies on the lower coast of NSW). A leisurely 6 and a half hours later and we established camp in the worlds noisiest caravan park. (It was Easter after-all).

Glasshouse Rocks just south of Narooma. 19 deg' C surf and crazy rock formations.

If you find yourself in Narooma, have a go at the sea-food on offer. Top class. I ate prawns, oysters, mussels, King-fish until it was time to come home and still was ready for more.
The waters were rough due to cyclonic influences up north, but amazingly clear. Plenty of empty beaches to wander.

Looks like the spot for lunch. Fish and chips, Ocean views, Parked Petrol Tanker.....

We cruised into Central Tilba for the festival which was a great turn out for a tiny town (congratulations all organisers). Tilba is a small town of timber buildings mostly dating from the 1890's. It has a history of gold mining, timber harvesting and cheese making. I got myself a good greasy-wool jumper from here.

We also did Mogo over (another little township on the Highway) and bought up on some local fare. Amoung a stack of other stuff I got myself a nice wooden drum here. Hayley added to her bead asortments.

With 2 kilos of local prawns in the esky we headed home to Woodabyna. The Monaro never missed a beat, but I was glad to get the layer of salt off it.

Its the end of April and the frosts have set in as a regular occurance. The vegie garden is over and an extra blanket came out of the cupboard.

Another Rock in the Wall

All you needed to know about rock walls, but were too lazy to read....

Corner

When people wander out for the first visit or so, usually their eye is taken to the rock walls located up the back paddock. There are two stock yards with walls ranging from 1.3 to 1.8 metres high and around a metre thick made out of local basalt. The rocks on our place all consists of 'floaters' which are relatively uniform rounded or flat. Being basalt, they are not light weight. A half-trailer load has the trailer sitting down on the stops with the tyres rubbing on the mudguards.

The rock walls are likley to have been built about the mid to late 1800's when the country was getting cleared and patches were getting ploughed up for crops. There are 1000's of rocks just under the soil, so working with a team of horses and a mulboard plough would have been a day of hard slog and the following day picking up the rocks. Rocks were put to good use and they made built up roads and stock yards out of them.

Gateway

The two walls are built in two different ways. The one closer to the house has been built on very large foundation stones (likely to have been pulled into place with horses) and constructed out of similarly shaped rocks all the way to the top of the wall. About one rock in three has been split in half to provide a wedge and to lean the wall slightly back into the centre-line. The one up on the hill with the tank-stand is also built on large foundation stones but has a 'core' made up of 1000's of cricket-ball sized stones and encased in larger rock wall structure. This latter wall has almost vertical faces. It once had a roof over part of it and a twin milking stand and bail set up. There is still the remains of white-wash on some of the rocks.

These walls have been built by tough, strong people. Much tougher and stronger than me.

The walls are likely to have held sheep pre-fence days, when alot of the country was still forested. There was once quite a few walls about the locality, but with the advent of larger machines, fencing wire and rabbits, many walls were pulled down and used to fill errosion wash-outs and to make roads over boggy land. Many walls harboured rabbits that couldnt be trapped or poisoned.

And the walls at our place? They continue to harbour rabbits and slowly they are falling down. They also provide good homes for snakes and lizards and all sorts of crawlies. (read this as a good thing!). The one closer to the house would make a beaut garden enclosure, keeping the cold winds at bay and providing a terrific solar trap with huge thermal mass.... we would just need to keep the rabbits at bay.

Little town of Grenfell NSW

Grenfell facing the south, showground at right bottom corner and Young road at the top.

Last week, I filled up the extra seat in the Piper and flew down to Kerang, Victoria to have a cuppa n' cake with an old mate. Would'nt you know it, the flight path cut straight across Woodabyna, Junction Reefs, Canowndra, Conimbla, and Grenfell and Weddins. (Weddins will be an upcoming entry, Im sure).

Grenfell is a small Central West town with a population of about 3400. It's main industries revolve around farming of sheep, cattle and cereal crops. It was the birth-place of Henry Lawson.... 'Listen to this.... its straight from the tourist brochure!... At school, we learnt to recite the Australian National Anthem, the school creed, and the cover of the 'Welcome to Grenfell' tourist brochure.

When we flew over, the country was still looking very dry. Dams are low and a lot of country destocked. Its the first flight Ive taken over Grenfell country, and Ive got to say, it was all very intersesting, a bit nostalgic... and the plane was so noisy that I wasnt bothered to tell anyone the stories from this place and that.

Grenfell facing easterlish. The Mid western H'way running straight on through. Most people stay on the highway and pass through, thinking that the town has no Main Street. The 'Main is the curved detour to the left of the Highway in the centre of town. It paralels the Emu Creek, which is where the town sprang up as a gold mining villiage in tyhe 1850's.

2006 Orange Car show..& we were there!

Photo time... Pic's speak louder than my guffing on.

I appologise if the Blogger is turning into a car ramble... but it is Autumn!

Rightio car buffs, seeing as though you could be from anywhere in the world and reading this, I will give a quick rundown on whats whats. Photo 1. A good mix; red early 1970's ford falcon, lime green HJ Holden Utility, Last years (?) Green GT falcon, Marone Ford falc, Orange WB Holden utility, Blue Holden Commodore (1994?), Yellow XY Ford Falcon, Green HJ Holden 4 door Monaro. You might be getting the feeling that anything later than late 70's is all much the same to me.


Guessing 1948 Chevrolet Fleetmaster utility. 'Rat' style resto. Surface rust and outa-the-back-paddock look. It is sitting on a holden 1 tonner chasis and has a Chev V8. It gets around Orange every now and then on full rego and always gets a smile from most people. I love it! Sticker on the back window says 'Paint!- I dont need no stinkin' paint!"



The red car section! A few worth a mention... Look for the hump-back lines of the 1953 FJ Holden. There is also a red HQ Monaro, a early 70's Camaro and a 68 HT Monaro in there. I had a good yarn with the Monaro bloke. He came over from Sydney for the day 'just for a cruise'.



A line up Australian 70's Muscle (and an 64 EH Holden up the end). The Yellow/ Red two-doors are LJ Toranas (early 70's). If you like HQ's then you also have a thing for the little shark-noses. These run a 202 (3.3 litre) motor, just like their much heavier HQ big brother. They go like a scalded cat.



And lastly a very nicely restored Holden EK (early 60's) wagon. This guy looks like he was right into the swing of owning a restored car. It just about had every bit of paraphanalia and extras from the era, right down to the Fanta cans in the picnic set. Numberplates read SMOOTH.


Late March in Orange. The weather is quickly cooling down, all the deciduous trees are changing colour and the nights are chilly.
For the first time in a good few years Orange Southern Cross Cruisers (NSW) put on a fund raiser car show. Just for fun we cleaned up the HQ Monaro and went on into town.
A good day had by all I recon. A very broad cross section of cars from doosh boys and their plastic pocket racers, to Australian Muscle Cars, to rods, to feral utes, to 1/4 milers, to restored authentic stuff... and not so restored .

A nice example of a 73 HQ. LS Monaro. Dont get too close now, that paint has only a 20 metre rating, any closer than that and it looks fairly ordinary. Note the gaps either side of our parking area that they allowed. Come-on, the doors are not that long when opened!

And what about the next project??

The next project is really a continuing project that has followed me around for the last 13 years like a hungry black dog. Its an 1953 Holden FJ utility, (AKA; the 'J', the 'humpy', the FJ ute, however you like to put it).

Before the HQ Monaro the ute already had the pride of place in the shed and it was only half finished.

I purchaced it from the local Holden dealer form Grenfell way back when, and he pryed it off a Mr Bell(e) from Manilla (up above Tamworth NSW). It had been stripped down to most of its key components which were all in the back in boxes. It sat for a loooong time in my cousins farm shed (collecting mud-wasp nests), until that great day when we had space for it a Woodabyna.
It is now running, rust free, with a refurbished interior.

This is the other ute... yep.... another one....alongside the FJ (on the right). The yellow of the HQ was inspired by an old road sign. this colour then got me thinking along the Golden Fleece theme for the FJ.

If you would like to know about the Holden HQ ute (on the left) Ive got a planned entry for it coming up. Short stats; 1973 HQ, 253 V8, Trimatic, mostly original, GTS guards and rims.

It gets parked in the other pride of place in the shed.

The mistake I now realise, was when I first bought the FJ and set about getting all the old paint off it and dents out of it. It was a farm ute for 30 odd years and the minor dents, scrapes and scratches were all part of its heritage. Now only the roof, tail gate and drivers side door retain the original paint. Ive left the innitials and numbers scratched into the dash and the the original tail gate. You just see too many shmickky FJ's at the car shows and not near enough of the original workers.

So, because I have 'ruined' the originality of the farm ute, I decided to keep with the working theme and do the paint scheme and sign writing and theme along with the 'Golden Fleece' service stations of the 1950's period.

Until winter starts in earnest, my plans will be on hold... there is still a few things to do around the place while the weather is nice.

This is a Golden Fleece photo from Victoria taken in the mid 1970's. While the logo and signs changed slightly from the 50's the overall colours were a very recognisable roadside feature for many many years.

Woodabyna from the air

This is our humble spot from about 2000 ft . I was immediately taken back when I saw how small we looked, but hey, ants even that thought out.... My second thought was how many more trees can we plant....

Yep, thats my mess behind the shed. The HQ wagon, the buggy, the Fordson. You really cant see it from the ground. You also cant see the patches yet to be painted on the roof of the house from ground level. Many thanks to Dave; friend from work learning to fly, for not crashing on us while taking these photos.
The paths look groovy fromup there...., I wonder if pilots use them as a landmark?
Misty is the little dark shape on the side path in from the cars.. (Just in case you were wondering what our dog looks like)

The Dam

As part of my work I got to visit the site of Junction Reefs Dam which is just up the road from where we live. I first visited the spot back in the 80's, when it was a used and abused camping/ recreation area. The mines moved in and closed the area to the public and so the place has sat idle for a good decade or more. The old camping area is overgrown and quiet, all the planted trees(which were just small sapplings last time)on the regeneration areas are now fairly big and growing well.

Being out there for a day, really let me suss out the place and soak up the atmosphere. (Plus a dip in the river). The day was pretty warm, the water was roaring and to finish it all up I got a few good stings from some over-friendly wasps..

The dam was constructed around the late 1890's for use by local gold mines. The gold dried up and the dam filled with silt. It's a great structure, built in a narrow rocky pass on the Belubula River, with 6 huge brick buttresses and a series of cascades directly below the wall.

I can see why so many people complained when the mines closed down the camping area. Remembering it from the late 80's, its probably a good thing.

It was nice to have the place to myself for a day. All in all I had pretty good time.

Upper Forest schoolhouse

Just on down the road from our place is the old school house for the locality.

Its derelict now, all the windows are gone and the floors in the main shcool room have been progressively smashed by cattle looking for some shelter.

The old walls are beginning to buckle from the pressure of the huge trees surrounding the building. It really hasn't got long left.

At the turn of last century it held 30+ students and ran for 4 decades. It became decommissioned in the 30's and used as temporary rent till the early 50's.
I would like to think that some type of unfound record of history lies under the floorboards or beneath the long grass.

The scrawl scratched into the plaster of the walls is just about gone,
& bats live in the roof.

'New (?) Cruise

HQ LS Monaro

Heres the after shots. After the 8 months of pulling down and building up again.
Unfortunately the thing never had a radio or any kind of sound machine fitted to it, otherwise we would be getting alot of Daddy-Cool's Eagle-Rock type music.
Eagle Rock was No. one when this car came out of the factory.









All in all, its a fun ride, not too thirsty with big windows when the weather gets too hot. Theres not alot around either, so the old blokes who see it reminiss and tell us ' Now thats a real car!". Young fellas say "Cool wheels!".
Anyway, we packed up the prezzies and headed in the freashly painted and registered HQ to Grenfell for Xmas, 50 km down the road a good sized roo jumps out of nowhere in front of us and had a real good swipe down the passengers side of the car. Sooooooo lucky... no dents, a small scatch and the roo bounded off down the road. It could have been all of our Xmases come at once!
The Monaro performed well on a 400km round trip, so by New Year and the mercury hovering in the mid-thirties (C), we packed up and pointed the big bonnet toward Phillip Island, Victoria. A planned round trip of over 2000 km. Long story short; the HQ never missed a beat. (I love it when things work out that way).

A case of the Monaro

Well, once again the corrogated iron stable is full and this time around the project was a 1973 LS HQ Monaro. We purchaced it as a one owner (deceased estate) from a fella down in Melbourne($3000). Finally got it back up into NSW and then proceeded to tear it to pieces to find out just what we had purchaced sight-unseen. What we found was good bits and bad bits, but over-all, the car was worth having a go at doing up. (Heres the 2 "Before" photos)
Winter passed, spring and then summer.... and many many late nights and weekends. This is all in adirt floor shed running off solar power and a noisy petrol generator.

The Interior, all pannels, engine and drive train were removed. I rebuilt the trusty 6 cylinder 202 (thats right people, not all Monaros have to be a stonking 350 chev!), cleaned and recoloured the interior, checked and relayed the wiring, cut the plenum tray out and replaced it with a new one (if you dont know where the plenum tray is, trust me it is a mongrel of a job). The sills were replaced, new/ old guards, new wheels, polished stainless and all those fidly little bits that take hours from your life (like refitting window glass.... there goes 3 years off my life).
Right before Xmas we spent a few runs to get everything checked and blue-slipped for rego and by Xmas day, we were on the road to Grenfell NSW for the family gathering.

Have a gander at the upcoming ' after' photos. Note that I will have cleaned up a bit of the rubbish off the floor, got rid of the brown interior and the dent along the sides had to go too!.