Wallaby-1, Betty -nil.

Hello. How’re you doing?

Here we are…April already and Daylight Savings has been mothballed for 6 months or so.

The election has been run and won…or lost depending on who you are… Looks like it’s going to be very ‘interesting’.

We are still fighting the pademelon battle. I have camera evidence that the electric fence is a deterrent. I also have evidence that the little buggers are still getting in…but not where and how…very frustrating.

My fractured relationship with these critters only got worse on election night. One decided to turn kamikaze and throw itself at Betty (my car) when I was returning to base after shooting a wedding in Hobart. Thankfully, I was in a 70kmh zone, but the damage is still significant and given how busy the bodyworks is (and how long it will take to get parts) it could be quite a while until she is back in one piece. These little buggers are costing me quite a few dollars!

The wedding was beautiful. A super couple (Ruby and Harrison) with a great set of family and friends around them. Ruby is the daughter of my best mate of over 40 years, Bill. So, for me it was pretty much a family event. It is highly likely that it will be the last wedding I shoot…so a very nice one to go out on.

Just days before the wedding I was in Queenstown working for Solstice Digital covering a launch event for the Tassie Devils football team. How amazing are we as an island, the way we get behind our State representative teams. Over 150,000 founding members…incredible.

And then there is the Jackys. How good was that?!! Winning the NBL comp in only the third year as a club…awesome!

On a less exciting note…house repairs. Own a house they said. It will be fun they said. To be fair, I wouldn’t have it any other way. But, sometimes it can throw you some curly ones. Thankfully, I am pretty handy and will tackle most projects around the place.

What started out as a relatively small project…prep and repaint the Northern wall, pretty soon morphed into something a bit bigger. I knew there was one weatherboard that would definitely need replacing due to rot. However, upon closer inspection, the rot extended further than first thought. The bottom plate (a piece of hardwood about 100mmx 50mm) had totally disintegrated. Compounding the problem was the fact that the floor joists (timbers that hold up the floor) were supposed to be sitting on the bottom plate. I was surprised that our floor hadn’t noticeably dropped. Anyway, after some head scratching and some jiggery-pokery I managed to get it sorted. A nice new piece of timber in place and a new weatherboard, sourced from the local salvage yard. Now I just have to get motivated to finish the prep (yuk!) and repaint.

Enough of my waffling, I need to go and cobble together a temporary repair on Betty. The wallaby impact has smashed a hose fitting on the window washer reservoir…bloody wallabies!

Until next time…be good to each other.