Author: Mark

On our way up to QLD to visit Bernie’s brother and sister in law (Jim & Christina) and thier new baby Jessica we had a nasty altercation with one of the local inhabitants. We were about 130Km West of Toowomba at about 6:30pm when a roo popped out of the trees beside the road while we were travelling along at 110Km/h. In the couple of seconds I had to see it, I managed to slow down a bit, but I probably still hit it at around 90Km/h. It must have been on the way up, as we pushed it into the air a bit before we hit it again and went over the top.

The Commodore is a little the worse for wear, with a smashed grill, bent bonnet and a left headlight that points into the top of the trees on the right side of the road. Luckily enough everything seemed to still be in working order, though the headlight must have been a pain to passing motorists. When we got into Landsborough and friend of Jim & Chris’ was nice enough to straighten the light out so we could make the return trip without bugging people going the other way too much. There are some photos here.

I decided to have a big bash for my 30th birthday (actual birthdate 04/09/1972) this year, so it was action stations to get the deck built and then get all the little bits and pieces done before the party started.

Preparation went into full swing on the Friday night with the arrival of the Spit. Saturday morning dawned dull and drizzling, so I was up at 6:30am to cover the electric parts of the spit with a bag to keep the water out. I then decided to make some modifcations to the tarp over the deck and spent most of the next couple of hours up and down on the roof getting it sorted out. As I was doing that, Danny arrived with the most enormous tarpaulin we have ever seen. It must have been 15m by 15m, and ended up covering from 2-3 tiles up the roof, over the deck and creating a huge covered open space underneath where we put the spit. There were a few problems with the ropes holing the tarp down, as the ground was so wet the pegs just pulled out of the ground. We fixed that with a few garden rocks.

Dad arrived at 10:30 and swept the deck clear of water while I had some much needed breakfast. I really couldn’t face the wiring of the deck balustrade so dad ended up fixing a broken chair inside while I put the string of 30 party lights up with Bern’s help.

Later Danny got up the courage to start drilling all the holes for the wiring and Jason and I got stuck into putting up enough of the wiring to stop people falling through unless they were really trying to. In the process Connor managed to fall down the stairs, and we wondered if there was any point to our work. (He survived with a nasty scratch and bruise beside his right eye.)

Jason and I managed to lug the fridge back into its rightful place on the deck, and put the BBQ in its place too before I suddenly found it was 5:30pm and people were due to start arriving soon. I ducked in for a quick shower and came out just as Speed arrived with his amp so we could set up the music. We basically got that done just as the first people started to arrive. In the meantime Jase had been doing a huge amount of setting up and cleaning up, not to mention all the work that Bern and Mon had done during the afternoon blowing up balloons and buttering bread and generally getting things together..

During the evening there were a whole bunch of people that helped out, especially Brendan (organising the meat and the spit, BBQing, carving etc), Rachael (salads, spuds and keeping the kitchen clean) Jen & Tam (clearing up) and all those who brought Salads and Deserts:: Lisa, Chris & Jeanette, Caz & Trev, Tammy, Mon, Julie and Sue. Special thanks to Marie for the beautiful birthday mud cake.

All in all I had a great night, and it was wonderful to have a bunch of my family and friends around. We need to do it on a smaller scale (less stress) but more often.

Thanks again everyone.

It has been over two years in the planning, but our Deck is finally built. I still have to run the cables around the sides so you can’t fall off, and oil the timber, but most of the work is done. There are some photos here, but for the time being they are only of the fully built deck. The construction photos were taken with an old fashioned film camera, so we have to wait till the roll is finished and developed, scanned etc. (which won’t be too long).

Actually there are a bunch of other things that need doing, like baseboards, lights, speakers, a roof etc. but the hard work is done.

Bernie and I spent all of last week at the Hillsong Christian Conference run by Hillsong Church in Sydney. It was an awesome time with great speakers, lots of information and plenty of opportunity to praise God.

I attended the Production Elective, which taught me heaps about setting up a venue for music (mixing, monitors etc) and other stuff about recording, making CD’s and running the music in a large church.

This conference is well worth a trip to Sydney and we’ll be going back next year, although that might be a little interesting with a 5 month old baby.