News & Updates from Vicki Avcin ~ AusCrafts · Page 30

We are slowly making progress on the renovations to our house. Every ceiling in the place has to be replaced, so we began doing three bedrooms. We nicknamed the rooms, Holey Room, Blood Room and Light Blue Room.

After replacing the ceiling and 2 walls in new plasterboard, and then plastering joins and patching holes, putting on new skirting and trims and doing the gap filling, we have now begun painting.

The photos are of the Holey Room, named because every wall was full of holes, which was painted originally in a dark blue, we have now a normal room.

We have prep coated all 3 bedrooms and today hubby will start on the top coat of the ceilings.

Because everything had to be prep coated we decided to use an air spray to do the rooms which only took about 20mins to do each room.

The photos show the real estate ad for the holey room, to taping up the windows, hubby spraying and a pano shot of the room after the prep coat.

It feels good to finally see the end product and feel we have accomplished something.

With only hubby and I doing it all its taking longer than wed like but it is satisfying to see it all come together.

Each year Bathurst plays host to the greatest car race in the country, The Bathurst 1000. This year 19 Holden Commodores and 9 Ford Mustangs will line up at 11.15am for 161 laps of the famous circuit.

It is the battle of the manufacturers each year Ford vs Commodore.

As neither brand is no longer manufactured in Australia, most of the cars now are purpose built and imported into the country.

The race concept originated with the 1960 Armstrong 500 at the Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit, before being relocated to Bathurst in 1963 and continuing there in every year since.

The race is traditionally run on the Labour Day long weekend in New South Wales, in early October.Peter Brock is undisputedly the only King of the Mountain with an unsurpassed 9 wins at the Bathurst 1000.

Sadly he passed away in 2006. King of the Mountain and Peter Perfect were his nicknames as he dominated the race over the years. There is now a Peter Brock Trophy which goes to the winner of the event each year.

There are two co drivers for each vehicle with designated pit stops where they can change drivers.

The weather plays a big part in the race as quite often you can count on rain which means drivers have to change tyres from slicks to wet weather (a call they have to make as to how bad and prolonged the rain will last)There has been some interesting incidents over the years with rabbits, cats, kangaroos crossing the track and big boulders have caused havoc rolling onto the track.

Thousands of fans camp out in various campsites around the track for the weekends where each year, over 150 thousand people flock to the country town, three hours west of Sydney.So its a lazy weekend for me as I settle into the lounge and watch the practice runs on Friday and Saturday, the top 10 Shootout (to determine final grid places) on Saturday afternoon and then Sunday is the Great Race.

My treat after shopping most weeks is to call into the Sushi shop and treat myself to sushi or a couple of spring rolls.

Now our furbaby isnt allowed on the table but likes to sit on my chair at the end of the table.

A couple of weeks ago I brought a tray of chicken and avo sushi rolls with mayo drizzled over the top of them.

Well as much as I was looking forward to getting into them for lunch, the cat thought that they might be a tasty treat also.

I finished putting the shopping away and came out to find her on the table and eyeing off my lunch!

She got scolded and got off the table, giving me poor starving me eyes. Well I went and enjoyed my lunch and couldnt resist giving her a couple of pieces of chicken but in her food bowl.

Nice try Meow (her nickname) but I win!!

The four baby plovers we have are growing fast. Almost as big as the parents now and they are finally figuring out they have wings. It is fascinating to see them flapping and actually getting of the ground and flying a few metres.

They seem so pleased with themselves so they keep trying. You can see in the picture all four of them with the mother and just how big they are now.

We also had another visitor the other day, a curlew.

We hear them at night and have seen them a couple of times down the yard but this one in the photo came right up to the house the other day while I was feeding the magpies.

Not sure if its a he or a she but it wasnt phased by us and came within two metres of us.

They have long legs and about the size of the plover in the body but their legs are much longer than the plovers.

Wonder if they have babies somewhere and were looking for food to feed them.

The price of progress since we left Brisbane 20 years ago ….well it has definitely progressed. Having driven all over Brisbane for many many years, we knew the roads inside out.

Well yesterday we had to go to the Northside of Brisbane and instead of knowing which roads to drive and which bridges to use, what a shock when all of a sudden after having driven up the Gateway motorway and over the Gateway bridge, on returning home, I brought up Google maps and set the route to head back home.

Only used it as so many roads have changed as theyve added motorways and changed roads, so needed to have it to guide us back to the Gateway.

Well all was good we thought till we were headed into this tunnel.

Didnt think anything of it as we knew there was a couple of tunnels added to alleviate some of the old bottlenecks.

We kept going down, down and thinking wed come out soon. Wrong. All of a sudden a sign comes up to Wynnum. Ummm Wynnum is on the other side of the river but we hadnt gone over the Gateway Bridge.

It suddenly dawned on us that wed traveled through the Clem Jones Tunnel which goes under the Brisbane River, so instead of going across the river via the Gateway Bridge wed actually gone under the river.

None of this was there when we left Brisbane and although wed heard about its construction over the years, didnt really comprehend the enormity of it all and where it actually went.

It does make the drive a little less stressful by not having traffic lights and heavy traffic but it is more expensive.

Guess one has to way up whether they want free or ease.