It’s Tuesday, we are heading down to get these sites done. We organised a compactor again with Skevingtons and unfortunately it fell through, so we wasted half of the day not being able to compact but we did the best we could. Hireworks brought a compactor out to us but it didn’t arrive till 1pm. Chris carried load after load of the gravel with his truck. Because of the lack of compactor we can’t finish today. However Chris has finished his part, we just need to compact the ground sufficiently.

Cheese (boss at Skevingtons) felt really bad and dropped off a compactor on Wednesday morning for us to use. Rowan and I had a compactor each on Wednesday morning, we put our headphones on and walked back and forth, 16 passes each and one pass is counted if you go back and forth in the same spot. Of course you must overlap too! The amazing Dean came down around 11am to test the ground and make sure it is compacted enough for the engineer! The pad Rowan was doing needed a little bit more but it is not surprising when his compactor is tiny compared to the big pink one I was using. Do you like my colour coordination?

Thursday and Friday the rain came, it wasn’t so bad in Herbert and Ōamaru but Dunedin and Palmerston was hit heavily. Our sites flooded mostly due to a blockage in the drain. The water was backwater though which is not ideal but we didn’t have flowing water over our pads. We decided not to go down and look. I am glad we didn’t because not long after they closed the road. We got all these photos from neighbours and Facebook! Not much we can do from here just wait. Someone said that a blockage must have cleared because all of a sudden the water drained like taking the plug out of a bath. Luckily our neighbour didn’t get water into her place but some of the new builds further down got inundated.

We asked the council when submitting our plans if we need to build to a certain height, apparently no. Yet they have told people on land like ours it is their fault for buying low lying land. Also it has been put on the owners next to the drain to keep them clear. Well that is just not going to happen, some people will but all it takes is one person not keeping it tidy. We planned to go down on Saturday morning and check out the damage, but the road stayed closed until 1pm. Rowan, Jim and I ended up riding in the dark rainy morning into Ōamaru for a McDonald’s breakfast haha. Then we sat around by his fire and stayed warm.

On Sunday Rowan and I decided to go the local markets and check out Palmy too. We got to Blueskin and had breakfast at the nursery and ended up spending $700 on plants. We got 8 walnut trees, 2 olives, a finger lime, a yuzu and a bay leaf. We will have a lovely orchard in no time!

Luckily for us there was no damage to our house pads, we did loose surveyor pegs and a bit of our driveway has washed away. Rowan and I used photos to work out how high the water got, it looks like we will be well out of the flood waters once the footings and slab go on. We have the builders coming next week so we will double check that is the case.

Monday we ended up running errands and went down the Waitaki River mouth to look for stepping stones. They were all a bit small for what we want, but I got some to use as markers for the fruit trees. I wanted to get the plants in the ground but the weather has other ideas!