Our youngest daughter still has 18 months of high school to finish near our current place of residence so that gives us a bit of time to get property ready and to build a new home before she starts college in launceston.
When we decided that we would like to build again we knew we wanted to be in or near launceston. Or at least within 10-15 mins from it. I am not a 'suburbia' person so we also had to have some space around us. Hence we purchased 4 acres of land at Dilston in June 2016.
Dilston has a fantastic dual lane highway all the way into Launceston so commuting is very easy and only about 10-15 mins away.
We also had a pretty strict budget we wanted to stick to......(or more to the point, the banks dont like lending for vacant land if your not going to build within a reasonable time frame) so we had to put a considerable amount of our own money into it to make it happen. But as luck would have it we......actually I, found this property that no one wanted to buy because it 'looked' terrible.
All through my life I have been able to visualise things that others wouldnt or dont want to see, so for this property I could see some massive potential..........I could see past the messy looking tree's and wood laying around and I could see the potential to make a large enough flat area to build a home. The blocks upper area is very steep. You would only want to build on the upper area due to the view over the Tamar River and City in the distance.
So we managed to purchase the property at a price that allowed plenty of scope to 'excavate and clean it up'.
An aerial view.....the blue shaded area is our 4 acres.
Sitting at the driveway looking at the upper area I felt was a good spot to excavate a home site.
Midway down the slope looking back up at the potential home site.
And a couple of shots looking back down in various directions.
And right back up the top again looking down to the nearest neighbour.
A part of the view from the top looking south.
Taking some measurements and moving the first excavator in.
About 2 months later the first excavator driver cleared around a 1400 sqm flat area. Disappointingly he left before finishing properly but due to various circumstances (the owners driver quite!! and the excavator was playing up badly) he decided to leave the job....he took his money and ran so to speak.
The first few days work.
From a distance it looks like he cut a quarry into the side of the hill.
Rock, rocks and more rocks.....so many in fact he started selling them
Im not sure how karma works but as he was loading his excavator his truck rolled down the hill through the neighbours front fence and luckily his truck jackknifed before knocking the neighbours house down.
It was now around October 2016. There was some massive rocks stopping the rest of the excavation from being completed so we had the task of trying to find a 30 tonne excavator that should be able to move the big rocks.
I spent the odd night on the property cutting some wood for next winter and getting to know the atmosphere of the surrounding a little better.....yes it felt like home.
Our new excavator driver wont be back until October 2017 to finish the job! We have done a deal with him where he takes all our wood (approx 50-70 tonne), cuts and splits a winters worth for us and finishes the excavation.
Some of the wood laying around.
The city lights at night in the distance.
And some drone images.
Ill post a new post when we do some more work in around 10 months time.
