A little while ago, I was travelling along in this chaotically hectic life thinking that I’d be making pots in the 2nd half of January.

But the appearance of the deer in our yard have changed everything.

Out neighbour saw a large buck with antlers in his yard last week. We have had the doe and fawn. So if there is a doe and a buck… then there will soon be a lot more. 

We needed to act quickly.

We have now completed the complete perimeter fence of one half of our land. A few years ago we only had one side fence put up by our only neighbour to keep their dog in.

Then after the fire, while we were waiting for the council to approve our re-building plans and waiting for our tin shed kits to be delivered, we decided to use the time to put up the stone and steel gabion wall out the front. This is to act as a radiation barrier in the next fire event. 

Now we are the proud owners of just over 510 meters of perimeter fence. It’s been a lot of work. At first, I thought that I might not be up to it, But it went well enough because I didn’t over-do it. I paced myself. However, I wouldn’t want to do it again. I was working close to my limit. In the end the effort was worth it to preserve our fruit trees and garden that we have spent over 45 years cultivating. Only time will tell if it is enough of a deterrent to encourage them to dine elsewhere?

I’m really glad that it’s over.

  Starting at the gabion wall on the street front, we had to cross the culvert ditch and make it deeply deer proof. So we installed a swinging gate to allow for the clearance of flood debris.

Then down between the two dams.

Then down to the back lane/firetrail.

Then along the back boundry, and through the key-line dam system overflow.

And finally up to the existing neighbours fence.

Having completed the fencing the only weak spot in our defences were the openings in the gabion wall where I never got around to making the gates. There are 2 drive in gateways, and two walk through openings. One directly in front of our front door, and the other next to the electrical meter box for access for the electrical services people.

I have spent the last few days making gates for those vulnerable openings. I now have 3 completed. The last one will have to wait, as I really need to get back to work in the pottery.

If the deer arrive in the mean time. I’ll just have to drop everything and weld up that last set of double gates to close off the 7.6 meter wide main drive way.

Now that the gates are in, it made me look closely at the gabion wall, which I hadn’t being paying much attention to recently.

I noticed that the stones had settled down in some places.

We’ve all read the warning label that “Contents may settle during transport”

Well, our stones have settled while stationary.

The only thing to be done was to make a trip down to the sand and gravel yard and buy another tonne of stones to fill it up again.

Now that it is topped up, it should be all good now for another decade?