Hazard Compensation

It would only be fair for Peter to get Hazard Compensation at work: around this time of year there are quite a few snakes around on the Proving Ground. Especially the brown snake and the tiger snake are well presented - both in the top 5 of most dangerous snakes. Collegaes are rather relaxed about this, just stay away from them and you'll be right mate. Except then for that one time a while ago when someone was bitten in the carpark through his safety-shoes. Airlifted by helicopter to the hospital (you have to get the anti-serum within a short time), and been sick for 2 days (from the anti-serum of course). Right so keep watching the ground when you walk to the cantine. Aargh, that's no good either: the wind can be extremely gusty over here sometimes so a massive Gumtree comes dropping down just in front of us. 'Widowmakers' is what they call these. And again the collegaes are not impressed 'god, that would have hurt' someones recons. No chance then - just when you're looking out for the falling trees you probably step on a tiger snake of course! Good thing Peter likes flying...

Termites

After an busy month it is getting a bit more relaxed, but only until our move to the new house is going to keep us rather busy. We're moving in just in time because we are expecting a lot of visits from friends and family soon. Good thing we still have got the old 'Teardrop' as spare bedroom.
Meanwhile we've been to a local 'Tulip Festival' (yep, there is a handfull of Dutchies around here growing their national pride). Our main reason for visiting however was the announced Dutch traditional food: 'kroketten' and 'fricandellen speciaal'! Don't get too excited about this though, these are just Dutch versions of a sausage...

We've had our new house inspected for termites (white ants). Apparently they have been around but the current owners had them removed. However there is still a change of them coming back. So we have put a sign 'no termites' up and just to be on the safe side we will get an expert in to make sure they're not coming back as well. These nasty creatures eat all the wood in your house from the inside. Sometimes this is only noticed in a very late stage because they leave a thin skin of wood in place (they're afraid of light), so you can't tell how much is gone in the inside.
Suddenly the metal building frames seem a lot more interesting than wooden frames. Well at least the house is mainly brick which is a good thing.

When people told us a long time ago that Melbourne can have 4 seasons in a day, we laughed. We shouldn't have done that: in spring this really can be the case with 8 degrees centigrade in the morning and 29 during the day ... next day it can be 15 degrees, etc. The water storages are not doing too badly at the moment with a level of 40% (still very low but not a crisis anymore).

OK, and now then for another quiz:

What will be the new name of our house (the sign is already in place).