Soooo 12 months later and work has been slow. Mainly due to getting the right excavator driver that would do some excavations AND deal with all the wood AND do some raking to clear all the under growth (some of which is on quite a slope).
We had a few tonnes of wood to deal with. Too much for us to handle so we did a deal with the excavator bloke to deduct the royalties from the final bill. Im not sure how that worked out for us but I am sure the bloke doing the work always gets the better deal
We also had some large rocks to deal with. A couple of them are going to have to be popped as they are just too big to handle. But some of them we will leave and use as a part of the 'look' or landscaping......which basically means we are sick of dealing with them so they are staying.
But we did get all the masses of wattle trees and epic amounts of under growth removed on the hill so it will look a lot nicer looking down to the bottom paddock now.
The part that probably matters the most right up the top is now level and large enough to fit a house and shed. I havent done the final measurements but it has around 1200 mtrs of usable area and considering the house is going to be hanging off the side of the hill that will leave plenty of room......too much room actually but we will do something with it.
Depending on some engineering issues we are doing a similar thing to our neighbour in regards to hanging the house off the side of the hill. They live up the road further and built their house on a massive drop off. All their 'flat' area is out the front and their back area is basically a cliff.
Heres a view from the neighbours balcony. Our property is in amongst the trees. We cant see them and they cant see us....perfect.
Thats about it for now. Im taking a bobcat out there for the next few days to dress up some nice big flat grassy areas, continue with the clean up and to get all the wood out of the piles that the excavator guy left (he only took the big creamy logs) theres no point burning off good wood.
Hopefully in the next 12 months we will start building. In a perfect world we will be out there by Feb of 2019 when the youngest starts college in the area.