A tree in front of our friends place was blown over with the strong 90km per hour winds we have had in Townsville this week.

The tree was rotted out at the bottom and infested with termites from what Josiah said.

I’ve had to cut down a few different palm trees since we moved into our house because of rot or ant / termite infestation. It seems that if the palm trees get damaged or too water logged they are ripe for infestation. Thankfully I cut down our palm trees before we had the strong winds.

The house in the photo has undergone a lot of renovations in the last few years. I can garantee that they would not be very happy with the tree coming down on their fixed up roof and gutters.

Tags: palm tree, termites

This year the Townsville City Council has started to allow free disposal of Garden Waste at their land fill sites.

I reckon that part of the reason for the free domestic garden waste disposal is to stop garden waste going into the regular land fill in Townsville. Because Townsville is growing at such a rapid pace there is increased pressure put on the existing land fill site and the general waste disposal system here in Townsville.

We are currently using a garden bag service that we pay a monthly fee to. The new free domestic garden waste disposal is putting a lot of pressure on the companies that do the garden bag services, because they are still charged to dispose of the garden waste, even though most of the waste comes from domestic sources.

We might be looking at cancelling our garden bag service, but given the time saved, the cost of petrol, and the headache of borrowing a trailer, I am awfully tempted to keep paying for the service…

Source: Townsville City Council – Citiwaste

Technorati Tags: townsville, garden waste disposal

Written by a guest author, my wife…

Bill ventured into our backyard yesterday after Townsville had received close to 180mm of torrential rain in a day. Bill simply wanted to put the ladder away, but sunk into a muddy pit instead. One would think that his wife would have rushed to his aide, but no, she preferred to stay upstairs taking photos of the event as it unfolded.

His legs sank to his knees. As he attempted to get out of the hole he lost his shoes….just the typical Aussie thongs (flip-flops that is to our North Americans). He couldn’t manage to drag his feet up while still holding onto his shoes, so had to leave them behind.

Determined to get his shoes back (seriously, they only cost about $10) he spent the next 15 minutes up to his elbows in mud trying to dig them out….AND yes, his wife continued to take more photos…

To accompany Bill’s lost shoes and muddy experience, he has also been busy with a leaking house. With still being in construction / renovation stage, our house has had it’s fair share of leaks. Our builder has responded quickly which we are so grateful for. However, Bill has had to do lots of temporary fixing in between our builder getting to us. Obviously we aren’t the only house here in Townsvile that has been hit with all this rain.Tarps have gone up on, mopping is a regular occurrence as well as wiping and soaking up with loads of towels. Yes, we are tired of it, but also thankful that we have not been hit as the homes further down South have.

The photo on the left is where our major leaks are causing delays in us getting our house finished. The downstairs area that was to be sheeted, painted and floor coverings laid several weeks before Christmas. It really was a blessing (in disguise) that the rains came when they did otherwise we would have been fixing up leaks to already finished walls.

The rains come in heavy across our front veranda area, pool on the tiles and run back to the house, leaking down to what is to become our bedrooms.

Will keep you posted as always…..send Bill some new shoes if you think of it. He would think that was hilarious!!

This article was originally written on our web-site linked to the ministry that we work with. You can check it out in the news section at www.billandtamara.com.

Here are some other titles I considered for the article:

• Our Backyard ate Bill’s Thong
• My Backyard Ate My Shoe
• My Backyard Tried to Eat Me

Tamara’s original title was “When it Rains in Townsville“.

This Japanese Deck furniture looks pretty cool. It goes from this:

To this:

I don’t think that it would work on my deck as we plan to put a couple of fans on the deck roof, and they might just chop off the top, but the deck furniture still looks pretty neat.

Source: Japanese Furniture – This Is Just Cool!