Blown Away

After taking our supplies down to the farm the week earlier, we left for the farm on Sunday for a 3 day holiday. We didn't get up at dawn because we had a birthday party the night before and deserved a sleep in.

On arrival, we briefly met with the neighbour who had told us that they had 3 days of great weather. Fingers crossed the weather would be good for us, although the wind was blowing a bit more than I would like and the clouds were rolling in.

We unpacked all the stuff for camping on Sunday at about 2pm. The plan was to set up and take it easy for that day because we had a few days to get things done.

We had a relaxing night, although the wind was a bit on the strong side and it rained a bit. On the agenda for Monday was building the shed and then working on the fence - if there is time.

The next morning (Monday) we woke up to an average day. The wind was getting stronger and the sky was overcast. But, we had work to do and had to get on with it.

After a quick bite to eat, we headed to the site for the shed and started to get it into place.

You can't tell from the photo, but by this stage the wind was getting stronger and was not ideal for trying to hold up large sheets of metal against the wind.

This is the first side of the shed up (the wind is to Kath's back). The star pickets and tie down straps hold the panel in place and stop it blowing away.

Here's side number 2.

Side 3 - Getting closer.

All 4 sides up - Much success! You can see that the shed is bent out of shape. That's NOT a design feature. The shed was purchased 2nd hand and is not in great condition. In fact, it looks like it was dropped into the paddock by a tornado. I keep saying "if we found the shed at the tip, we still would've paid too much!". But the price was right.

Anyway, the shed was braced down to stop it falling over or blowing away in the heavy wind. This was not great weather for shed building.

The wind was too strong for Fonzi and the site manger supervised from the car.



With the walls up, it was time to attach the roof one side at a time.

and the other side of the roof. Finally, we have a complete shed... or do we????

Before I could get a chance to rivet the roof to the frame, a gust of wind picked up this side of the roof, flung the rocks off and threw half of the roof into the back of the paddock. That was a lucky escape! Two steps forward, one step back.

Not one to give up, I bashed the roof back into shape and riveted it down to the frame. Nothing would move it now... or so I thought. A couple of tie-down straps and hopefully the shed would survive the night. The wind was getting worse - if that was possible.


It was getting on the cold side, so I thought a nice big fire would be needed to keep us warm tonight. With a couple of hours of light left in the day (and being sick of working on the shed all day!!), I decided to chainsaw some wood. We drove over to the old tree which I had felled a few weeks ago to collect more wood. After 20 minutes on the chainsaw, we had a ute-full of wood - enough to last the next couple of nights.

With the wind bringing the cold air from the snowy region, the fire was great for warming up. The radio was forecasting strong winds to increase through to Tuesday. Looks like we were in for some more windy weather.

Kath took a nice photo of the sunset - although the camera doesn't do it justice.


Here's the great fire that night. You can see that the wind is fanning the flames and its giving off a tremendous amount of heat. You couldn't get within 4 foot of the flames.


After dinner we headed to bed in the hope of good night's sleep. Our hopes were dashed. At about 2:30am in the morning (Tuesday), the wind really got going and the tent just couldn't do its job. While the tent didn't fly away, it did buckle and fold under the strong winds. Not good conditions for sleeping.

After spending about 45 minutes recovering various items from the camp site which had been blown away into the paddocks, Kath and I decided it was best to sleep in the car. By this stage it was 3:30am and we had had enough (except sleep, we hadn't had enough of that!). This camping adventure had turned rotten!!! While lying in the car I was thinking "I wonder if the shed will survive this wind".

The next morning turned out to be just as the forecast had predicted, windy and miserable! The main question on my mind was how did the shed go through the night. Well, this is the outcome....

The shed was battered and barely standing. In fact, I'm sure a chain-smoking asthmatic wolf could have blown it over at this stage! All was not lost. With a bit of work, we got the shed back into its correct foundation and ready for some concrete pillars to keep it from blowing away (why didn't I just concrete it to the ground on Monday!?!?)

The wind was still really strong and Fonzi had retreated to the car again. I don't blame him.

I started to reinforce the shed by concreting each of the 4 corners in. Here's one of the corners. Hopefully this keeps it in place.

Once the inside was done, I started with the outside reinforcing - these should act just like tents supports. The tie downs are metal cable (rated to 250kg each) and each is concreted 1 foot into the ground. Hopefully the 2 types of reinforcing will stop any further movement.


While finishing up the concreting, we saw about 4 eagles in the sky. I took a close up photo with the zoom.

This bird ended up slowly flying over our cabin site and was about 70 meters in the air. Kath and Fonzi were playing fetch in the paddock and you could see the eagle turning its head to keep an eye on Fonzi and slowly circle above him. He was nearly a bird's dinner!

Not being able to cope with another windy day and a sleepless night at the farm, Kath and I decided to call it quits. The weather forecast was for more windy weather for the length of our stay. After packing up everything in the wind, we headed back to Sydney on Tuesday - one day early :-( .

I'll be traveling to the farm in the next week or so to see how the shed is going and do a bit more more. I wonder if the shed will survive the couple of days of cyclonic wind!