We went back to Sandy Point

We went back to Sandy Point last weekend. Regular readers of this column will realise the significance of that rather bald statement. Others may mot, so let me explain.

I have a large family of eight brothers. Between us, and with a little help from our parents, who owned it, we built a beach house at Sandy Point, Waratah Bay. We used second-hand everything, including even driftwood from the beach at times.

The house had character, but not much staying-power. Three of us bought it from our parents and we've been rebuilding it ever since. We've had some strange results, too, and I've mentioned them in previous stories. Writing about them lets me blow off steam so, poor reader, here I go again.

A few months ago a friend's tank-stand collapsed, throwing the tank and about 400 gallons of water into his loungeroom through the wall. This did not impress him and nor did it impress my wife.

Our wives suggested that the same was possible at our shack. We ran a quick check. Yes, the wooden tank-stand was a little shaky and a little close to the house. The tanks themselves were not too good, either.

We bought two nearly-new tanks but this was not enough. No, we had to take them down to Sandy Point and actually install them, and on a proper tank-stand, whatever proper means.

We went down there to comply with their strongly-expressed wishes, having spent a week trying to design a tank-stand that did not involve too much money or too much labour. There is no such animal.

A concrete slab seemed the best answer so we bought a few bags of cement. Tim borrowed a mixer from a friend.

The women cooked up food for the weekend and we all set off. Val and I got there on the Friday night and went through the usual beach-house ritual.

Light the pot-belly stove (with wet wood), turn on the water (for which you need wrists like locomotive pistons), light the hot-water service (which starts much like a hand-grenade) and turn on the gas, which usually means driving down to the shop for a full cylinder. Eventually the place came to life.

At 11.30 there was no-one else around and I had fearful visions of having to do the whole thing myself. Mick and Iris got there, with Tim and Joy and two bottles of whiskey. I shuddered gently but drank my share so that there would not be enough left for the others to disable themselves. It was the least I could do.

It took some little time to get everyone going on the Saturday morning.

Mick and Tim walked around with me while we made knowledgeable sounds about where the tank-stand should be. The women watched in silence but with those "get on with it" looks. We picked a spot.

One problem with this spot was that it was under three feet of sand. At that point Mick and Tim decided they had better go to Foster to get some sand and screenings.

I was left holding the shovel. I held it for a while then Joy suggested it might be better if I actually used it. I threw sand around very energetically.

There were also seven small trees on the spot chosen by my absent assistants. Guess who had to cut them down and then dig up the lumpy bits on the bottom where all the roots start out.

There were two 800 gallon tanks to be moved as well, though I thought it would be easier to move the slab site. One was in good shape, fairly, relatively speaking, so I decided to drain it and line it up properly with the new ones to be installed. I opened the tap and watched all the beautiful water drain away, across the sand, across the path, under the kitchen wall, across the kitchen floor, into the loungeroom..

Frantically I threw up diversionary walls. For 20 minutes I worked like a team of demented bulldozers. The women watched me grimly. Well, they did help, but that is not the point. We stemmed the flood, though there is more water in 800 gallons than you might think, especially if it is in litres.

With the flood under some sort of control I noticed a small leak in one side of the tank. I poked it with a stick – don't ask me why – and it became a bigger hole and I had to shovel hard to make my little sand walls higher.

After what felt like a week of work I had the tank emptied and all the sand thrown out of the hole. Even the stumps had come out, largely because I'd removed the countryside in which were growing, Still there was no sign of Tim or Mick, Clever blokes, those.

Late in the afternoon the three bosses let me knock off for a minute because there was nothing else to do until the sand and stone got back – hopefully with Mick and Tim.

When they did get back they grinned cheerfully and pointed out that it was now too late to mix any concrete so we'd best have a drink or two and continue in the morning.

It didn't work. The three project managers heard us and within minutes we were laying out formwork and getting tangled in stringlines and spirit levels. I think Mick's spirit levels were still a little high from the whiskey. In a very short while everything was ready to mix and pour concrete.

Suddenly they thought to mention that the bearings on my trailer had collapsed while they were bringing the stone back and they'd had to hire a tandem trailer to bring my trailer back.

We were allowed to knock off about 8pm, too smart to mention the floodlights we had.

In the morning we cleaned up the whole site, removing the second old tank, which was further from the house and could be drained safely through the holes we poked in the sides with a stick. Not much metal there.

We set everything up for mixing. Tim knew all about mixing cement and I knew all about laying it. Mick was too slow. He was only allowed to know about wheelbarrowing the stuff. He was three inches shorter by the day's end having made many trips through soft sand with a laden barrow. It was good for him and we tried to tell him so.

Tim's first mix was a sort of stone soup. When Mick poured it into the hole the stones just sat there with all the water and sand running away between then them. His next mix was so hard it had to be hammered down flat, but we eventually got it right.

There was a fine, misty rain falling now, which kept the mix just damp enough and slowed its going off. It got heavier, and heavier and soon there was a good inch of water lying on top of the concrete, about an inch too much. Between trowelling wet cement I was trowelling excess water away.

Still, we were managing. We were coping. It wasn't good, but it was working.

Then the heavens broke open. It is a strange thing about fresh concrete, but it attracts dogs, cats, kids and rain, not always in that order. We were so dispirited that we just stood there in the rain and watched.

There was no great run-off so we were not losing (much of) the slab. It was just sinking below the surface. When the rain stopped we had a closer look. The surface looked like the playground of a crew of drunken sailors, each with two wooden peg-legs, so we had to screed and trowel it all up again. Have you ever trowelled pea soup and tried to get a nice, smooth finish on it?

It wasn't even that it needed such a smooth finish. It was just that the rain had damaged my mother-in-law's driveway strips when I did them. It washed away most of one brother's driveway when I did that. When I did the shed floor at Upper Beaconsfield Primary School half the concrete went hard before I smoothed it I just wanted one job to go right. One nice, smooth job. One job I could point to with pride and without my wife's hysterical laughter.

I did not get what I wanted. And next week I have to put in the new tanks. And the plumbing. All those taps and pipes and things. I might go down there alone this time..