"In the beginning"

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this blog are not necessarily the views of the blog management, (on the other hand, they are not necessarily not the views of the blog management).

No effort has been made to stay within the bounds of the truth in this blog as it has always been the view of the management that the truth should never be allowed to stand in the way of a good story.

Saturday, May 12, 2007

My dissappearing neighbors


To all the Mothers everywhere,
I hope you have a lovely day.



There is only one pretty child in the world, and every mother has it.



This is the rear view of the service station which
was next door to my house.



There was a BP Service Station located next door to my house in Gympie when I bought it, this never worried me in the slightest, in fact they were very good neighbors, closed at 6PM... no wild parties, they offered very good mechanical repairs and were ultimately convenient.

Strangely I didn't have a front view of it, I say strangely because I'm the sort that points a camera at just about everything I see.

About 1 month before my last trip to SA/WA the business closed down, not good I had to find an alternative workshop to service my Subaru for the trip, shortly after the site became vacant a contractor arrived to remove the petrol pumps and BP signage.

Sometime during the month that I was away they removed the building and erected a fence to keep people out, just why they thought people would want to come onto the now vacant block I'm not sure.

Fast forward another month; one night at about 8.30PM there was a lot of noise outside when I went to investigate I saw a HUGE excavator had been unloaded from a truck and was trundling into the empty site, an hour later peace returned to the hilltop.



Looks like a noisy morning coming up said I to myself and sure enough at 7.30 next morning the excavator started clunking and bumping away at the concrete forecourt not very far from where I should be sleeping, not that it was exceptionally loud but it was not something I could easily ignore.



I glanced out the window a few times over the next couple of hours and eventually noticed that as well as the operator aboard the big Hitachi (which BTW made my Hitachi electric drill with 1/2 inch chuck look very puny) there were 3 spectators, well 4 if you include me.

They are fairly well hidden behind my palm tree but if you enlarge the photo you will see 1 man on crutches and 2 more in safety vests.
I'm going to assume the one on crutches may have been the boss so he had two excuses not to do any work, the other 2 however did not lift a finger to help the operator even when he would climb out of his cabin and stack the pipes he was unearthing against the fence





as shown in this photo.

One can only assume that they
were some sort of workplace
health and safety employee's,
I'm sure the guy in the
excavator would have been only
too pleased to get a hand every
now and again though.

He finally unearthed the petrol
storage tanks and one of the


spectators sprang into action
marking them with a spray can
of pretty pink paint, shortly
after that they all departed
leaving just the operator and
me to finish up the day










The big Hitachi is still on site
with another full days work to
do I'm sure but we had a little
rain overnight so will be a day
or two before he comes back to
finish up now.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you know what's going to take the stations place?

Marcus said...

I'm always amazed at how quickly service station sites are decommissioned when they close down. There must be some sort of laws or environmental requirements governing the process because I've seen it happen numerous times. Mind you, I've never been an eye witness, or neighbour of such an event, I've just seen the evidence and aftermath.

Take care
Marcus

kenju said...

It's a good thing they dug up the old tanks, Peter. If they had any residue in them they might eventually leak and spoil the ground around them.

Val said...

I'm curious about your new neighbors too, Peter!

Rachel said...

Hope you get wonderful new neighbors Peter!

Merle said...

Hi Peter ~~ Great goings on nextdoor.
Sorry they closed down and now gone for good. What comes next I wonder.
Doubt if I will ever get rid of Old Faithful Laptop, but will hopefully
get the new one sorted. It is wireless and was supposed to "Just plug in and you'll have your Net"
Which didn't happen. Should work out in the end. Take care, Love, Merle.

OldHorsetailSnake said...

The three people who were watching were probably just waiting for it to get to be lunchtime.

Walker said...

This sounds alot like how many people does it take to change a light bulb.
One and three to watch him do it.

I hope your next neighbours are as quiet as the last one.I don;t know the regulations in Australia but don't they have to remove all the dirt because of cantamilnation from the garage being there for so long?

Have a nice weekend

Puss-in-Boots said...

Hmmmm, I hope you don't get noisy neighbours, Peter. Mind you, if they're going to build there, it'll be noisy until they finish.

Buy some earplugs.

Jeanette said...

Hi Peter, Fancy getting woken by that noise AWWWW, looks like early rises when they start to rebuild, just hope you get nice quiet neighbours.

Christina said...

Also wondering if you know what will replace the service station?

Margaret said...

Hi Peter, It is a shame that service station had to go as it really was a great one. It always had that old fashioned idea of personal service amd really beone friendly and interested im their customers. Also one never likes to have to replace a known reliable mechanic either.
Cheers Margaret

Meow (aka Connie) said...

It's always a shame when the neighbourhood changes, isn't it.
Thanks for the mothers day wishes.
Have a great week.
Take care, Meow