Chapter 15

Allie and Joey became regular visitors to the beach, Joey took over the role of bus driver. Because Mama had reluctantly given them her approval to sleep together Annie made up the guest room to accommodate them.

Allie continued to excel in her accounting course and spent a lot of her free time from college working with Erin and Ed. Along with Joey, the four of them became firm friends and often we would have them all visiting us. This gave me the opportunity to catch up on how the supermarkets were running.

As usual the folk was thinking up new ideas for the kids. One item was to build a barbeque pit. Herman suggested sinking an old iron water tank into the ground and have a swinging arm with a steel plate for the cooking surface.

"When it's not being used for cooking Jim, the kids could sit around it and tell stories."

The Sisters thought that it was a good idea. "Cooking marshmallows on a stick was one of the things we enjoyed when we were youngsters," said Sister Teresa.

"Yeah, and baked spuds in the ashes," someone else said.

"OK, then it's agreed to build a fire pit, any idea were we can get an old water tank?"

"I was down the rubbish tip last week and there were quite a few, they had the backsides rusted out but the tops were OK, a bit of work with an angle grinder and we have the ideal surrounds."

"Right then Fred, lets go and shop for a fire pit."

We hooked the trailer onto my four wheel drive truck and away we went. When we arrived at the tip there was two old tanks that suited our purpose. Picking the best of the two we rolled it up onto the trailer and lashed it down. Looking around Fred spied some pieces of pipe to make the crane for the barby plate.

Back at Pebble beach we dug a pit, after we had cut the bottom section off we placed the tank in the hole and then back filled it with sand leaving about eighteen inches sticking out of the ground.

I found a suitable piece of plate in the back of the workshop, Herman and Fred soon constructed the barby crane, a bag of cement and gravel mix bedded it in place.

The following day we lit a fire and tried it out, the walls threw off enough heat to make sitting around it comfortable. Annie threw some lamb chops and sausages on the barby plate and swung it over the fire. Soon the mouth watering aroma of cooking filled the air.

I brought out a few bottles of my home brew and we sat around enjoying the occasion.

"Looks like we've got a winner here Jim," said Herman sucking the last of the meat off of his chop.

"Yeah, I think we will be having quite a few cook outs here from now on folks." I think the decision was unanimous.

Swimming was high on the kid's list of activities when they visited. The favourite spot was the lagoon just before the Little Pebble river broke into the estuary. Originally it was a bend in the river but when the river changed it's course the lagoon remained. When the tide came in it filled up to about six feet in depth, as the tide retreated a sandstone bar retained about four feet of water. In summer this was a nice warm pool and the kids were always wanting to go there.

I was pottering around the yard catching up on the usual chores when a group of kids approached me. "Mr Jim, can we ask a big favour of you?"

"You can ask, of course, what's on your minds?"

"You know we like to swim in the lagoon when we can, would it be OK if we built a raft to swim from?"

"Hmm, tell you what we'll do, when we have the barbeque tonight we can talk to the locals and see if they can come up with something to make it with, how does that sound?"

"Wow, that's great Mr Jim, thanks a lot."

Later that evening we discussed the raft, making sure that the kids had an input. My thoughts were to supply the materials but let the kids do the actual building, we would ensure that it was safe to use.

I gave Alex White from the log cabin company a ring on Monday and told him what we were thinking.

"Great idea Jim, I can supply the frame and decking, what are you going to use for the floats?"

"I was thinking about using plastic drums."

"Down in our yard there's two pontoons, a chap had the idea of having us build a small cabin on them. When we got down to the nitty gritty it wasn't feasible, if you like I'll get in touch with him and see what he wants to do with them."

"I'll come over and look at them Alex, they sound like they could be just what we need."

Indeed they were perfect for the raft, so I asked Alex to contact the owner and find out how much he wanted for them.