CHAPTER 7. LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON (P.3)

For the next month and a half I was like a 10 year old boy frantically playing on a set of monkey bars at the local playground. Undoubtedly the lessons I learnt from this were to embrace the power of modern technology but never neglect that which is tried and true.

Conveniently I was still ballin’ in frequent flyer points that I had banked up during my FIFO days. Several thousand points later and I was picking Newta up from Melbourne airport over the AFL grand final long weekend. A few days of hard work, an AFL grand final and a hangover later we had a roof and three walls completed. Newta was gone as quickly as he arrived, generously donating his time to the project purely for the love of being involved and the opportunity to drop down and see his family in Halls Gap.

I will be forever grateful for this act of generosity – a true friend – a gesture I would someday like to pay forward to another friend myself. I had always expected to pay Newta, however the Nook was starting to generate excitement amongst some of my friends, Newta included and some were genuinely just keen to be involved. I am in awe of the power of passionate friendships like these, where we inspire, captivate and excite each other with our ideas.

Three and a half months of straight work later and we had a shell of a house, almost at lock up, apart from the huge gaping draft gaps where the windows were supposed to be. And physically I resembled something not dissimilar to a rake. Time for a break, time to get back in shape and time to start earning some moolah to cash flow this thing a bit further myself. While all of this construction was happening I was burning through cash and looking for the next injection, so I was also madly looking for a job to fit in with the project.

Holly and I were both incredibly keen to work in the national park and the only way to really achieve that was to work for the Halls Gap Parks Victoria team. Coincidentally, job applications opened up to work on the Halls Gap fire crew, so we both applied. A highly sought after job in this neck of the woods, neither of us was holding our breath, but we were hopeful that at least one of us