Footings poured

Tuesday 12th October dawned overcast, drizzly and damp.  Not the best weather for negotiating a 14 tonne excavator around a clay-based block.  Everything at eightmangana gets very slippery, sloppy and sticky when there's moisture around, which isn't great for the building process!
Pour day involved a cast of thousands.  On-site over the course of the day we had Phil, Josh, Steve, Symen, Lenny, Peter, Sam, Heath, Darryl, building inspector, 2xwater-meter guys, a visit by the Wilson family (the small, male members of which promptly got themselves wet and dirty while climbing to the highest and most dangerous spots on the house site...) and Tim (yours truly).  It's one of those 'all-hands-on-deck' kind of days - it's a big job (well, this one was) and just has to get done, so in the end 4 of us worked a 12-hour day and support cast put in some big efforts to get it all finished by about 7.30 that night.  Just imagining the job without a big white and blue concrete pump crane makes me feel a bit nauseous...

Spray-jackets on and don't bother trying to stay clean, boys.  Note a few little yellow mushrooms sprouting...

Trench mesh in the bottom of each footing to tie everything together and make sure it stays where it's meant to.  Personally, I couldn't see it going anywhere fast but I'm not the expert...

Gum-boots mandatory for junior builders visiting eightmangana.

...and they like to find the high spots.  This particular set of 'boxing' (holding back the full weight of quite a bit of concrete piling up behind it) gave way twice as we tried to pour it - shoveling the concrete back in for the third time wasn't much fun!