National Emergency in Aston Cres

What can I say? It's been a traumatic long weekend for me, and I've only just recovered sufficiently to write about it.

The focus of the weekend was to finish & install our new letterbox. I had borrowed the post-hile digger of my folks, and had the concrete. The letterbox was painted and I spent saturday attaching two posts, one on each side. All that remained was to dig a couple of holes & plonk the letterbox in. A nice little job for a sunday afternoon.

I started by trying to dig out the old letterbox. Two problems there. It was heavily cemented in, and also appeared to be sited above the gas mains. I didn't want to dig through the gas mains, so I decided to shift the new installation back about a meter. Dug one hole, then the next, but they weren't quite deep enough. I needed another 5 cm. So I went back to hole #1 a bit deeper and then -- WHOOSH -- the ground beneath me erupted! I had conveniently missed the gas mains, but instead had hit (and punctured) the line running between the mains and our house. Gas was pouring out, and continued to do so until the fire brigade arrived to clamp it off. Nat, meanwhile, thought this was sufficiently funny to record it for posterity -- hence the photos of the fire crew at work. When I pointed out how much it would cost to pay for the gas to be fixed on a public holiday sunday she didn't think it was so amusing.

I guess we can console ourselves with a few things. We now have the most expensive letterbox in the street. I'm only going to do this once (the head fireman pointed that out for me). We provided some entertainment for our neighbours. And Ella got to see a real live fire truck in action.