My 2010

SkyFarming

The big news, of course, is that the Mt Barker Windfarm project is going ahead and has progressed as far as 3 off 180m3 concrete foundations already poured. The turbine components are due mid January, as are the cables and High Voltage Switchgear and the installation of the turbines by end of this January with commissioning through February and possible handover early March. We have already received grant money for the fourth of six milestones.

Until about the middle of the year, we were very much uncertain as to whether we had a project or not. We went some very dark places. We were really looking at last ditch efforts. Though in the end, I feel that things turned out the only way they could. For a start, no debt from banks, we tried, we paid others to try but with time running out our top three investors have become our debt providers with expection that refinancing within two years will occur. There is a deadline for the grant that is critical to the economics of the project and the Independant Market Operator is already penalising us for late connection.

We had help in the form of investors, both big and small (and international!) and, funnily enough, Synergy, who bought our electricity and the Renewable Energy Certificates. They continue to work with us to overcome the red tape nightmare of electricity regulation of electricity sales and network charges.

Then, on Tuesday, September the 28th, contruction began on site. On that day, we rented a house in Mt Barker and Peter Auer, now a director in SkyFarming, became our site manager and has been working long hours there ever since.

Our car sharing deal with Phil's i30 continues, and is fact, a great opportunity to catch up with him now that I am no longer climbing. As the red car is now with Peter on site, we are having to hire instead. Whilst hardly convenient, it is still so cheap one wonders why others don't do it.

Cycling

A very big year with at least 3 rides over 6 hrs, and another 3 over 4. I rode the full 100km in the Karri Cup this year, supported by German friends Volker and Anke.

Anke and Volker in support at Northcliffe Karri Cup.

So happy just to be off the bike . . .

I also managed the Dwellingup 100 in September. A faster race than the Karri Cup but with bigger and steeper hills, I got off the bike half a dozen times. In November, in a mixed team with Tamantha and Toc, we came 2nd in the Jarradale 12hr, an all night celebration of fat tyre biking in the dust. This was two weeks after the Northcliffe 6hr. Maritza, who had come over from Norway for a short visit to Oz was support and did all the driving. It was the first time either of us had driven on the new freeway to Bunbury. It is very long, straight and flat. World's most boring cycleway runs along side of it, one day?

Susanna joined me in an overnighter to Northam on the Kep Track, taking the train to Midland and riding out from there. We rode with Tamantha and Toc and a younger friend of theirs from Murdoch. 6 1/2hrs and 100km there, but only 85km back? We, um, got a little lost and hit a bit more of the bitumen on the way out of town on the return.

The freeway ride in March from Kwinana to Joondalup was again ridden by team SkyFarming - petty, I know, but passing the Verve (that part of the old Western Power that takes care of generation) guys in their matching T shirts on cheap mountain bikes, well, you take the good with the bad.

We also continued to ride out to Henderson and to Subiaco to the Brew Ha for coffee beans and sometimes to lunch with dad. I rode out to Rockingham one day to see Perth Energy's brand new 120MW gas/diesel power station in Kwinana, now ready for this summer. Perth Energy had wanted the Mt Barker Windfarm, but the GFC had sunk that idea.

Socially

I have never been to Summerville so much, thanks to Volker and Enke! We gave up Badminton half way through the year, just too hard on Mondays.

In March, Susanna and I celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary by having a sunset dinner at Blue Waters at Heathcote where the wedding was held.

Suz continues her efforts to grow things in the garden, a very dry winter (at least 40% down on average, whatever that is these days, and as dry as 2006), has also meant some very cold nights, and our plum tree has now provided over a dozen plums! The lettuce worked ok, chilli as good as ever, the herbs remain in fine form but pumpkins and tomatos and capsicum remain small and discouraging.

And the motorbike frogs have bred.

Goodbye Volker and Anke dinner and birthday party for Tamantha, clockwise;Suz, Peter, Tamantha, Toc, Anke, Phil, Kate, Volker and Richard, I took the photo.

I still go to German lessons with the Goethe Institute at UWA but added many kilometres and not a few hills (ie up and down Mounts Rd a number of times) to get the kilometres in before the big races.

Movie of the year for me was the The Social Network, when I did that IT course at TAFE all those years ago, I knew guys who could code through the night . . . book of the year would be Ben Elton's Meltdown, a nice look at the Global Financial Crises. Other lightweight efforts include Barking by Tom Holt, a lawyer firm as a pack of werewolfs who like nothing more than chasing cats and trucks on a full moon night. Rather caustic and all the more fun because of it, is Jonathan Tropper's 'This is where I leave you'.

Stays

With the Mt Barker project at the pointy end, all my trips have been to Mt Barker and to three or four mountain bikes races, and the Northam tour. Of course, we have been able to put up people for a few nights and get to enjoy their trips second hand . . . Paul and Pam before and after their trips. Volker and Enke ended staying here at either end of their big trip to the Kimberleys. We even had Maureen stay a few nights during a lightning trip from SA.

Beck and Abigail came over to Perth for Dad's and her birthday in October, and not much later, Maritza, all the way from Norway, turned up for a week or so.

Federal Election

As usual, I dutifully turn up at the booths, but this time it is a lot more fun. I have never been to an election where it is so acceptable to be green. And what a result! the Bogan Princess beats the Mad Monk but only with the help of some 9 Green senators. It is basically a hung parliament and the pressure to get serious about carbon emissions - which are completely and utterly out of control in WA - is really going to hit the ALP (which apparently stands for Another Liberal Party . . ).

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Andrew Woodroffe, 21 December, 2010