Finally got it - and Wow!

This is a photo of my daugter Tash taken in March 2005, when she was pregnant, sitting on a piece of red beech driftwood I tried to get off the beach for about 5 years. This was one time we tried to get it. Another time, I took my brother-in-law down to try and get it, and we actually towed it along the beach, but it was just too heavy to get it up on to the trailer. It weighed a ton! Finally, earlier this year, I met another man was a woodie, and as he was off work, and getting bored, so next time I was going fossicking I asked him if he'd like to come too. He jumped at the chance. We came across this piece again. It's amazing how a piece so big and heavy shifts around the beach so much. Those waves are very powerful! You an see in this photo it's high and dry. This time it was down at the water's edge, but was at least on the hard. We got some other bits of driftwood and levered it up until it was high enough to winch it on board. At last! Another stroke of luck is that he happened to have a brother with a portable mill, and he lives in the country, so we set it up in the paddock next door, and after water blasting to get any salt, sand and stones off it, we managed to cut it into five slabs. He got two and I got three. It has wicked grain in it. I have made a coffee table out of the middle piece. The little girl in the photo is my gorgeous grand daughter Ashley-Rose, who Tash was pregnant with in the first photo. She's now 3! The end slab I was going to make a dragon coffee table out of, but I decided to turn it around and make a whale, "The Guardian of the Deep". So I still have another raw slab to play with at a later date. The coffee table and the whale are for sale now. Contact details on my web site.