The area I've chosen used to be a Melaleuca swamp (we call them paperbark trees in Aus) It was cleared a decade before we bought the property. More on that in a second...
We're in the middle of a drought which has been good for me to resize the lake, but has made the clay ultra hard to dig in accurately. Dug out the anchors - took me a whole day. One end was the super hard clay and was fiddly to say the least. The other end was the reason I mentioned the paperbark swamp, because I wondered what happened to all the logs. Turns out that they were buried and anytime I managed to get a wall accurate I'd snag a log and bring half of the wall down
Nothing extra concrete can't fix I guess.
The steel and rio is being bent as you read this and hopefully the anchors will be poured next week.