The first Open Studio Weekend is over. One more to go!
We had a very slow day on the Saturday, as it was raining hard on both sides of us in Picton and Bowral. So visitors were reluctant to leave home, and few and far between. We had just a few brave people venture out. One visitor from Picton had gone to an Open Garden event, but it was so miserable in the pouring rain, that she gave up and decided to come and visit us for some indoor, dry and warm, entertainment.
The Sunday Open Studio was much better, quiet in the morning, but it picked up after lunch and we were almost busy dealing with a steady flow of visitors in the afternoon. We hope for better weather and more visitors next weekend. However, if it is going to rain, I’d prefer it to pour down, flood the gutters and stream down into the dam.
Of course, as usual, it didn’t rain here at all, just a few light passing showers throughout the day. Our top dam, the one closest to the house, that rely on for irrigation and fire fighting water is bone dry. The foot valve for the pump is sitting high and dry on top of the caked and cracked mud. This dam still had a very small amount of water in it when we left for our time away in New Caledonia and then Brisbane. However, we got a call from our lovely neighbour one day to tell us that she had tried to water the garden for us, but no water was coming out of the hose. I knew knew why. I expected it to run out and dry up at any moment. but there was nothing that I could do at a distance.
Starting on the Monday morning, with the news of so many houses burnt down in the north of the state in the terrible bush fire there. I wasted no time in preparing ourselves for the next bushfire – whenever it happens. Maybe sooner than later? With the bushfire season now upon us in earnest. I was straight into action working on all those jobs that I had put off during the recent three wet years.
We have 4 dams, built in a key-line system. I moved the high pressure, petrol driven, fire fighting pump, down into the bottom dam, which is nearly empty, but still has some water in it, right at the bottom. I built a jerry-rig, improvised system of poly pipe lines to convey the water from this little bottom dam, up to the larger, middle dam. A day of running the pump moved most of the water up the hill to the next dam. I left just 300 mm of water in the bottom of that dam for the yabbies, to keep them safe over summer. If it does dry out completely, they will bury them selves in the mud.
From the bottom dam, up to the middle dam. This larger middle dam also has next to nothing in it, just 300mm deep in the middle, but every drop counts in summer. Especially when a bush fire is in the offing.
Neither the bottom dam or the middle dam, has a functioning pump on them at the moment, so moving all the available water up to the top dam, where I have both petrol and electric pumps installed gives me access to whatever water is left to us over the hot dry summer for fire fighting. Also, concentrating all our water in one place minimises the losses from evaporation.
Once the bottom dam was more or less empty. I carried the petrol pump up and into the middle dam, re-arranged all my Heath Robinson, improvised piping and began pumping from the middle up to the top dam. I’ve been on my very own personal, localised, ‘Snowy Hydo 2′ project here for two days now and all the water hasn’t been relocated yet. It’s a slow job, moving thousands of litres of water, up hill through a 40mm dia pipe. I hope to finish it off tomorrow.
From the middle dam up to the top dam.
The little top dam is now half full with all the accumulated water from the other dams, it will keep us safe into January. Then?
While all this was going on. I was also working on the new fire fighting sprinkler system along the verandah and roof of the new pottery building, and also rebuilding the burnt out sprinkler system on the barn. It worked perfectly during the fire, and saved the barn for burning, but when the power failed and the electric pump stopped, the plastic pipe system melted. I will be installing a petrol driven, high pressure, fire fighting pump in this system when I’ve finished pumping all the dam water uphill.
The roof and wall sprinklers all rebuilt and up and running again now.
Nothing is perfect. Nothing is ever finished, and nothing lasts.
However, I feel safer knowing that I have water in the system available to use to fight the next fire,
and a reasonably functional system in place that I hope will be able to cope with whatever nature throws at us
I make sure that I use the fire pumps often over the summer months to irrigate the garden and orchards.
In this way, I always know that the pumps are in reliable working order, then if one of them gives some trouble with the irrigation, I can step in and fix it well before there is any emergency, when there is no time for fixing things. Everything must work perfectly and immediately.
Since the last fire 4 years ago, I have installed 45,000 litres of tanks in front of the Barn, dedicated to the fire pump for the pottery and barn system. I have also installed 30,000 litres of new water storage tanks on the old Railway Station and car port with its own fire pump.
We are much better prepared now than we were 4 years ago. This is self reliance!
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