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| Saturday, 3 November 2007 | Today's diary | Today's images | top | next | last |
When we bought it, the house had a surprising number of mainly dilapidated sheds. I've already mentioned the “garage” and the now dismantled pigsties; there were also some others to the north-east of the house, visible in the exterior photos that I try to take every Saturday:
There's also another shed behind that one; Yvonne originally wanted to use both as horse stables, which would have meant a lot of work. A couple of months ago we converted the right-hand side of the shed into a tack room; now we've decided that the rest would conveniently house the garden equipment. The horses won't need any particular shelter until autumn, at least 5 months away, so we can cross that bridge when we come to it. Spent some time removing the interior of the shed, which had previously been used for the dogs.
Paul, the hay mower, came along to look at our pitiful excuse for hay; he thinks that yesterday's rain might help. So might today's; we had quite a bit in the evening, possibly more than yesterday, in the process discovering a leak in the roof which came down through one of the light fittings in the hallway. When it finally stops raining we're going to have to get up on the flat part of the roof and find out why there are bricks and chicken wire up there.
| Sunday, 4 November 2007 | Today's diary | Today's images | top | previous | next | last |
Woke at 2:47 this morning to discover that the power had failed again, and that the UPS for the HiFi system had already failed. There's not much I can do about that without a generator, so went back to sleep. At 8:00 there was still no power, so called Powercor on 13 24 12 to hear a message telling me that there were no incidents reported in the area, and that I would have a wait of 15 minutes before I could speak to anybody. Gave up on that and had breakfast, then out to look at the rainfall. The measuring beaker hadn't overflowed, but the scale conveniently stops at 33 mm:
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Took it in and measured the volume and the surface area—for reference, the beaker has an opening 78.5 mm wide, corresponding to 48.4 cm². Based on that, the 257 ml in the beaker correspond to a rainfall of 53.1 mm, more than in the whole of September and October. Now why couldn't it have fallen more uniformly? From being dried up, the paddocks are now overflowing with water:
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Also discovered that the storm had done quite some damage—one tree completely knocked down, another split and lying over the electric fence, and lots of debris on the road.
[Then back home] to remove the fallen trees, in pouring rain—between 9:00 and
15:00 we had another 17 mm of rain. The toys I bought on Friday came in handy with that job.
| Wednesday, 7 November 2007 | Today's diary | top | previous | next | last |
There was a funny noise coming from the other side of the lagoon most of today, sounding something like machinery running, so I went down there to the hall to take a look. Nothing. In fact, the noise was fainter than from home. Back home, went down to the lagoon and discovered that the noise was coming from the lagoon: now that it has rained, there are thousands, possibly millions of frogs and insects making a concerted noise. I suppose we'll have to get used to that.
| Sunday, 11 November 2007 | Today's diary | Today's images | top | previous | next | last |
We're gradually setting up a shaded area to sit in in the garden, under some trees which drop small white flowers:
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Very pleasant, much more so than at Wantadilla, where the wind made it impracticable to sit outside most of the time. Yvonne suggests that we name this place “Gottadilla”.
| Monday, 12 November 2007 | Today's diary | Today's images | top | previous | next | last |
In the afternoon, Gary Murray, the bore man, showed up and finally started drilling our bore:
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They got about 10 metres when the pump broke down and spent the next hour trying to repair it, finally leaving with the pump. Hopefully they'll get it finished tomorrow with no further problems.
| Tuesday, 13 November 2007 | Today's diary | Today's images | top | previous | next | last |
The bore people came back today, replaced their pump and spent all day drilling. Finally, round 16:30, they struck water at 48 metres, but carried on digging until 54 metres:
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So our work is cut out for tomorrow: get a bore pump.
| Wednesday, 14 November 2007 | Today's diary | top | previous | next | last |
Into town today to look after the rest of the equipment for the bore. That stuff is expensive! There are apparently only two companies in Ballarat who install bore pumps. The first quoted us a complete price of $2715, and the other $2900. After some discussion, went with the more expensive variety: the pump is more durable, especially where the bores can contain a lot of sand, and in addition they can do it next week, while the other company would not be able to do it for 2 to 3 weeks.
Delivery times and prices seem to be the order of the day. We need two tanks: a header tank to take the water pumped out of the bore, which wasn't included in the quote, and a tank to replace the rusted-out tanks behind the shed:
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They have got a lot more expensive since we installed the 11500 litre tank in Wantadilla, and the delivery times can be up to 6 months. Found a couple in stock at Landmark, and they promised to deliver on Friday.
In the afternoon, took another look at the pump that had seized up a couple of months ago, and with information given me by Lyndon of Ballarat Pumps, was able to get the thing going and pump out the remaining 1500 litres or so of the water we collected the weekend before last. What a waste! We calculated, while deciding on the size of the tank to put there, that we probably collected 7500 litres on the shed over that weekend.
| Friday, 16 November 2007 | Today's diary | top | previous | next | last |
Summer is here, and the rains of two weeks ago are a distant memory. The bird bath was full after the rains, but now it's nearly dry again from evaporation. The thermometer hit 38° in the shade, and though this proved to be inaccurate, the real temperature was still round 36°.
| Saturday, 17 November 2007 | Today's diary | Today's images | top | previous | next | last |
Another warm day spent mainly inside, though we did get a few drops of rain.
Did a bit of work in the garden in the afternoon. Judy, our neighbour from across the road, has given us about 50 Hebes, which desperately need to be planted. As soon as we have water (hopefully Tuesday) we'll be able to plant them, and today we started clearing the way: they'll go to the north of the house, just in front of the fence to the paddock.
| Monday, 19 November 2007 | Today's diary | Today's images | top | previous | next | last |
Simon from Landmark turned up today with the water tanks we ordered last Wednesday, and without the fittings I needed. Damn!
That wasn't the only thing that went wrong today. It didn't help that the temperatures were in the mid-30s, and that thousands of tiny wasp-like insects were swarming all round the house. I suppose it's better than the flies we had in Wantadilla, but they're still irritating.
Yvonne off to town in the afternoon to buy the remaining fittings, while I tried to reconnect the down pipes from the shed, helped by Yvonne on her return:
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To my surprise, that pipe was almost exactly the correct length, to within a millimetre or two. The other side of the shed will have to wait for more equipment.
| Tuesday, 20 November 2007 | Today's diary | Today's images | top | previous | next | last |
The rains of two weeks ago are a distant memory: the water in the birdbath, which had been full, evaporated correctly. Fortunately, Matthew from Ballarat Pumps along today to install the bore pump:
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That went surprisingly quickly, and two hours after he had arrived the header tank was full and I was filling up a bath tub (which Matthew had kindly helped me move—it's cast iron and must weigh 100 kg) with water for the horses.
After that, I was reminded of the passage in The Song of the Artesian Water:
If the Lord won't send us water, oh, we'll get it from the devil;
Almost as if to make a point, I had barely started heavily watering the garden when it started to rain, the first time in days. Over to Chris' place with a couple of litres of still rather cloudy water to look for some soap—we only use liquid forms, which I believe don't have a problem with hard water—and discovered that our bore water is as soft as they come. That's a pleasant discovery; assuming that it doesn't create too much scale, we could use it in the washing machine. More analysis to come; started boiling down 3 litres to see how much dissolved solids there are.
| Wednesday, 21 November 2007 | Today's diary | Today's images | top | previous | next | last |
It's still raining! We've had over 15 mm of rain in the past 24 hours, and the weather is about 20° cooler. It's such a relief to know that when it dries out again, we'll still have enough water, but there's also quite a bit of work to do laying pipes and setting up the garden beds we can now populate.
More work on the “analysis” of my first water sample. 3 litres boiled dry gave 800 mg of solids, or about 260 ppm. That's not too bad for normal tap water in some parts of the world, but in this case a large proportion was obviously the suspended solids in the water, which will gradually go away. About 10% was soluble in hydrochloric acid, but not in acetic acid, and gave a brown colour which suggested iron. How much? That would be about 25 ppm iron, still more than we would like. But a lot of that could still be from the suspended solids, so I need another clean sample to compare.
| Sunday, 25 November 2007 | Today's diary | Today's images | top | previous | next | last |
Finally it's time to make hay! Paul Ludovici came along hours after he promised, keeping Yvonne's nerves on edge. Finally he arrived and got through things in record time:
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In the meantime, spent some time relocating the compost heap, which had been in the middle of the covered sitting area. To our surprise, the lower half had already composted nicely—it was still a child's sand pit when we arrived in July this year. Left it behind to wait for the arrival of the soil for the plant beds, after which we can mix it in.
Next time I went past the heap, I saw something slimy, which we think is the Thing that came out of the Swamp:
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The question is, should we look after it or let it find its own equilibrium? It must have survived for at least 5 months, and when we came there was no compost heap there.
| Monday, 26 November 2007 | Today's diary | Today's images | top | previous | next | last |
Hay making time is always nerve-wracking. This year the weather has been exceptionally dry, but of course once we cut the hay, we have rain predicted for the day it's supposed to be baled. We're planning to put the hay in the left side of the old garage, which currently has the contents of the old Mike Smith Memorial Room. And they need to go into the shipping container which hasn't been delivered yet because Alan, the scrap metal man who is removing the remains of the pigsty, needs to fix the head gasket on his truck. We can't wait for that any longer, so agreed to have it delivered on Wednesday, the day they're expecting not just rain but also possible thunderstorms. Hopefully they'll be as accurate as even in their forecast.
| Wednesday, 28 November 2007 | Today's diary | Today's images | top | previous | next | last |
Out into a stinking hot garden this morning to finally transplant some seedlings, now that we have enough water to keep them alive. While I was working there, the rubbish truck came by—as on every Tuesday—but this time the driver got out and came into the garden. On closer examination, discovered that it wasn't the rubbish truck, but Mick from Dial-a-box come to deliver our shipping container:
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That went surprisingly well and accurately, and he couldn't have been there for more than 20 minutes. Not a moment too soon, either, since Paul Ludovici was due to come and bale the hay before the threatened storm, and we needed to put it into the garage as quickly as possible.
Shortly later Yvonne turned up with Chris Yeardley and Pam Hay, but there wasn't really much to do; first we needed to clear out the left side of the shed:
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That was a job for few people. Grabbed both sack trollies and discovered that they had flat tyres, so grabbed my terribly bad foot pump and discovered that it was worse than useless: it actually deflated the tyres that were still inflated. Threw that away in disgust, and then started carrying out larger objects, but didn't get very far before the rain arrived:
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It was some of the heaviest rain we've had since we arrived here, accompanied by hail and thunder. We had 15 mm of rain in two hours. What we didn't have was Paul bloody Ludovici, who thus managed to completely ruin our entire hay crop. Yvonne sent me off to tell call him and tell him that his services were no longer needed: she was too angry. That's about $2000 of damages.
| Thursday, 29 November 2007 | Today's diary | top | previous | next | last |
In the evening, just after dinner, Paul Ludovici arrived, unannounced, and expressed his intention of pressing our sodden hay. I told him that it was too wet, and that he should have been there yesterday. He claimed that a bit of wetness wouldn't make any difference—no matter that Yvonne had impressed on him the importance of keeping the hay dry, and that she placed utmost importance on him being available at the right time. Instead, he said “I won't be coming back”. Under the circumstances, that sounded the best thing. I said “Look, mate, you left us in the lurch yesterday. Piss off”. And he did. Somehow I have the feeling we haven't seen the last of this. I wish I had been more on the ball—several cleverer things occurred to me after his left, for example “I breed horses, not mushrooms”.
| Friday, 30 November 2007 | Today's diary | Today's images | top | previous | next | last |
While watering the garden discovered that the header tank from the bore was leaking from the top where the supply pipe goes in: it was drilled across an edge:
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Spent some time putting in some corrugated cardboard from a packing carton to fix that, which worked surprisingly well.
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