Tag Archives: water

Drought, Fire & Flooding Rains . . .

by . Posted on
17 Feb

I guess I couldn’t really understand what it was to be a farmer in this country without experiencing Drought. I console myself with that idea. The climate denialists will quote Dorothea McKellar’s beautiful ode to Australia as rationale for their beliefs, and it is true that Mother Nature operates in cycles, but we are in extremis now.

https://www.dorotheamackellar.com.au/archive/mycountry.htm

When we first came here, the farmers around us who had lived and farmed this land all their long lives told us that the Ellenborough River had never stopped flowing. It stopped in September 2019. We felt confident in our oasis with its creeks, springs and river. But we watched our stagnant pools dropping by inches a day in the vicious heat of spring and summer. We feared for ourselves, our stock, our platypus population – the river and rainfall are what sustains us all.

We scrambled frantically on the phones to find feed and then for funds to pay for it. We had to put our hand up for charity when we just couldn’t take any more. We watched beloved cows drop to their knees and despite our best efforts never get up again. We spent days digging a downer out of a bog, feeding and watering her and hand feeding her calf. We got intimate with maggots in an array of injuries. We learned just how useful hip lifters are. We hauled on heavy cows to turn and lift them. We tried and we tried and we tried . . . and we failed. We lost too many to count. We lost friends, four leggeds that we raised by hand and loved beyond measure: Isis, Damson, Millie, Milka, Henrietta, Big Red, JB and more. And then there were all the cows and steers we had to sell for a pittance because we feared they too would lie down and die.

And then there was Goldie. Our golden girl. Our beautiful bitch. Ben’s dog. There is something so incredibly beautiful about a boy and his dog. Listening to his peals of laughter as she scrambled all over him as she has done since a pup. He loved her so much. We all did. And her puppies were a miracle (unplanned though her pregnancy was, I am so grateful for it now). I stayed up all night and at one point woke Ben to come and see a baby being born. It was a sacred time. And despite her exhaustion and overwhelm (8 babies!!) Goldie was an amazing Mum. She hid under the house for a while that first day (& who can blame her?) and then she would disappear for a little while very day for a rest. Slowly traversing further afield as the weeks passed – down to the river for a swim and explore. Never too far, always back in an hour for the next feed. Until the day she disappeared with Mudji and didn’t come home. As night fell we were frantic and started feeding the babies (luckily I had bought some powdered puppy milk as a supplement for Goldie at the pet shop’s advice). Mudji turned up at the neighbour’s the next day as usual but no Goldie. It was Ben’s birthday weekend and we were out looking high & low, calling for her. No sign. No trace. No sound. Nothing. No body to bury. No real closure. No time to grieve.

We raised her pups, Ben instantly claiming the little lemon beauty as Goldie’s replacement and I held the little black boy close to my heart and refused to let him go despite Ged’s disapproval. And then we had to let them go too. God, that was hard. Every goodbye felt like another part of Goldie leaving us. And they were all so beautiful, just like her. But the fact that they are so loved by the families they have gone to, and that her light lives on in this world, is a source of great joy.

I don’t like who we became last year. Brutal, brittle, broken people. We talked very seriously about walking off the farm. We just couldn’t take it any more. We were in shock, I see now that it was like a war zone mentality – we became immured to death somehow, closed off from it, sealed from its shockingness in order to protect our own hearts.

And then came the fires. Moving slowly, but inexorably our way from Mt Seaview and Yarras. That added another level of stress. I went away to a long planned yoga retreat, hoping for healing. Instead I got a text from Ged with a dramatic photo of the fire now in the neighbour’s place and barrelling down on us. So I learned to live in the moment – going deep into meditation and breathing and then coming out to get on the phone and issue rapid fire instructions what to pack, what to leave, where essentials were, how to protect our assets. I stayed and focussed while fear built in me and then drove home via Bunnings on the Monday, filling a trolley with hoses and sprinklers. Ben was evacuated and we had two days to prepare ourselves and our property for the onslaught.

George, our 85 year old neighbour came by. He was scared. He doesn’t scare easy. He was worried about crown fires and fireballs and the lack of water, how dry it was, how little hope we could escape annihilation. But we did. Although the fires continued around us for months. ‘Watch & Act’ sounds so benign. But it is a state of hypervigilance, of nerves in tatters, of fear that I never want to experience again. And the helicopters overhead hour after hour, day after day, the thick smoke we breathed for months, and the sweet stench of death from my rotting friends gave me a feeling of Vietnam or some other vile warzone.

We went away but Ged had to come back to fight fire, to fix broken water pipes, to take delivery of more unaffordable hay. We couldn’t relax. We were constantly on edge, cranky, snappy.

The first rain came on Christmas Day – the ultimate Christmas gift. In January a slow moving wall of clear rainwater saw the river flowing again. Now we have cleansing floods, trees tossed and bobbing on fast moving muddy flood water as the riverscape is purified once more.

And now the healing can begin. I have begun what I call ‘crying yoga’ the nights on my mat sobbing for my lost friends. And walking the landscape, remembering their faces, their soft pelts, their wet noses.
We are scarred by 2019. We will never forget. I don’t know what the future holds, but I do know this – the global human population has exploded over the past 150 years as has our consumption, manufacturing, coal burning and carbon creation as we evolve from horse and cart to steam power, electricity, petrol & diesel driven cars, planes and more. We cannot possibly believe that our deforestation and coal burning has not irrevocably altered the planet and its atmosphere. We have to stop. We have to change. We have to backpedal. We all have to do our bit.

The water disconnect between city and country

by . Posted on

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4379820.html

We have to start to think before we unconsciously consume. We have to take responsibility for our waste and use resources wisely. Turn off the taps, waste not and want not, and stop seeing farmers as the enemy, writes Sophie Love.

We’re celebrating 40mm of heaven sent out here on the farm. It’s not enough, but it’s a start.

After three months of no rain the earth was cracked, scorched and rock hard causing pain and joint problems for older humans and horses. All the grass was dead and the bush, normally throbbing with life, was eerily quiet.

The wild dogs and cats have been foraging closer to the river and we have seen wallabies with their heads ripped off and have feared for our lambs and cria. The paralysis ticks have been abnormally abundant and we have two alpacas down with paralysis and we are tick checking all stock daily.

The river is at least two feet lower than normal, and lower than where it sat at the end of a five year drought. After five years of relentless flooding, that hardly seems possible but it is true. The river is our lifeblood and watching it drop daily is very depressing, as is the lack of growth in what should be the surge of spring.

Down in the big smoke (Sydney) a few weeks ago I saw sprinklers merrily soaking lawns and, when I enquired, was told that no water restrictions were in place. Hello?

Turning on the radio in the car as I race around feeding animals (we can’t get radio in the house), I hear news readers and radio jocks lamenting the storms in capitals across NSW and Queensland while we, their country cousins, are dancing, singing and screaming with joy at the sound of rain on the roof.

The disconnect between city and country is scary enough around food, but when it comes to water, on one of the driest continents on earth, it is downright terrifying. Australians consume more water, per capita, than anywhere else on earth, yet we refuse to consume recycled or reclaimed water. Why?

The CSIRO stated way back in 2004 that Australia could lead the world in water recycling, and State and Federal governments alike have invested public money in feasibility studies over the past 10 years. The only implementation issue every study identifies is the Australian public’s outright rejection of treated waste water.

Across all States and Territories of Australia, recycled water is used for industry and irrigation of parks, playing fields and golf courses. NSW’s Goulbourn Valley sees the benefit in using nutrient rich recycled water for irrigation of farms in one of Australia’s natural food bowls. Our most populated city, Sydney, recycles just 3 per cent of its water.

As more and more Australians travel the globe, they have showered, bathed in, and drunk (doubtless in blissful ignorance) recycled waste water in England, Spain, Florida, California, Singapore, Arizona, Belgium etc. So why are Aussies baulking at boosting their domestic water supplies with recycled water?

Why are our city slickers still so stubborn? Too precious apparently to sully themselves with treated sewage. Still over 60 per cent of the water supplied to Australian homes becomes waste water, which is minimally treated and pumped straight out into our rivers and ocean outfalls. As a nation of beach goers and fish eaters do we still really think that is a good idea in 2012?

In addition, when it rains in the suburbs and cities all that glorious water is seen rushing down kerbsides and stormwater drains where it increases flood activity in rivers and pollution in the seascape. Why aren’t we harvesting it?

It is incredible that such a young country, with such a dynamic and diverse population, seems to be so far behind the rest of the world in harnessing our natural resources. How can we possibly become waterwise if we don’t pay a premium for water usage or accept the inevitable and embrace recycled water?

Federal and State governments need to be prepared to make hard choices, however unpopular they are, in order to safeguard aquifers, serve Australia’s population growth and increased water usage for generations to come.

We are no longer a few hundred reprobates in Sydney Cove, but a population of almost 23 million, still acting like children in our wanton wastage of water and resources. Most Australians use approximately 400 litres of water a day each – that’s 1.5 billion litres of water down the pan every day. I wonder how much rain needs to fall each and every day to supply that much water? Do city slickers ever think about where their water comes from? Or make the correlation between rain and water usage? Judging by the distress the radio announcers greet grey skies and precipitation with, I guess not.

Fringe dwellers have to stop pumping effluent out into the seascape and start pumping treated water back into their homes. Treated effluent can be used as fertiliser on outlying farms, or compressed into bricks to be used as solid bio fuel. Every home needs to provide its own water for plants and lawns from a home purchased rainwater tank (pray tell why city dwellers get rebates for rainwater tanks, while people in the country, who rely on rainwater for all their needs, get none?). Tap water in most Australian cities is already full of chemicals and fluoride, a few more won’t even be noticed. And for those who care about what they put in their bodies, there are plenty of filtration systems to detox the water for drinking.

As a global village and as a nation we have to start connecting with where all these things that we take for granted actually come from – milk, vegetables, meat, water, power, clothes, fibres etc. We have to start to take responsibility for our impact on the environment and start to make conscious, informed and educated choices.

We have to start to think before we unconsciously consume. We have to take responsibility for our waste and use resources wisely. We have to stop acting as if the drought is behind us, and accept the fact that Australia is a land of dramatic climatic challenges, that climate change is a reality and both city and country have to work together to harness our resources.

Turn off the taps, waste not and want not, and stop seeing farmers as the enemy – we are the canaries in the coal mine, warning that all is not well with the rape and pillage of this great land of ours. Listen before it is too late.