Well, there's not a whole lot going on in the world of Baleboosteh at the moment. Besides taking Amber backwards and forwards to the Doctors for blood tests, things have been very quiet... very hot, but still quiet.We did have one scare though...
It is the middle of summer here right now and we have had a few hot days. I know numerous people from Melbourne, especially some of my family members, were complaining about it being 40 degrees there the other day. As many of you know, I don't live in the city where many of the houses and apartments have air conditioning and are close enough to the coast to get some sort of breeze from the water. We live inland a bit, close to the coast but far too far away to reap any of the benefits of sea breezes. We have a real dry heat here and we certainly don't have an air conditioner, our house isn't even properly insulated, so we might as well be living in a tin shed on hot days. Our house feels like an oven on 26 degree days. We often have days with temperatures in the mid 40's, so to listen to my family whinge about one day of 40 degree heat while they are sitting in their double brick house with the air conditioner on, well, let's just say I couldn't help but roll my eyes.
Since we were in for a few hot days, I decided to fill up our water tank... that's right 'tank'. We live to far away from town to have 'town water' - mains water supply, we live on tank water and mainly rely on rain water from our roof to fill the tank which is a bit of a concern when we are in the middle of one of Australia's biggest droughts on record. So how am I going to fill the tank? Luckily we have a bore down under the river that we overlook and we are able to pump up water when it hasn't rained in a while to top up the tank.
We have lived here at this house for 4 years now, and since we have been here we have never seen the river so dry - it is a huge river, really wide and very long and at the moment we have the smallest little trickle of water running down it. This is a river that we have seen 120ft trees float down in the flow of the water during previous wet seasons. You really wouldn't know it was the same river.
So, I went to turn the bore on to fill up the tank. Sometimes it can be a bit slow, but when it had been on for a few hours and the water level in our tank hadn't changed, I though it was a bit strange. Maybe, considering how little rain we had the bore was a bit low... too low to pump any water up. I decided to try it again 2 days later... still nothing. We reported it to our real estate agent (we rent). After contacting the owner, she told us the bore had run dry and we would probably have to buy water.Ahhhh, are you serious??? I do between 2 - 5 loads of washing a day, not to mention loads of dishes, showers, toilets, there are after all 5 people living here and with the kids on school holidays we are using even more water than usual. Not only that, we live on top of a ridge, with a very long, steep and very bumpy drive way, I doubt a water tanker could even get up here. Also, not forgetting our landlord has made it crystal clear we are not watering the garden enough. I think them coming over here and watering the garden ALL day long is a clear enough message! So, since I can't stand them hanging around the house all day, I have been watering the garden myself - so they wouldn't have to, but it seems kind of ridiculous considering the rest of our area we live in is on level 4 water restrictions. I have now been doing what they consider the 'right thing' and watering the garden, using all our tank water and now the bore is not working and they are telling us we have to buy water in! HA! Gotta love that!
I was doing a good job at what I do best... getting worked up about it, when the landlord came to have a look at it today. After fiddling around with it for 10 minutes, suddenly it was working again. We now have a full tank of water again! Woo hoo! What a relief. I think what happened is that they had the little tap to the bore open to one of the other tanks on the property while we were away in Sydney and have forgotten to turn it back. Bore water is not very nice, it smells disgusting, it leaves huge red stains in the shower and leaves a thick white build up of calcium on our kettle, but in situations like this, it is better than nothing. Right now every drop is precious.
For the last few days I have been hoping it would rain so the tank would fill with nice fresh rain water... did it? Of course not, but since we now have a full tank of bore water again, guess what?! This afternoon.... it rained...
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Above photos were taken from our house during a recent bushfire of the river we overlook, click on the images to view larger. You will see just how dry the river now is - it even has trees growing in it!
.... Just another day ....
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