This water belongs in Mombasa ...

At the risk of appearing somewhat dated, I remember a few of the interactions between Karen, Baroness Blixen (Meryl Streep), and the head of her household staff, Farah (Malick Bowens), in the 1985 movie Out of Africa. When questioning the wisdom of damning a stream to provide water for her coffee plantation, Farah points out that this course of action is inadvisable because the water needs to go home to Mombasa. Towards the end of the movie torrential rain destroys her coffee crop, the dam breaks despite their efforts to save it and Karen says to Farah “ .. let it go, let it go, this water belongs in Mombasa anyway”. 

 It feels a little bit like that today as we have experienced the first serious rainy day in the Huon Valley. The one thing we have learnt is that we badly need to pay some attention to water management. In the first instance, there is a massive problem of water runoff – it may not be heading for Mombasa but it is heading off down the slope to the Huon River and taking all our topsoil with it. The repairs which we made to the rock retaining wall last week have made a small contribution to preventing the loss of topsoil, but there are still vast exposed areas that need building up. This is a major landscaping project that will need to be tackled in stages. 

 

A second problem relates to water conservation. At present we have one big water tank (about 30,000 litres) that provides all the water for the house. Not only is this insufficient storage to survive a dry summer (or visitors for that matter) but, when full, the tank spills onto the lower slopes causing a quagmire to develop. Furthermore, we have vast amounts of roof area where the rain water is simply funnelled out into the general torrent of water running over the slope. This is a terribly wasteful situation and it exacerbates the runoff problem. Not even Pepper could figure this one out.

 

We have a local water tank company coming around next week to examine how we can become completely self sufficient, drought proof the property and simultaneously make a solid contribution to reducing the degradation of topsoil due to runoff.

 

Notwithstanding the drama unfolding outside, the day was mainly spent huddled in front of the wood burning oven (burning some of the pine logs that were previously moved from one place to another requiring great physical and mental endurance). While I have scribbled, Cath has researched the relative merits of various power tools – specifically impact drivers vis-à-vis simple drills, and in particular the difference between the DIY range and the professional range. You can guess which range we will be buying …