Em Nau Farm BLOG

What the Difference a Weekend Makes

Over the Australia Day long weekend (26-28 Jan 13) we went from being in drought to massive floods.  Ex tropical cyclone “Oswald” dumped 722mm (about 28 inches) of rain on Em Nau farm .

We went from having an empty dam and half full tanks to massive overflows from all storage areas.  A week or so before the long weekend we had the bottom dam cleaned out of the silt and mud, so it went from being empty to full (and overflowing) in the space of 24 hours.

It was not so much the water that caused problems but the destructive winds.  We lost the roof off the goat standing area on the Saturday night and the wind brought down trees, dislodged the TV aerial and upturned numerous heavy objects.  The water did the most damage on our driveway which , once again, is scoured down to the clay base with all the road base gravel washed into our paddocks.

Live stock wise we were pretty luck with all the larger animals (cattle and goats) making it through the weekend unscathed, although the goats didn’t like getting wet when the roof came off the standing area and most definitely didn’t like the mud when walking about.  The chicken population didn’t fair so well with half a dozen of the old chickens “drowning” or being crashed when they all went for a dry spot in the brooder pen. The younger chickens that were about 2-3 months old lost about 25-30 in similar circumstances on the Sunday night which is a real shame.

With all the goings-on’s on the outside we were fairing a similar fate inside the big house with loss of power from 9AM on the Sunday (didn’t get restored until 6PM on Tuesday)and  no telephone or internet access.  The loss of power meant we had no flowing water but we made do with capturing the overflow from the rainwater tanks in buckets and storing that for later use, very primitive but effective.  We also were lucky we had a gas stove so we could at least still cook and have a cuppa when needed.

The “good thing” about the loss of power was the amount of spare time we had to play cards, read, sit in the car “listening” to the radio and talking– in summary more family or us time.  It is funny but when I went back to work one of the people there was saying they had a “terrible weekend” as they couldn’t log on to the internet, their mobiles had gone flat so they couldn’t even play games on that, they couldn’t watch TV or play electronic gaming consoles – overall a crappy weekend.  When I made mention of playing cards and reading and even talking they said nobody does that anymore and we should be expected to do that as the power supply should be there 24/7 in the 21^st century.  There biggest whinge was the kids ran them ragged because they couldn’t be entertained or entertain themselves.

The next couple of weekends will be busy as we repair goat standing areas and resurface the driveway but that is the price we pay for living in paradise.

Take care and may your dams all be full.