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It hasn't rained properly here, aside from a storm on Boxing Day 2 years ago,
for 6 winters. We have had just enough rain for the farmers to get a crop, and
for the dams to be topped up a little, but this year is different. There has not
been enough for even that, and the soil is dust as deep down as a metre. It is
one of those things that one just adapts to and lives with, but when faced, as
we are now, with nowhere for the echidna to have a drink it really hits home.
There is no water. Not anywhere.
 We made the decision to plant 1000 little olive trees this year believing
that they stood a better chance of survival in the ground than they did in hot
little black pots which were too small anyway, being watered with salt (the last
of the dam) in the nursery. We put them in and forked bales of straw onto them
so that when we did get a shower the dampness would last longer. Well, we didn't
get that shower, and now we watch them gasping and keeling over gently as
another howling wind snatches any moisture there might have been away from them.
We have put bird baths all over the garden, and the shower water is caught in
one bucket while we get the temperature right, and then in another as we wash.
The first bucket goes into the bird baths so that the birds have soap free
baths, and the second bucket goes into 10 and 20litre drums with drippers in the
bottom on various trees, creepers and shrubs around the garden. It looks as if a
high wind tore through the rubbish tip and dumped its load here - but it is
working quite well. The water drips out and goes straight in rather than running
along the hard, dry surface and evaporating. The 2 acres of thick green kikuyu
lawn is no longer there - just the remains of the winter grasses and cape weed
skeletons holding the dust together.
We have a number of wallabies who come into the garden every evening and
drink from the birdbaths and the bins of bathwater we put out for them. We have
dug the bins into the ground so that they can't tip them up as they lean towards
the bottom, and we put a stick in so that should a small creature or bird fall
in the deep, there is something to hang on to and even crawl out on. The
wallabies don't care for this stick and remove it every night! All the trees in
the garden have been stripped of all their leaves to wallaby-at-full-stretch
height. There really is nothing for them to eat in the garden any more, and
while I know that I should just let Mother Nature do her stuff, I can't bear to
see any animal hungry or thirsty. So, I went to Sam's Grocery store and asked
what they do with the leftover veg - there's a box full there, Cheryl said. I
returned triumphant with a slightly smelly lot of old veg, sorted the best bits
into a kaylite box with a little water in the bottom, and covered the contents
with big cabbage leaves. That night I put out a cornucopia of broccoli, apples,
cauliflower, zucchini, grapes, cabbage leaves and a strawberry. In the morning
the cauli and broccoli were still there along with the grapes. It seems that Mr
Bush Sr has got to the wallabies too! Broccoli is not appreciated!
 The stump tail lizards, or blue tongued skinks are so funny;
if you go near them normally they give you the eye, open their mouths wide,
showing their blue tongue and the hiss ferociously! At the moment they seem
happy to have us as near as we like as long as we bring a drink. I took a plate
out this morning to a grubby old fellow near the birdbath, and he was delighted
to have a long, long, slow drink at about a lap a second off the edge of the
plate! Simon went over to his mother's house last week, and there, on the cool
laundry floor was a stump tale wondering where to go next. We thought that it
must be looking for water at the dog's bucket, and it led Simon a merry dance
through the house. He just managed to arrest it before it disappeared under the
bed! We have put a quiche dish under the access ramp as one in a chain of 'pubs'
called 'The Skink & Serpent' which are in every suburb around the house,
where all the blokes with short legs or no legs can get a drink too. And the
ants ….. spill a drop of water outside and the ants appear from every corner
of the farm in a matter of moments!
But back to that echidna, having seen him looking for water at the dry dam,
we found him in the roundabout the other day and while Michael kept an eye on
him, Simon raced in to tell me to bring some water. A glass and a plate to start
with, I thought; when I approached him he dug himself in and pretended I
couldn't see him. I did too - only I put the plate as close as I could without
touching him, and poured the water onto it with a tempting, I hoped, splash. We
stood back and watched. Eventually he uncurled and had a look at the plate, then
he dropped his snout into the water and drank and drank! Having finished that
lot he got onto the plate and sat with his hot feet in the cool puddle for a
while! By this time we had found a nice shallow dish with a rock in it to stop
it blowing away, and while he scuttled back into his dugout, we replaced the
plate and filled the dish. Out he came again, dropped his snout in and drank and
drank and drank. I really thought that we might be doing him an injury by
letting him drink so much, but then decided that if the dam was there he would
drink his fill anyway, so we left him to it. He sloshed his way off into the
scrub with what must have been a hot water bottle tummy, and we have filled 'The
Quill', as this new pub has been called, every morning and evening since!
Working in the olives we have to make ourselves just take what is happening
and not get depressed. It is so easy to be filled with panic when you see an
unhappy tree, and to want to rush off and get a bucket of bathwater for it; but
you can't. You just have to say what will be will be - and we will replace them
when this is all over. During the course of the day we apply sunscreen and fly
repellant, and when we go home we find that we have been lightly dusted all day
and are a nasty streaky sort of yuk brown. You can feel the dust on your teeth
often too.
 Everything, flora and fauna, is desperately thirsty now that the regular
watering holes have dried up. Some of the trees that survived the 82 drought
have given up and are dying back; it is so sad to see, and there is not a thing
we can do about it. We put in a huge dam in the 82 drought, and made the then
empty house dam bigger so that we would never run out of water again. Well just
look at us now! Two enormous empty dishes, and we are buying water in from St
Arnaud for the house and tree nursery. We get drinking water in 20L drums from a
friendly rainwater tank in town, and use what comes out of the taps as many
times as possible before it goes out. We do enjoy the wallabies coming into the
garden for a drink while we sit just the other side of the roses where the
shower water comes out onto the only bit of lawn left and drink a cold beer with
them! Then we go in to watch the news on TV and try not to get snappish when the
Weather Person says that we are in for some beautiful summer weather, with no
rain in sight for the next 5 days at least. I know that wet weather in the city
is depressing, but since we have to have the news from the city, it would be
great if sometimes they would include a little country weather and acknowledge
that no rain is no water and no water is no life.
The normally green and lush lawn has died off during the drought.
This is not a whinge; I am just telling it like it is. We will survive - and
with as many trees and wallabies, kangaroos, possums, echidnas, fat tailed
dunnarts, goannas, stump tails, ants …as the shower water will accommodate!
And I, for one, will never say that we have had too much rain again. There will
always be a bucket at hand to race out and catch that stray drip!
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