Rain

What a difference a week makes

January 31, 2020

The drought has been savage. All the dams and waterholes emptied and there is no grass anywhere. Even drought tolerant native plants were dying. We were putting out 5 water bowls and some seed for the birds and over 100 were visiting a day. Overnight the bowls were being completely emptied by the local marsupials.

If we were careless about our gate then the cows would get in and destroy whatever greenery they could find, such as my bean and passionfruit vines, much to my annoyance.

Every morning there would be a parade of cars passing heading from the claims in Rubyvale to the water pipe in Sapphire to fill their water cubes. These are 1 metre square plastic cubes that take 1000l of water and are used for potable water as there is no mains supply up on the claims. We are on the mains - treated bore water that we double filter before drinking - fortunately.

Things changed, finally, in January. We got about 150mm of rain in a week! We went from

to

in the space of one week!

The birds and animals have dispersed back into the bush but the noise levels haven't dropped due to the exuberant re-emergence of frogs.