The View from Vinegar Hill: It's WET here.

Tuesday 11 January 2011

It's WET here.

Well, it is nearly a year since the last posting on this blog. For a blog that was supposed to keep family and friends informed of what we have been up to it has not been very successful. That is my fault - too many other things getting priority.

Right now, though, I just want to share with you the flood situation here.

We, of course don't have a flood, being on top of a hill, though there is so much rain that the water can't get away fast enough and is often running in shallow sheets across the ground. But nothing like other people in the Lockyer Valley and Toowoomba, who have experienced the worst, most destructive floods on record on this area - and some of the most destructive, if not the most destructive, in Australian history.

Here we have had 321mm of rain in the first 11 days of January, which is 71% of the highest January rainfall ever recorded in Gatton since records began in 1897, so it looks like we might be breaking some records again this month (December was the wettest December on record here, and 2010 was the wettest year (by more than 200mm). Of course our rainfall might be different to the rainfall recorded down in the valley where the official weather station is, but I'm pretty sure that they broke all records there too.

Our front and back creek crossings are currently under water; the back one has been under water more often than not since early December. There is no way out until the water goes down, however right now that doesn't matter - if I got out onto the road there would be nowhere to go. All the bridges between us and the rest of the world (Gatton, Brisbbane, Toowoomba) are flooded and impassable.

At present that isn't a problem. I have about a month's supply of food, and of course we are self-sufficient in electricity and water, so it is no great hardship to just stay here and potter along with jobs to finish the house (those jobs that can be done while it is bucketing down raining).

Here's what our back creek crossing looked like at about 1430 this afternoon.

All for now.

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About Us

We live on 34 ha of sandstone bushland in the southern Helidon Hills, overlooking the Lockyer Valley 100km from Brisbane (Australia). It is registered and managed as Land for Wildlife.

This is one of the driest areas of Southeast Queensland and getting drier. And while the Lockyer Valley is highly fertile and known as the "salad bowl of Queensland", our soil is decomposed sandstone (with the emphasis on "stone") - there is very little actual soil.

Three of our major objectives are to live lightly on the Earth, prepare for peak oil and the increasing impacts of climate change, and to demonstrate by our lifestyle that the average person can go a long way in improving the sustainability of their lifestyle.

So far our self-sufficiency efforts extend to:
# 1.98Kw solar power that runs everything except our main water pump (and that will be replaced with an electric one sooner or later);
# a 200 L solar hot water system using evacuated tubes;
# about 120,000 L of water storage, of which half is for household use and half for gardens and fire-fighting;
# small passive solar house (nearing completion);
# composting toilet (our design), with the resting bin run as a worm farm to produce a rich fine soil that is buried under new gardens and under the mulch around fruit trees;
# worm farm and sand filter (our design) for all our waste water; and
# a vege garden that waxes and wanes depending on other priorities, but in the past has produced about 80% of our vegetable consumption.