There is something about growing up in drought that makes having too much water unfathomable. That’s the excuse I’m using for being so unprepared, two winters in a row, for the stinking, ankle-deep mud that has taken over our property.
It should not be a surprise. It was so muddy when we first saw this place that we swung past Bunnings before the second viewing and bought $15 gumboots. We were slipping through the cattle yards and sinking into the back paddock. But central Victoria had just been hit by the worst storm in years, so we figured it was a particularly wet month.
Reader, it was not. The cost per wear of those gumboots is down to three cents. And yet every time it rains and the paddocks turn to slush, I’m struck with the feeling it’s a fluke. It can’t be that wet all the time, can it?
My teenage years were spent under the twin threats of drought and bushfire. We had two “normal years” before the millennium drought hit, and by the time that was over I’d long since moved out of home.
When 2011 brought flooding rains that washed out the dam and sent an army of yabbies marching along the driveway, I was living in a city. You quickly become divorced from the weather as anything other than something that might affect your commute.
Flash forward a decade and we’re buying our own farm. Those formative dry years, and the experience of reporting on the black summer bushfires, guided all decisions.
It would be wrong to say we didn’t think about water before buying the place. I thought all the time about it running out. About how we would keep the tanks full, and whether we would have enough land to handle rotational grazing for up to four horses. I worried we’d run dry and not be able to defend the place in a bushfire. Then I worried we’d not be able to evacuate. I dismissed property after property for being too close to bushland or because access roads were unsealed, overhung with trees or unnavigable in heavy smoke.
This place was flat and bare – grassfire country only – and had sealed road access to the freeway and the sale yards, providing a safe evacuation point for the horses. It also had a domestic bore and an average annual rainfall of about 580mm. In a normal year it would be pretty wet, but when is it ever normal?
So I looked up the lowest annual rain record for the area (245mm, still enough to keep the grass if you don’t overstock). There is also a conventional wisdom that you should look north 50km to see what your home might be like under global heating, so I checked the climate records around Bendigo.
I wanted to make sure we would remain viable in drying climate, at least until the mortgage was paid off. But I forgot that abnormal could mean too wet, and that the climate crisis would bring floods as well as drought.
Last year served up the wettest spring on record in Victoria. We finished 2022 with almost 900mm in the gauge, more than a third of which fell in October and November. We were luckier than most: it doesn’t flood here, on a high cold plateau. It just never dries out.
Last August, fighting a wheelbarrow through a lake in the back paddock, I had a conversation over the fence with neighbours who have been here for 20 years. I said I was worried when we bought the place about running out of water, and they laughed and laughed.
You’d never run out of water here.
Every farmer I’ve spoken to has said the same. Even in the drought you can get a crop in. The ground is an upturned sponge and there’s no slope to take water away. It’s like spilling a cup of water on a table. We spent all summer trying to figure out where we should cut agi drains and were paralysed with indecision.
Now I think all our ideas were wrong: a drain won’t help if the water can’t get away. Best to pick one area to keep dry, build up the ground, and hope that’s enough. We’ve dumped 35 tonnes of sand in the area that is slowly becoming horse yards. Over summer we’ll put in a spoon drain with a sump to keep those yards dry. This isn’t revolutionary: it’s copied directly from a neighbour, and everyone who has horses anywhere near has the same set-up. It’s the only way to keep their feet intact.
This year, as I’m sure many readers will remind me, had a very dry start. The year-to-date rainfall hasn’t caught up with the average, although the 136mm we got in June is helping things along. I know it won’t last – the UN’s World Meteorological Organization has declared there’s a 90% probability of an El Niño this year, and my drought doomsaying may come true.
But for now it’s raining again. We’re expecting up to 40mm over the next five days and there are a dozen wheelbarrow loads of sand to go until the horses can stand in their dry yard. I’d best get on with it.
