1st July 2009

Although we made great advances last week, we had been disappointed not to find water. Dave however was convinced we could do better and spent ages sighting up and down the section and decided the land might be lower on the other side, down the gully. We had only ventured down there on a couple of occasions and had not even established where our section ended, as most of it was a thick mass of blackberry brambles. So he set off on a separate mission, armed with secateurs, cutters and ropes. And he discovered that once you got through the brambles, it opened out into an area of rather nice native bush with some fairly large trees. He came back with a new site in mind and managed to persuade our trusty bore diggers to try again, which they did.

Off down the gully....

where the mass of brambles and gorse opened out into...
some rather nice bush.

A bit tricky for the diggers but they were willing to give it a go.

And yay, we have water!

Just needed a pump to draw it up

It was at about 5 1/2 meters below the surface (and probably about 1 1/2 metres lower than they had reached last week). But when they lowered the sandtrap in, they hit something hard, probably river gravel, so it was very lucky that it was just low enough.

So now in terms of our favourite game 'Squatter', we can have 'Irrigated pasture' and not bother about 'General drought' or 'Local drought'. Just hope we dont land on 'Bore dries up' though!

And the rest of the water they brought could fill up our pond, which was very empty because of all the trees we have planted - 140 at the last count.

Meanwhile back on the surface, Dave was dealing to the gorse bushes with his not yet patented gorse bush remover (which only broke twice)

while I spread some mulch round the last few trees. And yes, you can actually see them from a distance now. Grow little plants grow!