Gully Raker

We were in Sydney for a reunion of our old woodworking class on the weekend.

We really enjoyed it, but while we were away there was a real gully raker came through the farm – over 30mm of rain in less than 30 minutes. While it was really nice to get the rain, this sort can do a bit of damage. Especially since I’d just dug the trench from the dam at the bottom of the property to the tank at the top and, having been severely beaten up by the trench digger (again), had decided to leave filling it in until this week.

Result? One pump slightly buried in the contents of the trench:
Pump half buried             The rest of the soil headed for the dam

The truly exciting discovery was that I hadn’t closed off the pipe where the feed came off where the feed pipe for the opposite ridge came out of the main pipe. So the bottom 5 metres of pipe were full of mud. Grrr.
Mud in the pipe           Fresh mud all over the pump
So, off comes the connection to the pump, back up the hill and let a couple of hundred litres of water out of the tank, back down the hill to check, back up the hill to do it again and finally it’s all clean enough to reassemble.

Now I just need to hire the machine again and run it through the trench again (after pulling the pipe out) so I can put the pipe back where it belongs.

Lesson? The weather gods are not kind. Never leave what you can do this week until next week, even if the machine is no fun, because the gods will make it even less fun.

Les Mulder

Les Mulder

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