Chapter 6 - What a Dam Problem

It feels like only yesterday I was whinging about no rain and having no water at all. Having to carry buckets of water to the Moringa plants. Creating makeshift hoses just to gravity feed one water tank to another. And as I write this, I have recorded 150mm of rain today. 100mm of that fell in the last hour.

Does Moringa Float?

My field of initial Moringa plants is holding up well. I know the plant hates wet feet and at this point I am hoping the influx of rain rushing into the fields does not uproot the juvenile Moringa plants and wash them away.

Luckily I planted these Moringa trees on a hill, so the water should wash down and flood my neighbours property instead. Queensland never fails to amaze me with the weather shifts, it’s either a drought or a flood. I am very happy for the rain however, my new water tank is overflowing and my dams are at bursting point.

I am flooded in at the moment though, my roads are now little creeks and my 2wd just won’t make it over them. Flash flooding on my own farm. Who would have thought.

It’s like that old saying..

When it Rains it Pours

As I sit here writing the next instalment of the Moringa Farm Chronicles, I need to keep checking the surrounding yard since the water is about an inch from entering my back door. There is something oddly satisfying about watching your floor mat float away from the door.

My overflows on the water tanks are spraying with more pressure than I can currently get from my hose. What was my beautiful view of trees and nature, is now a beautiful view of a waterfall.

My water gauge goes up to 120mm of rainfall before overflowing. I emptied it once and stopped tracking it at around 150mm of rain in total in under 24hrs. Monitoring Facebook, I see locals talking about our road being under water and saying they have never seen it like this before. It’s a strange feeling knowing I can’t even get up to the small town of Rosedale. But we have plenty of food and I can’t see myself running out of water anytime soon.

The Main Dam Issue

About a month after buying the property, a mate came up to have a look. We walked around one of the dams and he pointed out we are going to lose it as the wall is about to break. All those years of never studying agriculture or water management served me well here as I just looked at this massive hole in the dam wondering how you fix this?

I never knew of overflows or the importance of them. In my head, a dam fills up and when it is too full it just spills over the edge. Physics, however, brings me back to Earth pretty quickly. It turns out if you don’t have an overflow in the dam, the dam will break the wall and cut out its own river. Often resulting in losing most of, if not, all of your water.

So what do I do? I’ve never repaired a dam, my tractor is out of action more than it’s being used. And I don’t think the tractor could repair this monster of a task anyway. At least not an inexperienced operator like me. I am about as likely to run the tractor into the dam as I am to fix it.

So, I do what I do best and get inventive.

Tyres, Trash and Terrible Engineering

There has been a lot of trash left behind on this property. Scrap steel, tyres, chemicals, household items and just general trash. As we don’t have rubbish removal here, not even garbage trucks, it's become quite the obstacle to overcome.

I took a ute load of recyclables, chemicals, rubbish and tyres to the local rubbish tip. It turns out rates up here don’t cover tip runs (or for me, rubbish trucks) but they will take recyclables for free. But they charge to dump rubbish. This is also why most farmers just burn all their stuff, why make it inconvenient and expensive, completely deterring any incentive to remove rubbish in a practical way.

Trying to make sense of council or government rules is just too hard work and I could write at least four more installments of the Moringa Farm Chronicles on this topic alone.

So once they told me it is $30 per tyre to dump, I decided to keep all my tyres. They can’t take the chemicals as they have no utilities to dispose of it, again I can’t make sense of that. Dumping this kind of chemical anywhere is going to cause so much environmental damage and poison everything it touches. I am not going to dump it, don’t worry. I just have to work out where I can take it so it is correctly disposed of.

So, with all my genius I figure I have a hole in the dam. I have landfill in the ute. Why not throw the tyres into the hole and start filling it up. I solve two problems, get rid of the hard rubbish and fix the dam at the same time.

Not All Ideas Are Good Ideas

2 days after I started filling in this hole, by walking up and down the bank carrying tyres and concrete like an uncivilised barbarian, another neighbour comes over. He is interested in some stone irrigation pipes that are lying around the property. I can’t use these yet and by the time I know what to do with them, they will be sitting around for another couple of years under the weeds. Knowing my luck I will hit them with my tractor’s slasher and destroy it all anyway.

So I told him they are all his. He has some irrigation to sort out in his home and these are exactly what is needed. As we talk a bit, I show him the dam and of course he sees the hole in the dam wall that is looking more like a crater that is going to wipe out a race of reptiles again.

He laughs at my pitiful attempt at loading the hole with tyres. It’s somewhat similar to filling a pool with a broken glass, I imagine. He quickly reminds me that tyres float, oh they also make dirt that go on top of it buoyant and bouncy. So my idea was not only terrible, it was making the situation worse somehow. It’s hard being this efficient.

The good news came after though, since there was 200mm of rain due to fall the next few days (and it did), he said the dam wall won’t last, and I will lose the dam. It made sense as I could see the barrier getting thinner and thinner, a good flood of water would knock that last inch of wall out and goodbye to my dam.

The neighbour south of me would probably wonder why there is a sudden wall of water heading their way as well…

This is what an overflow should do. This is another two dams on the property with one overflowing into the other

Real Machinery Enters the Fray

It turns out this neighbour has a digger at his house. A real piece of earthmoving equipment that he went back home and walked over. It’s raining at this stage but it doesn’t stop this mini terminator from ripping up dirt, throwing around trees and cutting out channels with little effort.

Granted this kind of skill would take years to learn and utilise. He is a skilled operator and did not waste a second cutting out a channel from the lowest point of the dam. There once was an overflow in place, but over the years of neglect, it was completely overgrown with new growth that strangled the outlet for the dam, which is why it started cutting into the wall.

The channel took about 30 minutes to make, I think if I had tried this I would still be there 5 days later working out why my water won’t flow uphill. It’s like watching a surgeon with precise accuracy just throw earth around. The digger starts to fall, the bucket catches him. The digger can’t get up the muddy hole, so the bucket pushes him straight up. It was a dance, similar to how Uma Thurman would slash through bad guys in Kill Bill, nothing was stopping this digger from cutting a channel to relieve pressure from the dam.

A Hole to Fill

The digger walked its way around the dam, soggy ground wouldn’t stop it from its final destination. I thought climbing up the dam wall might be an issue, which is also why I had no idea how to fix it and even get machinery to get to the hole let alone fill it. But this wrecking ball of a machine ripped out regrowth that was in the way and scaled the dam wall like a mountain goat. I would have given anything to hear David Attenborough narrate this majestic machine as it went to work on the dam hole.

“Here lies some tyres, an invasive species contributing nothing to the cause and assisting with the destruction of this habitat. Now watch as the arm of the digger moves with such precision, snatching each tyre and throwing them out with ease. A much easier job than the buffoon who placed them there.”

At least that’s what I thought he would say as I embarrassingly watched on in the pouring rain. Moving earth around, the hole was filled in and flattened over and over with the digger driving while grading it at the same time.

Back From The Brink

It would not take long to see if this work was a success. The dam was already full before this next lot of 150+mm of rain appeared. The overflow worked a treat, and as water started to trickle down it, I felt a sense of relief. This trickle would soon turn to a river however and when water flows it has a way of carving out its own path.

But with such experience and operator skills, the track remained how it was cut and the water just flowed out of it and around the dam. It’s off to a neighbour’s property now where I presume they will either be happy for more water, or confused as to how a new channel is being cut into the ground. Either way, my dam is working again and it is certainly better than a tidal wave coming to visit.

The filled in hole has stood up against this rain as well. I need to investigate further when I can cross this new river that appeared to see if anything has eroded away. But from what it was a couple of days prior to now is an incredible achievement.

I would have lost this dam, no doubt at all. This amount of rain would have cut the wall in half and just channeled out. The timing almost feels poetic, from coming to look at a few pipes to fixing the dam all within a few hours. Then this monsoon arrived two days later. It’s almost divine intervention if you believe in such.

All I know is I am bloody happy the damned dam is fixed for the moment and I have an absolute abundance of water. A real change of pace to four weeks ago when I was seriously worried about our water running out.