tropical low rain

Discussion in 'The big picture' started by gardenlen, Jan 26, 2013.

  1. mouseinthehouse

    mouseinthehouse Junior Member

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    Markos,
    stop teasing Len! :) Totally no offence to those who live in one, but the words 'intentional community' makes me get a tic and involuntary shudder. LOL No one would want me in their IC because I am a cranky weird b***h and would de-stabilise the peace and cohesiveness or something. Maybe when I'm 80+ and worried about breaking a hip and everyone else is also cranky.
     
  2. ecodharmamark

    ecodharmamark Junior Member

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    G'day MITH

    You sound like a perfect candidate for the kinds of IC's I've lived in, worked in, studied in, and sometimes, helped to plan. Seriously, people from any walk of life can find an IC that suits their individual needs. And if they can't, then they can always form one with other like minded and/or behaved individuals.

    That's the whole point of an intentional community - you make it however you want it to be.

    Cheerio, Markos
     
  3. gardenlen

    gardenlen Group for banned users

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    this is an intentional community, it is a community and we intended to live here for afore mentioned reasons, and not been here a year yet and we have made good acquantance with others in this section, so no doubt we could arrange a lift if needed we have already given others a ride to shops etc.,.

    good luck mark

    hardly a gas guzzler our car.

    len
     
  4. juhill

    juhill Junior Member

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    I agree ... we are stranded because of the floods, I'm unable to leave the property and we have several people that have already offered to take us into town offered to help clean up.... this is our community... not all of it good but I don't worry about that part.
    Community is what you make it.
     
  5. ecodharmamark

    ecodharmamark Junior Member

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    G'day Len

    Same to you

    Cheerio, Markos
     
  6. Steve Burgess

    Steve Burgess Junior Member

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    Had an experience recently that is relevant to this thread about the floods that leads to a discussion about 'community'.

    Was bitten by a brown snake last weekend at the height of the local flooding. The assistance of 'community', ranging from people on the other side of the creek who met us after we waded across and took us to the ambulance, immediate neighbours who checked on our house and animals when my wife was unable to return home from the hospital because of the flood ,other neighbours who repaired the road sufficent to make it passable by vehicles by the time we could return from hospital, volunteer SES who helped the ambulance cross a flooded creek, and ferried us back over a flooded river in a tinnie, hospital staff who were themselves stranded and worked under extraordinary trying conditions (electrical failure in and emergency department), friends who put my wife up overnight and those who drove us in stretches from one bit of floodwater to the next on the piecemeal jpurney home .. and so on (including the wider structure of government which provided medical and emergency services from our taxation system) .

    I enjoy privacy and isolation, and have spent a long time on my own in the bush by choice, however, I treasure equally the web of local community that we have woven oursleves into. I think the trick with being part of a community and social safety net is making a choice about how interwoven you need to be to effectively support yourself and others, without trapping yourself and others in 'community' situations you don't want to be in. I don't think permaculture is about 'going it alone', this would be an extraordinarily irresillient and unsustainable social design for living in our landscape.
     
  7. mouseinthehouse

    mouseinthehouse Junior Member

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    Wow! You are obviously here to tell the tale thank goodness. Good to hear you are ok and had such great support from the local community.
     
  8. gardenlen

    gardenlen Group for banned users

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    great to hear you are doing well steve,

    reckon i'd panic if a brown got me under flood conditions, hope all returns to normal asap.

    times like that do bring community together, funny around here with roads cut to normal vehicles no one asked or offered. we all can't have 4X's

    len
     
  9. juhill

    juhill Junior Member

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    I'd need more than 4X's len, a helicopter is looking good.
     

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  10. annette

    annette Junior Member

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    Glad to hear you are ok Steve. Nasty experience but great you had some help there.

    Juhill, is that your place? I didn't know Nanango got clobbered!
     
  11. Grahame

    Grahame Senior Member

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    Is that one of your hand-dug swales juhill? :)
     
  12. juhill

    juhill Junior Member

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    We got clobbered again had only just laid new pipes then Christmas got in the way businesses closed up for the holidays, we had 208mm overnight.
    Grahame... no I didn't dig that Oswald did it on his way through.
    Not sure what we can do I can't climb out waiting to hear what help is out there for us.
     
  13. Grahame

    Grahame Senior Member

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    Was that a road?
     
  14. juhill

    juhill Junior Member

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    It used to be our driveway, at each side of the photo you can see what is left of the driveway.
    I haven't been able to leave the property for a week and I haven't got much in the garden as the stinking hot weather cooked everything out there and I didn't have enough water to keep everything going, there isn't much in the fridge either plenty of canned stuff in the cupboard, but I'm getting sick of rice...... potaotes would be nice.
    I know there others worse off than us but I'm getting cabin fever....
     
  15. gardenlen

    gardenlen Group for banned users

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    g'day juhill,

    that was as in after the rain your driveway or still is your driveway?

    will guess it is the remains of your driveway, as not likened to the needs of public roads.

    looks like you have some serious run off problems, so maybe you need to look at whole of property and begin some control measures, we have neighbour near by with some serious run off issues, he is at the lower part so water from road and other properties impacts right across his gardens and driveways, so all the effort he put in, in the spring raking and collecting slashed grass from around the neighbourhood mostly has been washed away and he is now back to hard compact clay. he can't see though it might look futile he has to start a plan, or forever fight for his garden, as we couldn't this time build our driveway across contours, we get some run off issues nothing major and when we can afford it easily fixed.

    like that section of road that is a one lane road base path now, the council needs to rip up all that road again on that flat and put in a decent culvert, and build the road above flooding height.

    the state gov' talking proactive but then how do they spend that money when they closed health units down and sacked people? that may suit the reverse ethics people

    len
     
  16. juhill

    juhill Junior Member

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    that is part of our driveway and really when we think about it it's no worse than the council roads here they had whole bridges wash away, sections of the highway just gone.
    We had only just started on repairing 2010/2011 damage and hadn't done all the work, we were replacing 30cm pipes with 1metre diameter pipes
    Don't really think there is anything can be done about the runoff driveway goes over a gully all the dams upstream broke in 2010/2011 so nothing stopping the water now some stupid people around here put their driveways over the dam wall and they lost the lot including fences.
     
  17. NGcomm

    NGcomm Junior Member

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    Hey all - just wanted to comment about the rain and its management. Arrived at Zaytuna farm on the Saturday to do a weeks earthwork course with Geoff and over the weekend and the next couple of days got, I believe, around 300mm. Not as much as what you folks are talking about but still a good dump. What I found really interesting was walking around the property and checking out all the swales and dams and how they coped so well with everything. Geoff even opened up all the swales so the property could possibly dry out so some earthworks could be done later in the week (didn't happen but still a brilliant course). We did look at a property that had more than 600mm and all that happened was a 2mtr block of newly made swale had given away due to the cover crop not being mature enough to hold the earth as yet.

    Even when I left the following Saturday the Lismore airport was still washed out which bought it home to me how important good water harvesting and management is for all our properties. My little space only gets 600mm per year so I need to put in around 500mtr of swales just to gather enough for two small dams (around 1/4 megalitre each). Almost every property I have seen since doing the course has flashed at me like a neon sign "Bad design lives here" and yes, this includes public spaces, especially in Canberra which has so much open green spaces with all of them designed to run water off through storm water drains and into creeks and rivers. In these 1:50 or 1:100 events they just can't cope - the soil is the best water storage medium we have and both public and private sectors seem unable to design with this in mind...and as the 1:100 year events are becoming more like 1:10 year events I hope they learn soon.

    It's all in how we design....
     
  18. annette

    annette Junior Member

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    Here comes the rain again.....................and a tropical low..............been hammered with it since last night. eeeeeeeekkkk!
     
  19. gardenlen

    gardenlen Group for banned users

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    yep same here annette,

    33mm yesterday at least that again today (read in the morning), but been falling steady all day soaking in.

    len
     
  20. purplepear

    purplepear Junior Member

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    Farm manager/ educator
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    warm temperate - some frost - changing every year
    Hope all is well up there. We got 100 mm in the Hunter Valley with the last one. The same would be nice. Stay safe guys.
     

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