53 Dam

The bad thing about the Glockemann pump was that when I didn’t irrigate, the header tank overflowed, admittedly slowly. Either I could turn off the pump when the tank was full, a sensible solution, or increase the farm’s water storage. I opted for the silly route. I would make a small dam right by the tank to take any overflow. This would also be an excuse to use the tractor that had been sitting idle with flat tyres for 2 years.

Within an hour of starting it up, following half a day of pumping air, refuelling, greasing, and removing birds’ nests from the cabin and debris leaning against the sides, the tractor had made a dam. I ran the tank’s 8000 gallons of water into the dam to test it. It looked great in mind space reflecting images of wading birds, frogs burping and tadpoles swimming, a jungle of native plants fringing its edges and of course a few floating lily pads iridescent with dragon and damsel flies.

The following day it was empty. The porous gravelly soil was no good. I either had to spend a small fortune on sealing it with clay, estimated cost $500, or lining it with plastic and rubberised sheet, estimated cost $500. I opted for a much cheaper wheat silo-lining plastic sheet with poor UV properties and easily holed by animals like sheep and kangaroos, estimated cost $200. I would use old carpet from the tip held down by rocks to cover the edges of the silo plastic thus avoiding UV and physical damage. These solutions worked well. The overflow from the header tank splashing into around 12,000 gallons of water from a height of 2 metres complemented the scene. Within three years the mind dream became reality.