Dead Horse Creek Farm
Home Fire! Rainfall Environment Beef Walnuts

 

Autumn 2010

It has been a strange summer. Fortunately there was no repeat of last year's frightening fires but we now have a new fire alert system for Victorian with a new extra level: "Catastrophic". 

On such a day, all the fire authorities now advise that if you are near any potential fires in forest areas that there is now nothing anyone can do, even in a well prepared home with sprinklers and pumps. 

However, this summer, while not extraordinarily wet (like much of northern Australia), we have had the best summer rainfall for years. Now, at the beginning of autumn (March 7), both our house tanks of 33,000 litres each are overflowing (and we have not attempted to economise in our use of water). (Note: we have no reticulated water! It is all water off our farm shed roof.) 

I don't want to give the wrong idea. We still had to irrigate our walnut trees and the pasture is low for the steers and we are supplementing it with our hay and silage. We still had a lot of hot and dry weeks but, extraordinarily for Victoria, we had a lot of hot and very humid days with weather systems bringing moisture across the whole of the continent from unusually heavy monsoon rains in the tropical north. 

Most of our summer rain wasn't (as in my previous experience here) from the occasional southerly cold front but from the tail ends of the northern monsoons.

In my more than 30 years living in Victoria, I cannot remember anything like this. Melbourne summers were always hot and dry and very, very rarely humid. Sometimes I wonder if climate change isn't bearing down on us like a freight train.  


About DeadHorseCreek

Dead Horse Creek is situated in a picturesque valley in the southern foothills of Victoria's eastern ranges. We have enough rainfall (about a metre a year in non-drought years) to remain green all through summer and, with 2 permanent creeks, we manage to escape the Australian archetype of the "Wide Brown Land" during summer. 

We are surrounded by bush* on two sides and farms on the other two (see Farm Photos).

With the bush to the south and east, we are protected from the worst of the bushfire season with the prevailing wind pattern in summer coming from the north and west, especially on hot days.   


Previous seasonal headers:

Summer 2009

Spring 2009

Winter 2009

Autumn 2009

Fires, February '09

Summer '09

Spring '08

Winter '08

Autumn '08

Spring '07

April '07

 

 

 

 

 

 * Australian for "forest", for the benefit of any international readers