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.
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