On a steep block like ours at Dondingalong , the management of the water was of great importance. It was not that there was a lack of water . I never bothered to check the average rainfall at Kempsey , but it was much more likely to suffer a flood disaster than a drought disaster . Indeed , any time that I drove into town over the Macleay River Bridge I was made aware by the recorded markers of the heights that the river had reached on past flood occasions.

I found it most peculiar that when I remarked to some neighbours on how there seemed to be one area on the ridge road that held water for much longer than other parts I was informed that there was an underground flow of water at that spot . I questioned this , because the ridge road was just that , a ridge , and it was on higher ground there than the properties on either side , so where any flow came from , or went , I could not make out .

I was informed however , most decisively , that it was so . The circumstance was quoted of the employment of a dowser or water diviner who solemnly asserted that there was an underground creek flowing there or thereabouts. I still have my doubts , as I feel that had there been that much on the water table , there would have been a run off into the neighbour's dam . There wasn't , and even after a good rainfall , his dam leaked irreparably through its loose shale base.

Steep as the slope may have been , my orchard seemed able to keep most of its dampness under the surface . No doubt my heavy mulching of it helped , and the liberal spreading of gypsum broke up the heavy clay enough to take the water table deeper.

Frustrated with the water loss from his dam , the neighbour finally set up a large twenty five thousand litre header tank, and when there was , for its short time of survival , sufficient water in his dam , he pumped the water uphill so that then he had a gravity feed back to down his house.

Even so , when a couple of drier spells came along , he had to purchase tankers full of town water to replenish his supply. There was , alas , no way I could help him out , as I had been able to help out Leo.

I owned two pumps . The first was a demand pump , for the house supply . It was relatively small and of the most violent yellow colour . It was because of that colour , sufficient to catch the eye of anyone passing , that meant that whenever I left the block for a length of time , I had to dismantle it and store it in the shed . Then on my return I would trundle it back from the shed in the trusty wheelbarrow , set it on its small concrete base , and attach the various lines from my own in ground twenty-five thousand litre rainwater tank. It was always the first job to be done , for without the water , how could I make the necessary cup of tea ?

I was a most reliable little pump , and never failed me . I even had to prime it only once , and that was because I carelessly spilled its priming as I brought it over from the shed .

Had it actually given trouble , as for instance if there was a blackout , I had another thousand litre rainwater tank , fed from the garage roof . I could have run a hose from that to the house with no problems.

The other pump was a much more powerful one , a big Italian one. It was set down by the dam , and its placement was somewhat of an annoyance . I remember sitting on the front verandah , before we moved in permanently , watching a small , one driver trenching machine digging its way from the house downslope to the dam . It was moving so fast that it almost disappeared into the scrub before I got a picture of it , at the last moment .

It moved fast , but it did not move far enough . The contractor decided that the amount of agricultural pipe in two rolls ran out right at the base of a big gum to the left of the dam. Thus the feeder suction pipe from the dam itself was just a tiny bit too long for my satisfaction.

Not only that , but since it stopped under the gum , a tree notorious for dropping branches , I was forced to take some of the leftover metal etc . from the construction of the house and build a shelter over it . It was not one of my bigger successes , but it served ,(though gradually having pieces broken off it by falling branches ), until we left the block . It also gave me valuable experience for some later constructions .

Because it was set so far down into the bush , the pump suffered quite a few depredations from the omnivores . What nourishment a bush rat would receive from the polyplastic coating of an electric cable , I don't know , but I had to replace the gnawed through ones a couple of times . Luckily for the bush rats , the electicity was not on while we were away -- or else , one fried rat.

There was a tap attached to the pipe down there , to which I attached a hose , and that gave me a test as to whether the pressure was good enough . Sometimes the instrument setting the pressure gauge failed to work , and inevitably , on taking its cover off , I would find a spider had decided to take over in there. There were plenty of other spiders , unfortunately the fairly poisonous ones , the redbacks , who took up residence in the shed as well . Yet the most annoying creatures of all were the mud-building wasps , who got right into the spinner of the pump , so that when it first started a spray of dried mud and paralysed grubs would fly out

Often , I had to re-prime it , and that could be arduous , but generally there was enough water in the lines running downslope to provide for that .

One a couple of occasions I had to get Michael , the technician from the firm that sold me the pumps , to come out and check it . He was a bluff , cheerful , rangy country bloke , who , while doing any repairs needed would keep me laughing with some of his really rural anecdotes. His story of having to remove a dead calf from a deep well though was gruesome to say the least.

I put in the auxiliary line to the orchard myself , as well as the lines within the orchard . I don't think I did a great job , but it worked . The end of the main line was at the house , and there was a join there that meant that if needed we could run dam water into the house . I always checked throughly to ensure that it worked each time I went up , but our rain water tank never ran out and we did not have to use it .

A good pump or pumps are a rural essential , and I was lucky to have two good ones and good back up mechanics if needed .