One of my brothers is a realtor, and today while he was showing a couple of properties to a client, they stopped at a truck stop in a small town near here to get something to drink, and lo and behold, there in the little country village of Salado, Texas, was a fellow from Queensland, (over here on vacation), talking with someone about the drought in Australia. Since my brother farmed most of his life, and still lives on a farm, they had a great conversation, comparing notes, and swapping drought stories. The only problem was, my brother said a translator would have come in handy at times. LOL.
Love,
Tex
Liz -- It's a Small World
Moderators: Rosie, Stanz, Jean, CAMary, moremuscle, JFR, Dee, xet, Peggy, Matthew, Gabes-Apg, grannyh, Gloria, Mars, starfire, Polly, Joefnh
Liz -- It's a Small World
It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.
-
Liz
- Rockhopper Penguin
- Posts: 1540
- Joined: Tue Sep 13, 2005 5:23 pm
- Location: Qld Australia
- Contact:
Hi Wayne. Well it is a small world. Wonder what part of Queensland he comes from.
About the translator-- I hope that you are not insinuationg that we Aussies actually have an accent
The drought that we are having at the moment is the worse experienced in living memory. People out west would have struck it like this but it is not usually as severe as this on the coast. Problem is that most of the population lives on the coastal areas & the demand for water is just too much for what is available. We have a water tank & have always used that for our drinking water, tea coffee & cooking, mainly because it tastes so much better than town water. We even used to cart it back to Brisbane for use during the week before we came up her to live. You were not then permitted to have a rainwater tank in the Metropolitan area but now they are paying people to put them in. We have a filter on the tank tap & that takes out anything that we wouldn't appreciate consuming. Only time we had any trouble was when a frog decided to commit suicide in there. Tasted terrible.
We had to empty all the water out, clean it out & pray for rain again. 
There is no chance of anything getting in there now as it is well protected by screening now.
Love
Liz
About the translator-- I hope that you are not insinuationg that we Aussies actually have an accent
The drought that we are having at the moment is the worse experienced in living memory. People out west would have struck it like this but it is not usually as severe as this on the coast. Problem is that most of the population lives on the coastal areas & the demand for water is just too much for what is available. We have a water tank & have always used that for our drinking water, tea coffee & cooking, mainly because it tastes so much better than town water. We even used to cart it back to Brisbane for use during the week before we came up her to live. You were not then permitted to have a rainwater tank in the Metropolitan area but now they are paying people to put them in. We have a filter on the tank tap & that takes out anything that we wouldn't appreciate consuming. Only time we had any trouble was when a frog decided to commit suicide in there. Tasted terrible.
We had to empty all the water out, clean it out & pray for rain again. There is no chance of anything getting in there now as it is well protected by screening now.Love
Liz
A smile is a light in the window of your face that shows that your heart is at home
Liz,
I'll ask my brother if he mentioned a city, or which part of Qld he was from.
Until about the 1950s, rural residents in many parts of this country also used tanks to catch and hold roof water, but somewhere after that point in time, people just sort of stopped using them, I suppose because after the drought of the 50s, shallow wells were much more reliable, so they didn't really need them, (they considered the wellwater to be cleaner). I remember that the tank water was so much "softer" than the water that we pumped out of wells.
We had the same problem with the shallow wells, that you had with the tank -- snakes and frogs would sometimes crawl into them and die. Nobody could ever figure out how they got in there, but they got in anyway. Everytime it happened, of course, we'd have to pump the well dry for a few days, to get rid of the "off taste". A neighbor once had a skunk get in his well, but we were never that unlucky. LOL.
As far as I know, nobody that I am personally aware of ever got sick from drinking "poluted" water. These days, something like that would scare the pants off most folks. Maybe we were tougher back in those days, (or just didn't know that we were supposed to be deathly afraid of water polution). Public water came along in the early 1970s, and we slowly stopped using our wells, though most of them are still in place, in case they're needed. Of course, during droughts, the public systems are usually forced to ration water usage, also.
Love,
Tex
I'll ask my brother if he mentioned a city, or which part of Qld he was from.
Until about the 1950s, rural residents in many parts of this country also used tanks to catch and hold roof water, but somewhere after that point in time, people just sort of stopped using them, I suppose because after the drought of the 50s, shallow wells were much more reliable, so they didn't really need them, (they considered the wellwater to be cleaner). I remember that the tank water was so much "softer" than the water that we pumped out of wells.
We had the same problem with the shallow wells, that you had with the tank -- snakes and frogs would sometimes crawl into them and die. Nobody could ever figure out how they got in there, but they got in anyway. Everytime it happened, of course, we'd have to pump the well dry for a few days, to get rid of the "off taste". A neighbor once had a skunk get in his well, but we were never that unlucky. LOL.
As far as I know, nobody that I am personally aware of ever got sick from drinking "poluted" water. These days, something like that would scare the pants off most folks. Maybe we were tougher back in those days, (or just didn't know that we were supposed to be deathly afraid of water polution). Public water came along in the early 1970s, and we slowly stopped using our wells, though most of them are still in place, in case they're needed. Of course, during droughts, the public systems are usually forced to ration water usage, also.
Love,
Tex
It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.
-
Liz
- Rockhopper Penguin
- Posts: 1540
- Joined: Tue Sep 13, 2005 5:23 pm
- Location: Qld Australia
- Contact:
Wayne, they are talking about using recycled sererage water in the near future. It is used in some parts of Australia for gardens & such but not as yet for drinking. I believe it is used in some parts of USA as it is in other parts of the world. It is the 'Yuk" factor that stops it for some people but when you come to think of it we happily drink water from dams that all sorts animals, including humans have been depositing waste in for ages so you would wonder what the problem with it was.
I remember when I was a child everyone would use tank water to wash their hair because it was so soft.
Love
Liz
I remember when I was a child everyone would use tank water to wash their hair because it was so soft.
Love
Liz
A smile is a light in the window of your face that shows that your heart is at home
Liz,
We have a lot of "involuntary" recycling already in this country, as upstream cities dump their treated sewage into the wateways, and then try to convince the downstream cities that the coliform pathogens that are showing up in their water samples must be coming from some other source. LOL.
As fast as some areas of Texas are growing, they will be forced to use recycling in a few decades, (or sooner), because their growth is outstripping the water supply in both wells drilled into aquafers, and surface lakes. Virtualy all the water is already committed, and there is nowhere else to turn, as growth continues. Curtailing usage, and developing satisfactory recycling methods will soon be unavoidable.
Back in the good old days, before huge cities created such immense sources of concentrated polution in this country, the water flowing downstream normally purified itself by percolating through sand, pebbles, moss, etc., and the sunshine on the water completed the purification process. Nowadays, the water downstream of those cities is green with moss and slime, which thrives on the organic phosphates in the effluent, and it can't even begin to purify itself, anymore.
You're right. I can remember my mother and aunts using tankwater for washing their hair, long past the time when it was used for anything else.
Love,
Tex
We have a lot of "involuntary" recycling already in this country, as upstream cities dump their treated sewage into the wateways, and then try to convince the downstream cities that the coliform pathogens that are showing up in their water samples must be coming from some other source. LOL.
As fast as some areas of Texas are growing, they will be forced to use recycling in a few decades, (or sooner), because their growth is outstripping the water supply in both wells drilled into aquafers, and surface lakes. Virtualy all the water is already committed, and there is nowhere else to turn, as growth continues. Curtailing usage, and developing satisfactory recycling methods will soon be unavoidable.
Back in the good old days, before huge cities created such immense sources of concentrated polution in this country, the water flowing downstream normally purified itself by percolating through sand, pebbles, moss, etc., and the sunshine on the water completed the purification process. Nowadays, the water downstream of those cities is green with moss and slime, which thrives on the organic phosphates in the effluent, and it can't even begin to purify itself, anymore.
You're right. I can remember my mother and aunts using tankwater for washing their hair, long past the time when it was used for anything else.
Love,
Tex
It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.