Last night I was had a look in the cupboard with all the hydro electrics in and just by scanning the lights I could tell the power was down. I looked at battery volts, well down from full charge, and voltage to the 25A battery charger. Oh bugger, the charger was heroically trying to charge but was only being fed 165V. Might be heading for a melt down so I swapped to the 15A charger and at full output, it was dragging the volts down from 240 to 205V. Acceptable. I was pretty sure it was the creek so low that the hydro was running out of water and sucking air. So I went to bed.
There was no crisis and the system equipment and batteries could carry the load for a while. Next morning I went down the creek and sure enough there was no water going over the weir and the pipe was sucking air, which is a very poor substitute for a water turbine. This has never happened before in 33 years of running the system, that I have run out of water in the middle of Feb. Not even close. Normally there is more water in the creek than you can poke a stick at … without the stick being snatched from your grasp and flushed down to Innisfail. So now I had to fit the smallest nozzle to the down pipe (I thought I would avoid using the word penstock as I have been faced with many blank stares before). This smallest nozzle is usually the last resort towards the end of the dry season. So I know the water table is at it’s lowest and there is no relief in sight. I have looked on BOM for signs of a monsoon trough and none till the middle of March at the earliest. Perhaps not then. So far this year I have had about 15% of the usual rainfall. This does not bode well for the power in the coming dry season. No build-up of the water table, no power in the dry. I Have 30 solar panels, which sounds good, but they are old ones, not your 250W panels of the current installations. Even when new 12 were 90W and 18 were 60W. They slowly degrade so I am getting less.
So to get through the coming year, I need it to be sunny all day and rain heaps at night. I have put my order in with Hughie, the farmers’ god, the great irrigator in the sky, but I don’t suppose I will have any more luck than the farmers’ frequent requests. Fear not dear guests, by hook or by crook, I will endeavour to deliver electrons to the cottages. They may not be the green ones you are used to and may be tinged with a little black as I patch in a stand-by generator at times of maximum demand, but I can assure you they will work equally well.
When I went down to check the creek, I found that the trash rack to stop debris clogging the hydro was askew, and the water was by-passing the rack. Further, the 2 devices which secure the rack when it floods were missing. Somebody had taken the devices and disturbed the rack. The devices were re-cycled parts from a sailing dinghy, sliding fairleads to be exact. In glorious stainless steel, they were high quality devices from 35 years ago I had adapted to lock the rack in place. Totally irreplaceable, totally useless to anyone else as the tracks were still riveted to the weir. Thoughtless vandalism by one or a few of my guests. I have no idea when it occurred as I only check the system when it needs attention. And was I angry? Yes! Of all the senseless destructive things to do! If a piece of debris in the creek went down the pipe that was bigger than the nozzle …system shutdown. I am also faced with replacing the rack locks with some other devices. Also replacing the nozzle went wrong as debris from lack of a rack got into the pipe and I had to repeat the process to remove the sticks.
As usual when I get all steamed up, I had a think about it. Actually my guests treat me very, very well. They respect the place and property and some even mop their way out of the door. Most of the kitchen equipment is donated, some by accident some obviously by intention, such as a toaster decorated with love hearts and ‘we love Possum Valley’. I can do a little profiling here, and am quite confident that this was girl/girls aged 6-12. Thank you. I have been donated more fry pans than a scout jamboree would require. I have been donated paintings and other works of art from young and old. I run a surplus on pillow cases and towels. I have lost one book, I have gained a library. Thank you so much dear guests for your consideration. It did not take me too long to put my disappointment at thoughtless damage into perspective. Of 30,000-40,000 guests, I have been disappointed a handful of times. How lucky am I?
As in current cop shows, I will now do profiling of the likely culprit of the infamous “trash rack crime”. Almost certainly a young male 9-13 years old. I raised girls, my grandkids are boys, conclusion is that boys definitely into destructive testing of all objects in the material world. Girls much less so. The culprit was most likely in the company of similar aged boys. The mayhem and mischief would be amplified by dares and pathetic attempts to be ‘masters of the universe’. How do I have this insight? You may not believe this, but I was once a boy myself. Reaching down through my memories I can find many even more stupid things that I did which I am not going to tell you about.
So a big thank you to all my guest who treat me so well. To the thoughtless boy, each experience has its own feedback, learn, grow.
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