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It's more than fifteen years since I bought the property I christened ‘Gerolstein’.
Before it was officially on the market, and on one viewing. I took everything
at face value and didn’t ask any questions … there was no point, I knew nothing
about rural properties and their little quirks. What would I ask? I mean, how
nice! Bounded on two sides with a waterway apiece. How great! tight shelter
belts of tall trees and a forest of bluegum. 35 acres of green, green grass for
horses … Well, over the years we have discovered the little oddities amongst
the joys of our little kingdom.
The forest is gone, blown away by an inopportune cyclone, we are
intermittently part-flooded by one of the streams, the trees have to be trimmed
savagely each year … but, hey, that’s farming.
That’s the country. And these
things can be solved. But one solution has evaded us. The property (and its
race track) may look pretty flat, but they aren’t. There is a slight slope from
back (they hay paddocks) to the front (the houses and the drive). And where
there is a slope, rainwater will run. Every autumn and winter our drive becomes
a series of torrents and fish ponds, and the front paddock is a lake for paradise
ducks. Five or six contractors have had a go at diverting all this unwanted
water the few dozen metres to the boundary river. None succeeded. So this week
was last chance corral.
If that doesn’t fix the problem, nothing will. We’ll just have to go in
for breeding paradise ducks in the front paddock!
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