WATER SHORTAGES.

In yesterday's newspaper we discovered that here in Whangarei water is coming into our supply from the river because of low rain and, consequently, low dam levels.  We have had some wet days but it has been more drizzle or short showers than a good drenching.

Auckland is also asking people to use less water suggesting showers of less than four minutes and says that August will have to be twice as wet as usual to bring levels back to normal.  

Meanwhile in the Southern Highlands between Sydney and Canberra my stepdaughter has been buying water for all of this year and last year (and possibly even longer) .  I am sure she won't mind me sharing a paragraph from her email earlier in the week.

"There is concern here about the long-term weather forecast - it doesn't involve any rain.  They are saying that it will be a dry Spring.  Every morning there's a constant flow of trucks going into B....... Station with hay bales, silage and grain for the cattle and sheep.  I can't imagine how much it must cost.  The man who owns B....... Station also owns a few other large properties in the area so he must store all the feed on one of the other properties.  The dust is unbelievable - even in our house.  C & J from across the road have sold all their cattle because they can't afford to keep feeding them.  No-one seems to know what is going to happen.   A lot of towns are running out of water and are having water trucked in.  This is the worst drought we've ever seen.   Hope our local water supply doesn't dry up or we'll be in trouble.   Amazingly our dam still has quite a lot of water in it so we can keep pumping water up for the garden although we can't get to everything so there have been a few losses."

On a happier note here is a photo I took of the waterfall down the road on our walk yesterday.