Living in a sparsely populated rural area means that there are no first-world facilities like water, sewage and garbage collection services in the vicinity. We have to manage those ourselves.
We had a three month period towards the end of last year where we saw almost no rain. Our water tanks which can store up to 55,000 litres (14,500 US gallons) were all but dry. This situation saw us having to buy water in to keep us going. Here’s the water carrier delivering 12,000 litres (3,000 US gallons) to us. This cost us $120 (which is quite inexpensive all things considered).
12,000 litres would be enough to keep us in water for about 5 to 6 weeks. As it turned out we saw a return of the rain a week or so after this delivery and, given that we’re in our storm season, the tanks have been full ever since.
lookANDsee 
I’ve always (well in the last few months!) wondered what rural people do with their garbage… what do you do with it? Bury it? Burn it? Take it into town?
Hi Kaz. Household rubbish is collected in a garbage can in our carport; paper, cardboard, plastic and glass is sorted into bins; compostable scraps are put into our compost bin. I visit the Armidale Recycling and Landfill Depot once every 4 to 6 weeks and deposit the garbage in the landfill, and the rest at the recycling depot. There’s no charge to visit the recycling centre, but I pay $3.80 to deposit a half-garbag in the landfill.
That is a serious amount of water use! We have two 5,000 gallon tanks, 5,000 gallons lasts about 9 months. That is for drinking, showering, washing dishes & clothes washing. Toilets are compost toilets, no water usage.
I hope you get some rain, we have had plenty here.
Regards, Keith.
Hi Keith. Yes, the composting toilet makes all the difference. I have a flow-meter inline with the water pump and, years ago when I was still monitoring it, we were using about 300 litres per day.
You really had a dry period there for a while and although a hassle that water delivery was still good value!
It is good to have you back blogging again, I missed your excellent photos… I’m assuming the computer is behaving itself now?
Hi Rod. Yes, thanks, computer is feeling much better now – I just hope we’re over the peak of storm season now 🙂
I just need to reclaim more time from the day job to get more time to myself.
oh good news that you’ve only had to buy once. we are coming out of winter now, but a relatively dry one. I have hopes for spring. But then I always do…….