Water

Beautiful irises in the grounds of our motel in Kaniva, glowing in the early morning sunshine:

Kaniva unfortunately does not have drinkable water, although I did find a news story that suggested they might have by 2021. However in the meantime, a huge amount of industrial waste has been buried illegally on a property in the area, which has the potential to pollute the groundwater supply for the whole district. EPA info here: Illegal waste dump. Nice!

The motel provided bottles of drinkable water, but having to use bottled water for cleaning your teeth made this feel a bit like being in India.

Time to get back on the road!

When we drove past this lake on the first day of our trip, it was bright pink. We thought we better stop on the way home to get a good look at this amazing sight.

But this morning it wasn't looking pink at all:

Once we got down to the shore, though, the pink became visible:

Salt-loving red bacteria create the pink colour. There's been a little bit of rain here while we've been away, which must have diluted the lake and the bacteria. No doubt the bright pink will return as water evaporates in the forecast heat today and tomorrow.

Our next stop was this nursery:

Back in August when we visited the Clarkesdale Bird Sanctuary we saw a honeybush, Hakea lissocarpha, in flower, and I thought at the time I would love to get hold of one for our garden. When I searched online, the Wimmera Native Nursery in Dimboola was about the only place I found it. They do sell plants online, but it was more fun to stop in:

They have a large selection of native plants, so as well as a couple of honeybushes we bought some eremophilas, grevilleas, other hakeas, and a callistemon. They are all destined for a planned "bird bed", a garden bed of shrubby plants to provide shelter and food for small birds. As well as looking good, of course.

(Several days after we got home, one of our neighbours asked if we had been at this nursery, because she had driven past and seen our car there. You just never know who might be keeping an eye on you.)

Our next stop was at the home of fellow quilter and garden lover Sue, whose blog is Mother Patchwork. Sue gave us a cuppa, then a tour of her lovely garden. She even generously dug up some pieces of alstroemeria for me, and gave me a pot of a recently divided aloe. Thank you, Sue!

Our last stop (other than collecting the dogs from the kennels) was in Stawell, where we got lunch at a fish and chip shop recently voted among the top 20 in Victoria. News article. You can't read the article without subscribing, but you can see the photo.

This was my view as I sat outside waiting for our food. It was nice to have a shady spot to sit, as the sun was bright and strong and quite warm by then.

The food was worth the wait - very yummy.

I took no photos of the rest of the day. But it involved collecting the dogs, who were overjoyed to see us, then heading home to a problem that we could have done without.

On about the first morning we were away, Graeme was checking the monitoring he has on various things around our house, and discovered that about 100 litres of water was leaving our water tank each hour. Fortunately our neighbour was able to come and turn off the water pump to stop any more water being lost. But once we were home we had to arrange for the plumber to come and sort out the leak (again).

Until it is fixed, the water pump is off. Having a shower (which I needed when we got home) involves turning on the pump, having your shower, then turning off the pump straight away. Best accomplished with the help of a friend - you don't want to run down to the tank, which is right near the road at the front of our block, wrapped in a towel!