Dear Bazz,

A strata title unit facing the ocean would
be my dream come true.

Persuading my husband - a different story.
But well worth a try.

Bazz a 5 horse power motor has to be in good condition to drive a fire pump well enough to pump water up to the flat, & 180 meters across to the damn. One that is a bit tired can't manage it. That is through a 3" line from the pump to the top, & a 2" the rest of the way. Even in perfect condition such a pump can only manage about 5,000 gallons an hour.

I used to take a 15 horse power diesel powered pump down to fill the damn, but a flood washed the roadway I'd had built, & it is not worth replacing it now I don't produce anything.

With 400 meters of river front, in real necessity I could probably build a ram pump system to pump a similar amount to a windmill.

The place was a turf farm when I bought it, no trees. In 23 years I have managed to get some growing, but they are still just saplings. It is only about one year in 7 that conditions over a few years allow seedlings to survive. I doubt I could grow enough timber for fire wood, let alone steam pumping, on less than about 10 acres of serious timber farming.

Hasbeen, well could your scavenge wood from bush around the area ?
Could be impractical I guess.
There is probably a law against it anyway !
Well when it hits the fan a lot of laws will be forgotten about.

Needing that sort of power probably rules out solar cells & batteries.
Does the river run fast enough for a turbine ?
Probably not. I was on a Rhine & Danube cruise a few years ago and I
was standing at the rail watching the river flowing fast.
A couple of West Australian farmers were there and said;
"I wish we had a few rivers like this."

I have a 2000 acre paddock across the river from me Bazz, but I doubt they would give firewood away. Apart from when their cattle break our fences, they wouldn't give anyone the time of day.

Although it has had us flooded in a few times, for up to 5 days, the river is mostly just a trickle. You can sometimes jump across it, & in 93/94 it stopped running for 9 of the 24 months.

Some of this was due to up stream irrigators pumping it dry, but there wasn't much to pump.

As the dam had dried, we kept deepening a bedroom size hole in the 15 Ft deep sand in the bottom to get stock water. We could get about 20 minutes pumping about every 3 hours from the underground flow.

It is not that bad today, as the farmers sons are not stupid enough to follow their fathers. 8 of the 10 dairy farms have got out, as have many turf & Lucerne farmers. I don't think there are any market gardens left at all.

I guess if things got really bad, we could reinvent the wheel, & use horses to drag water carts. I wonder if there is anyone left who knows how to make heavy horse harness today? A working horse is only as good as the harness he works in.