hot and crispy

That is what the weather has been like around here, day after day of hot dry days. Some hotter than others, yesterday - now I have a new fangled weather station thing, I can tell you with authority - it clocked 44.1 outside. It may have been hotter, but I wasn't looking at the thing ALL day.

Nothing of any excitement at all has been happening around here. I've done some well overdue cupboard cleaning and reorganising (perhaps as its been hot I've been looking for excuses to stay in the air-conditioning for as much as possible!) and the kids have been doing the same, staying inside, playing with lego and foraying out for swims in the afternoons.

We've had water troubles at the prickle farm to, so much time has been spent by the husband driving back and forth keeping the water up to the cows. It hasn't rained - still - and they rely on pumped bore water reticulated around the property by a supposedly sophisticated and self sufficient generator pump thingy (technical I know!) which hasn't been doing what its supposed to - ie start itself as required.

Luckily for us, we employ some other techy innovations that allow us to monitor the waters, which given the trouble we've had, has been very very handy.

The system, using satellite, monitors the level of the tank, and in another graph, also has data such as temperature, humidity and rainfall. We can tell by the level of the tank at a certain time of day whether the pump has started (and your heart sinks if that little yellow line is waaay down at the bottom of the graph, which means its EMPTY) (FYI this system is called Agmon)

The second system is based on mobile phone and it takes a photo a few times a day, so one can log in and see what the tank level is at. This is a different location to the graph above, this tank is beside the bore and once the water is pumped into here, it gets pumped up the line to the tanks in the graph (and others along the pipeline). It can be quite complex and it all relies on every thing working in sequence. This set up is called Usee.

We also employ other tools in our arsenal to manage and monitor things, the other most used - although can be a bit unreliable - is NAFI. North Australian Fire Information is a website that picks up hotspots on the earth as the satellite flies over and gives us approximate locations of any fires.

That yellow flame there indicates the fire the men went to yesterday, in our immediate neighbours place. We were all packed, car ready, kids bathed and about to shower ourselves and leave for the city, when we got a phone call alerting us. That put paid to leaving, well the husband did immediately, in the ute with fire fighting equipment on board. We have got an excellent crew in our brigade that work together very well, and as they have been to MANY fires together in the past two years fall into their roles and get stuck into the job at hand.

The Husband, from what I can gather, spent the night on our old Gertie the Grader, putting in breaks around the fire, and reinforcing others to fall back on should it get away. My role is in IT, HR and Catering, although this fire being piddly in the scheme of things, that after the initial flurry of phone calls gathering troops and information, my job was done. (mind you, we are keeping a wary eye on the big red one at the top of the map, but fly overs by the helicopter indicate that its contained within previously burnt country).

We are missing our creek swimming and mud play of previous summer holidays, but we can' only hope that the wet season will start soon - the line of cranky storms that passed over yesterday held very little moisture and were mostly heat generated, although of course a few mm of rain does more than days of watering with sprinkler!

hope the summer holidays are more entertaining in your part of the country!