Water - But Not a Drop to Drink
When I was a young minister freshly graduated and ordained, my first ministry in the 1960’s, after seven years of the slums of Newmarket, was in a small country church, in the small country town of Ararat, gateway to the Wimmera in Western Victoria. There I learnt the difficult art faced by all city bred ministers, of becoming a country parson.
We first arrived in Ararat in the middle of summer 1964. The temperature was over the century every day and the haze of dust slowly rose over the flat paddocks as far as you could see. The heat was terrible and as we unpacked our few belongings into the old wooden manse nothing would have been nicer than a good cup of tea.
That was the first shock. When we went to fill up a kettle from the tap we found that the water was a dark brown muddy colour. That was precisely what it was. The Ararat water supply was running dangerously low and the water was being siphoned out of dams for the town drinking supply. The clothes that were washed in it turned a grubby yellow, and the saucepans and glasses were all stained. You could pour out a hot cup full of water and it would like weak tea without having to put any tea leaves into it.
In order to prevent an outbreak of disease, the Shire Council was liberally adding plentiful supplies of chlorine to the water to kill any bacteria and so this dreadful brown water also tasted like the second hand drainage from the community swimming pool. We were not impressed.
Water was short everywhere and apart from domestic consumption, water was not to be used for gardening, spraying on lawns, washing cars or for any of those other tasks the public use water for in liberal quantities. The old outside toilet already had two bricks in the cistern to cut down the amount of water that the cistern would hold.
But I suddenly came upon a new problem with the shortage of water.
A number of people made commitments to Christ early in my ministry and desired to be baptised by immersion as is the practice of Churches of Christ. The filling of a baptistry for an immersion baptism was not included on the Shire’s lists of permitted uses of water. I was faced with two options:
1. Not have the baptisms until such times as we had some good autumn rains; or2.Take up the practice of those denominations who used considerably less water and sprinkle some only on the top of the head. While this was a saving of water it was not in conformity to any New Testament practice and so, being unwilling to wait until the rains, I looked for another alternative.
Most of the cows in the area were dry so we could not even consider the Cleopatra alternative and have baptisms in a bath of milk!
There was only one organisation in the city of Ararat that had plenty of water the Rural Fire Brigade. It received its water from a special spring and dam out at Halls Gap and the freshest, clearest water in all the Shire was stored in the Rural Fire Brigade tanks. There was an abundance of water out at that supply and farmers would go out there with big tanks on the back of their trucks in order to get water for the stock. If it was O.K. for stock, it should be O.K. for new Christians.
So I spoke to Captain Johnson of the Rural Fire Brigade. He smiled at my request and then said, “As a matter of fact the boys are pretty bored. We haven’t had any decent fires this summer and they come down to the Brigade three nights a week for practices and they are all pretty tired of just polishing equipment and getting ready when nothing has happened. Leave it to me. I will get you a load of water.”
So it was that the Rural Fire Brigade was seen heading off down High Street to the Church of Christ, not to put out any fire, but to back one of the tankers up beside the church and pump out half a tank load of water to fill the baptistry. The freshest, cleanest water in all of Ararat was used to baptise new Christians.
It was that concern of water that led into the Battle of Hastings. Not the Battle of Hastings in 1066, but the Battle of Hastings, Victoria. Hastings was on the other side of Port Philip Bay from Ararat but it figured very prominently in an event which involved my wife and I and our farmer friends, Geoff and Marj. Judd.
I had two large water tanks down at Dromana, Victoria. This was about 200 miles from Ararat and on the other side of Melbourne. These two perfectly good water tanks had been stored underneath a house and were no longer required. They were each capable of holding 5,000 gallons and were of the squat ten feet in diameter variety. I suggested to Geoff that we cart them up to Ararat and he could use the run off from the roof of his wool shed to give him an additional 10,000 gallons of water.
I was making this suggestion to him one dreadfully hot day while I was walking across the paddocks with him. The ground was bare. The last wisps of dry grass blew in the wind. From every footstep little puffs of dry dust rose in the still air and behind us, croaking, were the parched throats of a thousand sheep that were dying of thirst.
I was helping Geoff put down a bore. He had to use some of the precious water, forcing it down through a long pipe which had now gone into the earth more than sixty feet. The pipe was winched up into the air and then rammed down further into the earth while water was forced down through the inside of it opening up the dirt at the point of the long pipe and flooding it back up the top along the outside of the pipe, thus making a long thin bore. As the bore widened a six inch wide casing was gradually forced down into the earth. It was long, strenuous and tiring work. The winching up of the pipe and the ramming of it back down into the earth
again and again, once every minute, would break the back of any man. But Geoff continued in this work hour after hour in his desperate search to find some underground water.
It wasn’t going to help the situation immediately but two 5,000 gallon tanks attached to the wool shed might mean that never again would his sheep be dying of thirst.
I owned the water tanks and I gave them to Geoff. So the only cost was the cartage to Ararat. But the cost of a huge truck capable of taking a ten feet wide tank plus a trailer and driving it 200 miles to Western Victoria was prohibitive. We sat around the farm house kitchen table one night talking about how we could get the tanks up to Ararat when Marj. suggested, “Why don’t we take them on the railway. Vic Rail advertise they can shift anything. All we need do is take them to the nearest station and hire a couple of railway trucks.”
We checked out with the railways and found that it was possible and, yes, they would take empty water tanks. So we made a special trip down through Melbourne to Dromana, hired a huge road trailer which we used to deliver the tanks to the Hastings railway station.
Just getting the tanks out from underneath the house and then up onto the trailer was a massive job in itself. The tanks measured ten feet in diameter and about five feet in height. We got them out from under the house by ropes and effort, turned them up on end and then rolled them up onto the back of the trailer. A ten feet high load on top of a trailer was a very high load indeed and by the time we got the first one to the Hastings railway station we discovered that our load was causing a headache for the railways. By the time the tanks would have been placed upright in the railway trucks, which were already about four feet above the ground, the height of the tanks was 14 feet above ground and therefore too high to negotiate underneath the road bridges along the railway line. As the widest railway truck was eight feet wide, to lay them on the side meant they were too wide. However, a friendly railway employee told us that if the sides of the railway trucks were removed and we roped them on ourselves, he would take it even though a foot of tank
stuck outside each side of the railway truck. Getting those tanks onto the railway trucks was such an effort for two men and two women that Marjorie thereafter dubbed the entire venture “The Battle of Hastings”. With ropes and levers, a lot of sweat and few prayers, we eventually got the two tanks up onto two trucks. The railways delivered them to Ararat and then we repeated the performance of loading them onto a long flat trailer and getting them out to the property. By the time they were connected up it was the middle of winter and they soon filled with water. Never again were the sheep to go thirsty on his property. We would always remember the Battle of Hastings with gales of laughter about the effort of getting the two ten feet wide tanks onto the railway trucks.
When we arrived at the Hastings railway station the one employee at that entire railway station filled out the booking form, gave us a flat rate of costs, then looked over the counter and asked us where these two tanks were. When we told them they were out on the back of a trailer he said, “O.K. Bring them in here and I will put them the next parcel freight going through.”
In all of our discussions we had neglected to tell him the tanks were ten feet wide! He took one look at them and declared, “We’ll take them, but you will ruddy well have to load them onto the trucks yourself.”
It was while we were putting down that bore on Geoff’s property in a desperate search to find underground water that I was introduced to the art of water divining. Old Loy Fleming, the cow cocky who lived in our area, was out on the farm giving us a help with the bore. Loy had predicted that this was the spot for water all right because he had found it using both the twig and his rods.
Fresh from university, with all the insights that a course in psychology can give you, I scoffed at the likelihood of him ever being able to find water through divining. Loy had handled scoffers before and asked me if I would like to learn how to divine for water. Totally sceptical I agreed. The next couple of hours were some of the most fascinating in my memory. Loy initiated me into the mysterious arts of finding the right kind of twig, of stripping the bark from it, of making sure it was green and flexible, and then of how to hold it and walk with it until the rod of its own accord started to bend towards the ground. By approaching the spot from different directions you were able to judge by the rate of the movement of the twig, the depth and the flow of water.
I was completely sceptical but as I walked across the paddock I came to the most amazing occurrence when the wet, green stick in my hands started to tremble and then bend. I could not believe it. I held it firm and it bent against the pressure of my hands. Loy was laughing and hitting his backside with his hat. Exactly what should have happened was happening. But I still did not believe it was water.
Loy then told me that I had to learn to use his rods and produced some water divining rods used by him over the years. In the palm of each hand was a bent copper coin and the rods fitted into these so that they moved smoothly like a hinge. With arms outstretched I then walked across the dry paddocks and to my surprise at the same spot as the green twig had bent the metal arms which had stood out in front of me started to turn round and face each other. When I walked at that same spot from a different direction they swung again facing each other.
Loy showed me that there were different kinds of movements and from that we could estimate the depth and the flow of the water. I refused to believe it was true. I was judging the terrain from what I could see and we were standing on the crest of a paddock. I could not believe that there would be water flowing along the crest. Loy told me the flow was approximately 100 feet below where I stood and was flowing down from Mount Ararat about half a mile behind me. I was aware of artesian water and of underground flows but I could not believe the old cow cocky was right in telling me there was flow of water there.
But Geoff was desperate and so all of the drilling equipment was brought up to this spot where we had divined water and the procedure of getting the bore down started all over again. For two weeks I worked with Geoff getting the bore down. When we reached a hundred feet without striking water we stopped. Geoff had run out of water and money and effort. As far as I was concerned it proved the case water divining did not work even though I could not explain why both the green twig and the metal rods would bend or turn in my hands.
Geoff spent all the money they had that summer trucking in water for his dying sheep.
Five years went by until there was another terrible drought. This time Geoff had plenty of water in the 10,000 gallon storage capacity the two tanks from Hastings had provided. But he had taken on, at that time, a new development with 120 pigs, and in the dry heat those pigs needed water and large quantities of it to survive. Unless they could keep their temperature down and their skin cool they would die. The oils in the pigs hide were melting. So it was back to the bore to see if we could find any water there at all.
Geoff again set up the bore rig and once more I worked beside him trying to push the bore down further. Geoff was convinced that old Loy was right. He was a water diviner by whom the local farmers swore for his accuracy and for the quality of the water he could find. So Geoff was prepared once more to put effort into the bore.
All that day we worked pushing down the bore. We had reached hard gravel and it was hard going. We only made an extra six feet in depth when, late in the afternoon, we noticed that the water coming up in the outside casing was clear. Geoff looked at it with amazement. He tasted it. It was clear and cool instead of hot and muddy like the water we had been forcing down the ramming pipe. “We’ve done it! We’ve done it!” he exclaimed, “This is cold. It is underground water.” And sure enough on the very spot and only six feet deeper down from where we had stopped the previous drought we struck a stream of running water and to my knowledge that bore is operating to this day.
I cannot explain how water divining works and I know that large sums of money have been offered for people to prove the accuracy of water divining. All I know is that when I take the metal rods or strip a tree twig to the right size and shape and walk across dry paddocks there are certain spots where those rods or the twig start to bend beyond my control. Why the same twig or rods do not move with most other people is also something I cannot understand.
On the other hand Ararat was not always dry. In winter the freezing sleet and rain floods the creeks and made many of the roads impassable. My worst trip during winter would be out to Jacksons Creek, to the little one teacher school that often stood like an island in the middle of low lying swampy grounds. When Jacksons Creek rose the school was cut off and the kids would stay there. Most of them came to school on horseback and went home with bare legs, with their shoes tied round their shoulders and their school bags held high on the back of the horse. The horse would wade through the flood water to take them to their homes.
I used to go out to the little Jacksons Creek school to teach religious instruction one day a week. In winter time I was initiated in the arts of getting my car through flooded creek water. Before we ever got to the long, low flat flood areas, I would get out of the car, take off my shoes and socks, and roll up my trouser legs to the thigh, then wade out through the waters along the road to make sure that the bridge over Jacksons Creek was still sound and none of the road had been washed away.
From the boot of the car I would get out an old chaff bag in which I had two bricks and attach the top of the chaff bag to the front bumper bar of my old car. Then as I drove forward slowly the chaff bag, weighed down by the bricks, would lay back underneath the car and protect the engine from water that would be splashed up into it which would have caught up in the fan and splashed onto the distributor. That chaff bag dragging under the engine created, like the bow of a boat, a dry area so that even in fairly deep water I was able to drive the car through without the water stopping the engine. Mind you, the water often came up through the floor boards of the car and the inside of the car might be four or five inches deep with creek water. But that would drain out when we got up the other side of the flood area toward Jacksons Creek school. Many was the time when I arrived at school still in my bare feet with my trousers rolled up and the wet chaff bag hanging underneath the car and, as I opened the doo, the water would run out from inside.
If ministers have problems getting enough water for baptisms, and having too much water for getting to school, consider the problem that ministers and undertakers have when, in the middle of the flood area, they have a burial in a cemetery. The Ararat cemetery was built down by the Ararat creek.
When the Ararat creek flooded most the cemetery went under water. One morning I was burying a former patient from the Aradale Mental Hospital. These were government funerals known as “pauper” funerals. The deceased had no known relatives and consequently the funeral was put on early in the morning so as not to interfere with more important funerals that would be conducted later in the day. Only the undertaker, his driver, the grave digger and the minister would be present. On such occasions the minister and the grave digger would lend a hand in carrying the simple pine box in which the poor deceased’s body lay.
Even though there was no one present I always gave that funeral the same service as I would for anyone else, except when it came to the eulogy there was usually no information known about the person other than what I could find upon the card of admittance. As many of the people I buried had been in the Aradale Mental Hospital for 30 or 40 years and as the details of their admissions during the 1930’s were very sketchy there was virtually nothing I could say. However, I always gave the deceased a full Christian burial, talking about the Christian hope of resurrection for those who had faith, and of emphasising the inherent dignity and worth of each human being in the eyes of God, even though this person had been mentally defective and probably did not even known their own name. The undertaker got very impatient with my full service. He wanted a quick job.
One such morning, early, Mr. Dunne and his driver were carrying the pine casket towards the place of the burial. When we stopped Mr. Dunne said irreverently, “Oh God, look at that grave. It is full of ruddy water.” Since the grave digger had finished his job last night, the water had seeped through the sodden earth and filled the grave to the top. Mr. Dunne, with the coffin perched on one shoulder, looked at me. “If you
don’t mind, Rev.,” he said, “I want to get this box in as soon as possible. Otherwise we are going to have problems.” I did not mind so we had the committal first and then I conducted the service.
As soon as he and the driver put the coffin into the water filled grave I understood his problem: it floated! As it is very hard to bury a floating coffin, Mr. Dunne and the grave digger standing by, Old Busby, a grizzly alcoholic looking fellow with a big bushy beard and the most incredible amount of dirt always on his person and clothes, started shovelling shovelfuls of wet clay on top of the coffin. When enough clay was piled on top of the coffin, it very slowly slid down into the water. Satisfied Mr. Dunne and Old Busby stood back and I went on with the service.
I said some prayers and quoted the great verses about Christ being the resurrection and the life. I read the 23rd Psalm and then some passages from the 19th Psalm which seemed appropriate to this poor person. I had just reached the point of our Lord talking in John 14, when I read the words “Let not your heart be troubled: you believe in God believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. For I go to prepare a place for you.”
Immediately I said the words “Prepare a place for you” from the water beneath my feet, deep from the bottom of the grave, came the unmistakable sound of “blurple” and a large bubble came to the surface. It was then followed with another “blurple” and “blurple”. Then a whole stream of bubbles came up to the top of the water.
Suddenly I had a picture of poor old John in the coffin below affirming his faith in the words I had just said. Old Busby started to laugh but I was determined to keep my dignity and give the poor deceased a proper burial. Mr. Dunne the undertaker was standing in his best black clothes trying to keep a straight face but every time I finished a sentence another three or four large bubbles would reach the top of the surface and break.
I could see I wasn’t going to win. I’ve got an idea that Old Busby and Mr. Dunne the undertaker had deliberately planned to get that coffin in first so that my sermon and service would be cut short on that cold winters morning by the bubbles which came to the surface. It certainly worked. I could not cope with the noise of the bubbles and finished up the service and left old Busby the job of filling in the flooded grave.
Water in the country is essential to everything that happens. Some of the time there is just not enough of it and some of the time there is far too much of it. There certainly was that first day when I took a winter’s funeral in the Ararat cemetery.
And so I made my way home to the country manse at 90 High Street, opposite the Railway Station, having learnt another lesson in the difficult art of becoming a country parson.
GORDON MOYES
