Pipeline – target reached 2011.04.04

Sunday,03 April 2011

For our monthly meeting we had the pleasure of inviting Adrian Odgers to come and share his vast knowledge of plants with us and, what is usually just a short walk from the conference centre to the rockery and back, we took over an hour to cover this distance hearing interesting information about almost every plant on our route.

Here Adrian is pointing out the pollination process of cycads:

and we are listening intently:

We carried on the conversation during tea and coffee and eats in the conference centre and then turned our attention to the pipeline. Neil had as usual organized all the parts to fix the leak and while Ellie and I rolled out the new pipe he and Mark went out to the site of the leak and installed the connections.

Jenny, Christy and Rob in the meantime collected rocks and secured the pipeline on Gibson’s property.

It didn’t take long to thread the pipe through and connect and then we turned our attention to cover the remaining section of the pipe near Gibson’s gully with metal pipe, so much easier with some more muscle power to help us, and in next to no time we could join the pipes and, apart from filling in all the holes we have dug and protecting the pipe a little more the job is done on Gibson’s land.

With the water turned on again we were keen to see the water flowing on the other side inside the Reserve so we drove around again to the old nursery. Mark and Neil were disappointed not to see any water flowing out of the pipe until I reassured them that there was still a connection missing but after we fixed that we had a good flow going. Of course that encouraged us to try and get a pipe through all the way to the end of the metal pipe. I knew it was filled with soil near the end but with the water flowing we managed to wash it out and viola!

Pity the piece of plastic pipe was not long enough to go the whole distance, that is why it is not flowing strongly, that will be sorted out next time.

After a very pleasant lunch some of us stayed behind to reconnoitre the next hurdle and solve the mystery of the existing pipe from the old nursery to the N2 and, by digging holes at regular intervals, managed to establish without doubt that it indeed runs in that direction.