The Septic Tank Wars

It started with a hole. I had put the chooks to bed and came inside for a little while at 5pm. When I went out again it had appeared- a one foot wide hole beneath the clothes line. When I peered into the darkness I could see liquid and a flotilla of panty liners floating by. I left a message for my landlord begging for an urgent visit. Twelve hours went by so in desperation I spoke to his Mum who lives across the paddock from my cottage. Lying down with her head down the hole she announced "Yuk it stinks" which was when we all knew we were truly in the middle of a shitty situation.

Amazing what people will flush. Not me I hasten to add!

The following morning I got a call to say the septic tank cleaner was coming over and to move the donkey and goat from around the back gate area. Just as I was moving Briar the landlord's parents arrived to lift the rotary clothes line off its pole. Unfortunately Stig the goat happened to be near as he sleeps in the woodshed so he managed to get in everyone's way before I moved him. I was asked how it had happened but when I explained the sudden appearance of The Hole I was told that there was no way it could have happened like that. That was shortly before I was told that it was my fault the soil had collapsed because I had been wandering across it (which I had to in order to hang out my washing), cars were driving over it (they weren't) and the goat had looked at it funny.

By the time I'd come out an hour later the landlord's Dad was busy making the hole even bigger which is when we discovered that the concrete cap on the septic tank had cracked. No wonder as it was constructed from home made concrete with no reinforcing and laid on a few skinny metal fence standards. By this stage there was serious fuming going on as the tank was full of panty liners, masses of plastic sheeting and used syringes. I received a hefty lecture on having a rubbish bin in my bathroom and putting my plastic rubbish in there. My attempts at explaining that I don't use syringes and having lived in the country most of my life I only flush what's meant to go down a toilet went unheard as the old sod is deaf. Except apparently he's not deaf, everyone else is mumbling.

My poor clothes line- alone and palely loitering

I hid in the cottage until the septic tank cleaner arrived. I was so intent explaining to him that I was a good person who doesn't flush tarps and plastic forks I ended up helping him hitch up my garden hose and watching in admiration as "The Motion Mover" as he's known sucked the crap out of my old tank. The tank was six feet deep with four feet and sixty years worth of sewage stewing away right beneath my feet. According to Motion Man it hadn't been cleaned out for years, perhaps not since it was put in sixty years ago.

A temporary plywood covering over "The Hole"

As it was a weekend a new concrete cap couldn't be made so a plywood lid was laid down the hole and I lived with the whiff of poo until the following Thursday when the new cap was lowered in place by tractor and buried. As the landlord's Daddy threw grass seed over the bomb site he told me Stig had burrowed through the dirt and wrecked the backyard by spreading bark and kindling across the front of the woodshed (which was actually there when I moved in) so he was never allowed back but had to be tethered in the paddock. Plus I had to water the grass seed every day, not just one day and then let it wilt and die. So every day through the heat I have watered the dirt and said a prayer of thanks that the hole hadn't opened up when I was hanging out the washing as I would have literally ended up in the....manure.