Victorian rain brings relief for bad back gardeners
The recent rains in western Victoria have brought relief not only to farms and gardens but also to the backs and shoulders of older people who have been forced to carry often difficult buckets of water.
Ararat is one of 38 towns in the West that have had their severe water restrictions relaxed from level 4, which bans all watering outside, to level one. This means the area’s gardeners will again be able to use town tap water and even wash their cars with a trigger hose.
When the Ararat Rural City Council held a gardening convention recently, the mayor, Gwenda Allgood, said she was surprised to hear from a physiotherapist about how many elderly patients had injured their backs or shoulders while trying to water their gardens by bucket.
The new water supply boost has come via the 9,000-kilometre Wimmera-Mallee irrigation pipeline that has been established for agriculture relief in Western Victoria.
