tanked (haibun series)

It’s been a really wet year, and relying on tank water as we do it’s frustrating to see the tanks overflowing – all that water we can’t store just running down into the gullies! So having talked about it for months, and with the La Nina starting to fade away, we’ve finally bought another tank.

It was delivered on Monday. It has a capacity of 23kl, is 4m in diameter, and weighs about 400kg. Looks big, doesn’t it? But my husband assured me they always look bigger on the truck than on the ground…

Do things look bigger

on the back of the truck, or

after they fall off?

Seeing it arrive, I was a bit dubious about our ability to get it into place on the south side of the house under the overflow of the main (90kl) tank. But, we generally seem to manage these things – levers, pulleys, rollers and slides… we’ve used them all to move things around. So how hard could it be??

Well, I don’t have any photos of the next bit, so you’ll just have to imagine it.

First, the truck driver manoeuvres around a bit until he’s in a good position to be able to tip the tank off into the flat area in front of the house, and get out again afterwards. The flat area is sort of a saddle, with the land falling away to north and south. That will be important shortly.

Perched on the saddle –

a stable topography?

A lie of the land.

The way to unload the tank, the driver explains, is to just… push it off. So, truck driver, one son, husband, me (left to right), all line up at the far side of the truck as seen in the photo above. Things went fine at first – we pushed, the tank slid… but then we couldn’t reach to push it any further. And of course we were all pushing really low down, because (did I mention this?) the bloody thing is 4m tall when on its side. So it’s not going to tip the way we want it to until it starts to topple as it’s going over the edge.

The tank slides easily, and when we’ve pushed it as far as we can from ground level, truck driver and son leap like kangaroos onto the back of the truck before husband and I have even figured out how to climb up. And they both immediately start pushing again, still close together near one side. I don’t have any photos of the next bit. It was a bit… busy.

So, the tank slides and turns (because they’re pushing close together at one side!), and rolls off the truck and does not tip and land on its base. No, it comes down on its edge and bounces towards my car and the house, then starts to roll away downhill to the north and towards the dam. At this point you have to imagine a soundtrack as well – something befitting a comic chase scene with added yelling and swearing – as we all ran after the tank. (Did I mention it was 4m high with a mass of 400kg?)

The high roller leaves,

making good an escape, but

pursuit closes in.

We did catch up to the bloody thing before it got too far down the hill and landed in the dam, and by some miracle managed to stop it without anyone getting rolled over and flattened.

So then we rolled it back up the hill until we ran it into the tree on the north side of the house – the one in the far left of the first picture. And that’s where it is now, still on its edge and tied to the tree so it doesn’t escape again. It’s been there most of a week now.

But it’s amazing how quickly you can stop noticing something. Honestly, I hardly even see it when I walk out the front door now. And the inlet is just the right height for yelling into. Sort of like the goose girl and the stove pipe – I can tell my troubles to the tank. And at 23kl, it should be able to hold plenty of them. Starting with “how the fuck are we going to move this fucking tank?”.

Form defines function.

(But the orientation’s

also important).

…and I’m not convinced it looked bigger on the truck.