Village Homes Realty
What a difference a year makes!
We had a very mild dry season this year, after the driest on record last year.
We measure our water consumption over the financial year now, as it enables us to capture the whole dry season, and lines up nicely with when the dams start recharging, as well as with our strata AGM’s.
Our water consumption and evaporation figures were way down on the previous year. Some of the lower consumption is due to considerably better management of water in each of our residential clusters – well done to all of the irrigation managers in each cluster. I’d also like to thank the Shire who have significantly reduced water use on the oval and village square and are doing a wonderful job managing the turf and gardens in our public open space.
We were surprised to see the huge difference in evaporation over the last two dry seasons. Interestingly, the annual average (25yr) BOM pan evaporation rates over our dry season (Nov – April), when our two irrigation dams aren’t being re-charged (losing more to evaporation than rainfall) is 58ML (million litres). Last year we exceeded the 25yr average by 10ML, this year we were under by 15ML!
A quick summary comparing the use and evaporation in both years.
1/7/23 – 30/6/24
| Area | Annual Water Budget | Total Usage 1/7/23 – 30/6/24 |
| Residential Clusters | 33ML | 23.5ML |
| Public Open Space (AMR Shire) | 4ML | 8.7ML |
| Vineyard | 5ML | 6.4ML |
| Ag Lots | 40ML | 0.6ML |
| Avocados | 0ML (0 as will be 100% waste water in future) | 6.7ML |
| Evaporation (Irrigation dams) | 58ML | 68ML |
| Totals | 140ML | 114ML |
Dams were all overflowing by the first week of August ‘24
1/7/24 – 30/6/25
| Area | Annual Water Budget | Total Usage 1/7/24 – 30/6/25 |
| Residential Clusters | 33ML | 19.8ML |
| Public Open Space (AMR Shire) | 4ML | 2.5ML |
| Vineyard | 4ML | 3.2ML |
| Ag Lots | 40ML | 0.6ML |
| Avocados | 0ML (0 as will be 100% waste water in future) | 8.8ML |
| Evaporation (Irrigation dams) | 58ML | 43ML |
| Totals | 140ML | 78ML |
Our three dams were all overflowing by end of June ‘25.
Over the 18yrs that we’ve been living in the Margaret River region it’s become very noticeable that our winters and spring rainfalls are very reliable (spring of ‘23 was an exception), averaging around 1000mm, our summers are consistently dry and our autumns are getting drier.
We’re incredibly fortunate to live in such a reliable rainfall region, but as our autumns dry out we have moved into what I’m calling a wet season, from May to October, and a dry season, from November to April.
If you’re growing food, this now necessitates the requirement to hold water in dams, which can only be achieved on properties that have the catchment, topography and ability to do this sustainably. This was one of the three main drivers to identifying and buying the two farms we built the Ecovillage on.
With 250ML of storage over three dams, I doubt very much that we will ever be unable to supply our budgeted annual water requirements, and if we did, we could still be self sufficient in fresh food produce by being even more efficient than we are now.
