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I must confer with all those who say that water is probably the most important asset that any property owner can have.

2014 saw our average rainfall drop from a 100 year average of about 506 millimetres to 306 millimetres. A drop of 200 millimetres would not have been as bad as it sounds if it had fallen in rain events of more than 20 millimetres at a time instead of the small amounts we received that virtually disappeared as soon as they hit the dust.

The great thing about the metric system is that for every square metre of catchment area every millimetre of rain that falls equals a litre. 100 square metres of roof area equals 100 litres of potential water savings. Find out the long term average rainfall in your area, multiply that by the roof areas that are connected or will be to your tanks and it will give you an idea of your rainfall water saving potential. Dams for groundwater runoff are the cheapest storage you can have per litre stored but evaporation and seepage will be an issue but they do come in handy especially if you have a good catchment area.

We have a neighbour who had a bore put in so that he could have a more reliable water supply. Over $10,000 later he has water, and plenty of it, but it is unusable because of the high levels of salts and he cannot put in a desalinisation plant because there are laws as what you have to do to get rid of the salts. Also the cost of the additional plant would make it uneconomical.

From a preppers point of view I believe we have to learn to live with years of diminished rainfall by growing more than we need in the better years and storing as much as we can. We preserve fruit, jams and juices by bottling in the years we have extra the produce and we also freeze fruit and vegetables.

In a true after the lights out scenario what would concern me is maintaining our solar power system to a level that would enable us to run the freezer so in the future and preserving would all need to be done by bottling.

We cannot grow sugar here in Victoria so we are looking at, when we get another good year, juicing grapes and rendering the juice down and using that as a sugar substitute to enable us to continue to make jam. Sugar is not required to preserve fruit but some varieties need a sweetener before they are consumed, rhubarb is one, and I am looking at some of the herbs that are capable of being used as sweeteners.

Water usage is something that in good years when we have plenty of it is not the priority that it should be. In years like 2014 we revisit any improvements we can make to our storage capacity and the ways we can minimise its use i.e. wicking beds and hydroponics.

I would say that for most of us when we first look at a property rainfall is not the primary concern, getting hold of the land super cedes all other emotions. Once the property is ours then it is time to make all the other decisions that will make, or break, the lifestyle we would like to lead.