Acid is the buzzword this month, the Acid Trip the In Thing To Do. Now, I, as a Woman of Almost a Certain Age, was just a whisker too young for all that stuff in the 60s, so I was really keen to find out all about it now!
It turned out not to be glamorous or exciting at all - tramping around in the cold and damp, periodically plummeting up to your thighs in mud. Ergh - Yuk!! I have to imbibe an extra Gin and Tonic every time I’m assailed by the post-traumatic memory of my lipstick-red toenails plunging out of sight into disgusting black goo. Or of the same black goo enveloping my Mattissean thighs. I’ve had to throw away a perfectly good pair of fish-net stockings. Not to mention my favourite Italian leather sandals.
Can’t imagine how all those Beautiful People in the 60s got off on this! One shudders at the thought. Come to think of it though, there was quite a bit of mud at Woodstock. But it must have been considerably warmer - all those flimsy see-through clothes!
Anyway, what it’s all about, I discover, is Acid Sulphate Soils. The Government is wanting to build these walls/embankments/regulators/weirs, whatever you like to call them, across the Currency Creek and Finniss and the river channel at Clayton because of Acid Sulphate Soils. It’s all acid, they say, the river flats, the sand and cracked mud. Rory says that’s rubbish. He’s been out looking. If it was as bad as they say it is, he, being largely made of steel, would have dissolved from the feet up!
Now Chemistry wasn’t exactly my strong point in school. My attention flickered between gazing wistfully at the cute half French, half Malaysian Chem. teacher, and oggling Noah, the footy-jock at the next bench. But it seems that when drying wetlands become exposed to air they turn into something nasty, which then dissolves in any subsequent water to form battery acid!
The example which scares everyone is Bottle Bend Lagoon, near Mildura. Rory heard about this years ago when he was still on his mud bank, from the skipper of a visiting boat. Bottle Bend Lagoon was an ox-bow lake which had dried out and been re-flooded. It had indeed turned into battery acid and killed everything in sight, transforming it into an iron-red moonscape.
The Government is petrified the same thing will happen here. The science for our situation is largely unknown, but Rory said we are quite different from Bottle Bend Lagoon.
1. Bottle Bend Lagoon is small, the Lakes are big, they would hold thousands of Bottle Bend Lagoons.
2. Bottle Bend Lagoon is isolated, with no flow. In the autumn and winter rains, the Finniss and Currency do have flow often very strong flows all at once.
Rory explained it to me thus: Say the nasty (muddy yucky) stuff is sitting in the bottom of a wine glass (something small - the equivalent of Bottle Bend Lagoon). Fill the glass with water, the nasty stuff dissolves. You have a glass of battery acid. Now, hold the glass under a gently running tap and catch the overflow in a bucket. The battery acid is soon diluted to a safe level. This demonstrates the effect of flow.
Or, you could tip the glass into a bath full of water. Again, the acid virtually disappears. This demonstrates the effect of size, e.g., the Lakes.
You can prove it is safe, Rory said, by measuring the pH.
My eyes glazed over, my brain was turning to scrambled egg again. Rory explained. He is so patient. PH is a measurement of how acidic something is. At the top of the “nasty scale” is pH 1 or less, i.e. battery acid (and incidentally stomach acid too, that’s an unnerving thought, isn’t it - we’re all walking around with the equivalent of battery acid inside us!)
After this, the acid gets gradually weaker as the numbers increase. Rory, bless him, illustrated the gradations in terms of food. I was immediately having fantasies about lemon meringue tarts, white wine sauce, roasted stuffed peppers and Osso Bucco. In the middle of lightly sauteed baby carrots and zucchinis, we reached pH 7.0, the neutral zone. After this, measurements are no longer acidic but basic. Well, base I’d say, most of the things on this side of the scale are varieties of household cleaners. I mean, what gal with curves wants anything to do with them! I have to consider my lovely soft hands, my sculptured fingernails… Rory says I must make friends with them though, as bases neutralise acids. Bases can disempower those pesky Acid Sulfate Soils.
The highest number, by the way is pH 14, at the battery-acid-level of basic nastiness. And guess what it is - drain cleaner!
This pH stuff is a piece of cake, M’dears!
So - here for your collective edification - is Po’s Guide to pH, the Universe and Everything…
| 1 to 2 | Battery acid, stomach acid | |
| 2.0 | Lemons | |
| 2.5 to 3.0 | Vinegar, Coke | |
| 3.5 | Oranges, white wine | |
| Acidic | 3.7 | Apples |
| 3.8 | Beer | |
| 4.7 | Tomatoes | |
| 5.5 | Red peppers | |
| 5.7 | Rain water | |
| 5.8 to 6.2 | Meat | |
| 6.5 | Carrots | |
| Neutral | 7.0 | Milk, distilled water |
| 7.5 | Zucchinis | |
| 7.9 | Toothpaste | |
| 8.8 | Eggs | |
| Basic | 9.0 | Bicarbonate of Soda |
| 10.5 | Soap | |
| 11.0 | Detergent | |
| 12.0 | Bleach | |
| 14.0 | Drain cleaner (Caustic Soda) | |
Thanks to Liz Y for inspiration! |
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See Dahlings - a breeze really, a walk in the park! I should publish it is a public service!
Anyway, back to the Acid Trips and tramping around in the cold and falling up to your thighs in mud. Rory tagged along with some of our local friends as they did official workshops with CSIRO and LAP instructors about how to do pH measurements properly, of both soil and water. He then followed them on excursions to Clayton, the Finniss and Currency Creek to try out their new skills. I won’t go into all the grisly details here, it would bore us to tears, but they found a few spots of Coke and apples and beer and tomatoes, and one of lemons (no battery acid at all!) and vast areas of toothpaste and eggs! Water between Rory’s toes in the mud cracks at Wally’s Landing varied between carrots and zucchinis, the Finniss River at the Winery Road Ford was zucchinis, the Goolwa Channel was eggs and Lake Alex was carb soda!
The worst hazard they encountered was a large pool near Wally’s Landing which was filled to the brim with white wine! However, less than 50 metres downstream, it had reverted once more to milk. And after it had flowed around experimentally placed barriers of fine limestone granules, it became happily more basic than toothpaste, almost as good as eggs in fact. All this long before it reached the Goolwa Channel, which we are told is at such risk!
Which leaves me somewhat puzzled. If all this acid isn’t there, what is all the fuss about?
And in any case, how is creating at a closed ox-bow of water between the proposed wall at Clayton and the Goolwa Barrages going to solve the problem anyway?
Rory says there are much cheaper and simpler ways of dealing with acid. You could find all the acid “hot spots” measuring lemons and oranges and vinegar, and all the pools of white wine and treat them with powdered limestone (the equivalent of carb soda).
Well, of course!
Any gal with curves knows you add half a teaspoon of carb soda when cooking rhubarb to make it less tart. The base neutralises the acid. Simple really!
Sigh… it could all be so easy, and so cheap.
Cheers, M’dears
Po’
PS On Sunday May the 24th, the Official Launch of Rory’s Book took place at Di Bell’s lovely property overlooking the Finniss. It was meant to be a Winter Pool Party. Rory is quite fascinated by Di’s pool - he’s so homesick for water. I even anticipated the day by treating myself to a new cossie. I figured my curves would look quite fetching under the palms.
Anyway, as it turned out, pool activities were off. It was freezing cold and bucketing down with rain. Rory was ecstatic. We were all dancing with delight, everyone present sparkled with a new zest for life. Guests queued for Rory to sign their books and the Finniss sand flats in front of Di’s house were shining with a sheen of new water. Good, safe water.
The invitation had promised, besides the alluring Hockney-esque pool, light refreshments, book signings and “acid free Finniss views”. It’s true. Two weeks earlier, the measuring team had found Di’s sands to be uniformly between toothpaste and eggs!
PPS Rory showed me a photo of a big black muscular Angus Bull standing slap in the middle of the Wally’s Landing white wine pool. His tail was raised in an unmistakable gesture of defecation. I wonder - what effect does bullshit have on the value of pH?
To be continued…
