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My whole life is DIY. We live on a property in the Aussie Bush. We built our house out of trees that my husband cut up at our DIY timber mill. We pump our own water and run mostly on solar power. But every step of the way, there has been at least one 'DIY that went wrong' incident. Take water for instance. We have a pump by a creek to provide the majority of our water needs. We pump to a tank up the hill above the house and then gravity feed back to the kitchen, bathrooms, laundry and garden. We have a rainwater tank for drinking. Everything else depends on that pump.

I got home last night from work (yes, I work - we are a long way from self sufficiency!), to find that we were out of water. Hubby (aka Fatherfigure) went down in the dark and, with some difficulties (pump needed oil), he got it running. Went to bed without a shower, but thought "all will be well in the morning". Instead I woke up to the beginning of another day of DIY gone wrong.

As I walked out of the bedroom, there was Fatherfigure at the front door, a sour look on his face, announcing we were out of water again and he was sick of the whole thing and just to make things worse, we were out of petrol too. He stomped back outside. so I went downstairs, had a bit of brekky and then went out to help. He had siphoned petrol out of our most reliable farm vehicle, a World War II vintage American Blitz army truck. I offered to take the gas can down the hill and pump. I asked if I needed to take oil too but he said he had filled it the night before.

I slid down the hill because the DIY steps washed away in the winter rains, filled the pump, and then pulled the cord... and pulled, and pulled and kept pulling, till I was exhausted, but it wouldn't start. I climbed back up the hill and told Fatherfigure. He sighed and said he thought there was something wrong with a doohickey on the thingamabob and we would have to change pumps (we have three... because one is always breaking).

So that meant finding tools and a bucket and going back down the hill with the 'new' pump. It took quite a greasy while to get the old one unhooked and get the other one on. While Fatherfigure tightened all the nuts and screwed in the fittings, I took the bucket, made my way through the last six month's undergrowth (note to self: bring clippy-shears down here and clear up this mess!), managed to reach clean water without going up to my ankles in the mud.

I slopped the bucket back up to the pump and poured in the water. It filled right

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