Snug under a mosquito net in my antique Javanese bed, I listened to the rain lash down outside. It’s extremely pleasant to be warmly abed during a storm under a roof that doesn’t leak much, while the elements rage around the garden. The rain was falling in heavy ropes that beat leaves from the trees and dug chasms under the eaves. The dogs slumbered outside on the patio, woofing occasionally at a bat blown off course by the wind.Suddenly there was a blast of sound outside in the darkness, the roar of something very large exploding not far away. Not loud enough to be a bomb, too big for a breaking bamboo. The dogs shot out into the rainy night, baying with excitement. I was all set to follow them, then discovered that I’d forgotten to buy batteries for the torch. The dogs were gone what seemed an hour, giving me plenty of time to conjecture what could possibly be going on out there. By the time they returned I was still puzzling, but all was quiet so I let it rest until morning.
At first light I was picking my way through the muddy garden toward the bamboo grove. At first I didn’t understand what I was seeing, it seemed so bizarre. I sat on a broken block of cement and gazed numbly at what had been Pak Westi’s temple wall. Terraced two metres higher than my garden, a whole corner had given way under the unrelenting pressure of the saturated soil behind it. Huge chunks of masonry had been flung across the yard. My new adjoining wall was broken in half, caving in on itself. Hundreds of kilograms of broken concrete and bricks were strewn in crazy patterns on the ground, attesting to the force behind the collapse.Anyone standing there when the wall exploded would surely have died.Kalypso took advantage of the breach to scramble over and pick a fight with Pak Westi’s dog. As his daughter and I tried to separate them, she explained what had happened. The heavy new wall had been built on top of an old, existing one. No steel reinforcing had been used. There were no drainage holes to relieve the pressure of the water building up behind the wall. It had only been a matter of time before it collapsed. When would it be fixed? She shrugged; after the big upacara. Then she pointed to a big pile of debris that had stopped a centimetre short of knocking down the small temple in my garden. Look, it could have been worse.Every rainy season brings similar stories. One friend, who has built on three disused rice terraces, woke one morning to find that the lowest one had collapsed into the next field, dragged down by the weight of the coconut palms growing along the top of its eroded edge. Her lumbung was teetering on the brink and had to be moved at some expense. Another friend had a whole length of terrace fall into her garden from next door overnight, filling her swimming pool. Yet another, with a mountain house in Bedugal, is still dealing with massive erosion from last year’s monsoon. Large pieces of cliff overlooking the Ayung River, some carrying full-grown trees, have been seen to break away and tumble into the water below.
After every heavy rain, the journey through the Campuan cut is punctuated by fallen trees and whole slices of cliff that have slid down during the night. An entrepreneur has taken a big piece of land beside the Indus Restaurant, stripped its steep slope of every trace of vegetation and is now doubtless watching in astonishment as erosion consumes more of his investment with every rainstorm.
Erosion… chunks of Bali have probably always fallen down during the torrential monsoon. The combination of steep topography, heavy rains and constant small tremors from the volcanoes renders this a dynamic landscape in more ways than one. Sometimes a slab of mountain will detach itself and slide away for no apparent reason, but land clearing and illegal logging are often responsible for land slippage during the rainy season. In built-up areas, construction on top of natural drainage systems forces water to take alternative routes, often through gardens and across roads.
It’s something to think about. Many of us living in Bali are perched on the edge of something — a ravine, a rice terrace, a neighbour’s house at a different level. Take a walk around your property sometime and see where you might be vulnerable to minor or catastrophic erosion. A large tree perched at the edge of a bank is a weak point. If its roots are exposed, it might not be too securely anchored in terra firma. Check where it is likely to fall and plan accordingly. A bank that’s been cleared of vegetation needs to be stabilized. Try planting vetiver grass, which has a deep interlocking root system and is used to stabilize steep roadbeds and terraces by the East Bali Poverty Project. It’s usually available from IDEP at 974152.
Don’t let the gardener chop away all the vegetation and leave bare ground near a slope — it’s the roots of those low plants and grasses that keep the topsoil from sliding away in the rain. Ground cover also prevents soil erosion from wind in the dry season. If you’re building a retaining wall, make sure there are bamboo drainage pipes every few feet. If the wall is over a metre high it should be reinforced with iron bars and tilted slightly backwards.
On sloping ground, rainwater will chose the route of least resistance in its path to the nearest waterway. Help it along by digging drainage channels and removing obstacles. If you don’t, it may well excavate its own route through your herb bed — or knock down a wall.
Sometimes the results of erosion are easy to fix. When a rice terrace collapses, it seems to be the work of a day or two to carve a new one. Looking at the mess in my garden, I suspect it’s going to be a long haul. I’m already trying to figure out how to use some of that broken masonry in the landscaping or other projects. And I’m watching the remaining ten metres of old wall with some apprehension as I wait for the next dark and stormy night.
