[motto]

I sympathise with your loss Euan. You bring them home to preserve them and it's a blow when they are destroyed whilst in your care.
Unfortunately, Nature is relentless and it's only a matter of time before rain contributes to the process of returning everything to the soil from whence it came.

Dorothea Mackellar got it right, this land has always been a challenge.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of drought and flooding rains.

David