FRANKIE DeGROOT | News | CONTACT

Scepticism has greeted a claim by local woman Hilda Beckitts that her garden hose is somehow shrinking of it’s own accord.

Hilda, 84, who lives just down the road from Betoota Heights high school, says she distinctly remembers purchasing a 30m hose in 2017, but now it appears to be less than half that length.

Even more bizarre is the fact that the similar garden hose in her backyard with the industrial nozzle appears to be totally unaffected by the strange phenomena.

“Everybody thinks I’m going senile, but I used to use this exact same house to water the cliveas, and now it doesn’t even make it past the hydrangea bush.”

Hilda says her son, who is also technically a senior citizen but one with far less time on his hands appears to have no answers when it comes to the mystery shrinking hose.

“It seems to get a couple of inches shorter every other week. When I asked my son, he said perhaps the hose was getting shorter due to the colder weather, but that doesn’t make any sense.

“Later he asked me if any other strange things had been happening and if I’d ever considered moving to somewhere “more comfortable”.

Local High Schoolers and keen recyclers Ricky and Davo, who were passing by at the time of our interview said they knew nothing about the shrinking hose. However, they did promise to check it out on the way back from the Return & Earn depot where they were taking their empty Gatorade bottle.