October 20th, 2026Something definitely in the water…

Most of us of a certain vintage remember the water diviner: the bloke who turned up with two bits of bent fence wire, wandered around the paddock like he’d lost his car keys, and then announced with great confidence: “Dig here.”

My father and grandfather had the gift and as it turns out so did I.

For Central Highlands resident Kali Yaziji, that old water diviner is just the tip of the iceberg, or should that be the top of the aquifer.

Kali studied geomancy and dowsing in the UK more than a decade ago, after completing what was then the only government-accredited course in feng shui, geobiology and space clearing in Melbourne.

She came home, studied kinesiology, elements of traditional Chinese medicine and functional neurology, and moved to Trentham about 10 years ago.

“Divining is generally just tied to water, for digging bores or finding pipes, as tradies might do with a couple of bits of old fence wire,” she said.

“Dowsing covers any tool you’re using to interact with subtle energy through your nervous system.” That might be L rods, a pendulum or a willow stick.

She admits it all seemed “as woo woo and out there as anything else” when she first studied it, and she describes herself as a very grounded person. Her take is that the rods are simply a tool, and the real instrument is your own body.

In the UK she studied under a druid – an acupuncturist and dowser – who heads to Stonehenge on the equinoxes and learned what she calls earth acupuncture.

The idea is that underground watercourses, ley lines and fault lines can create what’s known as geopathic stress, and that where plants struggle to thrive, people may not do so well either.

Take a hedge where a couple of plants never take. Kali won’t make assumptions without dowsing it first but said it’s often an underground watercourse running “toxic”. In Chinese terms that’s a sha line, and the fix is to find the spot and do the earth acupuncture, much like needles in a human body, to return the land to balance.

What’s bad for one creature can be good for another. Bees, she says, thrive in geopathic stress, so a spot that’s no good for the sheep could be perfect for the hives. And the old folk wisdom was to let the sheep out to pasture and build the house where they chose to sleep.

A country girl herself, Kali once beat the professional to it on her dad’s farm, dowsing the exact spot where the bore was going in before he’d told her.

When she offered to find the best place for the compost heap, the fruit trees and the bees as well, the look on his face said, ‘let’s just stop at the water, love’.

These days she’s mapping properties for people about to build, including a current job at Muckleford, showing them where the ley lines, watercourses and blind springs sit before the slab goes down.

“The world’s heavy, it’s loud,” she said. “This gives people an opportunity to get back out into nature and connect with their own land.”

This summer Kali is running a program around the Central Highlands, including sessions at some of the mineral springs, covering practical dowsing, water divining and reading the living landscape. Link: www.weofthewild.com.au Words: Kyle Barnes | Images: Contributed