The Most Wasted Commodity

I learned that it’s World Water Day today. This precious resource is so often taken for granted.

I did a cash job a week back providing drinks for a wedding reception. A catering crew had set-up behind the bar and were feeding the guests. One of the catering staff had got béchamel sauce on her hands and came to the sink where I was cleaning glasses to wash it off. In her struggle to turn on the mains tap, she turned to me and said “Oh, I’ll just use the rainwater tap, it’s easier”. To which I reached across, reefed on the mains tap and turned off the rainwater tap and with an attempt at a polite smile on my face I said “I wouldn’t use the rain water because it hasn’t rained” and appropriately got her front wet from the splashback of the mains tap.

I reiterate: Water is a precious resource.

Not enough rain fell in South Australia last winter. Rain came in Spring. By this point, a lot of crops had already died and the drift was already working its damage across paddocks. Farmers were lucky to break even if they did, so many suffered losses. So many people are currently feeding all their stock. The price of hay and feed is set to continue to soar.

The lack of rain has mucked things up for the beekeepers. Flowering gums came on later than normal and were often dry of nectar. Commercial beekeepers have flooded certain areas with their apiaries where they wouldn’t normally go because of the concentration of flowering natives. Ordinarily, they’d be quite spread out across the state right now.  Hobby beekeepers have noticed their bees dying and after providing me with a description of the level of stores on board in their hives, my conclusion is often that the bees have starved.

I look around me at some of the properties in my area. There’s a defined line between my neighbours and Meaford. Meaford still has pasture. You can see the soil of my neighbours place. Meaford wouldn’t look like that if the place hadn’t been destocked late last year. I only have to juggle two horses, two alpacas and eight sheep. I’m having a moral dilemma about fencing the ovines out of a paddock that leads out on to a road (the paddock doubles as an easement). There’s good pasture there, I want them to be able to graze it. I don’t want them wandering off and having little adventures either.

The water for our creatures is being trucked in. The bore has crapped itself. It did so in late December. I feel as though we’re being mucked around by the guy that is supposed to fix it. A season with no rain and we have no working bore. The lawn is dead. It will remain dead and until a sufficient amount of water is being held in the dam again. I’m keeping certain trees and roses alive on request. I don’t flush the toilet every time I go. Flushing is saved for number twos and before I go to work. My shit and piss doesn’t need water to survive. Animals do. I do. The trees and roses do.

El Nino, a weather pattern associated with dry conditions (in comparison to La Nina which is associated with wet conditions and neutral which is self-explanatory), is expected to hang around this year too.

The Top End is only just getting the rain it needs so badly. Tens of thousands of cattle are currently being trucked off the Barkly because it got no rain. There are plans to sink bores on some places because the surface water did not get recharged. In the 16 years I’ve known the Top End, this is the worst Wet I know of.

Queensland and New South Wales is running into their seventh year of drought. Some of the kids on the stations in these states have likely never seen rain fall on their properties. Certain parts of Western Australia are copping drier than usual weather.

People are squabbling over the Murray Darling Basin drying up. Some point the finger at climate cycles and drought. Some point the finger at mismanagement by bureaucrats and politicians. Some point the finger at irrigators, especially cotton growers. And do you know what? They are all right. ALL these factors have contributed to the Basin being dry. Not one factor… ALL.

Things are not going to get better. My rural brothers and sisters don’t need these words, the strain to be measured in their water use is ingrained in them. But my city friends, I urge you this:
Don’t take water for granted although it freely flows from your household taps. Change to grey water safe products and recycle your water where you can by putting buckets under taps and using that to water your garden. Forget your lawn. Take shorter showers. Turn the tap off while brushing your teeth. Fix leaking taps. It’s the little things, they all add up.

Mad Max: Fury Road, 2015