Musings on water

Unless you have been living under a rock, you all know about the drought in South East Queensland, and indeed, around Australia. This is apparently the worst drought in recorded (white) history and some reckon the worst in 1000 years. SE Queensland's dams are hovering between 10 and 20 percent. Pretty sobering stuff considering 1200 people a week are moving here - and the Premier has ruled out a cap on development (it's the economy stupid!). We in the cities and major towns of SE Queensland are buffered from the worst effects of the drought, despite the State government's new watersaving targets for households - after all, water still comes out of our taps, unemployment is very low and we're all very comfortable, thank you very much. So it appears that the effects of the resources boom is keeping us all cushioned from the very worst effects of this milleniumist drought.

What it does mean, however rosy the economic outlook is short term, is that under Level 5 water restrictions, gardeners are no longer allowed to water their gardens. Again, gardeners - the soft targets of the State Government's water policy - get it in the neck. Thankfully, pool owners are now obliged to fill their water-wasting toys with tank water, the water in which must have come from rain. It was almost too much to bear watching my seedlings that would have fed myself and my partner for months wither and die knowing that my neighbour was blithely refilling his pool from the city's drinking water supplies. I guess we can thank a government who buried it's head in the sand when warned about investing in water security many years before the crisis has hit us over the head

I have a wish list that I would like to share with you - a vision of how things could be done differently. A few of these are top down approaches, some are bottom-up approaches. Some are tongue-in-cheek but it's up to you to decide which ones!

1. Positive tax encouragement for people to grow their own food - despite the shift to smaller yards many people have abundant space to grow some productive plants, from pawpaw trees to potatoes. Of course this would mean a radical restructure of our working lives - can't grow food and work 70-hour weeks.


2. The forming of neighbourhood co-operatives to sell the products of truly local food production.


3. Rebates for gardening lessons, compost heaps, worm farms, animal manure and gardening tools.


4. Local "Food Garden Champions", actively encouraging people to grow fruit and vegetable in their backyards and acting as a knowledge source for newbies.


5. Local "Water trading schemes" - water-misers can sell off their excess to water guzzlers at a price.


6. Making water tanks compulsory on all houses and supplying funding to make this happen.


7. Changing local legislation that sees composting toilets illegal in sewered areas.


8. Less Drought Relief to prop up poor farming practices and more funding to assist those hard-working folk on the land to convert to sustainable practices like organic farming.


9. Food-producing Community Gardens in every suburb providing a space for people to learn and contribute if they don't have space to grow their own food.

(Picture of cracked earth at Wivenhoe Dam by Jonathon Wood, Getty Images)

Wow, il pleut!

My god, it's been raining. In the driest season of the year here in Queensland, we recorded our most significant rainfall since October 2005. This is a picture of the downpipe to our modest rainwater tank gushing with water. Our tank was full from a previous shower so much of the rain went out the overflow pipe and into the stormwater drainage system. I nearly wept with frustration. I was out in the rain bucketing water like mad and even had the hose attachment flowing in an effort to capture some of that precious water. The ground is so dry that despite the good soaking we got over a 24 hour period, the soil in some parts of the garden is only marginally damp. The no-dig garden bed is lovely and moist and today I planted out seedlings of snowpeas, celery, Thai basil and sawtooth herb (tastes like coriander/cilantro but doesn't bolt to seed in the summer). Feel like these will survive as the soil is good and soaked with rain.

One winter afternoon...

Through the leaves of the paw paw trees on a perfect winter afternoon. This winter has been the wettest winter we have had for quite some time, although the picture of sun and blue skies belies this. It's quite ironic that in the middle of the worst drought in recorded history in Australia, we've had a some good falls of rain. None in the catchments of the dams however.