Wet, wet, wet

*SSS is not a scientist. All posts are generally unsubstantiated rants.*

'Rain, rain, go away, come again another day.'

A little ditty probably unknown to Australians but it's something that most UK children will chant more times than they can remember during their childhood. It feels as though we've been in drought since Sally Fletcher lived with Tom and Pippa. We've all seen the news items of children growing up in the bush who've never even seen rain. And yet it seems as thought there's been nothing but rain for the entire month of February. Are we off water restrictions? No. Why not? It's been one of the wettest Februarys on record. Where is all the water?

All of this beautiful rain has been going out to sea. I watched it today from my safe position undercover, a waterfall cascading from the cliffs at South Coogee, floating out and away. Meanwhile TV adverts inform me that by showering for one minute less I will be saving water. Well, what the hell is the government doing about saving the stuff that falls from the sky?

Scaremongering headlines don't help. They just create mass hysteria. Entertaining as it is to see bogans being interviewed on the street declaring that they "don't wanna drink piss from the tap" it would be more helpful if the public were better informed. We should be learning from the experiences of other countries who are already successfully using recycled water. My personal opinion is that no government wants to spend the money to get it going. Great. So because no one wants to pay for it, we're going to carry on as we are, showering for one minute less, unable to hose cars, leaving the garden to go brown and praying to the rain gods until someone makes a brave decision and gets the ball rolling.

I grew up drinking recycled water. I didn't know it until our science teacher told us, the entire class of 11 year olds let out a collective, "Uggggghhhhhhhhh" then we got over it. It's not as if we turned on the tap and collected a glass of urine.

Recycling, desalination, we need to do something. I want to be able to have a guilt free shower again.


* I did a rain dance once, when I was about 5. My grandfather helped me. We took the toilet from my dolls house and put an ant in it, this was our sacrifice to the rain gods. We then fashioned some long grass into a circle, placed the toilet in the middle and proceeded to dance around it. It would have been an entertaining sight, the five year old girl and the 50 year old man, whooping and dancing round a plastic toilet. Anyway, about an hour later it started to rain. I was delighted. It was years before I realised that he'd seen the weather forecast and decided to have a bit of fun. I prefer to think we made magic that day.