Crosspost: Life in a water crisis

I decided to start crossposting entries from my "main" blog, reasoning that people who read my entries elsewhere might be interested in these as well. This entry was originally posted yesterday, at Jayeless » Life in a water crisis.

Of the many things I am, one of them is that I'm a born-and-raised Victorian. Furthermore, I'm a born-and-raised young Victorian. I was born in 1992, only a few years before the drought took hold. You might have heard of "the drought". There's been so little rain for so many years that the lack of water has become a crisis.

This has several implications for life in this land. The first is water restrictions. I have vague memories of splashing around merrily in garden sprinklers as a toddler on hot summer afternoons. As a slightly older child, I remember playing some kind of espionage thriller game with my sister which involved me shooting her about a MILLION TIMES with a water gun. (It was again summer, and I did want her to shoot me back, but she kept missing. I wasn't happy.) I remember once being given permission to water the garden, and merrily turning the garden hose upwards into the air to create a kind of dodgy artificial rain.

Well, all of these things are now illegal, on pain of a $2,000 fine. For serious. If your neighbours report you to police for wilful violation of water restrictions, you have to pay $2,000 for it. One of the houses down the street has a sign in the front yard: "THIS HOUSE HAS INSTALLED A WATER TANK". If they did not, the owner could be reported for watering their garden. ( Read more... )