Water: Our Desiccated Planet

It’s raining today. Don’t ask me why, I just want it to continue. I live in Tasmania on two-hundred-acres of virgin bush. The wildlife frolic freely here, no hunters allowed, and even the vermin can make you smile, but the rain, the rain never came when the tanks were empty. It never came when the lake dried up. It never came when my mouth craved its cool wet intrusion. Yes, in Tasmania, the rain never came, but it is here today.

Water tanks supply water to my house, but one’s got a leak and instead of hydrating me, it flows freely down a steep hill catching in small swaled pools where Deer, Wallabies, Wombats, Kangaroos and yes, even Platypus, and an array of other wildlife, drink their fill. All manner of birds now live in trees taller than cityscapes, smaller than mountains, though not by much, around my house.

It’s a precious commodity, water is. Its nutrients and oxygen are essential to life on our planet, Earth. Every animal, including humans, or plants require its life giving, lifesaving power to live. The Earth must need water to ensure life, after all, seventy percent of the Earth is water, but take that away. Take all the water away, and the earth dies.

We die.

Tasmania has experienced a drought for a decade or more, and I understand the importance of water. I moved from a city to a place where an abundance of water was a given, and the first year I moved here it was. I've been in Tasmania for almost twenty-years, and have learned how precious water is. I also live so far from town, water carriers cannot get up my 4-wheel drive, driveway.

I’m lucky to shower once a week, once a month some years. For the first ten-years I would drive fifty-kilometers to a hidden pool of ice-cold water, clear as glass, the melt from the mountain above. I would collect it, and fill the car with as many bottles of as I could, for drinking water. I'd then take a bottle, move from the river, so as not to pollute it as every other creature in the area used that water to survive. I'd wash my hair, brushed my teeth and bathe in the bushes, even in Winter.

One morning I was watching a television program, I think it was two years in, and I was feeling pretty bitter about the water situation. It was about a woman in England who was undergoing a trial of living on four-litres of water a day for a month, and I remember performing a talk over as she complained, after the first day, about not being able to do it.

“I use two litres of water just for tea,” she said, “and after a morning flush, that’s the water gone. I can’t do it. I won’t do it.”

“Four litres?” I said using my best Monty Python, “you lucky, lucky, bugger. What I wouldn’t do for just one of those litres…”

So, it’s been twenty years, and I learned fast just how precious water was. Every single drop is life giving. I collect buckets from a lake to flush my toilet. I fill 2litre bottles from a twenty-litre bucket sitting just outside my back door, catching the rain from the roof, and put them aside for showers. I only use them if I am going to a meeting, or into town. Most times I can get away with only washing my hair and face, and I never flush unless I have to.

At the height of Summer, birds nest in my roof just to be closer to the skerrick of water still pooling out back. Every year, all sorts of wildlife and strange birds visit the clay pool that once was a lake. They teach their young to stay close, so they can survive the drought, and although I would love to shower every day, to not collect water from the lake every day, it’s no longer a challenge to go without. I understand how precious water is and have just enough to keep me, and my furry feathery friends alive.

So, it’s raining today, well it’s more of a sprinkle really, and maybe it will be enough to wash the dishes? Who can say?

I understand how precious water is, and that when we pollute it, we pollute our planet. I am just one person, but if everyone protected the finite amount of fresh water our planet provides, then maybe we too will survive.

Water preserving practices were forced on me twenty-years ago, and even though it's still a commodity that evades the water system to my house, I choose to care for our waterways. I understand their importance in the greater scheme of things, and maybe others can find ways to limit their use too. Maybe corporations could take more care in their dumping of chemicals and other waste products, and we can find more efficient ways to dump sewage and rubbish. We could put into practice better regulations to preserve our waterways.

More and more people are turning their homes into solar batteries, maybe they could install water tanks, or grey water systems too? Even if that water is only used for the toilet, garden and/or topping up the swimming pool, it would be giving back to the earth what it freely gave in the first place, and maybe, just maybe, we will save our own lives by saving our planet, because if it dies, we die.