Green or brown Australia!

It was obvious, even coming in to land at Adelaide, that quite a lot of South Australia is brown rather than green at the moment.  They’ve had a hot, hot summer:  and part of the problem is that the main river, the Murray, is over-used further upstream for irrigation and so is nearly drying up by the time it gets to the sea.

Water shortage, my host Christine thinks, is the next big crisis here.  If you ever doubted the reality of climate change, compare pictures of South Australia twenty years ago with how it is now.  It’s amazing that they manage to grow so many grapes and make so much wine!  But my host does a lot of water conservation, including having buckets in the shower – you fill these with the cold water whilst the warm is coming through (assuming that you don’t want to step straight into a cold shower!), and then it goes on the garden.  They have a water tank to keep any rainwater, and sometimes they use it as the main water supply, with just a small filter tap for drinking water.  And there may be more things I’ve not discovered yet.

I’ve certainly become more aware of the need to save water, in the few days I’ve been here.  Back at home, where we have the huge reservoir at Kielder, there seems little point in taking fastidious measures to save tiny bits of something we have in plenty, even in the dry times of the present decade.  But out here…and worldwide?  I suspect that fresh water will be a big issue as climate change bites more and more. 

Yet I don’t see any solar desalination here, or indeed hear of it anywhere much.  These systems are basically a sheet of glass set at an angle to catch the sun, with a shallow lake of sea water behind and a run-off channel for condensed water next to the base of the glass.  The sun heats and evaporates the sea water, and it condenses on the glass and trickles down into the channel.  Energy required once built:  zero!  Just keep filling the sea water pans and collecting the fresh.  This, on a large scale, could be a major help – couldn’t it?

Meanwhile, there are advantages to being in an area where wine is plentiful even if water isn’t!