Sunday in my City - Water on tap

On Art Gallery Road, near Robbie Burns memorial

Top left: Victor Chang memorial opposite St Vincents Top Right: Hyde Park south, near War Memorial Bottom Left: Mid Central Ave, that joined Gardens with Domain Bottom Right: Grand Drive, Centennial Park

Water is the most precious of commodities. More precious than gold. More precious that shares. Nearly as precious as education, but not as precious as love. We drink it, we cook with it, we bathe in it, we launder in it, we flush with it. Human household uses. But there are also industrial uses and agricultural uses. Water was a marginalised natural resource that was taken for granted. But that is all changing.

Australia is an arid country, and it is not alone on the planet in that respect. Our rainfall pattern is around the coastal fringes, and obviously this is where the population exists. We have creeks, but not a plethora of massive running rivers. No Niles, Mississips. No Rhines, no Danubes.No Amazons, no Yangtzes. Our main river system, one that drains a massive area of the entire continent, is the Murray-Darling which is nearly 3,500 km long.

All three bubblers are in the Botanic Gardens, the two small ones are same bubbler from different angle

Consumers the world over, for the last decade, have been convinced that the only good water to drink is the water that comes in small plastic bottles. This may not be totally true, but it does have people taking water where-e’er they go, and drinking water more frequently. Drinking fountains (bubblers) went out of fashion when advertisers told us that they transmitted diseases and were unclean.

All the bubblers featured here are very close to the inner city, and in areas that were developed in the middle of the 19th century. There are bubblers all over our city and in our major parks. I lost count how many there are in Centennial Park. Nowadays, these are all connected to our main water supply.

Today, I feature the humbler bubbler. Tomorrow, the bubbler gets a roof over its head.

Near Mrs Macquarie's Chair overlooking the Opera House

A member of the Sunday in my City community.