This is the picture I took when I toured the UQ Art Museum few days ago. I have to say that the Museum is very well-maintained; look at the water fountain located in front of the building! Nowadays, it’s very rare to see a water fountain that actually has water in it. Go around UQ and you’ll see none of those fountains has flowing water. That’s why I’m quite amazed to see this fountain; I wonder how much water is used for this thing?? But I’m relieved to know that UQ has saved the most water of any large company in the past year. Perhaps they’ll only keep the fountain running until the event ends.

Level 5 water restrictions now apply in South East Queensland from April. And plans to introduce level 6 restrictions are being discussed; perhaps it will take affect in September. Due to these restrictions, the government has to limit individual daily water usage of 140 litres a day. When the restrictions were first introduced in April, the daily water usage of people in Queensland was 171 litres per person. I have no clue how much water I use every single day. I suppose it’d be more than 140 litres. Who knows, really. I use water the most for showering and I’ve been trying to cut my consumption of water for the past few weeks. I try not to wash my hair everyday and do laundry only once every two or three weeks.

The managers of our apartment sent each of the residents an email few weeks ago and announced that:

Each unit at Altitude [the name of our apartment] averages a higher usage than the Taringa & Brisbane average. We don’t know why this occurs, but we need to reduce it.

[Brisbane City] Council has asked us to reduce our usage to 140 Litres per day per person.
Peter [one of the managers] has been monitoring this for 8 weeks and at Altitude, we average 193 litres per person per day.

Apart from reducing our overall usage, we would also appreciate if all of you could recycle your shower water and sink water for watering the gardens. Several people are already doing this and our aim is not to loose any more of our gardens unnecessarily.

In order to recycle water, you will need to put 1 or 2 buckets in the shower beside you which will catch excess water. If you have a bowl in the sink to catch water when you rinse your hands or vegetables, this water can also be recycled.

We will be providing plastic buckets at the office from Monday for anybody who requires an extra one or two.

Some habits that need to be changed are listed below:

- Please NEVER leave the tap running while you clean your teeth.
- Please NEVER rinse dishes under running water.
- Fill the sink and wash the dishes, then dispose of this water and if you feel you need to, tip a cup of water over the washed dishes to rinse off soap residue.
- Showers should only be 4 minutes long.
- Please limit the number of loads of washing you do each week.

The government monitors the daily water usage of all residents and will send out ‘Please Explain’ letters and assessment forms to households using more than 800 litres of water each day. Those failing to lodge the forms would face an immediate ban on outdoor water use and a fine [Brisbane Times].

Yes, that’s how serious the water crisis in Brisbane is. People who live outside Australia might not understand this and sometimes if I talk about it with my family and friends, they look at me as if I’m bluffing or trying to exaggerate the issue — when in fact, I’m NOT! Well, hellooo… Australia is the driest continent on earth! It’s so dry, that the water dam levels in South East Queensland are at 18.31%!

Let’s save water and pray for more rain to come!