You want ■■■■ drinking water come to Perth. Drive around and see the brown stains on people’s brickwork and paths from the high mineral content. I still can’t drink it straight from the tap and I’ve been here 30+ years.
Melton like Bacchus Marsh used to get its water from both Melton Reservoir and Merrimu Reservoir, neither catchments are closed. Now both get from Melbourne supply, but in the Marsh at times we get topups from Merrimu and it is easy to notice.
I spent many hours treking through the catchments of all of the closed areas for Melbourne supply taking water samples, and also samples of animal ■■■■ for testing at the Melb Water Labs. Also we took samples from all the holding reservoirs in the suburbs and from some Mains supplies.
Now that all dosing is fully automatic and chemical testing is online and continuous, there is rarely an over or under dosing event, except when they are doing maintenance or a breakdown. Equipment is very reliable, I sold them a lot of it.
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What’s going to be interesting is NHMRC has just this week indicated a move to the US PFAS criteria. There’s every chance many water supplies fail at that number. They say you can detect PFAS in the livers if unborn polar bears, so this could get interesting.
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I was talking about Merrimu to my mum yesterday. Was recalling getting bee-stung once on one of the times we went there for a family picnic BBQ on the mown grass with the tables above the res, skip stones and run around on the grass/daisies with bare feet. We actually had one of the blocks on Long forest road for a while and used to swim in the djerrewarrah and catch little reddies and roach, and yabbies.
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So.
Is this a good thing, and where’s the other place?
(I want another reason to big note QOL in Melbourne)
Are you in The Shire? That’s historically been the OK area there.
I was living in Sydney during the giardia scare, and quickly worked out it was better to better to drink the giardia than to boil (concentrate) the cow poo sludge they provide.
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Ha - harder to find - I recalled this from what I was told years ago. When I try and find a list, it’s not so straightforward. I also see unattributed claims between one-of-two, one-of-five, and one-of-few.
But I can say, the areas where the catchments are are mostly very protected. Try go fishing in the Watts river above Maroondah. Try accessing the banks of Cardinia. One of the biggest issues I think is where there has been logging pushing into the Thomson catchment - by far the largest chunk of protected catchment. But mostly, you really can’t get into these areas. You can’t fish in the dams. We are lucky these areas were protected in the 1800s.
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St George, which is adjacent to the Shire and same water supply.
Those red stains are from iron in the subterranean water, which is used by the reticulation systems for watering lawns etc.
The drinking water comes from a different source - mostly from deal plants. There may well be different supplies to different areas of Perth (ie YMMV) but the water in our place tastes as good as we had when living in Melbourne. (Although it still seems not to be as soft as Melbourne water).
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We should be OK. Not too many polar bears ■■■■■■■ into Australian reservoirs.
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When I did the water sampling in streams in the closed catchment you sometimes found the remain of illegal fishing. These turds used to leave hooked string lines and catch many fish, but often never come back so we were clearing up decomposing fish adding to our drinking supplies.
I remember asking the chief engineer what we should do, and he said take immediate action by not telling anyone about it. He said we couldn’t afford to close down any areas. O
Sometimes saw deer hunters as well, they had guns so I just waved.
Are magpies and crows attacking Indian Myna birds (and winning)?
A Currawong successfully beat off a Noisy Miner after being alerted to its invasion of their territory by small birds in the side garden,
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Can someone explain, what is the purpose of having a ‘pergola’ or an outdoor sitting area thing with just a wooden frame and nothing on the top?
I see it in almost every new townhouse and cannot for the life of me fathom what the purpose is. It is just so they can say on the leaflet when selling the place that it has an ‘undercover seating area’, or is there actually a purpose which I am completely oblivious to?
I feel like this is the epitome of a dumb question.
The “purpose” is to provide the simplest - sorry, cheapest - possible construction. Just look at how cheap and nasty that house and its surrounds are,
The “pergola” feature can be created by the owners who then can pay extra to install some protection from the sun, such as shade cloth or a deciduous vinous plant.
I’m with you on this, never understood the purpose.
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You can hang plants/wind chimes etc. or add lattice and run an ornamental grape for summer shade/winter light. Or use to mount shade sails.
Basically if it was covered it wouldn’t count as secluded private open space, for which you need minimum area in a unit development.
Put a roof on it and you’ve got to find another 10sqm of private open space.
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Yup makes perfect sense 
knew there had to be some nonsense explanation
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What others have said. But I think there’s also something aesthetically pleasing to humans sitting under it.
It might look stupid, but Imagine it wasn’t there, it’d look silly.