For a society which just three years ago turned on water sprinklers at any hour of the day or night, and which still regards the installation of a swimming pool as the ultimate expression of sustainable sub-tropical living, Level 3 water restrictions, introduced in June 2006, banning any form of hosing at all, were an almost unthinkable nightmare. Earlier residents of Brisbane got stuck into the rainforest, harvested the fine timbers, and built sensible wooden houses until generations of sawmillers ran out of trees to cut down. The imported species that give Brisbane what is left of its green canopy — especially the Leopard trees — struggled in the drought. Even the fig trees were troubled (Spearritt 2003). The city’s fountains remain waterless, in a rather pathetic attempt to pretend that everyone is tackling the crisis seriously, a bit like the marketing ploy of buying carbon offsets to discount guilt when travelling by air.

Gone are Brisbane’s long-touted ambitions as Australia’s only sub-tropical capital city. And on the Gold and Sunshine Coasts the outdoor showers — surely the quintessential Queensland act for locals, interstate and international visitors — were turned off. To get an outdoor shower you had to cross the border and head for Byron Bay, where it still rains regularly and where much more of the natural landscape has been preserved in national parks and nature reserves. Byron Bay could easily have become another Gold Coast were it not for interventions from both a brave local council and the NSW state government, which under Premier Carr, attempted to prevent coastal overdevelopment.