As parts of Queensland revel in the liquid gold brought by La Niña, a mother in a former mining town pours water left in a glass back into a plastic bottle.
In the late 1800s, Mount Morgan was a river of gold – its mines yielding fortunes that spawned BP – but now Rockhampton council is paying up to $10,000 a day to truck water to the town.
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Its water supply – No 7 dam – sits at just over 8 per cent, with the town currently at level 6 restrictions.
Locals say the tap water they do have tastes like “dirt”.
They say they don’t want to drink it, parents say their children don’t want to bathe in it, a coffee shop plumbs 15 litres of bottled water into their machine just to avoid complaints.
It’s a water crisis a local development group fears could be hampering industry.

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