Last night it rained gently all night here - this is an arid desert with an interesting water supply history.

Up until 1922, opal miners had to cart in their own water, then the Govt built an underground storage tank to hold 2 million litres of water - unfortunately it didn't rain enough to fill up.

In 1967 the State Govt built a solar desalination plant (didn't know the Greens party was around that far back lol) to extract fresh from salty water (theres many HUGE dry salt lakes up this way) but it didn't pump enough water up the 100m bore and also the strong winds often put it out of action.

It wasn't until 1985 that an efficient and reliable water supply was constructed using underground salty water and processing it by reverse osmosis.  The water is then pumped 22km to storage tanks which automatically fill as water is drawn down.

Water here is now beautiful but as a visitor you pay for it.  We're staying in the CP which is part of the Hotel and they have tank water out the back you can help yourself to, but showers are a modest 20c for 4 minutes.

Some places sell water for up to $1 for 30 litres, but on the main road in town (opposite the Shell roadhouse) is a very large area for van parking and has a dump point and 2 water fueling pumps (look very much like a smaller version of a fuel bowser).  Water there is 20c for 30L and you insert various coins in the slots (like CP washing machines).  You can draw up to 15 mins worth before it shuts off and you need to start again, but that's one awful lot of water in that time.