FYI - "Australia drought sparks suicides"
 

How awful! It's horrible that our farmers are having to sell what has been such an important part of their heritage, and livelihood. Everytime we drive through the outskirts of town, we see less agricultural activity, and tons of land development for housing additions everywhere! It makes me wonder where the crops will come from if we sell all the farm fields off to developers. :(

Thanks for sharing this article Lara!
{{{{{{hugs}}}}}}
~Kimmy

Lara,
That is so sad. I had no idea you guys were still in a drought situation there.
And you've got the hottest part of your season still yet to come. :(
{{{{{{HUGS}}}}} and prayers for rain for Austrailia....
vicky

That is just heart breaking to read Lara...losing everything including hope. :( :(

Sheffield's life savers - Tasmania, Australia
 

Just adding on a story here. I just watched it on TV. The transcript is not yet available, but it should be in the next day or so I should imagine. After losing a large number of people to suicide within a short period of time, this little country town decided they needed to work out what they could do to prevent this from happening again in the future. I think they said they got about 200 people from the town together for a meeting and then went from there. Now they run short courses so that people can learn more about suicide prevention and depression. It was a very good programme and really made me think about how valuable it would be for everyone to do one of these courses.

http://www.abc.net.au/landline/conte...6/s1794064.htm
Sheffield's life savers

Reporter: Pip Courtney
First Published: 26/11/2006

Between 1999 and 2003 the small rural town of Sheffield in northern Tasmania was left reeling when 10 locals committed suicide.

Perplexed that so many people had missed, or just didn't know what the warning signs were, the town set up a suicide intervention program.

It's been a big success, and now Sheffield hopes other rural communities around the country will adopt it too.

(Full transcript will be posted when available)

im sorry to hear of these suicides and dought and i hope it stops

is the global warming stopping the rain?

why dont they build more salt water water plants?

Hi clouds, how are you?
Climate change has certainly affected water supply here.
There's a huge push on at the moment for recycling of water. There are some areas where there are desalination plants but the negatives seem to outweigh the positives from what I see. Desalination is very costly in terms of electricity consumption and initial set up costs. Then what do you do with all the salt that's left over anyway? I don't even know if it would be possible to harness enough energy from solar or wind power to run huge desalination plants.

Our government has been off in la-la land for years now about all this and suddenly they're waking up... ooops, a little late. We even have Al Gore wandering around over here telling us all what we should or shouldn't be doing. How come he wasn't wandering around elsewhere 15 or 20 years ago telling people what they should or shouldn't be doing before it got almost too late to do anything at all.

People here waste water like you wouldn't believe. I see it all the time. I'm not talking about the farming areas, I'm talking about populated cities and suburban areas. I always had a bore. Used the bore water only to water plants and grass areas if needed. Even just doing that cut down the water consumption heaps.

I've been against recycling of water, because I don't think people should drink it even though councils are telling us it is safe to drink, but... I am all for recycling water if it's used for everything else and I just buy my bottled water for drinking. We have a referendum coming up on this issue. We all have to vote if we will use recycled water in my part of Queensland.

In Australia there is this huge underground water supply called the artesian basin. Link to Great Artesian Basin info It's even drying up and the water in most of it is not really suitable for irrigation for farmers 'cause of the PH and salt content. But... I don't know why they're not spending more money doing something about that. We in the cities are wasting water, the farmers are not.

Every single home in Australia should have at least one rainwater tank, a grey water tank from used washing and shower water for example, and water saving devices on all toilets, taps, showers etc.. People are topping up their swimming pools all the time here because it's so hot they're evaporating constantly. They're bringing in mandatory pool covers now to save on that. Oh so many things to do and very few people even care! A lot of old water pipes in the cities are bursting and wasting water on a daily basis because the ground is drying out and shifting.

It's a huge issue and I'd better stop 'cause I could go on forever.