Well done - what a tremendous efort. Author, adventurer and engineer Steve Posselt has completed his gruelling journey by kayak up the Goulburn River and over the Great Divide into Melbourne arriving in Federation Square on Sunday 16th August. He was cheered into the bank by Plug the Pipe Supporters, Watershed members - a community based campaign against the de-salination plant in Victoria, members of the Clean Oceans Foundation and Watermark and Women'sTtrust supporters. Note the wheels on Steve's kayak - he had to use them often - 'I was in and out of the kayak on stoney sections, walking around log jams' Steve wrote in his blog on day 11.
Steve has been giving the stark facts to media along the way, and has generated a lot of attention including a segment on the ABC Stateline Program on Friday evening 14th August.
'It beats me how Minister Holding thinks he can create water. From all of my analysis, all of my investigations and discussions I can see no savings, just paper shuffling and spin. There is no magic way to create water for the river. It would be nice if someone could get him to justify his statements one day, rather than just repeating them. said Steve in his final wrap up of the trip. Steve is continuing his journey across to Adelaide to help many more people in South Australia realise that the North South Pipeline Policy directly affects South Australians as well as Victorians.Find out more about the ups and downs of Steve's journey

13/08/09 Regulations that will allow country water to be funnelled to Melbourne via the controversial North-South pipeline were rejected in the Victorian Parliament on Wednesday 12th August.

In pursuit of water efficiency, Professor John Langford recommends a retro-fit of homes to replace Melbourne's 400,000 single flush toilets. Read the full article by Melissa Fyfe in the Sunday Age July 26th 2009

The people of Bundanoon's opposition to water mining in their local area received significant national and international publicity recently with the towns peoples decision to ban bottled water. Their fight to stop aquifer mining however, is far from over and has been running since early 2007. The utter waste and inefficiency of bottled water need to be exposed at every turn.

Bundy votes on bottled water ban
THE Southern Highlands village of Bundanoon is poised to become the first town in Australia, and quite possibly the world, to ban commercially bottled water......... The catalyst was a proposal by the Sydney company Norlex Holdings to build a water extraction plant in the town. It was initially turned down after sustained objections from residents, but Norlex appealed, and the case is before the NSW Land and Environment Court. "The idea of them taking water here, trucking it up to Sydney and bringing it back in bottles to be sold in shops at 300 times the tap price is a bit strange," said Mr Kingston, who has organised support for the ban over several months.......read the full article

Kenneth Davidson, Senior columnist with the Age challenges the Victorian govenment's current water policy and continues to put forward the case for using recycled water rather than desalination. Read this excellent article in The Age 2nd July 2009 Denying the effectiveness of recycling just won't hold water

The Report of the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into Melbourne's Future Water Supply has been released. Water recycling and re-use is at the forefront. Read the Report. Click here...

Start lobbying now - if you are in a Labor seat especially, get in touch with your local members. Ask them which recommendations they support and what are they going to do to achieve them.