I for one have noted the dying trees in Adelaide, they can no longer be counted in the dozens but in thousands.
Governments boast of the millions of trees they have planted, but unless they are watered, they end up millions of dead trees.
The once beautiful mature trees along the centre of Greenhill Road are now beyond saving. The parklands are becoming a wasteland of firewood. South Terrace is testament to the dead trees that are waiting for the chain saw.

This scenario is being repeated all over Adelaide and South Australia as climate change becomes reality (except apparently for Karlene Maywald who seems a climate change denier, and is still praying for rain). Well it has rained Karlene, in bucket loads in Queensland. And that's where it counts. But the water is taken long before it reaches SA.

As many of us know, the mouth of the once mighty River Murray closed over for the first time twenty eight years ago in 1981, and yet our elected governments have continually said they had no idea this "drought" to quote Karlene "was coming".
Well, successive governments were warned by this, but did nothing except allocate more water upstream and, pray for rain.
Personally, I think this government stands condemned for its head-in-the sand attitude to the needs of supplying water to this city. Surely water, electricity and gas is expected as part of living in any first world city? No apologies just reliably supply.

On one hand our government commendably wants to attract tens of thousands of new settlers to Adelaide and SA, but what it does not tell any potential immigrants is that once they come here they can not expect to have a viable garden, can not even wash their car in the driveway, and must contend with watching the street trees and parklands die, due to water restrictions bought about by decades of blind inactivity by governments of all persuasions in this state.

Adelaide is fast becoming a desert city. Dead trees, dead gardens and dead parklands. And one can not do anything legally to save this degradation of our environment.

Karlene, yes it can rain, and it has rained, bucketloads in Queensland, Western Australia, NSW and even northern Victoria, but the run off of this water no longer reaches South Australia and the Lower Lakes, because no-one in this state has the intestinal fortitude to do what is necessary, face reality that we can no longer sustain rice growing, cotton growing and unsustainable water practises upstream.

March 2010 in SA will be a watershed, following yet another hot dry, spin cycle summer of political half truths and ribbon cutting.
Are we living in a third world city where we are asked weekly to not only watch our water but now even to curtail our electricity consumption?
Are our trees and gardens not part of our way of life in Australia?
The Adelaide parklands tell the story of our blinkered government and decades of inactivity .
As Mike Rann might say, "On ya bike"!