Last night I had the honour of attending a gala dinner at the Sydney Hilton to receive a Bronze Award for the Sydney Water Annual Report in the Australasian Reporting Award. I work as one of the three people on the editorial team that puts the report together.

It is the second award since I have been working on the report, the first being for the 2005 report. (We didn’t enter in 2006). Now it is time to start working on the 2008 report. Head down bum up from now till it is finished.

(aka “Hip Hip Hooray for Turds”) - This should be the Sydney Water theme song.

 The Turd Song (as sung by Pat Drummond)

There are lots of songs and stories,
Of great food that’s good to taste,
But not of its by-product,
Which is solid body waste.

Most food has lots of nutrients,
Your body stores and uses,
But there’s always something left behind,
Ignored by gastric juices.

In a little while, this substance vile,
Comes out the other end,
Dropping in a porcelain pond,
And flushing up around the bend.

It travels in a big clay pipe,
That’s too putrid for words,
A human couldn’t live there,
But it’s just like home for turds.

CHORUS:

They’re denigrated, insulted,
And generally resented,
But think how fat the world would be,
If turds were not invented,
We’d all just keep on swelling,
Till we couldn’t move about,
Full of undigested bits of food,
All screaming to get out.
So don’t just slam the lid down without a single word,
Sing ‘Hip Hip Hooray’ for turds!’

Down an endless pongy palace,
Where life is such a lark,
And turds go tumbling two by two,
Like lovers in the dark.

Until they reach the treatment plant,
And join their other mates,
Floating in a sullage pond,
Like a pudding full of dates.

They’re mashed and then bombarded,
With bacterial infestations,
And great big pumps pull them towards,
Their final destination.

They surface out at Bondi,
Where they flow into the ocean,
Now don’t you try and tell me,
There’s no poetry in motions.

© A Jack & P Drummond 1987

When Sydney Water first released details of the desalination plant, it had a short list of three sites; Port Kembla, Kurnell and Malabar.
Port Kembla was then dismissed as being limited to a 125ML/day plant.
Miraculously, the costs for the remaining two sites were estimated to be exactly the same. The prime reason that Kurnell was chosen was that the land at Malabar had unknown levels of contamination and the strict timeline for building the plant meant the “greenfield” site at Kurnell had the advantage.
By the time the plan was put on hold, (after the sudden discovery of huge amounts of water within the vast cavern between Morris Iemma’s ears), the site at Kurnell had been purchased.
Now it is revealed (Sunday Telegraph, 11 February) that the site is actually contaminated with 100,000 tonnes of material containing asbestos.
Perhaps it is time for the government to reconsider the siting of the plant, for if it must be built, it is better built on a site closer to where the water will be used, and avoid the need for a massive water pipe under Botany Bay.

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Advertising agencies recently had a competition to come up with ways of selling recycled water.

One of the better entries appears below. The tagline? It’s your mind that’s dirty.