Photographs of Bruce Rutherford's dam on his farm at Walcha in northern New South Wales show a stark difference.
What was bone-dry and brown three years ago is now full to the brim with water, as cows stop by for a dip and a drink.
But while eastern Australia's rivers flood and dams spill, experts say the risk of communities running dry in the next drought is greater than ever.
The warning comes hot off the heels of the latest climate snapshot from the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology, which shows extreme weather events, including drought, are likely to get worse.
Drought trauma lingers
In 2020, an ABC analysis revealed that 55 rural and regional towns were at risk of running out of water, if they had not already.
This included Stanthorpe in south-east Queensland, where Samantha and Russell Wantling recalled the pain and suffering the community endured during the worst dry period in modern memory, which started in 2017.
Every day for 15 months about 50 trucks carted in water for the town's 5,000 residents.
Locals were forced to live on 80 litres of water per person per day. By comparison, Sydney's average daily consumption is 200 litres per person per day.
Mr Wantling recalled driving home from work and seeing a family filling up buckets of water from Storm King Dam, the town's main storage facility.
He stopped to ask them if they were okay and learnt that the family had resorted to using dam water to shower and to wash their clothes.
"They weren't on the reticulated system in the town area, so there was no access whatsoever to any water," Mr Wantling said.
"And they couldn't afford to buy a truckload … so the only option left was to go and start bucketing water."
Water will dry up again
The Wantlings, who established a charity that delivered 18 million litres of bulk water during the drought and more than 1,000 pallets of bottled water to locals, believed water conservation had been "instilled" in the younger generation.
"It was horrific for kids to go through that because they saw what their families were going through," Mrs Wantling said.
Mr Wantling said people did not have enough water to bathe, "not even enough water to get up in the morning to brush your teeth".
"Schools ran programs because kids were starting to smell," he said.
"To save the embarrassment they started sharing some of the water with them. It was horrific."
Despite the increased awareness, the Wantlings fear their community could face a similar fate in the next drought.
"Something we had during the drought was every politician, whether it was local, federal or state, come up and, you know, grace us with their presence," Mrs Wantling said.
"They'd get the great photo with someone who was deserving and say, 'We will never let this happen again', and then go away.
"What has happened now is it's raining, so I feel the need for water security is on the backbench."
Day zero still looms
Central Queensland University Professor of Regional Economic Development John Rolfe is working with nine Queensland regions "from the grassroots" to plan how to become more drought resilient.
His work with the Rural Economies Centre of Excellence is funded by the federal government's Future Drought Fund and the state government.
The program's website states its "sharp focus" is on agriculture but Professor Rolfe said it had changed to focus on people and communities as well.
"Just about every local government that I've talked to has said that they've got at least one small town or small community where maintaining supplies during major droughts is problematic," he said.
His research suggests extreme droughts, population increases and agricultural productivity are leaving towns more vulnerable than ever to water shortages.
"We've got more people living in urban areas, we're allocating out the water at a faster rate, and there's not as much water left in the systems that are unallocated," Professor Rolfe said.
"So all of these things mean that there are greater risks, I think, of [water] shortages into the future."
Professor Rolfe said state governments should fast-track and fund more water infrastructure projects for country towns, and stop subjecting them to the same regulatory hurdles applied to larger agricultural and industrial schemes.
"We are not seeing urban water put as a first order type of a ranking compared to other areas for water supply, and that's probably one of the things that has to change into the future," he said.
A greater focus on people
The recent federal budget revealed the National Water Grid Authority's (NWGA) remit would expand to include town water projects, with dam projects across NSW and Queensland to be deferred or scrapped pending stronger business cases.
The deferrals include an agricultural dam slated to be built near Stanthorpe.
The grid, set up by the former Coalition government, had previously invested in dams, bores, weirs and pipelines that largely benefited farming.
The NWGA will now fund a $215-million plan to shore up Cairns' drinking water supply, which is projected to run short within five years.
Cairns may receive nearly two metres of water on average during its wet season, but there is not enough infrastructure to store it.
Councils and state governments have been chipping away at other schemes too.
The Queensland government is funding a new pipeline that will connect Toowoomba to Warwick — another town that came close to running out of water during the last drought.
But the Wantlings point out the pipeline will not help Stanthorpe and surrounding rural residents.
"They still have to cart that water to Stanthorpe … when there could be a storage up here."
NSW acts on damning report
A damning New South Wales auditor general's report in September 2020 found the state's Department of Planning, Industry and Environment (now the Department of Planning and Environment) was to blame for the lack of water security in country towns.
It found the department had "not effectively supported or overseen town water infrastructure planning since at least 2014" and did "not have a strategy in place to target investment in town water infrastructure to the areas of greatest priority".
Water Infrastructure NSW acting chief executive Ingrid Emery said the department had "accepted and acted upon" all of the report's recommendations.
"The New South Wales government had previously really focused on making sure that our metropolitan or Sydney and the greater Hunter water supplies were safe and secure, and probably hadn't had as much focus on the regional areas," she said.
Ms Emery said the department was working more closely with councils and bodies in charge of managing local water supplies to help reduce the risk of towns running dry.
Delays to infrastructure works
The NSW government's Safe and Secure Water program had exhausted its $1 billion allocation for water security projects since 2017, with an additional $90 million yet to be handed out.
"Once complete, [those projects] will assist another 447,000 people, who were previously deemed to be at high risk of running out of water, to have a secure water supply," Ms Emery said.
"I'm also finalising funding agreements for another 125 projects."
But she added that floods, supply-chain disruptions and worker shortages had cast doubt over whether towns would be drought-proof before the next extreme dry spell struck.
"The flooding, in particular, has been really challenging in this because it's been really difficult to access sites, let alone do any construction works on them," Ms Emery said.
"So I can't say with any certainty when we come into drought, [whether] all of those projects will be finished.
"But we'll be certainly well on the way to getting a lot more towns in a better position to be able to deal with the next drought."
Small town to build dam
Experts have long argued the worst time to plan for a drought is during one and Professor Rolfe believes governments should be planning 20 years ahead.
The National Party has spruiked dams as the most effective long-term solution but history shows they are costly and can take decades to build due to rigorous environmental approvals.
"I think dams should definitely be considered in the options but desalinisation [and] water reuse is another option, as is transferring water out of other industries including agriculture, and [increasing] reserves for urban use," Professor Rolfe said.
But for Walcha, one of the worst-hit NSW towns during the drought, persistence has paid off.
Walcha Council Mayor Eric Noakes said the community's desperate situation helped convince state and federal governments to stump up a combined $11 million for a new dam due to be completed by autumn 2023.
Cr Noakes said navigating red tape and bureaucracy over the past 10 years to build the damn had "been like pulling teeth".
"But it's public money and they've got to make sure every box is ticked," he said.
"You can't fight the process. You've got to work with it."
