Final taste: The esteemed judges put water to the test.
You could have knocked me down with a feather when the Water Industry Operators Association of Australia announced that for the first time Melbourne Water had won the Victorian title for the best tap water.
Hold tight - we’re checking permissions before loading more content
Goulburn Valley Water and Central Highlands Water were the other Victorian finalists.
Call me biased, call me parochial, call me late for dinner, but this is an outrage.
Top drop: The Melbourne Water crew celebrate their Victorian title.
Oddie recalls that Melbourne water was so good, they built a massive pipeline so they could defy gravity and blend in some good old Goulburn River water.
Politics got in the way and the pipeline has never pumped our good drop into Melbourne’s water storage, so Oddie asks the question, how could the Melbourne water have improved?
This is backed up by Oddie’s long experience with city water, which tastes like it has been manufactured rather than drawn from nature.
The key to success: the Melbourne water came from the Cresswell Water Treatment Plant at Healesville; within the rules, but really it is country water.
GV Water won in 2015 and 2017 but in reality should have won a string of water premierships. It is clear, clean and tasty, in Oddie’s view, and is only ever topped by filling a flask from the upper reaches of the Snowy River while camping.
We can all drink to that.
Spruce up the signs
Oddie loves the wayfinding signs at the Shepparton sports precinct, it’s pretty easy to find netball, soccer, hockey or basketball by following the cut-out figures representing each sport.
One, a soccer figure, seems to have survived the ravages of time and exposure to the elements, and maintains its rich red colour — but the rest are all looking a bit tired.
Perhaps soccer took matters into its own hands, something Oddie has been tempted to do quite often despite how many rules it would probably contravene.
One wonders though why something so obviously in need of maintenance keeps escaping the paint brush, especially when we are a Commonwealth Games-bound sports city.
