When you grow up in a country that thinks of drought as part of the family tree, it's hard not to think about water.
You think about where the water is, where it came from and where it's going, you think about the last time it rained and you watch the forecast like bankers watch the stock market: no-one really knows what is going to happen, but there is a general, anxious consensus that the rain gauge will go up or down or stay the same and, in some instances, lives depend on it.
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If you grew up rural, you might think of water as being one of a few kinds. There's rain water - it's soft and sweet. Tank water's earthy, round and imperceptibly funky. Then there's "town water"; that subtly bitter but unmistakable taste of water that has been through chemical cleaning and is the subject of debate from here to Sydney, Adelaide (which had a storied reputation for funky water), and Tasmania where the water, like the air, is spoken of in hallowed terms.
There is, it turns out, something in the water and a reason it tastes like that. It depends on where the water is, where it came from, and how it gets to where it goes.
It's hard, in regional Australia, not to think about the water. But in a city where we're fortunate enough to have water running clear and clean, it can be easy to forget where the water is.
Where Newcastle's water comes from
The water I drink in Wickham will, in all likelihood, have come from the northern and eastern shores of Grahamstown Dam near Raymond Terrace. It was probably pumped there from the Williams River via the Seaham Weir, through the Balickera Canal north of the dam, and then treated at the Grahamstown Water Treatment Plant near Tomago, which also takes in water from the Tomago Sandbeds and can process up to 257 megalitres a day (an amount that could fill roughy 103 Olympic swimming pools). At the treatment plant, the water is purified and disinfected to meet Australian guidelines to remove microbes that cause disease before a tiny amount of fluoride is added as per state guidelines to help maintain my dental health.
There will be trace amounts of roughly 30 different elements in the water that pours from the kitchen tap, including about 51mg per litre of calcium carbonate (a chemical that indicates water hardness) that makes it slightly softer than the water at Lemon Tree Passage (about 66 mg per litre) and at Gresford (about 78 mg per litre). It means the water won't have that slightly metallic taste that my family back home in rural New England associates with town water.
The town water main never quite made it past the gate at home, so the water - like a lot of country homes - comes from the rainfall captured in a tank. In a dry year, when harder water has to be pulled from a bore to supplement the supply, it tastes bitter and leaves white spots on the stemware.
What does water truly neutral taste like?
According to a 2020 research paper published in the journal "Foods", water with a neutral taste contains less than 120 mg per litre of the chemical salt calcium chloride and more than 610 mg per litre of calcium bicarbonate. It goes bad if there are more than 350 mg per litre of calcium chloride.
The same paper found that the level of sodium and potassium in the water is important "at the cellular level" of the taste buds, but low concentrations were best. Any more than 75 mg per litre is intolerable.
Magnesium gives water an astringent taste, like that of green tea.
The chemical make-up of water is what changes its taste and hardness, and is why water like Evian and Fiji have a different taste to brands like Mount Franklin.
Lower Hunter water quality for beer and coffee
The beer brewers at Islington's Method rely on the softness of the Lower Hunter's water to make their lighter lagers and pilsners. Over the phone, Sean Costigan reads from his records:
"Chloride is about 40 parts per million," he says, "Sulphates are about 34 parts per million, that's pretty low. There's plenty of room to move there. Calcium is around 16 parts per million - it's very low. We're pretty lucky here.
"The water that we get out of the tap is pretty good quality," he said. "It doesn't give us a blank slate to work with, but it's low enough (in minerals) for us to add to depending on what style of beer we're making."
The coffee I take from the cafe each morning similarly relies on the water quality. In 2019, a Coffee Next and UNSW study found that harder water (above 80mg per litre of calcium carbonate) diminished espresso flavour, and a higher PH (between 7 and 8.5) is needed to make the most of flavour and consistency in the extraction. Grahamstown, which provides as much as 75 per cent of the city's daily water supply, is around 7.4.
Why does the water taste different in different locations?
University of Newcastle laureate professor Ravi Naidu has made his career on knowing where the water is. There was a time, he told me, when the water at Adelaide in South Australia (the site of one of his earliest research projects) was coloured by the dissolved organic matter that came from pine needles and natural trees along its catchments.
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His research set out to find what caused the tint and how to improve its quality. At the University of Newcastle, he leads the Global Centre for Environmental Remediation, aimed at safeguarding the environment for future generations.
"The taste of the water will depend on the minerals in the catchment and the groundwater," he explained, adding that the slightly saltier composition of southern soils across the country typically meant that water flowing north to south would become saltier as it went. Hunter Water, the utility that provides for Newcastle, Lake Macquarie, and the handful of local government areas in the Lower Hunter, is one among many.
Further up the valley, Upper Hunter shires typically treat and supply their own water from local catchments.
There is something in the water. It just depends on where it is.
