00:00 Water is so precious. Water is life.
00:06 The human body needs water to drink.
00:10 It calls itself Australia's hottest and driest town.
00:18 But for a long time, cooling off in Oodnadatta came with danger.
00:23 You don't realise at all.
00:25 You get older and you realise how bad is the water.
00:30 We had a lot of other things there too.
00:32 Cheryl Stewart grew up on cattle stations bordering Oodnadatta
00:36 and regularly showered in bore water plumbed to her home.
00:40 The Yunginjurra woman says the salty water made her skin dry and itchy.
00:46 Yeah, I had sores everywhere.
00:49 Yeah.
00:51 Not just me, other kids had sores.
00:53 For decades, the South Australian government supplied Oodnadatta
00:58 with salty, non-drinkable bore water from the Great Artesian Basin.
01:03 Locals say that caused long-term suffering.
01:07 I still got scars here on my leg, you know, where I scraped and made it itchy
01:12 and made it really sore.
01:15 Look at this. It's like a rock.
01:19 Across town, Robert Aiken says he used bore water to cool his home.
01:24 The 61-year-old regularly had to clean his air conditioning unit
01:28 to get rid of salt from the water.
01:31 That's how we drink rainwater.
01:33 Some people buy a box of water from the shop.
01:36 The government warned locals that bore water previously supplied to their homes
01:41 could contain a parasite called Naegleria fowleri,
01:44 which, if inhaled, causes a rare but almost always deadly brain infection.
01:50 It crosses the blood-brain barrier,
01:52 which means that it actually gets into the nervous system.
01:55 I'm just so surprised nobody's taken it as a major health risk and taken it further.
02:01 The government says it's never found Naegleria fowleri in Oodnadatta's bore water supply,
02:06 but the risk was high enough for it to warn locals not to drink,
02:09 brush their teeth or get the bore water up their nose.
02:13 Public houses in the town have rainwater tanks,
02:15 but they haven't always been fitted with filters.
02:18 That leaves locals to choose between drinking questionable bore or rainwater
02:22 or buying expensive bottled water.
02:24 It's convenient for people like Adelaide and people in Adelaide and that.
02:29 They've got drinking water coming out of the tap, but not out in the bush.
02:35 Dean Walker used to live in Oodnadatta
02:37 and helped spearhead a campaign demanding clean drinking water for the town.
02:43 After decades without a safe supply, the government finally acted.
02:49 Oh, a little one. Do you want a bottle?
02:52 And you can fill up at the fountain, yeah?
02:54 It's just opened this $9 million desalination facility,
02:58 which will filter about 200,000 litres of safe drinking water
03:02 to homes and businesses in the town each day.
03:06 I feel real blessed, proud to accomplish something that took a little while.
03:12 It's been a long time and it's something new, isn't it?
03:16 You know, it's something that we've been wanting for so long.
03:19 While locals celebrate this win,
03:25 decades of warnings have made some a little wary of the new water supply.
03:30 Oh, I think they must want to see everybody else drinks it first
03:34 before, like the outsiders, come and have a drink of our water first before we drink it.
03:39 Despite the trepidation, this community knows change can be slow, but is possible.
03:48 It's also given them a voice, the younger generation,
03:52 to say, hey, if you want something, you've got to stand up and be made accountable.
03:58 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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