Victoria has had a dry winter and already water restrictions are being tabled for the city with John Thwaites saying, " It is very likely that we will need to go onto stage one restrictions from the first of September. We indicated at the beginning of the month that unless we got average rainfall or above average rainfall for August, we would need to be on the restrictions, and unfortunately we've had below average rainfall through August. ".

Where is Victorian water used? State-wide, Melbourne is a very small user of water. From southeastwater.com comes the following graph ;

South East Water also links to a graph showing the 200 largest users of water. The food and non-food industries are the biggest users of non-residential water with council's in third place, but significantly behind in percentage terms.

The Department of Primary Industries contains information that Victoria is highly dependent on surface water . With 90% of Victoria's water coming from surface water sources and 10% from ground-water. Given that Australian rainfall is non-seasonal, unlike North America and Europe. Australian rainfalls are highly dependent on El-Nino and consequently are irregular. The high dependence on surface water is an issue.

Last year Goulburn and Yass went through deep water difficulties due to lack of rainfall, despite the Wollondilly River being nearby.

The water catchment areas are going to have to decentralise and diversify with greater reliance on water tanks and and other suburban catchment forms for non-drinking water uses. Recycling of water is another conservation method, though Toowoomba knocked that on the head in a recent referendum.

This doesn't change the fact of the wet nature of the Australian economy which has primary industry drawing heavily from our water supply. It may be that industry is concentrated around water supplies, like the Murrumbidgee, while cities such as Sydney and Melbourne are not, however livestock, rice and cotton make up the dominant portion of primary usage in NSW .

Sally of Sydney Daily Photo has a sequence of posts on the differences between Melbourne and Sydney.

Trams
Hook turns
Fences
Train stations
Level crossings

Of the cities I have been to, Sydney and Melbourne are two of my favourites. Disclaimer, I am a sydneysider.