Imagine having to wait in a queue to collect a 25-litre daily ration of water because your city's taps have run dry.
That is a doomsday scenario only narrowly avoided by South Africa's drought-stricken Cape Town, which was facing the prospect of becoming the world's first major city to run out of water.
According to experts, it is a catastrophe that could have also played out in Perth — a city similarly in the throes of a drying climate.
But as Cape Town officials race against time to secure the city's water supply through systems that do not rely on rainfall, such as desalination, Perth has reached a major milestone.
Its two desalination plants in Kwinana and Binningup — which turn seawater into drinking water — recently ticked over the one-trillion-litre mark.