WHAT happens when you just add water? It's magic. The leaves of a drooping pumpkin plant lift, the packet cake transforms from a bag of powder into afternoon tea and the red desert takes on a green tinge.
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Recently, I was lucky enough to see an explosion of bird life at the Currawinya National Park in south-west Queensland following heavy rains.
As we drove towards Lake Wyara, the sky filled with soaring and circling pelicans.
As we walked across marshy flats to get closer to the shoreline, we saw thousands of them all crowded together, with standing room only.
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There were more birds on the water too, although they looked different to the pelicans.
Through the binoculars, we saw that the water was dotted over with black swans. Following in their wake, lines and lines of cygnets were struggling to keep up with their parents. It was a surreal, unforgettable scene.
And it came just by adding water.
But adding too much can be as bad as adding too little, as we're seeing simultaneously in the world today: dry rivers in Europe and China, crashing floods in Pakistan.
The days of wondering about the link between "weather weirding" and climate change are well and truly over. Yes, the world has long known droughts and floods, but it's the first time since the dawn of the Holocene era 12,000 years ago that we've had 416 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Yes, we need carbon dioxide in the atmosphere - without it, the planet would freeze over - but now, thanks to the burning of fossil fuels, we have too much of a good thing.
With over a thousand people dead and 30 million affected, the government of Pakistan has made it clear that the catastrophic floods sweeping through the nation are connected to global warming.
"We are at the moment at the ground zero of the front line of extreme weather events," said the country's climate change minister, Sherry Rehman.
Meanwhile, Europe's worst drought in 500 years is revealing sunken World War Two warships and interfering with the river-based trade, energy and transport systems that have sustained the continent for generations.
Last Sunday, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, tweeted: "We need #ClimateAction that matches the scale of the crisis. We have no time to lose."
