Our second issue of Volume 52 features materials that were for the most part written and edited during the annus horribilis that was 2020. Warm thanks to all of our intrepid and resilient authors. Before the advent of Covid and the return of La Niña, we were of course thinking about water. That drew many of us to the outstanding scholarship emerging from the Australian Research Council funded project on 'Water and the Making of Urban Australia: A History Since 1900' (DP180100807), based at the University of Western Australia. Early outcomes of the project, notably the virtual exhibition, Drought, Mud, Filth, and Flood: Water Crises in Australian Cities, 1880s– 2010s, http://www.environmentandsociety.org/exhibitions/drought-mud-filth-and-flood, assumed heightened relevance during the summer of 2019–20. As we write, we are thinking about water again, being in the midst of what the Bureau of Meteorology is describing as a critical weather disaster, causing damage and evacuations across New South Wales, especially in our urban centres.