The competition is a sideshow to the the annual three-day NSW Water Industry Operations Conference and Exhibition, which was hosted at the TRECC in Tamworth this year, attracting over 3000 visitors to the region.

On Tuesday, April 10 those visitors tasted water samples from all over the state, before naming four regions to go through to Wednesday’s grand final, Kempsey being the other nominee.

Queen of Country Music Alexandra Kellahan, joined a panel of four judges, who blind-tested the four samples, judging each on colour, odour, mouth-feel and taste.

“I was lucky enough to grow up on rainwater, and the winning sample nearly tasted exactly like rain water,” she said.

“You could really taste the difference between the samples, they were all different, but all really good.” 

Port Macquarie Hastings water treatment supervisor Danny Roberts was surprised and relieved to take the win after being named as a finalist a few times without ever picking up the trophy.

“We are lucky to be able to extract our water out of the Hastings, right up in the Hastings Valley where it is really clean and at an optimal stage where the water is in really good condition,” he said at the conference.

“We pump that into the Port Dam where it gets UV filtered and further treated, but it is all about the source.” 

The Port Macquarie-Hastings team will now represent NSW at the Water Of Origin against the other states in Queensland later in the year, with the Australian champion earning a trip to the US to take on the best in the world.

“It will just be good to beat Queensland at something,” Mr Roberts said.

The conference wrapped up on Thursday with a trade show.