Lifeblood of the nation

Baiame, creative spirit of the
Ngemba, instructed neighbouring
tribes to work together to build these
Ngunnhu Fish Traps on the Barwon
River at Brewarrina, NSW.

Fortunes ebb and flow along the troubled Darling River.
____________

STORY BY DIANA PLATER PHOTOGRAPHY BY JUSTIN WALKER

IT’S DUSK AND the late afternoon sun has lit up the Barwon River’s banks in an orange glow, illuminating the pink beaks of pelicans patiently perched on the Ngunnhu (Brewarrina Fish Traps).

Below the modern Brewarrina Weir in north-western New South Wales, a 2km bend holds the remains of this ancient structure, a complex of dry-stone walls and a site of engineering brilliance. Displaying advanced knowledge of river hydrology and fish ecology, the traps were designed to catch Murray cod, golden and silver perch and other fish, but allow breeding stock to pass through.
Ngunnhu (pronounced noon-oo), which is believed to be one of the oldest, if not the oldest, human-made constructions on Earth has national heritage listing. The Ngemba traditional owners say their creative spirit, Baiame, instructed neighbouring tribes to share and work together to construct Ngunnhu, allocating responsibility over particular traps to each family group. Here they took part in ceremonies, traded and feasted.
Despite a troubled colonial history – deeply marred by massacres and later the corralling of people from as far as the NSW south coast onto a mission up the river, and the subsequent dismantling of and damage to the traps – this powerful place has never lost its significance to Aboriginal people. When rain came in early 2020 and the river flowed again after months of being dry, the townsfolk came to dance, swim and fish, along with 800 or so pelicans and flocks of other birds that aggregated here.
I meet with Lily Shearer and other local women, all keen fishers, who belong to an Aboriginal women’s water alliance, which began when many towns ran out of water or it became too foul to drink and they had to rely on donated bottles. She describes this meeting place with its ochre beds, stone quarry and burial ground as the “capital city of the west” and the “landscape parliament”, thought to be tens of thousands of years older than Egypt’s pyramids.
Further downriver, at the Brewarrina Aboriginal Cultural Museum, I’m led on a tour by guide Bradley Hardy, who describes his ancestors as architects, builders, river environmentalists, farmers and bakers who for thousands of years shared the country with giant animals. A 35,000-year-old diprotodon, with a spear head inside it, was found near here. “The river’s our blood,” Bradley says. “If we lose the river we die.”
At the time of colonisation, the British were mystified about where the inland rivers of NSW flowed, with many believing they emptied into an inland sea or even flowed all the way to the Indian Ocean. So in 1828 NSW governor Ralph Darling sent explorers Charles Sturt and Hamilton Hume to investigate the course of the Macquarie River and solve the riddle. Following the Macquarie inland, they came to a smaller river they named the Bogan.

▲ Lily Shearer belongs to an alliance of Aboriginal women fighting to protect Australia’s rivers. They say the Rainbow Serpent, Wawei, will be woken when the country is at its lowest ebb.

In 1829 Sturt arrived at what he described as a “noble river”, which he named after governor Darling.
Its banks clearly showed that during flood times it would carry huge amounts of water. But the thirsty party was disappointed to find the water salty and undrinkable. This was later found to be the effect of brine springs along the banks, which in dry weather are strong enough to recharge back into the river.
In 1835 Sturt’s great rival, Major Thomas Mitchell, travelled 483km of the Darling. Although his party never reached its junction with the Murray, he correctly assumed the rivers joined at what is now Wentworth on the NSW–Victoria border.
European settlers soon used the Darling as a transport corridor and imposed British law to enable the expansion of nearby pastures. Today, these rivers are all so deeply entwined with water politics you can’t speak of them without mentioning the Murray–Darling Basin Plan. It has generated accusations of corruption and water theft at corporate and government levels, numerous inquiries including a South Australian royal commission, and thousands of media reports about mismanagement leading to dry rivers, massive fish kills and huge impacts on the environment and communities along the rivers’ bank.
To its traditional owners, the Barkindji – the people of the river – it’s the Baaka. Other traditional owners of land within the Barwon–Darling catchment include the Murrawarri, Ngiyampaa and Kamilarray. Those around the Darling–Murray confluence include the Muthi Muthi, Maraura and Nyeri Nyeri ▶

▲ Pelicans (top) flocked to the Barwon at Brewarrina after early 2020 rain. Rusted farm machinery (above) along the river is from an old mission nearby.

▶ The Ford Everest Sport used by the AG team on this assignment, proved to be the perfect 4WD for the tough conditions they encountered in outback NSW.

These rivers are all so deeply entwined with water politics you can’t speak of them without mentioning the Murray–Darling Basin Plan

THE DARLING RIVER

“The river system is a lifeline to
so many people, and it’s also a
good tourist attraction.”

WE HEAD NORTH from Brewarrina to the Darling’s source, near where Sturt might have been at the Culgoa–Barwon confluence about 40km east of Bourke. The Darling runs 1545km from its source to where it joins the Murray. According to Geoscience Australia, which recalculated the lengths of Australia’s 10 longest rivers in September 2008, the Murray–Darling catchment contains the country’s longest continuous river system at 3672km. The Darling’s meandering course is three times as long as the direct distance it traverses, and its flow relies on what Henry Lawson referred to as the “Queensland rains”.

Its tributaries rise in the ranges of southern Queensland and northern NSW, west of the Great Dividing Range, and include the Balonne, Condamine, Macintyre, Gwydir, Namoi, Castlereagh and Macquarie rivers. The Bogan, Warrego and Paroo rivers join the Darling near Bourke or below. Earthquakes, volcanic activity and the coming and going of ice ages have shaped the 60 million-year-old landscape of the Murray–Darling basin (the Basin) into these rivers and more than 30,000 wetlands and expansive riverine plains, which provide major bird foraging and breeding sites.
At the junction of the Culgoa, Barwon and
Darling, red-tailed black-cockatoos screech in the river red gums – magnificent trees that grow along the banks and around lagoons and channels and for which a 2m-diameter correlates to about 500 years of age. Coolibah and black box woodlands can be found on higher areas of the floodplains.
From barely pools of water early in 2020, the rivers, which also operate as station boundaries, are now flowing. But they’re muddy due to soil run-off and the introduced European carp. Since the mid-1970s, this fish species has devastated native fish, aquatic plants and animals and general river health, particularly through its destructive feeding habits.
When most of the Darling’s water flows from the Macquarie, it’s clear, having been filtered through the Macquarie Marshes. It becomes muddy when it travels mostly via other tributaries.

WE DRIVE INTO Bourke, once the Port of Bourke and the country’s greatest stock centre, with its many handsome historic buildings, including the furthest inland maritime courthouse, and a replica of the original wharves.

The historic Brewarrina Barwon Bridge (above) is a lift span bridge that opened in its centre to allow paddle-steamers to travel up and down the river. Captain Alan Bartsch takes tourists on cruises (below) along the Darling River near Bourke in the replica 1894 PV Jandra paddleboat.

The first paddle-steamer reached Bourke in 1859, and, until overtaken by the railways, about 300 paddle-steamers with barges worked the Murray, Murrumbidgee and Darling, all the way to Collarenebri, reaching their peak in the 1870s. They supplied stations and towns with goods and took bales of wool and other products to market.
Dangerous snags – underwater trees and branches that provided habitat, feeding and spawning sites for native fish – were removed. Rock and clay reefs, which were also refuges for fish and plants and sustained the river at times of no or little flow, were blasted out.
From 1897 Bourke had the Murray–Darling’s first navigation lock, designed to maintain a reasonable level of water in the river near the town. Straddling the rivers are lift span, or suspension, bridges that let paddle-steamers through.
On a relaxing morning cruise, we settle back with a coffee and watch the birdlife and fishers in tinnies at north Bourke, as Captain Alan Bartsch of the replica 1894 PV Jandra paddleboat points out kites’ nests.
“The river system is a lifeline to so many people, and it’s also a good tourist attraction,” Alan says, explaining the Jandra was completely out of action for 18 months until 2020 due to the state of the river.

MORE THAN 3 MILLION people in the Basin, our most important agricultural region – covering Queensland, NSW, Victoria and SA – rely on the rivers for water for domestic, stock, irrigation and other uses. Land use in the region is dominated by grazing and dryland cropping. But almost 3 per cent of the catchment area is used for irrigated agriculture, which has been harnessed for that purpose for about 140 years.
The health of the river and its floodplains depends on floods allowing the river to break its banks and fill or reconnect billabongs and other wetlands. This can be stopped by levees,

The PV Jandra, now powered by a diesel-electric
engine, is a replica of one of about 300 paddlesteamers
that once plied the Darling River, supplying
stations and towns with goods and taking wool
and other products to market.

channels, banks, raised roads and other structures. The state governments have allocated permits to extract water for human uses. These grew rapidly in the second half of the 20th century, exceeding the sustainable capacity of the natural environment.
There are problems of salinity, erosion and invasive species such as carp. And in 1991 it became clear the Darling was in dire straits when an outbreak of toxic blue-green algae, fed by nutrients in fertiliser run-off and sewage, developed along a 1200km stretch. Then came the Millennium Drought, from 2000 to 2009.
In 2007 the then prime minister, John Howard, proposed a $10 billion, 10-year National Plan for Water Security. He called for Basin states to transfer their powers to enable the Commonwealth to oversee the management of the Basin, with the Murray–Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) responsible for setting a cap on the sustainable use of water resources.
This has been a continuing source of conflict ever since, with the NSW government at times threatening to pull out of the scheme. Meanwhile, there is a serious north–south divide, with farmers and others on the lower Darling feeling they bear the brunt of poor decisions in the northern basin, which favours cotton growers and other irrigators.
The NSW Independent Commission Against Corr-uption investigated allegations of water theft and corruption under the basin plan, arising out of a 2017 ABC TV Four Corners program, “Pumped”. Separately, there have been criminal charges against two of the larger irrigators, some of which are being appealed.
The 2019 NSW Natural Resources Commission’s final report into the Barwon–Darling Water Sharing Plan described the Barwon–Darling as “an ecosystem in crisis”.

Despite recognising the NSW government had undertaken significant reforms since 2017, it called for steps to improve water management to be accelerated and extended.

THE MORE PEOPLE you talk to along the Darling the more it seems as if there must be multiple different water courses. Some quote Lawson who described it as “either a muddy gutter or a second Mississippi”. Others insist it’s “ephemeral”. Some say that while there may have been dry periods in the past they are nothing like the recent decade.
Then there’s the range of licences and rules covering the Basin that to outsiders are complicated and overwhelming. To begin with it’s necessary to understand that river water is measured in megalitres and gigalitres. A megalitre is 1 million litres. A gigalitre is a billion litres, or 1000ML. To compare sizes, Sydney Harbour holds about 500GL. The Menindee Lakes, when full, hold three and a half times that volume.
Broadly, an irrigation licence on the Barwon–Darling allows you to take water when there’s a threshold flow in the river. Allocations are made against that licence, which varies depending on the season and the type of licence – A, B or C class. There are also other licences for stock and dam use and town water use.
Water trading is another big issue. The only water acquired by the Commonwealth across the Basin has been through voluntary water buybacks and irrigators voluntarily giving up water in exchange for subsidies for efficiency upgrades. But Federal Minister for Resources, Water and Northern Australia Keith Pitt announced in 2020 there would be no further water buybacks ▶

The more people you talk to along the
Darling the more it seems as if there
must be multiple different water courses.

Darling Farms at Bourke supports huge
paddocks of winter crops. Since the 1960s,
cotton has been grown here with the help of
irrigation channels, which allow the farm to
take water when the river is in high flow.

from farmers under the basin plan, instead focusing on practical outcomes, such as water-saving projects to return water to the environment and establishing a new statutory authority to bolster water compliance and break up the MDBA.

WE’RE DOWN AT the Davidson Weir in Bourke with Ian Cole, spokesperson for Barwon–Darling Water, which represents water users, and chairman of the WREB Co-operative, which runs radio station 2WEB and the Western Herald, the newspaper that once employed Lawson under the pseudonym Joe Swallow. Ian was married on the river and has attended many other weddings and baptisms there. He’s also a former grower of cotton and many other irrigated crops. “Without irrigation and intensive agriculture, you don’t have a civilisation,” he says. “Yes, cotton uses a lot of water but per hectare no more than citrus or grapes, but we grew a lot more cotton.
Cotton was grown experimentally in this area at Pera Bore in the 1890s using artesian water, but the salt in the bore water made the crop unusable. Then from the 1960s, supported by the hot, dry climate and grey-black alluvial soils, cotton farms developed around Wee Waa on the Namoi River. Ian says the federal government of the day offered a bounty to overseas cotton growers, and Darling Farms – the operation of his Californian father-in-law, Jack Buster, and Owen Boone – grew into an empire, producing Bourke’s first cotton harvest in 1967. In 2014–15 Darling Farms was sold to Australian Food and Fibre, but Ian continues to work for local irrigators.
We drive past red dunes, paddocks of winter wheat crops, and dams and irrigation channels that allow the farm to take water when it’s in high flow.

Ian believes the controversy and antagonism stems from the fact that the cotton industry is a “tall poppy”, with technology and research “far ahead of most industries”.
“There are heaps of regulations on when you can pump,” he says, explaining that the lack of water downriver is due to a lack of inflows. “If we say the country wants to feed and clothe itself and have export dollars from the industry, from irrigation, then you’ve got to try to work out where’s the balance, how much water can you take from the system, without harming it too much.
“I’ve been involved in water politics since 1995 and heard a lot of stories about theft and corruption in irrigation. But I’ve never seen anyone conspire to steal water and I’ve never seen anyone put undue pressure on a politician or a public servant to get a result.”

WE HEAD SOUTH-WEST on a graded dirt road that hugs the river, past Toorale National Park – a historic sheep and cropping property the federal government bought in 2008 from Clyde Agriculture – then on to the tiny town and former Cobb & Co stopover of Louth.
From Bourke to Menindee there is a road on either side of the river, and from Louth we have been advised to take the west side route, past sheep stations and other properties that have harnessed the area’s feral goats, turning them into a lucrative industry. Louth and Tilpa, further south, are on higher country that during wet times wasn’t as prone to flooding. This meant the river could still be accessed. We pull into Dunlop Station, with its store and huge 1886 homestead topped by massive chimneys. In the 1880s, half a million sheep were shorn here and its sheds became the first to use mechanical shears. ▶

“The key to the Darling is it’s an event river. What we’ve lost over the past 100 years is the frequency of those events.”

Justin and Julie McClure (above) value the importance of sustainability when it comes to irrigation on their station, Kallara, south of Bourke. The Tilpa pub is a favourite community meeting place for locals, such as the McClures, tourists and grey nomads.

Further south, we turn off at Kallara Station, to meet its owners, Justin and Julie McClure, who irrigate organic milling oats as feed for their organic lambs. Half the house was built in the 1930s, the other half in 1900, on red gum slabs. There’s an 1890s store and a date palm planted in 1852. Justin is the eldest son descended from five generations of farmers on this land and president of the Australian Floodplain Association. His great-grandfather Edward Davies had a paddleboat that plied these waters and Julie tells the story of a famous paddle-steamer, the Jane Eliza, which in 1883 became stranded for 18 months in their part of the river when the level was low. When the water is high neighbours and friends come here to waterski.
As new-era irrigators, the McClures value sustainability. In recent negotiations with the NSW government, they came up with new rules for their section of the river that will restrict access to water for irrigation. They see this as positive and point out that although the Water Sharing Plan needs to deliver “low-flow equity”, especially when considering downstream connectivity, the largest issue is the lack of connectivity from the northern tributaries. “The key to the Darling is it’s an event river,” Justin says. “What we’ve lost over the past 100 years is the frequency ofthose events…with the building of the major dams, and off-river storages in the northern basin. And the laws and rules aren’t adequate enough to protect these small flows.”
Tilpa, which has grown from its origins as a stock crossing, is 15 minutes downriver. All locals are invited to its community hall at Christmas, when “politics get left at the door”. We join the McClures for a drink at the historic timber and corrugated iron Tilpa pub. “The river’s our, and our community’s, life,” Justin explains simply.

ON A RIVER bend near Wilcannia known as Steamers Point, Barkandji men Owen Whyman and Eddy Harris show us middens where their ancestors discarded mussel shells. Also here are camp ovens or hearths, stone artefacts, a dance and corroboree ground and scar trees. Canoes, shields, coolamons and other tools were cut from the bark of mostly river red gums, and the wood was placed in ash to be dried and shaped. Emu bush was collected for smoking ceremonies. Smaller canoes were used for hunting while the longer ones were for family travel, explains Eddy, who has cut and built canoes himself. “Different families would have [their own] little fishing areas on weekends,” Owen adds. “I still camp here with the kids.”
About 700 people live in Wilcannia, most of whom are Aboriginal. The state of the river – “important for both blacks and whites” – impelled Owen to stand as an Independent for the seat of Barwon in the last NSW state election. He is beginning the first Indigenous party in time for the next federal and state elections.
Wilcannia was once the third-largest port in NSW and many of its historic sandstone buildings have been renovated, including the hospital, which, after consultations with the community, acknowledges the river’s spiritual and cultural significance. The Bonds Store is to become a museum, and a new cultural centre is being built. The golf club is on the site of the original Resch’s Red Lion Brewery, which began in 1879 and was capable of turning out 180 hogsheads (44,100L) a week.
Wilcannia Tourism Association members Bill and Chris Elliott explain the town was once a major transport hub, with many English, Irish, Scottish, Chinese, German and Portuguese settlers. Afghan camel trains as well as bullock teams supplied. ▶

Fatal waters

The conditions that led to major fish kills in 2018–19 have been described as the perfect storm.

KEY PROCESSES

STRATIFICATION

Thermal stratification occurs when the surface water heats up significantly more than deeper water. It usually occurs, or becomes most pronounced, during low or no flow periods in summer, whereby the potential for mixing in the water column is reduced. In such instances, dissolved oxygen in the colder deep layer can be depleted. This keeps fish and other life that needs to breathe that oxygen at the surface, where they can be exposed to heat stress and predators. These conditions also promote blooms of blue-green algae.

◀ Figure 1.
Stratification begins when surface water heats more than deeper water.

DE-STRATIFICATION

Small increases in flow or sudden weather events, such as a sudden cool change (e.g. a storm front), can quickly mix the warmer surface water and cooler deep water, essentially breaking down the temperature stratification. This means that, even at the surface, dissolved oxygen levels can drop rapidly, stressing or even killing fish. This is what happened at Menindee on the Darling River three times during the summer of 2018–19.

▶ Figure 2.
De-stratification occurs when the layers are mixed rapidly by a sudden weather event.

2018 19 MENINDEE FISH KILL ON THE LOWER DARLING

Menindee air temperature and rainfall, December 2018-January 2019

Figure 3. Daily air temperature fluctuations and rainfall played a significant role. Recorded maximum and minimum temperatures and rainfall at Menindee from 1 December 2018 to 26 January 2019 are shown at right. Observed fish death events are indicated by stars. Blue-green algae growth occurred during the hot conditions, when ‘red alert’ notifications were issued by WaterNSW for the Darling River at Menindee and Menindee Lakes throughout December 2018. The yellow stars show the 2018–19 Menindee fish kill events each followed a substantial drop in temperature, associated with a cold weather front. Available water-quality data suggest these events coincided with de-stratification of the water column after protracted heatwaves in the affected stretch of river.

BLACKWATER

Blackwater occurs naturally over time when leaf litter and woody debris build up on the floodplain and are then washed into the river system during a flood, turning the water darker in colour due to the tannins and carbon leaching out into the water. This forms an important part of the aquatic food web because the processing of dissolved carbon represent the base of the food web, ultimately providing food for insects, fish, frogs and other aquatic wildlife.

HYPOXIC BLACKWATER

During prolonged dry periods, organic matter builds to high levels on floodplains, and with the next flood a significant amount washes into the rivers. Its carbons and tannins leach into the water faster when it’s warmer (e.g. in summer). Bacteria processing the excess dissolved carbon multiply rapidly, consuming excess dissolved oxygen. If oxygen drops to very low levels, the water becomes hypoxic, which can be deadly to native fish.

Many thousands of fish died during the summer of 2018–19.

NATIVE FISH RECOVERY

INFORMATION SOURCES: NSW DEPARTMENT OF PRIMARY
INDUSTRIES,\FISHERIES RESEARCH UNIT; BUREAU OF METEOROLOGY

▲ Barkandji man Owen Whyman points out a canoe tree at Steamers Point on a bend of the Baaka at Wilcannia. He and artist Eddy Harris are asking for a “flow along the river just to keep the river running”.
______________

“The river’s being run to suit a business plan rather than the business plan being run to suit the river.”

Healthy Rivers Ambassador Kate McBride describes shearing practices at Tolarno, her family’s property south of Menindee.

goldfields at Mt Browne near Tibooburra then returned with wool for the paddle-steamers. The Renmark was the last paddle-steamer here, ending its run in September 1942, but a rowing club held races up until the 1950s.

WE’RE GREETED BY two emus as we drive into Menindee, 155km south of Wilcannia. So it seems appropriate when Ngiyampaa elder Aunty Beryl Carmichael tells us her country is shaped like the “butt end of the emu”. She explains how emus were cooked and shared, the first rib given to the kids, innards and guts to the women and the hip part to the men. Born and raised on the Menindee Mission, she remembers being told how the riverbanks were denuded of timber for the paddle-steamers. “I wish they’d leave the river alone,” she says. “It’s the lifeblood of the nation.”
We meet tablegrape-grower Graeme McCrabb for a tour of the Menindee Lakes water storage scheme. These shallow natural lakes were transformed from the late 1940s by dams, weirs, levees, canals and regulators, built to catch and retain floodwaters and include Lake Wetherell, created by damming the main channel. They supply Broken Hill and landholders between Menindee and Wentworth, and supplement the Murray River system. A train on the Broken Hill line passes as we drive by Copi Hollow, a lake built for recreational water sports. From here you can explore Kinchega National Park and its historic shearing shed, and people love their weekenders at Sunset Strip along Lake Menindee’s northern end. But Menindee’s recent notoriety comes from three days in the 2018–19 summer as the site of mass fish kills (see “Fatal Waters”, p61).
Above Weir 32, which releases water into the lower Darling, we stop at Little Menindee Creek, a former duck-hunting site next to ancient middens. Graeme has photos of fish, including 30-year-old Murray cod, floating dead here. On the fish kill’s third day there were mostly gold and silver perch and little boneys flapping

and straining for 30km along both sides of the river. Fishing was one reason Graeme moved here from Warrnambool in Victoria and the event brought him to tears. “I’m not ready to fish again,” he says. “The river’s being run to suit a business plan rather than the business plan being run to suit the river.”
The river had been dry for more than eight months when videos of Tolarno Station owner Rob McBride holding a dead giant cod as thousands more fish were dying in the river’s stagnant pools went viral on social media and led to massive media attention. Now Rob’s 22-year-old daughter, Kate McBride, a Healthy Rivers Ambassador, has been catapulted into the world of river politics and media.
History imbues the McBrides’ 2000sq.km station south of Menindee. Burke and Wills stayed in 1851 at its former homestead. In 1894 unionist shearers burnt the paddle-steamer Rodney south of here in protest at its use as a strikebreaker carrying non-union workers to Tolarno’s wool sheds. “My best memories of Tolarno are getting the inner tubes from tyres and blowing them up and just putting a dinghy up the river and floating down for hours with friends,” says Kate, who’s completed uni in Adelaide. She talks of mental health issues caused by a dry river, including a rise in suicides. Voters showed their feelings in the 2019 NSW election when sitting Nationals members were replaced in Murray and Barwon by the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party. “We feel like the government’s forgotten about us,” Kate says.

OUR NEXT STOP is a beautiful deep river hole on Karoola Station, a favourite kayaking and swimming spot for farmer Wayne Smith and his children. Wayne’s 12-yearold son, Judd, and his friend James Allison are thrilled to have a break from School of the Air lessons, and bound out of the vehicle and up the trees.

For farmer Wayne Smith, his son Judd and friend James Allison, this is a favourite swimming and kayaking spot on the river at Karoola Station.

Wayne points out a 500-year-old river red gum in which it is thought the Barkandji and Ngiyampaa people long ago grafted two branches together to create a circle, perhaps marking a boundary or permanent water hole. On the opposite bank are 40-year-old box trees. “It’s always nice and cool here on a hot day,” Judd reflects. “It was kind of sad to see the river with no water in it, and being unable to catch fish.” Judd and his brother and sister are the sixth generation that has lived on the station, where the family farms organic sheep for meat, presently put into ‘deferral’ until some natural grasses return after the dry. In September 2019 they’d had less than half their average rainfall.
When, on Australia Day 2019, Wayne heard of stranded fish 30km upriver, he and others jumped in the water on a rescue mission. “We got about 40 cod out of that hole before it was depleted of oxygen, and relocated them a short distance to a much larger and healthier body of water,” Wayne says. He’s frustrated by the rules and regulations that stymie lower Darling farmers like him who are desperate for water security. “We have to have a more equitable sharing of the water otherwise we’re not going to be viable. Menindee will be a ghost town. So much industry has been taken away because the water hasn’t arrived through the changing of the water sharing plan of the Barwon–Darling.
“It also affects the Murray irrigators. If the water’s not coming through Menindee, which supplies SA, they don’t get allocation. And they’ve been sick of that for the last three years. Although we know it has been drying it’s been made longer by inadequate, biased rules.
“The fish felt the brunt of it,” he says with a sigh.

THE ROAD SOUTH continues through Pooncarie, another former paddle-steamer port, and then past the turn-off to World Heritage-listed Mungo National Park. We pass former orchards where, in 2019, because of lack of water, trees were left to die with owners compensated by the Commonwealth in exchange for their high-security water licences. At Wentworth, the country’s busiest inland port in the late 1880s, there’s a light, late afternoon breeze as Rob Verstappen shows me how to steer his houseboat Adelora on the convergence of the Darling and Murray rivers, 832km from the mouth of the Murray.
We can see a distinct line where the blue Murray fed by winter rain and snow meets the browner clay-based Darling. Rob explains the Darling at this Wentworth end is filled with Murray River water back upstream for about 50km. The dramatic Perry Sandhills, once used as a retreat in times of flood, are 3km behind the junction.
We cruise past Junction Island, a narrow spit of land between the two rivers. On 23 January 1830 Sturt reached this point and found a group of Aboriginal people brandishing spears. Before shots were fired, an Aboriginal elder Sturt had befriended earlier swam across the stream and persuaded them to lower their spears.
It’s a great feeling to be at the helm of an iconic boat on the widest part of the river after a week of travelling down it. I reflect on my meeting on Wilcannia’s outskirts with woodcarver Waddy Harris who spoke of how, as a child living by a waterhole with his grandmother, he would observe how the animals shared it.
People, he says, must “understand the land and the river and its importance. It’s about sharing and patience”.

Beauty on the brink

IT’S JUST AFTER lunchtime, the morning rains have finally cleared and the sun begins breaking through the clouds. Max Breckenridge, a captive release project officer with BirdLife Australia (BLA) is slowly walking along a dirt road that cuts through a patch of untouched spotted gum–ironbark forest in the Lower Hunter Valley in New South Wales.

Our new conservation superpower

There were expectations it would reveal much about the evolution of this continent’s largely unique mammal fauna, and it has. But to most scientists working in Australian wildlife conservation, it didn’t seem to have a lot of practical relevance.

When a city rises

THAT FEBRUARY 2011 earthquake, which struck during the city’s lunch hour, was the most destructive in a series. It was the one that broke so many of the Central Business District’s verticals and horizontals – its buildings and the roads, sewers, water and gas pipes. It was shallow and ferocious. Its peak vertical ground acceleration of 2.2G (more than twice the acceleration of gravity) momentarily lifted parts of Christchurch to the sort of face-distorting speeds astronauts experience when they ascend into space.

Grantham’s road to recovery

IT WAS 10 JANUARY 2011 and once again it was pouring with rain. Queensland had already endured its wettest spring and December on record, and yet still the rain kept coming. I was working at the time as a freelance photographer for Queensland’s main newspaper, The Courier Mail. And weary of capturing “wet weather photos”, I’d decided to stay dry inside my Toowoomba office.

Conservation canine-style

IN 2004, THERE WAS no way David Williams, then an environmental science student at Deakin University, in Victoria, could have predicted the chain reaction a last-minute assignment submission would create. A paper he’d written outlined an environmental management plan that suggested using trained Maremma sheepdogs to protect little penguins from fox predation on Middle Island, off the coast of Warrnambool, in south-western Victoria.

Beauty on the brink

Our new conservation superpower

When a city rises

Grantham’s road to recovery

Conservation canine-style

Australian Geographic

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