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The Forum > Article Comments > The Murray-Darling River: journeys in search of a compelling narrative > Comments

The Murray-Darling River: journeys in search of a compelling narrative : Comments

By Diane Bell, published 9/1/2012

From Burke and Wills to the present, white Australians have never had a coherent understanding of the continent.

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Great article thanks. The analogies with Burke and Wills were instructive, particularly Wills ditching most of his scientific gear in the interests of egalitarianism. The lesson has to be: some have more legitimate needs than others, in this case, we can't sacrifice the environmental integrity of the river in the process of dividing up its waters.

I hope the MDBA journey will not be one of failure. Craig Knowles must go back to the peer-reviewed literature and bring the Wentworth Group back on board.
Posted by popnperish, Monday, 9 January 2012 7:58:58 AM
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I haven't read the report, but benefited from the account that the writer has given of it. 'Adaptation' has to be the way to go. We know that the MDB experiences periods of drought and flood. We know that there have been extensive droughts around Federation, during the second world war and in the 1990s. There is plenty of water at the moment, and it is likely that for the next few years there will be adequate flows. Managing the river system by taking account of the differences in rainfall, and recognising the much greater human 'claims' on the water, now and in the future, is a tricky job. But adaptation to me seems the key. Maybe it's all there in the report, but from the writer's account, I wonder.
Posted by Don Aitkin, Monday, 9 January 2012 8:33:45 AM
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The fantasy of it all reminds me of another journey. It is the journey of a little girl from Kansas following along a yellow brick road. If only she can overcome all the hurdles on the way she might be able to meet the wizard and he can point out the way home. Mr Knowles says he is also on a journey, traveling with his metaphorical companion, the MDBA plan. His companion like the heroine of our story and her intrepid travelling companions have similar failings; not enough heart, not enough courage and not enough brains. Of course, we all know that the promises of a solution offered by the wizard of oz came to nought. The whole trip turned out a bit of a flop. When it came down to it all Dorothy really had to do was to click her heels together and she would find herself back in Kansas. At the end of the day the story was about the journey and not so much about a solution. The wizard, who turn out not to have much magic at all, escapes his critics and the confused onlookers in a hot air balloon. Not sure if MDBA have the magic to create a happy ending from our own story, but if not, maybe we will all have to move to Kansas.
Posted by Mr. P. Science, Monday, 9 January 2012 11:05:38 AM
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Diane Bell challenges us as a nation to figure out how to take on big projects in order to succeed rather than adopt the Australian penchant for celebrating failure [eg., she mentions the ANZAC campaign]. The implication is the MDBA draft plan is programmed to fail the river system. She weaves the pseudo-scientific endeavour of Burke and Wills's tragic exploration of the inland into her critique, providing the Authority with an apocryphal cautionary tale of failure.

Bell argues that the peer-reviewed science necessary to inform the decisions to be made [already made?] about the MDB is not sufficiently comprehensive. Her entertaining account confirms my gut-feeling from afar in Queensland that this is another "consultative" process that is merely a travelling show set down to a script designed to entertain communities with the notion that they have had real input. It seems more of a sop to the bookburners than a real attempt to inform decision-making with the scientific, social and economic benefits of keeping the Murray-Darling healthy.

Not only is critical research sidelined, but social science also appears to take second place to interest-group politics. Bell draws our attention to the critical failure of the MDBA to apply the scientific method, which is integral to adaptive management, a term appropriated by the Authority to dress up its real decision-making processes.

Science appears subordinated to politics in the Murray-Darling and the managerialism behind the Murray-Darling Basin Authority's "consultative" process. That this is inherent in contemporary environmental and climate politics on both sides of politics is incontrovertible. In Queensland and NSW we see Liberal and Labor governments fudging their responsibility to bring peer-reviewed science to the environmental, economic and social effects of large scale open-cut mining and CSG extraction on water resources, farmland, communities and the health of livestock and people.

Jim McDonald
Greens Candidate
Noosa
Posted by Seamus, Monday, 9 January 2012 11:08:16 AM
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Thank you for your article. Adaptive management is difficult here for at least three reasons. Firstly the lack of knowledge of the impacts of environmental flows on ecosystems (see the CSIRO report at the NWC website - http://www.nwc.gov.au/publications/waterlines/improving-environmental-water-planning-and-policy-outcomes-ecological-responses-to-flow-regimes-in-the-murray-darling-basin). Secondly because we are talking about highly resilient systems most recently demonstrated by the water bird surveys undertaken by Richard Kingsford et al (as an aside why was he so 'surprised'?). The last thing resilient systems need is continuity rather than variability. I fear that much of the objective of environmental watering is/will be to maintain relatively constant flows, or at least some minimal flow, to the detriment of many ecosystems. The third issue is that bureaucracies are not well placed to undertake large scale adaptive management when they have to answer to politicians (more a comment about politicians rather than technocrats).
Posted by NoelB, Monday, 9 January 2012 11:16:34 AM
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Yes Don, adaptive management is an excellent approach when one is dealing with complex systems and in particular with living systems that have their own rhythm. My concern with the Draft Plan as it stands is that adaptive management remains vague, more an aspirational goal than a well-resourced, strategic, multi-disciplinary approach that would have some hope of achieving the goals of the Water Act. We have examples within the MDB, for instance, the Macquaire Marshes, that could provide sound models but then there is the issue of scale, expertise, monitoring and acting on the feed-back in a flexible and timely manner. The lessons to be learned by not being prepared to consider all options is made plain in the article by Kingsford et al in a Ramsar Wetland in Crisis - www.publish.csiro.au/journals/mfr. A number of us have offered constructive criticism of the concept but are yet to to 'engaged' by the 'engagement team' of the MDBA.
Posted by Diane, Monday, 9 January 2012 11:33:25 AM
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What a relief to have a knowledgeable contribution to this issue. I don't use the word 'debate' because debate on an issue like the MDBA is not the point. As Diane Bell argues it's about listening to those who know the most - foremost among them Indigenous people who live along the river. The point about the MDBA Draft Plan, from what has been in the media so far and long interest in the river (I grew up on a farm along the Murrumbidgee) is that the system has to be looked at as a whole. So growing irrigation crops in semi-desert areas is not sensible. You only have to listen to the land to see that.

The problem is that governments and political parties and states want certainty. This is a river system that shifts and changes. It needs to be accompanied by 'plans' that shift and change with conditions. Listen to locals. Look at the history of the land. Act sensibly. One size fits all will not work. If need be make a provisional plan, catering to the needs of the river.
Posted by Susan Hawthorne, Monday, 9 January 2012 12:06:10 PM
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Moving to Kansas?

Historically, from the Fertile Crescent to the Sahara Desert, as human populations destroy fragile ecologies with divine aspirations of "can-do" technological progress, SUFFERING ensues and things GET WORSE as humans became more entrenched, promising great things.

Eventually the fragile ecologies collapse and some freaks suited to the harshness stay on while the rest either die or move to areas between great mountains and sweeping plains that have the THERMODYNAMIC properties that sustain life without all the trials, tribulations and profit and loss disasters.

All the stake holders of the MDB must be looking to New Zealand now. They are business people and shareholders right? They MUST know what I am saying is true. They will just get every last dollar out of the MDB and skip across the pond to NZ. Its not a big leap from cotton to Kiwi Fruit!

The MDB won't rebound. It is a fragile ecology that depended on many TRICKS that nature has. When those tricks are destroyed the ecologies retract rapidly. We know this from Nth Africa.

The MDB is finished. Be thankful for the taxes the corporations and shareholders paid before they left. Its all YOU Australians who have NO stake in the MDB at all, deserve.

Australia is destined for sub 20 million populations because of mismanagement in the face of poor mountain range quality.

Kick the lemon! Tasmania and New Zealand await you!
Posted by KAEP, Monday, 9 January 2012 12:28:14 PM
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Great article, Diane.
I worry that Tony Burke and Craig Knowles only view "adaptive management" by the noise of the irrigators at the rallies at Griffith and Shepparton.
There has been "less noise" this time round, therefore, they need to adapt less.
Wrong.
This always was a compromised plan, based upon a compromised figure, itself a reduction of what the Science indicated was necessary to keep the MDB flows healthy.
They are currently relying on the flood surges of the last two years.
What happens when the river flows revert to the norm?
Denis Wilson
Posted by Australian Water Campaigners, Monday, 9 January 2012 12:54:49 PM
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The article moved me - literally - to tears.
Water reform in the Murray-Darling has been a long, hard road. On the up side, the Darling does now figure in our plans. One the down side, before we have come close to acquiring the 2,750GL for the environment, it is proposed to dramtically increase groundwater extractions for the benefit of the mining and coal seam gas industries. Such developments will mobilise millions of tonnes of salt currently stored underground and safely out of harm's way. Will 2,750Gl be enough to flush all this out to sea? I doubt it.
I desparately want a Plan that DELIVERS for the environment, and the wildlife and communities that depend on it, but we must also have commmitments from all state governments for the resources necessary for monitoring and adaptively managing the meagre environmental water on offer.
It seems there is no hope of keep politics out of our rivers. Science-based decisions seem as elusive as they were in 1995 when the Cap was introduced.
I just hope I won't be shedding more buckets of tears when the first plan comes into effect.
Posted by Carolinem, Monday, 9 January 2012 1:35:31 PM
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Love the correlation Di...what changes? I read Patrice Newell's book, "the Olive Grove", a few years back. It related the selloff of water in NSW and opened my eyes to what politicians were up to there. Such an insidious way the Government had of making money. Sadly such philosophy undermines our future, and dare I reflect its application in the MDB is evidence of that. We need to work on a way to incorporate natural and public interests in the patchwork of intervention Governments have in our living and working environments. While it is only subjective legislation in law, and politicians that have any control, the evidence is we are lost.
Posted by Gary01, Monday, 9 January 2012 2:06:53 PM
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Gary, looking forward to reading the book. Thanks for the reference.

I would love to have more time to develop my ideas around the journey as metaphor and a lived reality, especially in terms gender, race and class.

What, for instance, might we learn from a careful reading of Jill Ker Conway's Road from Coorain? Not a journey to triumph: in her words, she had come to 'an intellectual dead end in Australia' but she cares very much for the future of our river systems and the country.

What about the classic Lewis and Clark (1804-6) crossing of the USA? It succeeded in part because of the knowledge of Sacagawea, a young Shoshone woman, who accompanied them. It was an expedition with both commercial and scientific goals and the expedition journals constitute an extraordinary rich account of the journey. Sacagawea was respected and 'even given a full vote in deciding where to spend the winter of 1805-6, though at the end of the expedition, it was her husband and not she who was paid for their work' (http://womenshistory.about.com/od/sacagawea/a/sacagawea.htm)

Back to Burke and Wills, John King survived because he was cared for by the Yandruwandha and Sarah Murgatroyd suggests that in that time he fathered a daughter whose story is know to his descendants in Ireland and NZ.
Posted by Diane, Monday, 9 January 2012 3:51:18 PM
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When politicians have to wear the consequences of their decisions; those decisions are likely to be very different? It's so easy to pontificate from the wilds of Noosa?
The MD basin is the most engineered system; just about anywhere; and, is just not possible to un-engineer it?
Instead we need to revisit some of the engineering; to get it right! There are a number of places where the river needs to be deepened to reduce evaporation. Annual evaporation numbers top 40%?
When the system is reduced to a series of stagnant algae laden cesspools; it is of no benefit to either the environment; or those who depend on it for their very survival.
We need to manage it from the mountains down to the sea; and try to replicate, what was there before the white man; namely, a very slow release of the water from the uplands, which should be slowly releasing water; stored in the landscape, during the drier times. This way there will still be some water and environmental flows; during our often extended droughts, which arguably can only ever get worse with climate change and must be adjusted for?
Leaving it to nature as the normal parameters fly out the window is a recipe for disaster; and, almost the most fatuous suggestion made? Consult the original custodians, and perhaps native common sense; and pragmatic survival instincts; might surprise quite a few?
Posted by Rhrosty, Monday, 9 January 2012 4:18:51 PM
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The river is the locality of journeying because it determines the "over there" and the "there" at which our becoming homely arrives, yet from which, as a coming to be at home, it takes its departure. The river does not merely grant the locale, in the sense of the mere place, that is occupied by humans in their dwelling. The locale is intrinsic to the river itself. The river dwells. (Martin Heidegger, Hoderlin's Hymn "The Ister," 1996 [1942])

As someone who grew up on the Murray in Mildura I could hardly believe my eyes when I first saw the rivers of Europe, so full, so fast. The Murray is those things sometimes, but without the same feeling of insistence. A different story altogether. Unlike Europe, few of our communities have had time to yet be able to dwell with the river's own dwelling.
Posted by cardigan, Monday, 9 January 2012 6:56:50 PM
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It wasn’t the Olive Grove, Di, it was Patrice’s next book, the River, published by Penguin in 2003. It talks about Patrice and her partner, Phillip Adams, and their biodynamic farm, Elmswood, on the Pages River. Water entitlements and mining. The beginning of national water reform by COAG and the adoption of a framework in 1994. Market based reforms and the true cost of water in the Pages and the Hunter rivers The association of water rights and properties, and then owners rights to trade them on the open market. You will see some fundamental insights into where the value of water is today. An interesting read with correlation to the MDB system.
Posted by Gary01, Monday, 9 January 2012 8:58:04 PM
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Rhrosty, it's irrelevant where I presently live. I lived by the Murray during the 1950s. Returning many times in the 1970s and 1980s, and later visiting Mildura in the 2000s, I found a river that had been seriously degraded by mismanagement, with exotic species, especially carp, adding to the damage. As I flew into Mildura, the Murray looked from the air like a river of radiator fluid. In earlier years I had seen around Kerang fields devastated by salination. This is not an issue only for people living in the MDB: it is an issue for the whole nation. And, the MDB Authority does not impress as a body capable of addressing the challenges for the future of the Murray-Darling and the whole of its resources. Instead, the MDBA seeks to invent politically driven compromises that appear only partially to address the immense environmental, social, agricultural and economic problems arising from our mistreatment of our largest river system. As my comment pointed out, this is consistent with Government failure in addressing the potential devastation of large scale coalmining and short-term coal seam gas extraction. Some of that also occurs in the MDB.
Posted by Seamus, Monday, 9 January 2012 11:37:06 PM
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Fabulous article Diane. Wonderful to link the narrative with the beauty and scientific significance of this amazing and important river. We need to think carefully and deeply about the future of the MDB and it is clearly imperative that Craig gives the MDB due credence and study the science rather than respond to the politics! Keep up your excellent work.
Posted by Zerochrysum, Tuesday, 10 January 2012 9:35:58 AM
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Fantastic work Diane and really enjoyable article to read - your interweaving of the history, narrative and science is compelling. Let's hope the Feds get it right. Important to study the science and think more of the future of the MDB than the future of any political party.
Posted by Zerochrysum, Tuesday, 10 January 2012 9:38:08 AM
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We cannot marry coal seam gas extraction with the health of the MDB. These are two different quite separate issues! Moreover, many of the recent changes in the basin are a consequence of years of enduring drought, leaving no water for the environment or irrigators.
As an aside, two thirds of farmers along the river system are dry-land farmers, who can hardly be blamed for the sad state of the river, with carp infestations and the like.
We are confronting inevitable climate change and a much warmer wetter future, where the median average rainfall could be higher! However, it is likely to fall far more furiously; from a greater height and recreate the 14 metre wall of water that took so many lives in the lockyer, many times over!
Anything decided on the basis of an Ideological imperative rather than very thoroughly researched science is likely to be disastrous.
Green advocates seem to ignore calls for limiting evaporation; only ever likely to get worse in a warmer wetter future; and currently reducing flows by as much as 40%+ per annum. Yes, old style flood irrigation has to go; given, with more modern underground applications. we can produce twice the crop yield for half the water.
We live in a world where food shortages will go from serious to severe; and indeed, lead to conflict and or regional war.
Most of the remaining buy back money, should be rerouted into eliminating flood irrigation; and, re-engineering works; designed to stop/prevent both evaporation and leakage, both of which could consume up to three times the water of a sealed system. And that's happening up and down the rivers
We will need to keep growing food or something, which like algae/bio-fuel production; just borrows the water temporarily and then returns cleaned up, back to the system. People have to live!
Simply and almost mindlessly buying back water won't fix the problems, nor satisfy either farmers or all or nothing rigidly recalcitrant green groups?
Posted by Rhrosty, Tuesday, 10 January 2012 3:34:41 PM
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Rhrosty,

Thank you for proposing concrete methodology for implementing a balanced manageable plan - utilising water more efficiently by installing underground trickle-feed for agriculture, in place of flood irrigation or overhead sprays. Using the buy-back to install such systems has to be the way to go - with less water to achieve the same or even greater food production - a win-win all round. This should of course also include reimbursing those who have already installed such systems. And the time to act is now, while water levels are high.

I would also suggest building more dams in strategic locations, with fish ladders, etc, as well as your suggested deepening of the bed where strategic so as to reduce evaporation.

Someone made a valid comment, that a consistent controlled flow is not nature's way, and would not be optimal for the environment or the ecology - as periodic flooding is essential for the natural breeding cycle of the Murray Cod, for example. This probably also applies to the breeding needs of various water fowl and trees/plants. So, I think some enhanced suitably situated storage (dams) could be utilised to provide such conditions optimally - in concert with nature in periods of intensive rainfall. The science will have to rise to the mark in this regard.

Without the necessary infrastructure, it may be that in times of severe extended drought everyone will have to take a hit - farmers and environment - so that downstream populations will have an adequate water supply. So, the sooner the necessary actions are taken the better for all concerned.

I am not yet sold on coal seam gas extraction (fracking) and releasing huge volumes of saline groundwater - partly because of the potential toxic pollution of the groundwater, and due to the potential damage to and lowering of the water table, and because of the problem of disposing of the saline water responsibly. Judgement still out. In the meantime I think it would be prudent to hold off on fracking anywhere near prime agricultural areas.
Posted by Saltpetre, Tuesday, 10 January 2012 6:30:38 PM
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thanks Diane for a compelling analysis of the draft MDB Plan form an historica perpsective. Whilst the historical analogy is very powerful and convincing, it is the critique of adaptive management that I particularly liked. This concept seems to me to have been invoked regularly by governments to justify proceeding in ignorance when precaution should be the rule. The two concepts are distinct policy counterpoints, but precaution in the face of a lack of adequate scientific certainty concerning potential impacts is treated with scorn by most policy-makers – and I doubt rates even a mention in the draft MDB Plan!
Posted by RobF, Tuesday, 10 January 2012 7:21:36 PM
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History is watching the MDBA.
Posted by Mr. P. Science, Tuesday, 10 January 2012 8:41:58 PM
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With regard to CSG, one cannot consider the health of the MDB without factoring in the huge amount of "produced water" the CSG people will release into the surface water systems of the MDB.
Tony Burke has approved some 10,000 wells in Qld alone. All within the upper reaches of the Basin.
That water has to go somewhere.
Where?
And what about the vast amounts of salt which will come up with it?
They are talking now about using that salt in industrial processes.
They have to do something.
Originally, when the CSG industry was small, they simply sprayed the excess on roads, pretending they were doing dust reduction.
That won't work now that people are a wake-up to them.
.
But the Bureaucrats and the people on forums like this must get their heads around the facts of this matter.
You cannot pretend it is not happening.
Denis Wilson
Posted by Australian Water Campaigners, Tuesday, 10 January 2012 11:02:18 PM
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Part One: An emerging narrative?

The comments over the past two days indicate a willingness to engage seriously with serious ideas and to move beyond the representation of responses to the MDB Plan as a ‘tug of war’. Informed discussion of decisions that will shape the lives of all Australians for future generations is welcome. These decisions need to be framed by science and law. Of course the process is ultimately political but it is to the detriment of the Australian nation that science has been politicised. It behooves an Authority wrapped in a cloak of independence and with access to a $10 billion budget of taxpayers’ money to begin with the law and the science concerning the river, to be open and clear, to facilitate civil and informed debate.

It grieves but does not surprise me that so few citizens understand what is being attempted in the Basin Plan. When confronted by book burners, one smells a media stunt and contempt for serious scholarship. Such willful behavior effectively closes down civil debate. If the MDBA is on a journey, I would cast the release of the Guide in October 2010 as prequel. The Guide was flawed. There was work to be done. Rather than defend the science, the MDBA repudiated the document and began again: new models, new members, new rhetoric. It is now a ‘working river’ to be managed in the interests of all. How is this to be achieved? By a balanced plan. In whose interests and according to whose scales will this balance be achieved? Again, initially, I would argue it must be science and law, not competing self interests, some better resourced than others.

‘Everything is connected’ is a basic principle of Ngarrindjeri culture and ‘connectivity’ a key concept of ecology. How interesting then, as I read though the comments of the last two days, to see the interconnection of concerns being raised about our relationship to the river and how this has been made manifest in historical accounts and in current management plans. Continued in Part Two.
Posted by Diane, Wednesday, 11 January 2012 3:25:10 PM
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Part Two: Narrative continued

Key concerns being raised cluster around what might be seen as a disconnect between rhetoric and reality.

1. Adaptive management: what does it mean and what might it mean? As RobF notes, the ‘precautionary principle’ is in tension with an ‘adaptive management’ that Don Aitkin, NoelB, Denis Wilson and myself might endorse. It is not for want of input from concerned citizens that it remains vague.

2. Numbers and outcomes: one means little in the absence of the other. Numbers games become shouting across an ill-informed chasm but careful catchment by catchment analysis shows that the outcomes required by the Water Act will not be achieved by the proposed reductions. The weight then gets shifted to adaptive management.

3. Ground water allocations and mining: what will be the impact on surface water? The announcement that some 4000GL of ground water would be available, an increase from the existing 1787GL, stunned many of us: the MDBA had assured us there would be no surprises. The matter was not part of the CSIRO Science Review because it was not on the agenda when their terms of reference were set. When I asked the MDBA Chair about the impact of the increase on ground water, he said it was a matter of accounting. How the water was used, coal seam gas, reuse, was not within his purview. So Rhrosty, Saltpetre and Denis Wilson we have a real struggle here to find the balance and the fulcrum.

4. History: Thanks for reference Gary01. Mr P Science (‘P’ for pseudo?) reminds us history is watching. I doubt it will absolve us unless we lift our game. We have what is left of the 20 week consultation period to craft a Plan that meets the Act, is informed by peer-reviewed science and is good value for money. Keep agitating Zerochrysum. There are citizens who know the River, like Susan Hawthorne, Seamus and cardigan. Do not give up KEAP. I hope to rejoice, not wail, with Carolinem. If there a balance to be struck is must include passion for the river and reason
Posted by Diane, Wednesday, 11 January 2012 3:26:24 PM
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I watched in absolute horror as the recent disastrous Queensland floods devastated so much of the state; destroyed lives and livelihoods, family memorabilia and heirlooms.
Many green advocates displayed their calloused indifference, by suggesting people shouldn't build on flood plains; ignoring the fact that this is usually our poorest demographic, with few other options?
If there is no real empathy for them; then perhaps the plight of the dugong and our turtles might encourage it; and, some informed debate on mitigating the many repeated flood disasters, which all but wiped out our sea grass beds; and as a consequence, made very serious inroads into already threatened species.
One of the rivers that sent many times the volume of the Sydney harbour out to sea; to decimate the sea grass beds, is the Dawson. Reportedly, the Dawson and several other major rivers, used to flow west and add its/their volume to the MDB.
A dam at Nathan's gorge i.e., would allow that to reoccur; as well as preventing Theodore from being repeatedly inundated; or indeed, tons of harmful sediment from wiping out important sea grass beds. Other similar gorges ditto, with the water contained in the gorge(s) and nearly as narrow as the water course(s); thereby effectively limiting evaporation.
Our work ought not end there; as our very survival and that of a whole host of threatened species; could be largely determined, by how much of our most precious resource, we effectively husband!
Many upland landscapes can be forced to absorb more water; during the wet, and gradually release it much later; retaining harmful sediment, where it will actually provide a positive benefit; as well as, dealing with otherwise intractable salt problems; by placing an envelope of fresh over it!
With enough water stored, we could easily envisage sending an annual surge south, to help the Murray cod and river red gums etc, without also destroying any lives and or livelihoods? Which can only endlessly repeat in a warmer wetter future; and, essential extremely urgent flood mitigation; fatuously stymied by a largely mindless or imbecilic Ideological imperative?
Posted by Rhrosty, Wednesday, 11 January 2012 4:22:11 PM
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Diane your article makes gripping bedtime reading and really clears the cobwebs from all the fuzzy mixed messages and pseudo science that shroud much reportage on the River and its future. The Burke and Wills story as both framing device and chilling allegory is stroke of brilliance. The embedded web links work well - the MDBC chair needs to be careful that he does not cast himself as Burke and share his fate.

Like several other commentators, members of my family have lived along the Murray for five generations (since the 1840s) and since I was a small child I’ve been entranced by the astonishing diversity of its waters as it approaches the ocean through the Lakes and sea-mouth. As an historian I’ve come to better understand the River through the intricate web of Indigenous living knowledges, and also through the long, often-overlooked history of cross-cultural engagement along its waters from early colonial times. I'm compelled now to read Sarah Murgatroyd's book - fascinating that the survivor of the expedition had Aboriginal children, much the same as William Buckley, probably a not an uncommon experience.

Thank you for focusing emphasis on the River as a living body rather than on water as a commodity of a 'working river'.
Posted by Karen Hughes, Thursday, 12 January 2012 12:36:33 AM
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Thank you Prof. Bell for your astute analysis and analogy. Let's hope that this year we all make some positive progress with the MDB Journey.

Like you I have little confidence that the MDBA is using the right guides, or has acquired sufficient and suitable provisions for their journey into the unknown. Each of these journeys (Burke & Wills, and the MDB Plan)had a sort of vague objective, better articulated by their backers, but the consequences of the modern attempt are far more dire if they fail in their undertaking.
Posted by Lonbell, Friday, 13 January 2012 3:20:22 PM
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Thank you Diane for this impressive article. The comparison of the MDBA plan which will take Australia on a journey with the ill fated journey of Burke and Wills is very apt. If Craig Knowles and the MDBA, in their arrogance, refuse to genuinely listen to indigenous people, scientists, environmentalists and all who live in the MDB, who care for the rivers, who make a living of the rivers, then how will the MDBA journey end? Like the journey of Burke and Wills, in tragedy? Will it end with a dying river system?
Posted by COR, Monday, 16 January 2012 3:28:24 PM
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