Some good news from the river: the rainbow bee-eaters and kingfishers have found spots to dig their nesting holes after the river finally went down a week ago.
They might have a chance to hatch some eggs before the inter-valley trade lifts the level again and floods them out.
It’s not over, by a long shot, the threat to my river. Back in August at the Basin Plan summit, our Catchment Management Authority put it bluntly: “The proposed Commonwealth water purchases increase the risk of further impacts to the ecological health of the river.”
So it’s not just me and New Boy counting the times over the year our favourite sandbar gets flooded and pushed around.
The CMA also said (bluntly): “Additional environmental water entitlement is not required for the Goulburn River.” It added that “current environmental volumes are unable to be fully utilised...”
The boss wryly adds: “That’s one-third of Eildon water they can’t safely get down the river — and they want more.”
The Boss and I remain bewildered that our local environmental group — at odds with the CMA — clearly thinks it’s worth sacrificing our Goulburn, not to mention infant platypus and hatching bee-eaters, for the sake of the lower Murray, when Queensland and New South Wales have so plundered the Darling system that it contributes a fraction of its historical flows.
But let’s face it — bewilderment is everywhere. Last week the Voices For Nicholls group called for a candidate to run as an independent at the forthcoming federal election.
Competition is always healthy, particularly in politics, but The Boss was surprised after Independent Rob Priestley failed to prise away the Nationals’ grip following Damian Drum’s successful innings. He was a strong candidate, but so was the victor (and our current federal member) Sam Birrell.
Since Sam was brought up on the river — like me — and has been leading the water fight since his maiden speech, The Boss wondered what Voices for Nicholls might have to say about it.
The river doesn’t get a mention on their website, it turns out — nor do irrigators, or the threat to our communities from the federal water buybacks, rammed through parliament against Victoria’s wishes.
They mention cost of living, health, education and population pressures, as well as serious weather events and “ongoing pressure on the natural environment”. That’s it.
Then he noticed Elizabeth Tregenza, the new Voices for Nicholls spokesperson, seemed a familiar name to him: turns out she has long been an advocate for taking water from irrigated agriculture in our region.
Before coming to the region Liz was in South Australia, where she was secretary of the River Lakes and Coorong Action Group. And in 2020, she was spokesperson for the Lifeblood Alliance, a collective of 14 organisations including Conservation SA and the Australian Conservation Council lobbying the Federal Government to conduct water buybacks.
“Really, the only way to restore the river to health is through buybacks,” she told The Advertiser at the time.
The Lifeblood Alliance — along with our very own Goulburn Valley Environment Group — supports delivery in full of the additional 450Gl and the use of buybacks to achieve it.
As I’ve said before, they invariably overlook those massive drains The Boss went to see, which the South Australians gouged across the Coorong watershed to drain it for farmland — and killed the southern Coorong. Easier to blame someone else — and urge the feds to take the water from us. Woof!