A Water Story: Learning from the Past, Planning for the Future 9781486311293, 9781486311309, 9781486311316

Table of contents :
Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Challenges and opportunities
1 Water and the earliest civilisations
Ancient Australia
Water management in ancient worlds: irrigation, canals, cities
Qanats
The earliest aqueducts
The Romans
2 Water use across the Roman Empire
A new water supply for Nemausus (Nimes)
Wells and cisterns: the basic water source
Further developments in urban water management
Building aqueducts
North African variations
Decline of the Roman Empire
3 Some basics about Earth’s water
The water cycle
Evaporation and evapotranspiration
Salinity
El Niño and La Niña
Coping with a paucity of fresh water
4 Water supplies for the First Fleet colonists
The situation the First Fleeters left behind
Water issues for the new arrivals
Efforts to become self-sustaining
The colony grows
Pollution of the Tank Stream
A new source of water
5 The search for water inland
Oxley: the Lachlan and the Macquarie
Sturt, the Darling, and dreams of an inland sea
Mitchell: seeking the elusive ‘Kindur’
The situation at mid-century
Rainfall patterns in Australia
6 Aboriginal Australia
Colonisation
Living as part of the country
Managing water resources
Changes to the country after 1788
7 The Great Artesian Basin
Artesian bores
Wasting GAB water
8 Groundwater: more than the GAB
Groundwater worldwide
Consequences of over-extraction
Groundwater in Australia
Some examples of groundwater use
Threats to groundwater resources
9 Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre and its basin
The Lake Eyre Basin
Effects of floods on Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre
Management of the Lake Eyre Basin
Northern rivers beyond the Lake Eyre Basin
10 The golden pipeline
A new gold rush in Western Australia
Shortage of fresh water
Attempts to overcome the water shortage
The Goldfields Water Supply Scheme
Development of the scheme since 1903
11 Adding water to the land: irrigation
Sources of irrigation water
The beginnings of irrigation in Australia
The Murray River
Major river works
North of the Murray River
The Ord and Burdekin rivers
Methods of irrigation
Negative consequences of irrigation
Modernising irrigation systems
12 Dams and reservoirs: storing water
The beginning of the age of dams
What dams are
Dams in Australia
The world context
Adverse effects
Dams for hydroelectricity
Lakes: natural water storages
Colour plates
13 The Murray–Darling Basin
The Murray–Darling Basin as a geographical entity
Working rivers
The Darling River
Some special places in the Murray–Darling Basin
The lower Murray River
A controlled and managed system
14 Saving the Murray–Darling Basin?
The Murray–Darling Basin Authority
The Basin Plan
Implementing the Basin Plan
The situation five years after acceptance of the Basin Plan
15 Water for cities, towns and farms
The capital cities
Water sources for regional and remote cities and towns
Water for farms
16 Living with scarcity
Looming shortages
New sources of water
Desalination
Recycling wastewater
Managed aquifer recharge
Stormwater harvesting
Water sensitive urban design
Rainwater tanks
Water trading
17 Facing the future
Rainfall diversity across Australia
Ongoing issues: ways forward
Addressing the future: opportunities for action
Where to from here?
Glossary
Appendix I: Case Study: South Australia’s long-term water plan
Endnotes
Index

Citation preview

A WATER STORY

Learning from the Past, Planning for the Future GEOFF BEESON

© Geoff Beeson 2020 All rights reserved. Except under the conditions described in the Australian Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, duplicating or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Contact CSIRO Publishing for all permission requests. The author asserts their moral rights, including the right to be identified as the author. A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia. ISBN: 9781486311293 (pbk) ISBN: 9781486311309 (epdf) ISBN: 9781486311316 (epub) Published by: CSIRO Publishing Locked Bag 10 Clayton South VIC 3169 Australia Telephone: +61 3 9545 8400 Email: [email protected] Website: www.publish.csiro.au Front cover: (top) section of Brewarrina Aboriginal fish traps (photo: Bradley Moggridge); (bottom left) windmill at Mount Arapiles, Vic. (photo: Ed Dunens/Flickr, CC BY 4.0); (bottom right) Solar powerdriven aluminium flume gates (photo: Geoff Beeson) All figures and plates are the author’s unless otherwise indicated Set in 10.5/12 Minion Pro & Stone Sans Edited by Sally McInnes Cover design by Andrew Weatherill Typeset by Desktop Concepts Pty Ltd, Melbourne Printed in China by Leo Paper Products Ltd. CSIRO Publishing publishes and distributes scientific, technical and health science books, magazines and journals from Australia to a worldwide audience and conducts these activities autonomously from the research activities of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of, and should not be attributed to, the publisher or CSIRO. The copyright owner shall not be liable for technical or other errors or omissions contained herein. The reader/user accepts all risks and responsibility for losses, damages, costs and other consequences resulting directly or indirectly from using this information. Acknowledgement CSIRO acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the lands that we live and work on across Australia and pays its respect to Elders past and present. CSIRO recognises that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have made and will continue to make extraordinary contributions to all aspects of Australian life including culture, economy and science. The paper this book is printed on is in accordance with the standards of the Forest Stewardship Council ® and other controlled material. The FSC® promotes environmentally responsible, socially beneficial and economically viable management of the world’s forests.

Oct19_01

Foreword

A Water Story: Learning from the Past, Planning for the Future is an important contribution to a major debate which Australians must have – but are only tinkering with. We live on the world’s second driest continent (only Antarctica has less rain), 90 per cent of us live near the coast and our red, arid centre is more of a national myth than direct experience, somewhere we fly over or drive through at high speed. Our river systems are stressed beyond endurance, with record fish deaths, loss of habitat and the retreat of birds. In contemporary Australia, when there is a conflict between science and politics, politics nearly always wins. We make short term decisions based on votes in communities which depend on extreme water use, because nature – like posterity – has no vote. Geoff Beeson’s book is encyclopedic with powerful explanations of how past civilisations have struggled to provide clean, healthy and sustainable water supply for humanity’s survival. The world’s population is soaring – 7.6 billion in 2019, projected to be 9.8 billion in 2050. And we are living longer, far longer, and our per capita consumption rates rise exponentially. The melting of ice caps and glaciers will provide more water, but it won’t be potable and the impact on coastal communities will be catastrophic. Geoff has provided us with an essential resource which should be widely read. We must consecrate ourselves to saving Planet Earth, our home, where our species, homo sapiens, lives and depends for survival. All nations, and all people, must dedicate themselves to protecting our global home rather than short term national, regional or tribal interest. We must save the air, save the soil, save the oceans to guarantee that our species, and the environment, shall not perish from the Earth. Barry Jones AC, FAA, FAHA, FTSE, FASSA, DistFRSN, FRSV, FRSA, FACE

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Contents

Foreword iii Acknowledgments viii Challenges and opportunities ix

1

Water and the earliest civilisations

1

Ancient Australia 1 Water management in ancient worlds: irrigation, canals, cities 1 Qanats 7 The earliest aqueducts 9 The Romans 10

2

3

Water use across the Roman Empire

11

A new water supply for Nemausus (Nimes) Wells and cisterns: the basic water source Further developments in urban water management Building aqueducts North African variations Decline of the Roman Empire

11 13 14 18 19 23

Some basics about Earth’s water

25

The water cycle 25 Evaporation and evapotranspiration 26 Salinity 28 El Niño and La Niña 28 Coping with a paucity of fresh water 29

4

Water supplies for the First Fleet colonists The situation the First Fleeters left behind Water issues for the new arrivals Efforts to become self-sustaining The colony grows Pollution of the Tank Stream A new source of water

5

The search for water inland Oxley: the Lachlan and the Macquarie Sturt, the Darling, and dreams of an inland sea Mitchell: seeking the elusive ‘Kindur’ The situation at mid-century Rainfall patterns in Australia

35 36 38 39 42 43 44

47 48 49 52 54 54

v

vi

A Water Story

6

Aboriginal Australia

57

Colonisation 57 Living as part of the country 58 Managing water resources 60 Changes to the country after 1788 62

7

The Great Artesian Basin Artesian bores Wasting GAB water

8

Groundwater: more than the GAB Groundwater worldwide Consequences of over-extraction Groundwater in Australia Some examples of groundwater use Threats to groundwater resources

9

Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre and its basin The Lake Eyre Basin Effects of floods on Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre Management of the Lake Eyre Basin Northern rivers beyond the Lake Eyre Basin

10 The golden pipeline A new gold rush in Western Australia Shortage of fresh water Attempts to overcome the water shortage The Goldfields Water Supply Scheme Development of the scheme since 1903

11 Adding water to the land: irrigation

63 66 68

73 73 74 75 76 82

87 88 93 94 96

99 99 99 101 102 111

115

Sources of irrigation water The beginnings of irrigation in Australia The Murray River Major river works North of the Murray River The Ord and Burdekin rivers Methods of irrigation Negative consequences of irrigation Modernising irrigation systems

115 116 119 120 121 123 124 125 125

12 Dams and reservoirs: storing water

129

The beginning of the age of dams What dams are Dams in Australia The world context Adverse effects Dams for hydroelectricity Lakes: natural water storages

Colour plates 13 The Murray–Darling Basin The Murray–Darling Basin as a geographical entity

129 130 130 132 134 136 138

141 157 159

Contents

Working rivers The Darling River Some special places in the Murray–Darling Basin The lower Murray River A controlled and managed system

14 Saving the Murray–Darling Basin? The Murray–Darling Basin Authority The Basin Plan Implementing the Basin Plan The situation five years after acceptance of the Basin Plan

15 Water for cities, towns and farms The capital cities Water sources for regional and remote cities and towns Water for farms

16 Living with scarcity

161 161 169 172 174

175 175 178 181 182

189 189 200 205

207

Looming shortages 207 New sources of water 209 Desalination 209 Recycling wastewater 212 Managed aquifer recharge 216 Stormwater harvesting 218 Water sensitive urban design 219 Rainwater tanks 221 Water trading 222

17 Facing the future Rainfall diversity across Australia Ongoing issues: ways forward Addressing the future: opportunities for action Where to from here?

225 226 228 238 243

Glossary 245 Appendix I: Case Study: South Australia’s long-term water plan 249 Endnotes 251 Index 277

vii

Acknowledgments

I am grateful for the assistance and advice I received from many people during the writing of the book. Miles Lewis AM provided valuable feedback on early drafts of the chapters concerning ancient civilisations, and Don Gibb commented on drafts of the historical chapters about early European Australia. Both sets of comments were helpful in refining these sections of the book. Jason Alexandra made constructive observations after reading draft material on the Murray–Darling Basin. These observations formed the basis for some worthwhile discussions we had on this complex topic. My thanks also go to Helen Symmonds who read each chapter as it was written, Melissa Beeson who commented on specific sections, and Amanda Lazar who made constructive comments on the first draft of the book as a whole, and who provided significant support on other aspects of preparing the book for publishing. Michael Buxton read a draft of the whole book from a public policy perspective, and his comments assisted in further refining the draft. I am indebted to Bradley Moggridge for his feedback on the sections relating to Aboriginal Australia, and to Anna Adams for the preparation of several of the maps and diagrams. Finally and most importantly, I express my thanks to my partner, Brenda, for her understanding and support during the whole writing process, but especially for her invaluable company and discussions during our many expeditions, which included visits to key water locations in diverse parts of the country over many years, and for her constructive comments and suggestions on drafts of the book.

viii

Challenges and opportunities

The story of water told here leads to the inescapable conclusion that now, late in the second decade of the twenty-first century, we are at a critical time in our water history. Water scarcity is increasing, as it is in other parts of the world, and at the same time, the populations of our major cities are exploding. We are making greater demands on irrigated agriculture to provide food and fibre for the growing populace and for worldwide export. Across the country, water sources are increasingly under stress, and the reality of climate change is here now. The need for action and consistent long-term planning cannot wait. Despite our vastly increased knowledge and our undoubted scientific expertise, we are unfortunately still seeing inertia and back-sliding by governments and other water decision-makers, especially notable in the all-important Murray–Darling Basin. But there are also some positive signs, particularly in relation to city water supply, with the implementation of increased numbers of innovative, water-saving, and environmentally friendly schemes. This book is about water and Australia – how the Aboriginal peoples were sustained by the land’s water for tens of thousands of years, and how our use and management of this indispensable substance has developed and changed since Europeans’ continuing occupation of the land began in 1788. It is also about the sources and availability of water across the country and the relationship between water, the landscape and the people who live in it. It draws on a range of historical and contemporary sources, anecdotes and personal experience to provide a readable and comprehensive account relevant to all Australians. It is intended to fill a gap in the Australian literature about water, and to stand alongside and extend such works as Michael Cathcart’s history The Water Dreamers, the earlier Thirsty Country by Asa Wahlquist, and more professionally-oriented texts such as John Pigram’s Australia’s Water Resources. The management of water, humankind’s most critical resource, has been fundamental to the development and survival of civilisations. Through the ages, innovations in water engineering and effective husbanding of water resources have enabled civilisations to develop and grow; neglect and over-exploitation of the sources and their environments have resulted in decline. Understanding how earlier civilisations, including early Australians, sourced, managed and used water, and the consequences of their decisions and actions, can help us to comprehend our own situation more clearly and prepare to cope with future water crises or, preferably, avoid them. The ancient Roman civilisation is rightly celebrated for the ways it provided growing cities and towns with prodigious amounts of fresh water, and early civilisations in the Indus Valley also made some impressive, if less well-known, achievements in city water management. The Roman water systems endured for several centuries before being destroyed by invaders or falling into disuse through lack of maintenance. Remarkably, it was not until the late nineteenth century that water provision and sewerage for cities approached the sophistication of the Romans. The ancient Mesopotamian, Egyptian and ix

x

A Water Story

Chinese civilisations developed irrigation systems to suit their different environments, in order to support and expand their empires. These early water schemes were fundamental precursors to modern water supply systems, including our own. From the time of arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 and the establishment of British colonies in Australia, the struggle to provide fresh water underlay the struggle for development. The newcomers tried to impose English methods on a landscape much drier and very different from the one they were familiar with. Their search for water sources inland in the forms of large rivers or an inland sea was shaped by their much wetter homeland on the other side of the world. In this search, they found difficulties and disappointments. It didn’t occur to them to examine the achievements of Aboriginal peoples and how they managed their water sources and lived compatibly with the land. This, despite the obvious health and fitness of the local people. Australia is characterised by extreme variability in rainfall – from place to place across the country, and from year to year for a given region – and therefore highly unreliable natural water supplies. Cycles of drought and flood are the norm, and many streams stop flowing in the dry seasons. Australia’s largest lakes are usually dry, devoid of any water. In the vast arid parts of the continent, groundwater, especially from the Great Artesian Basin, provides an essential source for life. But there are very wet areas as well as arid ones – occurring mostly in mainland coastal areas and in Tasmania –emphasising the wonderful variety of our country. Variability and unreliability are being intensified by climate change, a challenge now upon us. Over more than two centuries of European occupation, many water projects have been realised that have demonstrated exceptional ingenuity and engineering achievement in water storage, supply and management, in both arid and wet parts of the country. These have included schemes to bring water to parched regions in support of vital enterprises; ambitious irrigation projects to provide reliable water supplies for farming regions and their communities; monumental projects to ensure that homes, businesses, industries and recreation facilities in large cities have clean, fresh water always available; and strategies to secure water needed for food supplies and to support economic development. Research and practical experience have led to enormous increases in knowledge and understanding of water sources and their relationship to the total environment. And yet, as well as successes, our water history is littered with blunders: pollution followed by destruction of primary fresh water sources in embryonic cities; wastage of untold amounts of water from the Great Artesian Basin for close on a century; over-exploitation of rivers in the Murray–Darling Basin; repeated failure to match our water demands to the nature of the country; environmental degradation resulting from carelessness, over-use and lack of long-term planning; salinisation of vast tracts of countryside; and more recently, disregard for the impacts of climate change. Worse still, we have often not learned from previous mistakes, but keep repeating them. By understanding the relationship between water and the Australian landscape, and embracing the lessons from our water history, we will be better prepared to address the issues now facing us. Chapter 1 outlines achievements of ancient civilisations in managing their water resources, starting with the oldest – the Aboriginal peoples of Australia. It describes, in particular, the way the ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Chinese civilisations developed irrigation systems to support and expand their empires. Chapter 2 reviews the remarkable achievements of the ancient Romans in providing their growing cities and towns with fresh water. In these cases, the methods resonate with those used in the modern

Challenges and opportunities

world and provide lessons for us to contemplate. Chapter 3 covers basic facts about the earth’s water, including the water cycle and ingenious methods used in past (and present) ages for providing and securing water supplies in areas where there is a natural paucity. Chapters 4 and 5 focus on the struggles of the British newcomers in the months and years after their arrival in 1788 as they tried to come to terms with the Australian landscape and its water environment. Chapter 6 outlines the way the Aboriginal peoples made use of available water resources and protected and managed them with great resourcefulness to support their life and culture. Chapters 7, 8 and 9 investigate the nature of water sources in the vast inland regions and the ways the European explorers and settlers attempted to capitalise on them to support new ventures. Chapters 10–15 examine the development of various forms of water infrastructure across Australia over the last two centuries, including immense achievements in irrigation and in providing growing towns and cities with reliable supplies of fresh water. These developments are compared with the situation in other parts of the world, and the account includes consideration not only of beneficial outcomes but also harmful side effects and instances where inappropriate methods or over-exploitation have had devastating effects. With increasing water scarcity due to population growth and climate change, Chapter 16 examines ways of using available water more effectively. These methods are less wasteful, are not destructive of the natural environment, and do not deplete resources available for future generations. Chapter 17 provides a summary of our water history with its highs and lows and where we stand at present with respect to water resources in Australia. It urges us to reflect on the water practices of the country’s first inhabitants. Critically, this final chapter identifies ways forward for unresolved issues and opportunities for action to secure our water future while avoiding continued environmental degradation.

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1

Water and the earliest civilisations The stunning water engineering achievements of the ancient Roman civilisation, such as imposing aqueduct bridges and grand public baths complexes, are familiar to most of us. Some 2000 years ago, they were parts of sophisticated water management systems for Roman cities and towns. Even older civilisations, as far back as 7000 years, made impressive achievements in managing their water, mainly for irrigating farmland. These include the ancient Egyptians and civilisations in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. Although these are vast periods before our own time, they are dwarfed by the tens of thousands of years during which the Australian Aboriginal peoples managed the available water sustainably to meet their needs.

Ancient Australia The remarkable achievement of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia was to continue to live sustainably in the land over a period of more than 50 000 years, perhaps as long as 65 000 years. They lived throughout the country, from the tropical north to the cool Tasmanian south; from the western plateau to the eastern highlands; in hill country and on the plains; in deserts and in well-watered lands. They adapted to extraordinary climate change and lived through drought and flood. Their achievement was not dependent on building large water-engineering works, but on managing the landscape in a systematic and meticulous way to ensure there was abundant food and water available, despite the dramatically variable Australian climate. Several factors were fundamental to their success, including their detailed knowledge of the characteristics, requirements and tolerances of plants and animals; careful protection and husbanding of available water resources; development of water storages, including wells and dams; and their making of smaller scale modifications to streams and wetlands as well as broader scale modifications to the landscape. Knowledge and experience were passed down through the generations as part of Aboriginal Lore, which prioritised and protected water places. This approach enabled the Aboriginal peoples to live in harmony with the environment; it did not lead to degradation, such as through erosion or salinisation, or need periodic corrective measures to maintain the system.1 These matters are discussed further in later chapters, especially Chapter 6.

Water management in ancient worlds: irrigation, canals, cities Irrigation was one of the earliest forms of water management and distribution, stretching back thousands of years. Examples can be found in ancient Egypt, Mesopotomia, the Indus Valley and China, but are not limited to these cultures. Some early civilisations developed 1

2

A Water Story

ingenious methods of supplying large cities with water, including those in Assyria and in the Indus Valley.

Egypt: the Nile Valley The Egyptians began practising some form of water management around 3000 BC (though there is evidence of farming before 5000 BC). In ancient Egypt, the Nile River was the key to life because there was (and still is) very little rainfall in that country. The river flooded each year with predictable regularity, with all of the water coming from outside the country, most of it from the Ethiopian Highlands. Once the waters had receded from the wide floodplain, wheat and other crops were planted in the now well-watered soil, which was also fertilised by the rich silt carried down from the highlands. Egyptian farmers developed a style of water management called basin irrigation, which was dependent on the natural rise and fall of the river. They built networks of earthen banks, some parallel to the river and some perpendicular to it, thereby forming flat-bottomed basins of various sizes, into which floodwater could flow via regulated sluices. The water was allowed to stand in the basins for 1–2 months and was then drained off downstream back into the river when the time came for planting the crops. With the river flooding reliably, there was always plenty of water. Increasing soil salinity was not a problem because the month or two of inundation took any salts that had accumulated in the upper soil layers down to below the root zone (see box: ‘Requirements for sustainable irrigation’). Consequently, the irrigation practised along the Nile was not only productive but sustainable – it lasted for 5000  years. However, not all was perfect: a low flood could lead to famine, and a high flood could destroy dykes and other earthworks. Knowing the height of the Nile flood in advance was critical to the success of the irrigation system. Early on, the ancient Egyptians developed a system for measuring the height of the Nile at various points along the valley. ‘Nilometers’ were structures made of stone and of various designs, such as a marked column submerged in the river’s edge, a stairway leading down to the water with graduations on the walls or a more complex design.2 A clear advantage of being able to direct the flow of water onto the fields was that no lifting of the water was required. However, there were places where fields were too high to receive water from the river or canals. The shaduf, a water-lifting device, appeared in upper Egypt sometime after 2000 BC and was already in use in Mesopotamia. It consisted of a bucket on the end of a cord that hung from the long end of a pole which swung from a pivot and was counterweighted at the shorter end. It allowed farmers to irrigate crops near the river or canal banks when the water level was low during the dry season. Use of the shaduf led to an increase in the area under cultivation of 10–15 per cent. The shaduf was later supplemented by the noria, a waterwheel with attached pots for raising water.3 More than 25 centuries after the beginning of irrigation in Egypt, Herodotus, referred to by his admirers as the ‘father of history’, visited the country and commented on the role of the Nile. Writing in the fifth century BC, he reported that ‘when the Nile overflows, it floods not only the Delta but parts of the territory on either side … to a distance of two days’ journey – in some places more, in some less’. He also referred to the ‘innumerable dykes, running in all directions, which cut the country up’, and consequently made the country ‘unfit for horses or wheeled traffic’. He described how the purpose of the dykes had been to supply water to towns which lay inland at some distance from the river. He also believed that the people of the lower Nile ‘get their harvests with less labour than anyone else in the world’.4 According to fresh water expert Sandra Postel,2 the early Egyptian irrigation works were not centrally managed, unlike in other ancient civilisations. It appears that water

1 – Water and the earliest civilisations

Requirements for sustainable irrigation For a region to be irrigated on a long-term basis, it has to have •• an abundant supply of water •• well drained soil •• good drainage through the region •• a supply of fertiliser for the soil.

management was carried out at the local level, with decision-making and responsibility close to the farmers. She suggests that this may have been an important factor in the continuity and longevity of the basin irrigation system as the farmers might well have been able to continue their irrigation practices while political disruptions and wars engaged the state bureaucracy. The basic simplicity of the system was also a factor; substantially less labour and maintenance were required than in other irrigation networks such as those of Mesopotamia. One of the greatest threats to the long-term sustainability of irrigation in a region is increasing soil salinity. River water is never pure, as it contains dissolved mineral salts. Evaporation makes it saltier. As water flows out over the soil in a thin sheet during irrigation, it evaporates and consequently becomes more saline. If the water dries up altogether, it may leave a thin layer of salts on and in the soil. In addition, plants absorb moisture from the soil, thus leaving the soil more saline. All of these processes contribute to the salt buildup in the surface layers of the soil until the area becomes too saline to support the growth of crops and pasture. The only way to overcome this problem is to apply enough water to flush the salt off the surface or through the soil. Unless the salt is flushed away completely from the region along natural or artificial drainage channels, the salt will just be shifted to another area, including possibly to downstream users or into groundwater. Flushing also leaches out soil nutrients, which must be replaced for agriculture to be sustainable.5

Mesopotamia In Ancient Mesopotamia (‘land between the rivers’), civilisations relied on the life-giving properties of two rivers – the Tigris and the Euphrates. The rivers run roughly parallel to each other and formed the western (Euphrates) and eastern (Tigris) boundaries of Mesopotamia, located in present-day Iraq, mostly, but also parts of modern-day Iran, Syria and Turkey. (Today, the rivers join before emptying into the Persian Gulf, but in ancient times the sea came further inland, and the rivers emptied into the sea separately.) The plains between the rivers were dry, with little rainfall, but they were fertile, especially near the rivers. Unlike the Nile, the Tigris and the Euphrates could be wild and turbulent, and floods were frequent, meaning a different approach to tapping and using the waters was needed. Important ancient civilisations in Mesopotamia included the Sumerians in the south, the Babylonians in the central and southern areas, and the Assyrians in the north. The Sumerian civilisation The Sumerian civilisation lasted from ~5000 BC to 1750 BC. Sumerians were sowing and harvesting in southern Mesopotamia in the fertile soil just north of the Persian Gulf by ~7000 BC, and practising irrigation before 4000 BC. Communities of farmers dug tanks

3

4

A Water Story

and reservoirs to store water, and built ditches to lead the water to their fields during the growing season. Over time, these simple arrangements were extended and developed into more sophisticated systems involving networks of dams, reservoirs, canals and drainage channels, enabling farmers to grow their crops outside the short rainy season. Crops included wheat, barley, onions, turnips, grapes and apples, and people kept cattle, sheep and goats. The consequent increase in productivity meant that food could be stored for use in leaner seasons or be used in trade for needed goods not available in the area, such as stone for tools, decorations and weapons. Increased productivity also resulted in the population increasing greatly during the period 6000 BC to 4000 BC, based on irrigation of the fertile soil that had been deposited by the Tigris and the Euphrates over millennia. Cities of thousands or even tens of thousands of people developed. It is also interesting to note that these people fought over water rights, a source of conflict that has repeated down through the ages.6

The Babylonian civilisation The Babylonian civilisation endured from the eighteenth to the sixth century BC. The Babylonians inherited the technical achievements of the Sumerians in irrigation and agriculture, maintaining and extending the system of dykes, canals, weirs and reservoirs constructed by their predecessors. The maintenance work required was considerable – canals became blocked with silt brought by the rivers, and floods had the potential to destroy dykes and weirs. Herodotus records the work of two Babylonian rulers in modifying the course of the Euphrates River, which divided Babylon in two. Around 600 BC the queen Semiramis ‘was responsible for certain remarkable embankments in the plain outside the city, built to control the river which until then used to flood the whole countryside’. Five generations later, queen Nitocris had changes made to the river in order to improve the security of the city. By cutting channels upstream she caused the river to wind through the city instead of running straight. She built high embankments on both sides of the river, and she had a basin dug for a lake ‘some forty-seven miles in circumference’. These were all designed to slow the flow of the river and to make life difficult for invaders.7 Assyria Assyria existed as an independent state from ~2500 BC to 605 BC. The highpoint of the Assyrian’s achievements in water management was truly remarkable, and was reached under King Sennacherib in the late eighth and early seventh centuries BC. Sennacherib had a vast network of canals built in four stages, into which half of the water from a river flowing from the Zagros Mountains was diverted. The remains of this system can still be seen. Evidence includes inscriptions of the king himself, written in cuneiform texts on clay tablets and on the irrigation features themselves, and remnants of weirs, canals and aqueducts visited opportunistically by travellers and archaeologists since the 1850s. More recently, Jason Ur, a professor of anthropology at Harvard University, has examined the canal networks using recently-declassified intelligence satellite photographs taken by the United States in the 1960s and early 1970s and low-level aerial photographs acquired by a private firm in the 1950s.8 The first stage, a canal 13.4 km long and leading to Nineveh, the new imperial capital, was commenced in ~702 BC and would have irrigated ~12 km2 of land. The final stages, which included the true engineering achievements, were completed ~690–688  BC. Two basic forms of canal were built: earthworks constructed across a watershed to direct the

1 – Water and the earliest civilisations

water flow, and channels 6–20 m wide and 2 m deep, their course dictated by the local terrain. Altogether, more than 100  km of canals were constructed, having a rock or pebble bottom so that the water flowed clear, and there were tunnels, weirs, reservoirs, and takeoffs for irrigation. The longest canal, the stage four Khinis canal, stretched 55 km across the parched countryside from Khinis in the north, to join the Khosr River, which formed an additional 34 km of natural canal ultimately leading to Nineveh. The average gradient of this canal, and most of the others, was about 1 m/km, or 1 in 1000. It appears that this was the slope Sennacherib’s engineers determined was the optimum: shallow enough to avoid scouring of the canal by fast-rushing water but sufficiently steep to slow the build-up of silt. At one place, about midway along the Khinis canal at a place called Jerwan, there was an intermittent stream in its path, so in a staggering piece of engineering for the times, an aqueduct was built to cross the steam. The aqueduct was 9 m above ground, 22 m wide and 280 m long, and two million perfectly carved limestone blocks were used in its construction. The remains are still visible.9 Jason Ur argues that that the canal network developed by Sennacherib had the purposes of both supplying water to Nineveh, where Sennacherib developed great parks and gardens, and of irrigating the broader region. The agricultural productivity of northern Assyria would have been greatly increased by a reliable supply of irrigation water. As he expanded the Assyrian empire, Sennacherib had a policy of relocating the populations of captured towns and regions. He brought the majority back to Nineveh and resettled them in the surrounding region. Ur argues that ‘The combination of reliable water supplies and efficiently distributed labor would have enabled the great agricultural surpluses required by the new imperial capital at Nineveh’.8,10 Ancient texts reveal that Sennacherib developed a grand garden in Nineveh that recreated a mountain landscape. It boasted terraces, pillared walkways, exotic plants and trees, and rippling streams. Following long-term study of the evidence, Stephanie Dalley of Oxford University has concluded, somewhat controversially, that these gardens were the famed Hanging Gardens – one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World – built by the Assyrians at Nineveh, rather than by Nebuchadnezzar at Babylon as traditionally believed. An expert in ancient Middle Eastern languages, she argues that the gardens belonged to Sennacherib’s palace, and were constructed of artificial arched terraces on which the soil for growing the plants was suspended. The estimated 300  tonnes (300  000  L) of water needed daily to keep the plants growing were supplied from Sennacherib’s canal system. The water was raised to the top of the gardens, from where it flowed down through the lower levels, by water-raising screws made using a new method of casting bronze.11 Astonishingly, this predated the invention of Archimedes’ screw by some four centuries. Despite all these achievements, the irrigation system developed silt and salinity problems. Silt that built up in the canals could be overcome by dredging, but this required significant manpower and organisation. Flooding problems were more serious in Mesopotamia than in Egypt because the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers carried several times more silt per unit volume of water than the Nile, causing the rivers to rise faster and change their courses more often in Mesopotamia. A more insidious problem was the tendency for salt to build up in the soils because it was difficult to drain water off the fields, and this, over time, destroyed the agriculture of the region.12

The Indus Valley Extensive water management measures were also used in the ancient civilisation of the Indus Valley. One of the world’s earliest urban civilisations, and contemporary with the

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civilisations of Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, it occupied the north-west region of the Indian sub-continent, including most of present-day Pakistan and extending into western India. Major cities included Harappa, Mohenjo Daro and Dholavira, which flourished in the period 2600–1700 BC. Evidence suggests they had populations of up to 50 000, and there could have been as many as five million people in the whole Indus River basin in this period. These cities were well planned with wide streets, public and private wells, bathing platforms, reservoirs, and significantly, the first known sanitation system. Excavations in Mohenjo Daro have revealed that almost every house unit was equipped with a private bathing area with drains to take the dirty water out into a bigger drain that emptied into a large covered sewerage channel. In many of the bathing areas, the floors were made waterproof to prevent moisture from seeping into the other rooms nearby or below. Private wells were rebuilt over many generations to serve the needs of a large household or neighbourhood. In Harappa, a large public well and public bathing platforms have been uncovered. It is thought that these public bathing areas may also have been used for washing clothes as is common in many traditional cities in Pakistan and India today. The city of Dholavira appears to have had several large reservoirs, which were filled by an elaborate system of drains that collected water from the city walls and house tops. The remains of a ‘Great Bath’ have been discovered at Mohenjo Daro, representing ‘without doubt the earliest public water tank in the ancient world’. The tank itself measures ~12 m long and 7 m wide, with a maximum depth of 2.4 m. Two wide staircases lead down into the tank, and there are adjoining rooms. It is thought that the tank was used for special religious functions where water was used to purify the bathers and enhance their well-being.13 The population was supported by the products of the rich agricultural region, watered by snow melt from the Himalayan and Karakoram ranges to the north, and seasonal monsoon rains. It is argued that some form of irrigation must have been used to generate sufficient surpluses to support the many city residents, such as artisans and traders, who were not engaged in agriculture, as well as to trade with the surrounding cultures in the Arabian Gulf, West and Central Asia, peninsular India and Mesopotamia.13 Evidence of irrigation from this period is somewhat sketchy; much may have been obliterated by repeated catastrophic floods over the centuries.

China The ancient Chinese civilisation began on the plains of the Yellow River around 1500 BC or perhaps earlier. There is some evidence that over the succeeding centuries efforts were made to find a solution to the devastating floods on the river – canals were dug to channel excess water out into the countryside and then down to the sea.14 The Dujiangyan irrigation system was one of ancient China’s great achievements. Its origins date back to 256 BC, when the provincial governor Li Bing set up a scheme to counter the ruinous floods caused by the Min River, a tributary of the Upper Yangste River. The system split the river into an inner flow for irrigation and an outer flow for flood control and made subtle use of the local topography. The system is still in use today, together with modern adaptations, for irrigating the Sichuan Basin.15 Other major water management schemes initiated by the ancient Chinese involved canal building. The construction of the Zhengguo Canal, 150 km long and connecting the Jing and Luo rivers, was originally begun as a ploy to divert the resources of the ancient kingdom of Qin in order to limit their capacity to fight wars. However, although the Qin discovered it was a ploy, they completed the canal which then allowed them to irrigate

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thousands of square kilometres of agricultural land, thus providing the kingdom with huge additional resources. To this day, the land surrounding the canal is extremely fertile. The 36.4 km Lingqu Canal, the oldest canal in the world still in operation, is located in Guangxi Province. It was built to connect the Xiang and Li rivers for grain transport, and was completed in 214 BC.14,16 The Grand Canal, at ~1750 km, is the longest artificial waterway in the world. It was commenced in the sixth century BC. Further sections were completed in subsequent centuries and the whole canal was completed by the seventh century AD. China’s rivers run west to east; the Grand Canal runs north–south ‘to break this grip of geography’.17 Used for transporting grain and other goods, it improved the economy as well as acting as the government’s courier system and a cultural conduit. The Grand Canal is still a major transport route, though major sections of it are now silted up and not navigable. A section has recently been upgraded to serve as part of the massive South-to-North Water Diversion Project.

Other civilisations There were also water management works in other ancient civilisations. In Peru, archaeologists have found evidence of canals used to irrigate fields as long ago as 4700 BC.18 Complex irrigation works in ancient Sri Lanka date from ~300 BC, and the floodplain of the Santa Cruz River in what is now southern Arizona and northern Mexico was extensively farmed during the Early Agricultural period, around 1200 BC to AD 150.19

0 0 0 A stable climate which allowed the growing and harvesting of crops was critical for human settlements to grow and prosper. This occurred generally from ~7000 years ago, allowing flourishing civilisations along the Nile, Tigris, Euphrates, Indus and Yellow rivers. When the necessary climatic conditions declined due to drought or flood, civilisations were threatened and in some cases collapsed. These ancient river valley civilisations depended on the ebb and flow of the seasons to provide water at the times and in the quantities needed for agriculture.20

Qanats Qanats are an ingenious and important means of water supply that enable water to be delivered over long distances under gravity and without loss due to evaporation. This is especially important in hot, dry climates. Qanats originated in what is now the United Arab Emirates (where they are called Falaj), where several qanats dating from ~1000 BC have been excavated on the northern outskirts of the city of Al Ain and in regions further north.21 Their introduction was a revolution in ancient irrigation systems and must have had a substantial impact on the distribution of settlements, industry, and especially cereal production. From the United Arab Emirates they spread to Iran, and later to Egypt and other predominantly arid areas. Qanats still form a reliable water supply for irrigation, livestock and human settlement in countries such as Iran, Afghanistan, China, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Syria, Oman, Israel and Yemen.22 A qanat consists of a gently-sloping tunnel driven into a hillside to tap an aquifer (Fig. 1.1).23 The tunnels were frequently quite long; qanats of 10–15 km in length were not unusual, with the largest known being 33 km, at Gonabad in present-day Iran.24 Vertical shafts every 20–30 m along the course of the qanat provided access for digging the tunnel and the

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Mountains Desert Aquifer tapped here

Access shaft for construction & maintenance Mouth of qanat

Cultivated land & villages

Qanat

Impermeable rock or clay

Aquifer Water table

Open channels for irrigation

Fig. 1.1.  Schematic diagram of a qanat.

removal of excavated soil. Some of the excavated soil was used to build a small ring-shaped mound around the entrance to the shaft to prevent surface run-off bringing silt and other contamination into the shaft. Once the qanat was in operation, the shafts provided ventilation and access for repair and removal of any silt and debris that accumulated. The tunnels were normally unlined, but they were sometimes reinforced by rings of terracotta tubing if there appeared to be danger of collapse. The water was usually carried in a runnel in the base of the tunnel, the dimensions of the tunnel itself being determined by the need for human access. As we can imagine, the digging and cleaning of a qanat could be a hazardous business, given the danger of collapse of the tunnel or the shafts. Qanats were usually located in the foothills of a mountain range because there the mountains force rain-bearing clouds to rise, resulting in precipitation (Chapter 3) which feeds the aquifer. The higher altitude of the source also enabled the water to travel under gravity to its point of use. The slope was kept to the minimum required for the water to flow to limit the erosion of the base of the tunnel. This varied with the length of the qanat, the topography of the area and the water table, but was typically ~1 in 2000 (0.5 m/km).25 Turpan lies in the desert expanse of north-west China and is situated in the seconddeepest depression in the world. In summer it is the hottest place in China, receiving almost no rain. The Chinese administrator Aitchen K. Wu passed through Turpan in 1933 and commented: The market often goes on all night long – while in the daytime the streets are deserted, everyone having ‘gone to earth’ in caves … The hot wind is worse than anything that can be imagined, shriveling the skin, scorching the eyes; and the direct rays of the sun can carry death. It is a proverbial saying, not much exaggerated, that the people bake their dough cakes by sticking them on the walls of the huts.26 Yet Turpan is an oasis, thanks to a qanat system (called karez in China) that brings water from aquifers fed by melting snow in the Tien Shan mountains (see Plate 1.1). This

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precious water supply system, some of which was built more than 2000 years ago, has supported extensive agriculture in the region, traditionally wheat and Chinese white sorghum, and more recently, grapes. In the town itself, many streets are lined with trees and have open, flowing water channels down their sides. More karez were constructed in recent centuries, but the number operating has declined from ~400 to fewer than 200 since the mid-1980s. The decline has been due to the construction of water reservoirs and surface canals reducing the rate of recharge of groundwater storages, and to the rapid increase in the direct pumping of groundwater.27 In ancient times many qanats continued to operate in arid lands occupied by the Romans, and they were a common source of water in the empire. For example, in Timgad in North Africa the Roman aqueducts were fed by qanats, and it is thus possible that qanats may have influenced the Romans’ aqueduct-building techniques.28

The earliest aqueducts In the Middle East, aqueducts were being used as early as the eighth century BC. The aqueduct at Jerwan in ancient Assyria, constructed by King Sennacherib between 703 and 690 BC as part of the water supply for Ninevah, is one example. In ancient Judah, located in what is now Israel, King Hezekia (727–669 BC) ordered the construction of an underground conduit to bring water from the Gihon spring outside the city of Jerusalem to the Siloah pool within the city walls. This was a straight-line distance of 370 m, but the aqueduct was ~530 m long, as it took an S-shaped course. Constructed around 700 BC during a war against Assyria, it provided greater security of water supply to the city as the spring water could then be accessed without going outside the city walls.29 One of the greatest engineering achievements of ancient times was a tunnel built as the middle part of an aqueduct to provide a secure supply of water to the capital of the island of Samos (now Pythagorion) in the sixth century BC. It was referred to with great admiration by Herodotus, who wrote in the middle of the fifth century BC of the people of Samos: … they are responsible for three of the greatest building and engineering feats in the Greek world: the first is a tunnel nearly a mile long, eight feet wide and eight feet high, driven clean through the base of a hill nine hundred feet in height. The whole length of it carries a second cutting thirty feet deep and three broad, along which water from an abundant source is led through pipes into the town. This was the work of a Megarian named Eupalinus [sic], son of Naustrophus. … .30 [The other two great works to which Herodotus referred were an artificial harbour and ‘the biggest of all known Greek temples’.] The aqueduct began at a spring, and the first part of it was an underground conduit 890 m long. The Tunnel of Eupalinos is a little over 1 km long (1040 m), ~2 m wide and 2 m high, and was dug through Kastro Hill, which is 230 m high. Work was carried out simultaneously by two teams advancing from both ends using only picks, hammers and chisels to cut through the solid limestone. This was a remarkable feat of manual labour. Perhaps even more remarkable was Eupalinos’ capacity to ensure that the two tunnels, one of which had some bends, met in the middle – all without the aid of magnetic compasses, surveying instruments, topographic maps, or even much written mathematics at his disposal. The terracotta aqueduct pipe was laid in a trench at the side of the tunnel. The trench was 3.5 m deep at the start and 8.5 m deep at the end, giving a 0.4 per cent (4 in 1000) slope. At the

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end of the tunnel the aqueduct continued into the city. Throughout its length it was hidden from view and well protected, thus ensuring the security of the water supply in times of siege. The whole system operated for more than 1000 years.28

The Romans The Romans built on the work of previous civilisations and developed these earlier methods for transporting and distributing water on a grander scale. Hubert Chanson, a professor of hydraulic engineering at the University of Queensland, suggests that some of the Romans’ hydraulic expertise was gained from the Etruscans (on culverts, tunnels, and water channels), from the Greeks (on water channels, dams and siphons), as well as from Turkey, Egypt and Mesopotamia. However, he also argues that they developed significant expertise themselves, including concrete technology and arch design, which were essential for the construction of an aqueduct system.31 The Romans’ special achievement was to transport water over long distances and to develop distribution systems for their cities. As a result, they were not so dependent on settling close to perennial rivers and streams, and facilities available to town and city dwellers were far superior to what there had been before.

2

Water use across the Roman Empire When I was a young man on my first overseas trip, driving around southern France, I visited the Pont du Gard. This lofty Roman aqueduct bridge crosses the River Gardon1 between Nimes and Avignon. Three hundred and sixty metres long and almost 50 m above the river at its highest point, the bridge was enthralling and elegant, and I was amazed at the thought that it had been designed and constructed by the Romans nearly two thousand years earlier. Constructed of local light-yellow limestone in the middle of the first century AD, it was built to support a section of the aqueduct that carried water from the Eure spring near Ucetia (present-day Uzes) to Nemausus (now Nimes), 20 km away. It consists of a rectangular enclosed channel 1.8 m high and 1.2 m wide supported by three rows of arches: six on the bottom, 11 on the second level and 47 on the top row, making a magnificent threetiered bridge (see Plate 2.1). The three levels were built in dressed stone without mortar.2 It was a beautiful summer’s day with no other visitors in sight, and I spent a couple of hours wandering around and over the bridge – through the covered way and on top of it, something that is no longer permissible. I wondered at the ambition and determination that drove these early planners and engineers to take such monumental action to secure the water supply for their city. It also stimulated in me an interest in water supply and management that has continued to the present day.

A new water supply for Nemausus (Nimes) In the first century AD Nemausus was an important Roman city – one of the greatest cities in Gaul3 – after it became a colony under Roman law in ~45 BC. The city prospered, and significant building was undertaken, including a 6  km-long city wall, temples and an amphitheatre. However, near the middle of the first century AD, Nemausus had a water supply problem. There were a large number of wells (60 have been found) and a productive spring inside the walls, but the output from these was becoming inadequate to provide for the growing population.4 Water sources in the plains to the south and east of the city were too low in altitude for water to flow to the city. (Given the general absence of mechanical pumps at the time, gravity had to be relied on to provide continuous supply.5) The most suitable source was the Eure spring, north of the city However, transporting the water to Nemausus presented several challenges: the straight-line distance between the Eure spring and the city was 20 km, but a range of hills 200 m high blocked the way. The only feasible solution was for an aqueduct to go around the hills to the east. The result was that the length of the aqueduct ultimately built was 50 km, in a winding, U-shaped route to avoid the stony hills. Tunnelling through the hills 11

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the necessary distance of 8 or 10 km would have been impossible at that time – tunnels of that length would not be achieved until many centuries later.6 Another significant problem to be contended with was that the Eure spring was only17 m higher than the destination water basin (castellum) at the entry to Nemausus. Hence the engineers of the day had to carry out the incredible feat of calculating and building a channel to enable the water to flow all the way under gravity alone, along a channel where the average gradient was only 34 cm/km. This is a little over 3 cm in every 100 m – a slope imperceptible to the human eye. An error in any section of the aqueduct could have been disastrous. The Roman engineers achieved the necessary precision despite having only simple surveying, levelling and measuring technology available. Ninety per cent of the course of the aqueduct was underground. It was built by digging a trench and constructing a stone channel within the trench, typically 1.2  m wide and 1.2 m high. A stone arch was constructed on top of the walls making a total height of 1.8 m. The floor and side walls of the water channel were lined with waterproof cement and made as smooth as possible throughout its entire length, to prevent leaks and seepage and to provide a low friction surface (Roman engineers had mastered the making and application of waterproof cement). The completed channel was covered with earth. There were other construction challenges on the long and winding route. Some sections had to be tunnelled through rock. Furthermore, as the aqueduct traversed uneven ground, including numerous valleys and streams, it had to be supported by culverts or walls where the valleys were small, and bridges and a series of arches where they were wider. The section of the aque-

Fig. 2.1.  Remains of the Castellum Divisorum at Nimes, showing the entry of the aqueduct and the circular holes that held lead distribution pipes.

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duct supported by the bridge over the River Gardon was covered by stone slabs to prevent contamination of the water and heating by the sun. As if these issues were not enough, another problem confronting the aqueduct designers was that the height of the bridge over the River Gardon needed to maintain a steady downward gradient of the aqueduct was at the very limit of that which Roman engineers could build. Therefore, to keep the bridge height to a minimum, the gradient of the aqueduct was made steeper – up to 45 cm/km – in the sections before the Pont du Gard. However, the steeper gradients in these sections meant that it was necessary for the central part of the aqueduct to have an even gentler slope than the average – a mere 8  cm/km, or 1 in 12 500. It is astonishing that the Roman engineers could achieve this feat. When completed, the aqueduct delivered 20 000 m3 (20 ML) of water a day,7 enough to fill about eight modern-day Olympic-size swimming pools. This is a flow of more than 230 L/s. Water leaving the Eure spring took 24–30 h to reach its destination at Nemausus. On arrival it fed into the castellum divisorum located in the highest part of the city. This consisted of a circular stone tank 5.90  m in diameter and 1.40 m deep carved into the rock, and its remains can still be seen (Fig. 2.1). The castellum had a sluice gate on the aqueduct’s entrance to the tank, several drain holes in the floor, and 10 circular holes around its perimeter through which water was distributed via lead pipes to public baths, fountains, public toilets, and some private houses in the various parts of the city. The new source of high-quality water from the Eure spring enabled Nemausus to flourish into the second and third centuries AD, enhancing its prestige as well as liveability for its 20 000 or so citizens.

Wells and cisterns: the basic water source The Pont du Gard is just one example of the many aqueducts built by the Romans to supply towns and cities across their Empire in Europe, western Asia and North Africa between the first century BC and the third century AD. It illustrates the typical issues the Roman engineers had to confront. The visible remains of other aqueducts still existing today are mostly monumental aqueduct bridges and arcades. Examples can be found in Segovia (Spain), Rome (Italy), Cologne (Germany), Carthage (Tunisia), Cherchell (Algeria), Istanbul (Turkey) and many other locations. Because of this, it is tempting to conclude that aqueducts were the main sources of water for Roman towns and cities. However, this was not the case. People in towns and cities, as well as those in rural areas, relied primarily on wells tapping underground water, cisterns (water storages) storing rain water, and local springs, rivers and streams where they existed. Aqueducts were added to established towns and cities at later stages of their development, primarily to fulfil the need for prodigious amounts of water for the public baths to which citizens of the Roman Empire had become so addicted.

Wells Wells were dug down from where the water was required at the surface in an attempt to get subterranean water. It was generally a ‘hit-and-miss’ process, as knowledge of geological structures in Roman times was minimal, and it appears that there was little or no understanding of the nature of groundwater. Wells were generally round and lined with stone, though in heavily forested regions wood was often used, in which case the well was usually square. Size was variable, but commonly up to about 2 m across. A wellhead, often simply in the form of a low wall, was usually constructed at the top of the well to stop people and

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objects from falling in, and a removable cover or lid was usually provided. Depth varied enormously and depended on the depth of the water table, but anything up to 25 or 30 m was common. Wells, both public and private, were abundant throughout the Roman civilisation. In the cities, private houses had a well or a cistern or both, and public wells were often located in city streets or the forum. In the countryside, farm houses had wells for drinking water or for irrigation. However, there were real limits to the area that could be irrigated by a well – usually the size of a market garden or a small orchard.8

Cisterns Cisterns usually took the form of a masonry tank at or a little below ground level, to receive and store rainwater run-off from roof and ground surfaces. They were rectangular, circular or bottle-shaped and lined with waterproof cement. Some may have had a settling basin in which run-off was received before being decanted to the cistern. Private cisterns were typically under the floor of a house, were covered by a lid, and water was obtained from them by lowering a bucket. Cisterns were also used for agriculture and industry and were common on farms in the arid regions of North Africa.9

Further developments in urban water management The introduction of aqueducts represented a major step in water supply to Roman cities and towns. It enabled them to grow further, to increase the amenity for citizens and, in particular, to service the city bath houses of which there were often several in the one city, as well as some private baths owned by wealthy citizens. The baths complex was not only a place to bathe for hygienic purposes; it was equally a centre for social and recreational activities. It was a place to meet friends and to find the facilities we have in our homes and communities today; it was a place where citizens could go for a cool wash in the hot weather; and in winter it was a place to be warm, especially in the colder regions of northern Europe. The largest and grandest of the baths complexes were the imperial thermae. These were generally state-owned and were gigantic and magnificently decorated structures offering the full range of services. The walls and floors were decorated with mosaics and frescoes, and there were vaulted ceilings which would have added to the feeling of spaciousness. There was even a cultural and intellectual side to the baths as the imperial thermae incorporated libraries, lecture halls, colonnades, and promenades.10 The Baths of Caracella complex in Rome occupied ~10  ha, and the Antonine Baths at Carthage, the largest in North Africa and the third largest in the Roman world, ~3.5 ha – about two city blocks. The more modest and more numerous ordinary baths (balnea) also provided a range of services, meaning that everyone, from the ordinary townspeople to the wealthy elite, was able to experience this aspect of the desirable lifestyle, often at no cost. Generally, baths were open to women in the morning and men in the afternoon. In the ruins of the Roman city of Timgad, in arid rolling country in eastern Algeria, one of the slabs in the forum is a gaming table (tabula lusoria) bearing the words, ‘to hunt, to bathe, to gamble, to laugh – this is living’.11 This is a succinct summary of the Romans’ attitude to their baths and the priority they attached to them. In towns and cities, the uses to which water was put included public fountains, which supplied water for the general public and for cleaning the streets; public bath houses; public toilets; workshops, such as the fullers (roughly equivalent to modern laundries); public

2 – Water use across the Roman Empire

eating places (thermopolia); entertainments including naumachia (mock sea battles); uses in markets, such as washing fruit and vegetables and cleaning away blood from cut meat and fish; water for horse troughs; washing through drains and sewers; gardens; and domestic uses in private houses of the more wealthy. The availability of an abundant water supply necessitated more sophisticated means of distributing the supply to the different parts of a city for the various purposes. The principles of the structure and administration of Rome’s water supply are described by Sextus Julius Frontinus, and based on his role as water commissioner for Rome under Emperor Trajan.12 Most archaeological evidence for the methods of water distribution comes from excavations at Nimes and Pompeii. On arrival at the city, water from an aqueduct was delivered to the castellum divisorum, a relatively small tank on the edge of the city from where it was distributed to the various parts of the city via lead pipes. Sometimes a settling tank was incorporated into the water reception arrangements to remove sediments. The castellum was located at a point as high as practicable, so all parts of the city could receive water under the force of gravity. Evidence suggests that water was distributed either by regions of the city, or by categories of user. In Pompeii, for example, it appears that the order of priority for supply was public fountains first, then baths and theatres, and private houses lowest priority. However, it must be remembered that water supplies in houses were extensively supplemented by wells and cisterns.13

Rome and Pompeii Because of its size and time as the centre of the Roman civilisation, Rome’s water distribution system was more complex than that of other cities. By 226 AD, when the population of Rome was about one million, there were 11 aqueducts supplying the city. No other Roman city had more than three or four aqueducts (e.g. Lyon had four), and a single aqueduct was common. Rome’s first, the Aqua Appia, was built in 311 BC and was 16 km long. It was also the shortest of Rome’s aqueducts, while the Aqua Marcia, built in 144–140  BC, was the longest at 91 km. The total length of the 11 aqueducts has been estimated to be 502 km and the total daily output of the order of 1250 million litres (1.25 GL), enough to fill 500 Olympic-size swimming pools. At this time, in Rome, there were 11  imperial thermae, 965 smaller bath houses, and 1352 public fountains.14 Huge amounts of water were used for recreation and entertainment, including the bath houses. Emperor Augustus instituted a new system of water management for Rome in 36 BC, directed by a curator aquarum (water commissioner) who was appointed for life. This was an office of great dignity. The curator aquarum managed the public water supply, and adjudicated in disputes over right-of-way and cases of water-law violations. He was supported by several officials, including assistants, clerks, public slaves, engineers and artisans. The artisans included men who made and laid the lead supply pipes, others who measured water levels or kept the castella (storage tanks) in order, and inspectors of works. There were also other workers who took up the street pavement when mains needed to be replaced or repaired, tilers, bricklayers, and pottery crushers to make the lining for the channels and reservoirs. In subsequent years and under the administration of the next emperor, Claudius, the organisation was further developed and strengthened, including the addition of several hundred slaves. The head of the water administration, now Procurator Aquarum, was one of the most prestigious non-political offices in Rome. Laws were passed to protect the water supply and simplify its administration, for example, laws to ensure a clear space on either side of arcades, substructures and subterranean

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A Water Story

channels, to avoid damage to the channel and ensure ready access for repairs. A law stipulated a fine of 10 000 sesterces for anyone who polluted a public fountain, planted trees or shrubs in the clear zone around aqueducts, or wilfully destroyed an aqueduct structure. Two men were appointed on each street as caretakers and watchmen of the fountains.6 In Rome and Pompeii, the water travelled from the castellum divisorum to smaller secondary castella, some of which were privately owned, and from where pipes branched off to individual customers. In Pompeii, the secondary castella were placed at strategic locations around the city, such as at busy crossroads, to service the surrounding area. Public fountains were normally found at these locations. At its most basic, a fountain consisted of a metal spout over a stone trough placed at a convenient height. Water was carried away in pottery jars. Because the water was constantly flowing, it was likely that the trough was kept filled, so it would have been possible to dip a jug in the trough for a quick fill. A map of fountain locations published by Hodge13 showed few inhabitants of the city would have had to go more than 50 m to get to a public fountain for water. For those further away, there were pipes under the pavement, as there were for private houses. Evidence available to date indicates that there were ~50  public fountains for the 12 000 inhabitants of Pompeii, that is, ~240 people to each public fountain on average, not counting those with a private water supply. If this was the case, the people of Pompeii would have had a generous supply of water for their domestic and personal use. For example, an average of 350 L per person per day (a generous allowance even by today’s modern city standards) would be a total of 4.2 million L for the whole city, leaving 2.48 million L per day for public facilities – baths, toilets, entertainments – and industrial purposes. It is important to note that in some respects Pompeii was a special case, in that it was a place where the elite of Rome’s citizens built elegant holiday houses and elaborate villas.

Water pipes The water pipes of the city distribution system were sometimes placed underground and sometimes on the surface, for example, between the pavement and building walls. It was illegal for a private user to tap directly into the aqueduct, and permission had to be granted for private water supplies. Frontinus reported that in Rome ‘No person shall draw water from the public supply without official permission, that is, an Imperial licence, nor shall he draw more than he has been granted.’12 The amount of water permitted to be drawn by private users was controlled by the diameter of the supply pipe – specifically by a calyx, a pipe or opening of a designated size. A calyx was usually made of bronze rather than lead, to make it not so easily deformed. There were no water meters, apart from this. Where a private house had piped water from the town system and/or its own wells and cisterns, there was no need to depend on the public fountains. However, the upper floors of apartment buildings would have had to make use of the public fountains in any case, because the water pressure from the town system was insufficient to flow at the level of the higher floors. That is, the ‘head’ of water due to the height of the castellum would have been insufficient. Also, the upper floors probably did not have access to private wells and cisterns as the lower floors might. In Pompeii, and probably other provincial cities, where land was less expensive than in Rome and there were significant numbers of wealthy people, it was more common for houses to have both kitchen and toilets, but this was by no means the norm. These luxuries were only available to the wealthy. The vast majority of citizens living in Roman towns and cities relied on the public supplies of water from fountains and on the public baths, toilets and eating places. They had no access to private water supplies and the allied facilities.

2 – Water use across the Roman Empire

Lead pipes were widely used in urban distribution networks, but in some areas wood or terracotta was used. The lead pipes were made from a flat sheet of lead bent round a cylindrical former and soldered along the seam, which was placed at the top.15 Separate pipes – usually in 10-foot lengths – were soldered together after being placed in position. Contrary to what might be expected, the use of lead for pipes did not cause poisoning because, as Hodge explains, the water was in constant flow, and the pipes rapidly developed an internal lining of calcium carbonate, thereby separating the lead from the water. Where wood was plentiful, and consequently cheaper, as for example in Roman Britain, holes were bored through tree trunks to form pipes, which were joined together with circular iron collars.16 The wood didn’t rot if it was kept constantly wet by the water flow. While lead was readily available and the Romans were adept at handling it, it was heavy, and therefore expensive to transport. Junctions, branches and the like were made as required, and were easiest to achieve with lead.

Drains and sewers With aqueducts discharging water continuously 24 hours a day, there was often significant overflow from public fountains, baths and houses. There was also wastewater from houses, public toilets, and commercial establishments such as shops and workshops, as well as rainwater. The water from these sources either washed down the streets in open gutters, helping to keep them clean, or was directed to underground drains or sewers. In the newer cities of the Roman Empire, including those in North Africa, drains were more often underground, where overflow and wastewater collected into main drains under the main (paved) streets and hence were covered by stone slabs. Openings cut in the street paving or at the edge of the roadway allowed water to enter the underground drains, as can be seen today in the central part of Pompeii. People living in houses without toilets – the majority – used pots, and these were emptied into the street gutters and drains. In Pompeii footpaths were raised and there were stepping stones to help residents negotiate the streets washed by the continual overflow of the 50 or so public fountains (see Plate 2.2). Drains from houses with a private water supply took overflow and wastewater to the exterior where they joined the larger street drains. Gutters crossing the streets in some places helped to control and direct the flow of water. In multistorey apartments, such as existed in Rome, there were vertical pipes for wastewater and sewage, but more commonly, people went outside – to the public toilets, or ‘betook themselves to the neighbouring dung-heap’, or elsewhere. Hodge17 reports the use of signs saying ‘don’t do it here – or else’. Central drains and sewers emptied into a river – if there was one – or via smaller channels to a soakage system in low-lying plains. In areas of North Africa where the land was more arid, it is thought that the wastewater was used for irrigation, although this is not known for certain. It is worth noting that the largest drains built by the Romans were for draining agricultural land and reclaiming swamp land. One impressive example in terms of the engineering involved was at the Lake Fucino in central Italy. Here, in the first century AD under Emperor Claudius, 30 000 workers dug a 5.6 km-long tunnel over 10 years through the nearby hills to drain fertile areas around the lake and prevent flooding.18 Public toilets Public toilets in Roman towns and cities were normally attached to the public baths, where there were abundant supplies of water. Roman toilets were communal affairs – centres of social discourse with a distinct lack of privacy. They could accommodate several people at a time, with the larger ones holding up to as many as 40 users. They typically consisted of

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A Water Story

a stone or wooden bench with holes (seats) arranged in a line, with the bench not uncommonly occupying three sides of a rectangle. The bench was mounted directly above a stream of constantly flowing water, so flushing was unnecessary. Water also flowed in a small gutter or runnel in the floor just in front of the seats. It was therefore possible for the user to reach down and dip a sponge on a stick in the water (or to use a fig leaf or the left hand) for cleaning purposes. The constantly running water kept the toilets clean and helped to maintain a good standard of hygiene. The toilets were open to users of the baths and to the public in general.

Building aqueducts The building of aqueducts across the varied climates of the Roman Empire was not only a testament to the Romans’ design and engineering skills, but a manifestation of the priority they gave to having an abundant supply of fresh water.

The aqueduct itself The typical aqueduct was a masonry channel of the type used in the Nimes aqueduct, made of concrete or rough stonework, or in some cases, brick. The size was influenced by the need for maintenance – the channel had to be accessible for a man to clean it. The aqueduct would normally run 0.5–1 m below ground level for protection against interference or damage. Inspection holes for maintenance were sometimes placed at intervals along the route. Aqueducts were designed to run only one-third to one-half full, so the waterproof cement lining only covered the floor of the channel and up to about two-thirds of the height of the side walls. The depth of water in the aqueduct could vary, perhaps due to changes in rainfall affecting the source. If, for this or some other reason the water ran at a higher level, there were leaks from the higher parts of the walls. The source of the water The majority of aqueducts tapped spring water as their source of supply. Some aqueducts drew their water from rivers and streams, but these were a minority. Towns and cities were not able to draw their aqueduct water from rivers flowing past them, partly because the water was too polluted, but also because the river water could not flow to the higher level on which the town was built. According to Frontinus, for four centuries after it was founded, Rome relied on water supplied by wells, cisterns, springs and the River Tiber.19 It is worth noting that these wells would have stored water that had percolated through the soil from the river; however, in the process the water would have been filtered to some extent. Springs are outlets for ground water – water that has accumulated in porous rock, between impervious layers. They can vary enormously in quantity of output – from small trickles to great gushes – and in water quality. While rivers generally carry physical contaminants – sand and mud sediments together with anything else that might find its way into the river – spring water, while more likely to look clear, generally contains chemical impurities. Springs that fed Roman aqueducts were often found in limestone country, which resulted in the spring water containing dissolved calcium carbonate when it entered the aqueduct. As the water flowed through the channel, the calcium carbonate separated out chemically as a solid and deposited on the lining of the channel. It could only be removed manually, by chipping. This made aqueduct maintenance costly. The amount of encrusta-

2 – Water use across the Roman Empire

tion depended on the purity of the water. In the remains of some aqueducts, very thick encrustations have been found which would have significantly reduced the flow of water. In the Nimes aqueduct, for example, encrustation up to 47 cm thick has been found. Given that the channel was originally only 120 cm wide, this represents a major reduction in the capacity of the aqueduct. The annual rate of the crust build-up has been estimated at 1.15 cm every 10 years, that is, 11 or 12 cm each century.20 The encrustation was obviously a long-term rather than a short-term problem. For lead pipes, whether used in aqueducts or elsewhere such as for distribution of water within a city, some sort of pull-through mechanism may have been used to clean the pipes, or they may simply have been replaced when the deposits restricted the flow of water to an unacceptable amount. Suspended material, such as sand and soil particles, was another potential source of impurities in the water. Sedimentation tanks or pits along the line of the aqueduct were used as a way of reducing this problem. Another threat requiring continued maintenance was posed by vegetation penetrating the stone lid of the channel, which could potentially obstruct the flow of water and introduce algae and bacteria into the conduit.21 As discussed in the case of the Nimes aqueduct, the water flowed under gravity alone, so it was very important that there was a steady gradient – not so steep that there was erosion of the lining of the channel, and not so gentle that there was a possibility of the water stagnating. A very gentle slope also increased the likelihood of sediments settling out along the floor of the aqueduct. A balance had to be struck between these extremes; a gradient in the range 1.5–3.0 m/km seems to have been common.22

Crossing valleys: bridges and siphons Although the greater lengths of the aqueducts were underground, maintaining the required gradient through hilly country meant that in addition to following contours and using some tunnelling, stone walls, arcades or bridges were needed to get the aqueduct across valleys – of which the Pont du Gard is a celebrated example. Other prominent examples are the aqueduct bridges and arcades in Segovia (Spain), near Carthage (Tunisia), at Cherchell (Algeria), in Nero’s Aqueduct (Rome), and in the Valens Aqueduct (Turkey). It is these structures and others like them that tend to come to mind when we think of aqueducts, rather than the actual water channels themselves. In some cases – relatively few – a siphon (actually an inverted siphon) was used to transport the water across a valley. This usually occurred when the valley was too deep for a bridge to be used – that is, the bridge would have to be higher than could be constructed with the existing expertise (~50 m). In this arrangement, the water flowed from the aqueduct into a header tank on the edge of the valley, and then into several pipes heading steeply down the bank of the valley, across the base of the valley, and up the other side to a receiving tank. Because of the energy lost by the water in friction with the sides of the pipes, and the need to ensure a steady flow of water, the receiving tank had to be at a lower level than the header tank. In the Nimes aqueduct, a siphon could not be used to take the aqueduct across the River Gardon because the location of the receiving tank would have been at too high a level for the siphon to work effectively.

North African variations In the period from the first to the third century AD, as part of its relentless expansion and consolidation, the Roman Empire established cities across North Africa, in the region now

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A Water Story

occupied by Libya, Tunisia and Algeria. Many had several thousand – even tens of thousands – inhabitants. Remains of many of these cities can still be seen. Several are UNESCO World Heritage sites, and some have undergone significant conservation and restoration. Walking through their remains, one can only marvel at the ambition, skill and inventiveness that were required to bring them to workable reality nearly 2000 years ago. It is easy to see evidence of paved streets (some with drains beneath the paving), impressive public buildings (temples, baths, fountains, toilets, markets), and water reticulation to some private houses – all typical of Roman cities. Most of the cities in North Africa were in regions of low rainfall, so finding and maintaining sufficient supplies of fresh water must have been a daunting task. Where possible, cities were built on or near a spring, which supplied some of the fresh water needs of the inhabitants. However, typically as the cities grew and developed, aqueducts were built to transport water from sources further away, especially as water-hungry public baths were included. Because of the sparse rainfall, special water collection and water saving measures were used that were not in general use in other parts of the empire. These included collecting rainwater via holes in pavements, which led to a cistern below, and piping water between cisterns to avoid waste. In the countryside, farmers built small dams in wadis (usually-dry water courses) to collect rainwater and topsoil, and in some cases, large dams were constructed.22 Roman Tiddis, in what is now north-eastern Algeria, was a small town of only ~1000 people. It was situated on the side of a steep hill with commanding views, where the red and grey rocks of the city blend with the rocky, uneven landscape. There was no natural water supply to the site, and it seems that ancient Tiddis relied totally on rainwater. The hill was modified to collect and store the rain that fell, and on which the community relied during the long, hot summers. The water was stored in wells and cisterns. The remains of some of these attached to or incorporated in buildings, along with water channels, can still be seen. Also still visible are the remains of several very large rectangular stone cisterns that were constructed at the top of the hill above the town, each holding perhaps 50 000 L. The total storage capacity may have been ~300 000  L (300  m3). The cisterns were so arranged that as they overflowed one into another, the water was purified, presumably by sedimentation (see Plate 2.3). The water was then led by a series of channels down through the city where it was put to various uses as needed, and finally to the baths (built ~250 AD by citizens) at the bottom of the city. Feeding the public baths with rainwater is remarkable, given their appetite for water.

Aqueducts and storage cisterns But perhaps the most dramatic difference in North Africa was the fact that aqueducts terminated in storage reservoirs of some kind, usually complexes of cisterns, rather than a smaller castellum divisorum, as in other parts of the empire. Examples of these can be seen at the remains of Carthage, and the well-preserved Roman city of Dougga, Tunisia, where the capacity of the cisterns is estimated to have been ~15 million litres. Roman Carthage, on the coast near modern-day Tunis, reached a population of 350 000 or more. In earlier times, Carthage had been the centre of the Carthaginian civilisation before it was attacked and razed to the ground by the Romans in 146 BC. It was re-established as a Roman city late in the first century BC. As the city grew, the shortage of water in the immediate vicinity began to be felt, especially in periods of drought. In a massive undertaking during the second century AD, an aqueduct was built to transport water from a spring at Zaghouan in the Dorsale mountains south of Carthage. The altitude of the

2 – Water use across the Roman Empire

Fig. 2.2.  Remains of Hadrian’s Aqueduct arcade at La Mohammedia, near Carthage.

spring is 289 m, and the aqueduct travelled across 90.4 km of undulating country to the city. There was a further 42 km of secondary extensions to other water sources, making a total length of aqueduct system of 132 km, the longest in the Roman Empire.23 Known as Hadrian’s aqueduct, or the aqueduct of Carthage, it was regarded as one of the marvels of the world by the Muslim poet El Kairouani24 and has recently been referred to as ‘a jewel of structural (engineering) and architectural archaeology’ by Figueiredo and colleagues, experts in materials archaeology.23 Typical of Roman aqueducts, most of it was underground, but due to the undulating landscape there were sections where it was carried high above the ground on stone pillars, forming long aqueduct bridges or arcades. There were a total of 17 km of these high arcaded sections.23 Parts of these arcades are still standing and can be seen near the town of La Mohammedia, a few kilometres outside Carthage, as massive stone pillars 20 m high linked by arches with the enclosed aqueduct conduit on top. During its course from Zaghouan to Carthage, the aqueduct changed direction several times and passed through hills and over valleys. At one stage the remains run along a modern road for several hundred metres (Fig. 2.2). The aqueduct was completed by the time the grand Antonine Baths – the largest outside Rome – were finished in AD 162,24 no doubt making the residents of Carthage very happy. It is estimated that Hadrian’s aqueduct delivered an impressive 32 million L (32 000 m3) of water per day at a speed of 370 L/s.23 There were two large cistern complexes for the storage of water on the outskirts of Carthage. One, at La Malga, was located on the north-west

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A Water Story

Fig. 2.3.  Remains of the cisterns complex at La Malga, Carthage, showing the ‘in’ channel.

edge of the city, near Hadrian’s aqueduct. This complex, the remains of which can still be seen, consisted of 15–24 cisterns, each 95  m long and approximately 8  m wide, with an arched roof, and an estimated total capacity of 50–60 000 m3 (50–60 million L), possibly the largest in the ancient world.26 They were made of clay, small stones and carbon, and had occasional 30 cm diameter holes in the top. The holes were covered most of the time but were opened intermittently for ventilation (Fig. 2.3). The second complex was at Borj-Djedid in the north-east corner of the city. It occupied an area of 39 m by 155 m and was divided into 18 transverse compartments. The estimated total capacity was 25–30 000 m3 (25–30 million litres). This storage system is now not accessible. The total storage of the two complexes was the equivalent of perhaps two-and-a-half days’ supply from the aqueduct. There is also evidence of 114 other smaller cisterns scattered around Carthage (Fig. 2.4). Although it is not completely clear how the system worked, it is known that water from the aqueduct went to the Antonine Baths first, possibly via the La Malga cisterns and was ultimately distributed to other parts of the city. The large storage complexes presumably allowed for moderated use of the available water. One possibility is that they constituted a reserve of water for times when the aqueduct ran low or city usage was greater, such as in the hotter, drier seasons. Another possibility is that if city consumption exceeded the aqueduct supply, the cisterns could be topped up at night when usage was lower. In any case, a significant point to be made is that the existence of these storage reservoirs implies a some-

2 – Water use across the Roman Empire

Fig. 2.4.  Remains of cisterns for supplying a group of Roman villas in Carthage.

what different philosophy to the previous Roman one of continuous supply,27 and one approaching modern-day methods of water storage and supply.

Decline of the Roman Empire With the decline of the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth century AD, the aqueducts, which had become the backbone of the Roman water system, gradually fell into disuse. The water channels were no longer regularly maintained, and lime deposits, intruding vegetation and debris started to clog them. They suffered further damage in wars and conquests over the centuries, as well as damage due to ‘stone stealing’ for other building projects. This did not happen uniformly across the empire, of course. Some regions suffered more from invasions than others, and there were instances where the aqueducts were kept working by the new occupiers for periods following the invasion. For example, Hadrian’s aqueduct and its associated cisterns, central to the effective functioning of the Antonine Baths at Carthage, were kept working after the Vandals had conquered the city in the fifth century  AD. There followed periods of destruction and partial reconstruction over the centuries, but the aqueduct system gradually fell into ruin.28 It was not only the effects of the decay and destruction of the aqueduct system on the cities that were significant – the neglect of water management for agriculture had

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A Water Story

s­ometimes devastating consequences. Miles Lewis, a noted architectural historian, argues that this neglect caused repeated famines in what is now eastern Libya, ‘once the granary of the Romans’.29 The hundreds of aqueducts built across the Roman Empire were an outward symbol of the sophisticated Roman water management system, of which aqueducts were the supply line. For all its high cost and high maintenance requirements, the Roman water management system formed one of the key factors in the success and longevity of the empire. It also provided communities with a higher standard of living, and was a high point in the development of mechanisms of water supply and distribution to towns and cities which would not be reached again for close on two millennia.

3

Some basics about Earth’s water

The water cycle The water cycle, also known as the hydrological cycle, describes the continuous movement of water above, below and on the surface of the earth. The total amount of water the earth has does not change, but the water is constantly being changed between liquid water, water vapour and ice. Energy from the sun causes water from the ocean, lakes and rivers to evaporate. When the water vapour so formed (which is invisible) is pushed by wind over hills and mountains, it cools as it rises and turns back into tiny droplets, forming clouds. When these tiny droplets combine in the process of condensation, they fall to the earth as precipitation – rain or hail or snow. Much of the precipitation soaks into the soil and some of this is taken up by vegetation and some finds its way into aquifers – porous rock through which water can move. The rest flows into lakes, rivers and the ocean, and the water cycle continues (Fig. 3.1).1 It follows that water does not necessarily fall to the earth as rain or snow in the same place from which it evaporated, but overall, the total amount of water remains the same. The total volume of the world’s water has been estimated to be 1386 million km3. Only 2.5 per cent (35 million km3) of this is fresh water, most being salt water contained in the oceans, seas, saltwater lakes and in aquifers below the oceans. Of the fresh water, more than two-thirds is locked up in glaciers, ice, snow and permafrost. The remainder is theoretically ‘available’ for human use, though only a tiny proportion of it – 0.4 per cent – is found on the surface of the earth, as lakes, rivers, marshes and wetlands, soil moisture, air humidity, and in plants and animals. The rest is underground – that is, groundwater found in aquifers. Approximately one-fifth of the fresh water used in the world comes from aquifers, with ~800 km3 being extracted from the ground each year, supporting 1.5 billion people.2 Groundwater is water located in saturated zones below the earth’s surface, accumulating in tiny pores – spaces between the smallest soil and rock particles – or in narrow cracks in the rock itself. These geological structures are called aquifers. Water from aquifers eventually flows into streams, rivers and the ocean, or onto the surface of the land via springs. Some groundwater is fresh and suitable for drinking, whereas some is brackish or contains high levels of dissolved chemicals, and consequently is unsuitable for human consumption or livestock supplies. Some of these underground storages are replenished quite quickly as rainwater seeps through the soil, but others, especially in areas of low rainfall, are not renewed or are renewed only very slowly. Aquifers vary enormously in size, from very small to exceedingly large. The Great Artesian Basin in Central Australia is one of the largest groundwater storages in the world, covering 22 per cent of the continent.3 25

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A Water Story

Cloud formation

Snow

Precipitation

Condensing water vapour

Surface runoff

Evaporation Ocean contributes about 80% of total water vapour in air

Lakes Groundwater

Impervious layer

Salt water intrusion

Ocean

Fig. 3.1.  The water cycle. Source: SA Water (CC BY 3.0 AU).

In regions of the globe where rainfall is low, groundwater is a particularly important resource. Many cities rely to a substantial extent on groundwater for their supplies, for example, Beijing (China), Mexico City (Mexico) and Perth (Australia). Also, in many countries, huge quantities of groundwater are used for irrigation and industry (Chapter 8). Climate change is having an impact on our freshwater resources and ecosystems, including melting ice sheets, glaciers and permafrost, and causing changes to rainfall patterns, though the total quantity of water available to the planet is not predicted to change.2

Evaporation and evapotranspiration Evaporation is the process by which liquid water is turned to gas (water vapour). As a key component of the world’s water cycle, it is responsible for the movement of enormous quantities of water. Most (~86 per cent) of the world’s evaporation occurs from the ocean, as well as significant amounts from lakes and rivers. Transpiration is the process through which water is absorbed by plants through their roots and is ultimately released to the atmosphere through the leaves. Evapotranspiration is the sum of evaporation and plant transpiration from the earth’s land surface to the atmosphere, including soil (soil evaporation), and vegetation (transpiration). More than 10 per cent of global evaporation comes from the soil and vegetation, that is, from evapotranspiration.2 The rate of evapotranspiration is influenced by several important factors, including ●●

●●

solar radiation – the largest energy source available to change liquid water into water vapour air temperature – evaporation is greater in hotter environments

3 – Some basics about Earth’s water

The water table The water table is the upper level of an underground area of soil and rock that is completely saturated with water, that is, all the openings within and between the rocks are filled with water (Fig. 3.2). It therefore separates a groundwater area from the area of soils and rock above it that might contain water but not be saturated. The water table is affected by climatic variation and by the amount of water vegetation draws from the soil, and it therefore fluctuates with the seasons and from year to year. It is also affected by substantial withdrawal of water from wells, or by artificial recharging of them.

Precipitation

Seepage

Pores filled with air and water Unsaturated zone Water table

Saturated zone (groundwater)

Pores completely filled with water

Fig. 3.2.  The water table. Used with permission. James Garry, NYS Department of Environmental Conservation.

●● ●● ●●

air movement – a breeze will increase the rate of evaporation humidity – the dryer the air, the greater the evaporation the surface area exposed to the air – the greater the surface area, the greater the rate of evaporation.4

These factors explain why in hot, dry climates large areas of water, wet soil, and vegetation are subject to substantial water losses, and why water conservation measures in arid regions are especially important. Areas of Central Australia that are very dry have high rates of evaporation – averaging up to 500 mm and more per month from an open pan in summer. Daily rates of evaporation in these areas can approach 50 mm; that is, the depth of water in an open pan would reduce by nearly 50 mm in a 24-hour period.5 Covered storage cisterns, wells and aqueducts in Roman times reduced losses due to evaporation (as well as reducing contamination of the water supply). Protecting water from evaporative losses was crucial in the case of the enormous storage cisterns used in the Roman cities of Dougga and Carthage (Chapter 2). Water flowing underground in qanats through several kilometres of hot desert was also protected from the risk of evaporation.

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A Water Story

Salinity In Chapter 1 we saw how continual irrigation of an area of land can cause increasing salinity of the soil unless there is sufficient water for the salt to be flushed away completely. Increased soil salinity can also result when the natural vegetation of deep-rooted trees and shrubs is cleared from land and replaced with shallow-rooted crops and pastures which take up less water. In these cases, the water table rises, bringing naturally-occurring salt to the surface. Increasing soil salinity degrades the land and threatens the viability of agriculture. This is further discussed in Chapters 11 and 14.

El Niño and La Niña In Australia, El Niño (‘the little boy’ in Spanish) and La Niña (‘the little girl’) events are often referred to in discussions of droughts or floods in the eastern part of the country. These events, a natural part of the global climate system, occur when the Pacific Ocean and the atmosphere above it change from their neutral (‘normal’) state for various reasons. El Niño events correspond with a warming of the central and eastern tropical Pacific, while La Niña events are related to a sustained cooling of the central and eastern tropical Pacific. These changes in the Pacific Ocean and the atmosphere above it occur in a cycle known as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The atmosphere and ocean interact, reinforcing each other and creating a ‘feedback loop’ which amplifies small changes in the state of the ocean into an ‘ENSO event’. El Niño is typically associated with reduced rainfall over northern and eastern Australia. Although most major Australian droughts have been associated with El Niño events, widespread drought does not necessarily occur with an El Niño. During an El Niño, reduced cloudiness can lead to warmer days and therefore greater evaporation. There is a decreased risk of tropical cyclones around Australia during an El Niño. La Niña is typically associated with increased rainfall in northern and eastern Australia, and sometimes floods. For example, during the 2010–11 La Niña, most of Australia experienced significantly higher-than-average rainfall over the nine months from July 2010 to March 2011, including damaging floods in Queensland and Victoria. Perversely, south-west Western Australia missed out; in fact, it experienced the driest year on record. This La Niña also ended one of the longest and most severe droughts in the Murray–Darling Basin in recorded history – the Millennium drought. There is an increased risk of tropical cyclones during a La Niña. In general, El Niño events usually last for only a single cycle, from one autumn to the next. However, it is not unusual for multi-year La Niña events to occur. For example, the La Niña which began in autumn 1998 affected successive years to autumn 2001. Each El Niño and La Niña event is different, as each is the result of several factors which interact. Consequently, the nature and timing of their particular climatic impacts vary from one to the other.6 The El Niño events of 1982–3 and 1997–98 were exceptionally strong (now called Super El Niños). El Niños also occurred in 2002, 2004 and 2009, though these were a new type of El Niño, sometimes termed El Niño Modoki (‘similar, but different’). Australia’s weather in 2015 was dominated by one of the strongest El Niño events on record, comparable with those of 1997–98 and 1982–83, leading to below-average rainfall over most of eastern Australia.7 Based on weather journals, documentary data and palaeoclimate records, a group of researchers from the University of Melbourne have recently argued that the first European

3 – Some basics about Earth’s water

settlement in Australia was compromised by a La Niña period of cool, wet weather during 1788–90, followed by the drought conditions of an El Niño period from 1791–1793. This proposition can be matched with the accounts of climate and water availability recorded by the early colonists and explorers, including the descriptions provided in Chapters 4 and 5.8 In his book The Weather Makers, Tim Flannery presents evidence of a causal relationship between climate change and the El Niño–La Niña cycle – climate change resulting in more intense El Niño events, which in turn can contribute to increased global temperatures.9

Coping with a paucity of fresh water There are large areas of the earth’s surface where there is little or no available fresh water. These include arid lands, where water is scarce, and the oceans, where the water is salty. (In Australia, the arid zone is defined as areas that receive an average annual rainfall of 250  mm or less.10) Yet humans have lived, worked and travelled in both these environments since ancient times. While modern technologies help us today, it is instructive to consider what steps ancient peoples took to meet their needs in places where there was a paucity of fresh water.

Conserving water in arid lands In the Roman cities of North Africa, elaborate arrangements were made for conserving and recycling the precious water available (Chapter 2). The practice of directing rainwater into underground storage cisterns via holes in pavements is also in evidence in later eras in North Africa – for example, in the Great Mosque at Kairouan in Tunisia, dating from the seventh century AD. In dry parts of Central Asia, a similar approach was adopted in public buildings such as mosques, medressas (educational institutions) and mausoleums and is still in use today. Evidence can be seen in surviving buildings dating from the fourteenth century, such as in the Shah-i-Zinda mausoleum complex in Samarkand or the nineteenthcentury summer mosque in Khiva, both in what is now Uzbekistan. In North Africa and Asia there were vast areas of desert with precious few resources of fresh water – only scattered tree-ringed oases, underground springs and wells, and some seasonal wadis. The key to success in crossing these expanses of hot, dry interiors in the past was the organisation of camels into long caravans for trade and military supply. The Saharan dromedary (one-humped camel), had a prodigious water-storing capacity, being able to go without drinking water for a week while carrying a 90 kg load for some 50 km each day. At a water source, the camel soon rehydrated, drinking up to 100 L or so in the space of several minutes. Personal water supplies for the travellers in the caravan were carried in containers made from animal skins. A single caravan could contain thousands of camels and include merchants, soldiers, missionaries, pilgrims and guides. A caravan of 5000–6000 camels was able to carry as much cargo as a very large European sailing ship or a series of barges on China’s Grand Canal.11 For caravans plying the Silk Road through arid regions of Central Asia and China over the centuries, sardobas built along the routes played a big part in their water supply. Sardobas (a Tadjik term meaning ‘cool water’) are ancient cisterns for the collection and storage of water. They were usually circular in shape, perhaps 12–20 m in diameter, and built of bricks with a domed roof and ventilation holes (Fig. 3.3). Sardobas were filled with rainwater, snowmelt, or water from nearby springs carried in by tunnels or terracotta pipes placed underground. Steps from the entrance led down to the water, which was several metres

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Fig. 3.3.  Sardoba Malik, originally built in the eleventh century and later restored, close to the remains of an eleventh century caravanserai in northern Uzbekistan. The water had a depth of 13 m and was supplied from the Zarafshan River via a long underground tunnel. The diameter of the dome is 12 m. Photo: Faqscl/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

deep. They were placed ~40 km apart on the Silk Road routes – about one day’s travel – and often near a caravanserai (a stopping place for trading, eating and sleeping). They were also built along other main trade routes and in settlements and cities where there was a lack of clean water. While their use continued over many centuries, several hundred were built in Uzbekistan in the sixteenth century, of which a substantial number still survive.12 For armies travelling across an arid landscape, finding sufficient supplies of water was (and still is) especially problematic. Herodotus made passing references to this in his various accounts of military campaigns, including the great army of the Persian king Xerxes drinking the river Lisus dry!13 Referring to the (earlier) campaign of the Persian king Cyrus against Babylon in 539 BC, Herodotus reports: When the Persian king goes to war, he is always well provided not only with victuals from home and his own cattle, but also with water from the Choaspes, a river which flows past Susa [capital of the Persian Empire]. No Persian king ever drinks the water of any other stream, and a supply of it ready boiled for use is brought along in silver jars carried in a long train of four-wheeled mule waggons wherever the king goes.14 In an aside, Ryszard Kapuscinski reflects on the relationship – or lack of it – between the king’s water wagons and the ‘… soldiers dropping of thirst along the way’ as they crossed desert country.15 Herodotus also reported a method of providing water for desert crossings in the late sixth century BC ‘…of which few voyagers to Egypt are aware’. Earthenware jars, in which wine had been imported into Egypt, were filled with water after the wine had been con-

3 – Some basics about Earth’s water

sumed. They were then taken to the tract of desert in Syria which was the only land entrance to Egypt and required three days’ travel through a region without water. The full jars were then placed in the desert ‘…so making the passage into the country practicable’. In another account, Herodotus also relates how, in the sixth century BC, the Arabian king assisted the army of the Persian king Cambyses to cross the desert by having camel skins filled with water, loaded on camels and taken into the desert to await the arrival of the army.16 People living in arid climates also took action to conserve personal water loss and therefore the need for excessive drinking – for example, by wearing clothing that protected them from the sun.

Crossing oceans In earlier times, crossing the oceans presented similar difficulties to crossing deserts, in terms of fresh water supply, as the water needed for the crossing had to be carried or collected at suitable stopping places en route. In the case of long sea voyages, ships carried water with them and generally hugged the coast where it was possible to replenish supplies. This applied whether the ships were powered by sail or oar. The full-rigged ocean-going sailing ships that emerged in the fifteenth century made crossing oceans more feasible and were fundamental to the ‘Age of Discovery’ during the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries.17 On these long voyages, the essential fresh water was carried in barrels in the hold. Whereas sea water could be used for washing, cleaning and cooling (when appropriate), fresh water was needed for human consumption and for consumption by any animals taken along as sources of fresh meat. Early records suggest a sailor’s daily allowance was 1.5–3.0 L, supplemented by wine or rum. Barrels were topped up with rainwater, when available during a voyage, by using a system of sailcloth or canvas awnings to divert water into the barrels (after first letting the salt wash off the canvas). Unfortunately, water stored in this way went bad after a period, gained a foul taste, and eventually became undrinkable. This was due to the growth of microorganisms including algae in the water. These organisms could have been present in the water to start with or in the barrel before the water was added – most probably both. In addition, the storage conditions for the barrels of water were far from ideal – for example, rats were common on the ships and were attracted to the water. These factors limited the quantity of water it was worth carrying. Rum (or wine or vinegar) was added to the water to make it drinkable for a longer time – and to keep the crews happy (‘grog’ in this context was watered-down rum). The basic meal for the sailors was probably a kind of stew, which could be prepared without waste, and which could disguise the horrible taste of the water. A general aim for sailing ships of this period was to make landfall every four weeks or so at the most to take on fresh water and food, though there were many instances of periods without replenishing much longer than this.18 As the link between water contamination and disease became better understood, and city water supplies improved – especially with the introduction of sand filtration in the nineteenth century and the introduction of chlorination early in the twentieth century – the quality of the fresh water carried on sailing ships and the containers in which it was stored also improved. As a result, water remained drinkable for longer. In addition, ships became larger and faster and thus increased their capacity to carry large quantities of fresh water and reduce the time between ports. In the meantime, it must have been a challenge for ships’ captains to find enough fresh water of sufficient quality to meet the needs of the ship’s occupants. For explorers sailing in unfamiliar waters, this would have been even more of a concern. In 1802 when Matthew Flinders was exploring the south-west coast of Australia in the HMS Investigator, his ship’s master, John Thistle, found a source of fresh water in a tiny but beautiful bay in a remote

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The barque Moshulu The situation on sailing ships had improved by the twentieth century. In 1939 the four-masted barque Moshulu was a participant in (and ultimate winner of) the informal ‘grain race’ for windjammers – large merchant sailing ships plying their trade between England and Australia. As an essential part of its supplies, it took on ~60 tonnes (~60 000 L) of drinking water for the round voyage of 30 000 miles (48 000 km) because water at that time cost five pounds a ton at the Australian destination.19

corner of the continent, not yet settled by Europeans. Flinders was so pleased that that he named the bay Thistle Cove. It still bears that name today. Hardship due to water shortage on ocean crossings continued until well into the nineteenth century. This is illustrated, for example, by the references made in Robert Whyte’s 1847 Famine Ship Diary, which records the experience of ~100 emigrants on a six-week voyage across the Atlantic, fleeing famine and fever in Ireland to a hoped-for new life in Canada. While such ships of emigrants were notorious for overcrowding, poor conditions and sickness (they were often referred to as ‘coffin ships’), Whyte’s many references to the provision of fresh water – or lack of it –emphasises that this was a hardship of major proportions. Only two weeks into the voyage Whyte recorded that the water: … was quite foul, muddy and bitter from having been in a wine cask. When allowed to settle it became clear, leaving considerable sediment in the bottom of the vessel but it retained its bad taste. The mate endeavoured to improve it by trying the effect of charcoal and of alum but some of the casks were beyond remedy and the contents, when pumped out, resembled nauseous ditch water.20 Shortly after, he also referred to the need to ‘reduce the [passengers’] complement of water and to urge the necessity of using sea water in cookery’ due to slower progress than expected (p. 31). He reported that ‘The passengers suffered much for want of pure water’ and described his personal agony at hearing ‘the cries for “Water, for God’s sake some water”’. (p. 35) Less than a decade after Robert Whyte’s shipboard experience, Emily Skinner left Southampton with ~100 other passengers to join her fiancé in Australia, arriving in Melbourne in 1854. She and her future husband were two of the many thousands seeking to try their luck on the Victorian goldfields. Emily Skinner’s shipboard experience was much less testing than Robert Whyte’s and the tone of her diary much lighter.21 However, there were still hardships as indicated – for example, by her reference to ‘mutiny among the sailors on account of the badness of their provisions’ (p. 22), and this passage: … so we live by begging and stealing. Don’t you pity us? Everyone says this Company chose an appropriate name when they were christened ‘The General Screw Company’. (p. 13) Perhaps the greatest advantage that Emily’s voyage had over Robert’s was that the ship she travelled in had a steam engine as well as sails, and consequently the supply of fresh water was not a problem, as she explained:

3 – Some basics about Earth’s water

Distillation In the distillation process, water is boiled, and the steam produced is condensed on a cold surface. Impurities in the water are left behind in the boiling vessel and the water resulting from the condensation of the steam is pure. In the early days, the equipment used was referred to as a ‘condenser’. After the Industrial Revolution made large boilers and engines possible, larger quantities of water could be distilled in a single process. In modern desalination plants, a reverse osmosis process is used in preference to distillation, as described in Chapter 16.

We have only steamed 18 days of the whole of the voyage [of 69 days]. As they shut it off directly the wind is fair on account of the coals. They use sea water, of course, but have condensers and make from it two tons of water daily, which is beautiful and clear – so there is no scarcity of excellent water, which is a very great comfort and another of the advantages of a steamer. (pp. 24–5) The advent of steamships in the mid-nineteenth century and, later, diesel engines in the twentieth century, meant fresh water could be distilled from sea water, thus eliminating one great problem on long sea voyages. As a result, even with passenger liners carrying large numbers of people, as was the case during the 1950s and 1960s when travel by ship was the dominant method of intercontinental travel, water supply was not a problem. For example, the MS Oranje, launched in 1939 and used extensively as a passenger liner in the 1950s and 60s, could produce up to 341 000 L per day for its complement of more than 1000 passengers and crew. In this case, the heat of the engines’ exhaust gases was used to produce the steam in the distillation of sea water.22 Large, modern-day cruise ships can accommodate several thousand passengers and more than a thousand crew members. They incorporate desalination plants that use a distillation process or reverse osmosis using membranes (Chapter 16). Minerals normally found in drinking water are added to the desalinated water for health and taste reasons, and the water is then stored in massive tanks awaiting use. For example, the Queen Mary 2, launched in 2003 and able to carry more than 3000 passengers and 1200 crew, contains three desalination plants, each with a capacity of 630 000 L per day. Three storage tanks for the drinking water have a combined capacity of 3 830 000 L, enough for more than three days’ supply.23

Desert islands Like ocean-going ships in some ways, ‘desert islands’, surrounded only by vast areas of ocean, also have fresh water supply issues. The Republic of Maldives consists of ~1900 tiny coral islands in an area of more than 90 000 km2 of the Indian Ocean south-west of India. Only 200 of these islands are inhabited, including 87 that are used as tourist resorts. There are no rivers or streams, and very little in the way of wetlands or fresh water lakes. Access to safe, fresh water has been a major problem for the people of the Maldives. Traditionally, they used wells in mosques and other public places for drinking water until pollution became a problem. They now mostly depend on rainwater for drinking and groundwater for other domestic needs. Rainwater is collected from roofs and stored in various types of tanks. On all of the islands there are individual household tanks as well as community tanks.24

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However, groundwater supplies are limited and are vulnerable to seawater intrusion. In the capital, Malé, and on some other islands, removal of too much of the groundwater and sewage pollution are major problems. Malé is the largest and most populous island, measuring 2 km long and 1 km wide, with a population of ~80 000. In addition, there is a transient population made up of people from outlying islands and foreign workers. In order to meet the needs of the increasing population and to cope with the population density and threats to groundwater, a seawater desalination plant using the reverse osmosis process was built in 1988. It generated 200 000 L of desalinated water per day. Since that time, more desalination plants have been installed to increase the capacity to 5.8 million L/d.25 If you walk along the ‘back’ side of the island it is not possible to avoid the sight and sound of the diesel-driven plant working continuously. All people on Malé have desalinated water within reach, due to a piped network which services the island. However, use of desalinated water is expensive. Most households on this island use desalinated water for drinking, cooking, bathing and other domestic purposes. Groundwater is generally used for toilet flushing, but some still also use it for bathing. When it is possible, some people collect rainwater to save money. Those who cannot afford to connect to the desalinated water supply can collect limited quantities from tap bays located at 15 points throughout the island. Around the year 2000, ~6–9 per cent of household income was spent on water. A 2002 study argued that the application of stepped tariffs ‘has made the public aware and willing to conserve and use water judiciously’.24 Desalination is widely used in the tourist resorts; each of the 87 resort islands has its own small desalination plant. It is an affordable option in these cases because of the considerable income generated through tourism. However, guests are encouraged to buy bottled water for drinking, and consequently, desalinated water is used mainly for bathing. While desalinated water is expensive, its cost pales against the cost of bottled water. In 2002, resorts sold bottled water for around US$2 for a 1.5 L bottle – a rate of more than US$1333/1000 L. At the same time, consumers on Male were paying US$2–8/1000 L under the stepped tariff that applied. No doubt driven by the limited sources of fresh water, the Maldives water authorities have undertaken significant analyses of water supply and usage in recent decades, including details such as calculations of the roof areas and storage volumes necessary to supply 10  L of water per person per day. Policies identified for possible future implementation include increasing household collection and storage of rainwater, improving community collection and storage, community groundwater systems, and discouraging the use of electric pumps in order to protect groundwater.24

4

Water supplies for the First Fleet colonists Long before the ancient civilisations of Rome, Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, the Aboriginal peoples of Australia had been managing their water resources efficiently and productively in ways that met their every need. Theirs was a well-established, selfsustaining way of life when the first British colonists arrived in the late eighteenth century. However, the new arrivals regarded the country as wild, inhospitable and untamed. Using the English countryside and farming methods as their template, they proceeded to occupy the land, ignoring the achievements and knowledge of the long-term inhabitants and with total disregard for their needs, wishes and preferences.

0 0 0 The travellers in the First Fleet found themselves in a much drier country than the one they had left. It was, in fact, the driest inhabited continent on earth. Their initial landing place in Botany Bay on 18 January 1788 was found to be unsuitable because there was an inadequate supply of fresh water. On top of this, the harbour was shallow, and the land was not suitable for cultivation. So Captain Arthur Phillip, governor-designate of the new colony, took some officers and marines in longboats and explored other possibilities further north. There, they came across what Phillip described as ‘one of the finest harbours in the world, in which a thousand sail of the line may ride in perfect security’.1 On the following day, 26 January 1788, the fleet sailed into what was to become known as Port Jackson, now Sydney Harbour. Watkin Tench, a young Captain in the marines, reported: We continued to run up the harbour about four miles in a westerly direction, enjoying the luxuriant prospect of its shores covered with trees to the water’s edge, among which many of the Indians were frequently seen, till we arrived at a small snug cove on the southern side, on whose banks the plan of our operations was destined to commence.2 The ‘Indians’ referred to by Tench were, of course, the Aboriginal people who had lived in harmony with the country for millennia, perhaps as long as 65 000 years.3 The ‘small snug cove’ was in the land of the Eora people. Crucially, there was a small stream of fresh water running into the head of the cove, which became the source of supply for the new settlement. There were nearly 1000 people to be settled in this foreign place, apart from the crews of the 11 ships. The majority of these were convicts being transported – against their will – from overcrowded prisons and prison hulks in England to serve periods varying from seven years (the majority) to life. Many had committed relatively minor crimes such as 35

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Wattle and daub This method of construction has been used for thousands of years. Walls were made of panels constructed of thin (often split) branches (‘wattles’) woven between upright stakes, and the whole was then daubed with a sticky material such as clay to fill the cracks. The clay was preferably strengthened by mixing with something fibrous such as dry grass or straw. Straight poles made from suitably-sized tree trunks were used for the corners. The roof was made from bark or rushes or cabbage tree fronds (at Sydney Cove) plastered over with clay. The method was later used extensively for made-onthe-spot accommodation in parts of country Australia.

thefts of small amounts, but there were also some more serious multiple offenders and professional criminals. The convicts numbered 751, including 550 men, 185 women and 19 children. There was a military force of 211 officers and marines to guard the convicts during the voyage.4 A small number of the marines (32) were accompanied by their wives and children (25 children, including 10 born on the voyage out).5 Overall, it was an astonishing ‘experiment’ for the English authorities to send 1500 or so people on a 36-week, 24 000 km voyage to an unknown land on the other side of the world and leave them to their own devices to establish a sustainable colony. There was no infrastructure; they would be cut off from any outside support whatsoever. Over the following days and weeks, the ground at the new site was cleared and makeshift accommodation was erected. There was a portable canvas house for the governor and tents for the officers and women convicts. Male convicts had to build their own accommodation from what was available – tree branches, sticks, bark and mud. ‘Wattle and daub’ was the basic method used for construction of the walls, with bark, rushes or cabbage tree fronds used for the roofs (see box). The new colony was starting from scratch. The only resources available were what they brought with them on the ships (including axes, shovels, saws, hammers and the like) and what they could glean from their new environment. There was also two years’ supply of food to tide them over the establishment period. However, this was to prove insufficient, as supplies were depleted by theft, rats, and native marsupials, and damaged by the summer heat. Consequently, in early October 1788 a ship was sent to the Cape of Good Hope for further provisions. The new colonists were near starving by the time it returned in May 1789. While there was a supply of fresh water from the stream (later to be called the Tank Stream), the water had to be carried to the place of use, whether drinking, cooking, washing, building or other purpose. It must have been a hard life for the mostly unwilling English settlers, and there were guards to ensure that convicts did not escape. The local Eora people were clearly robust and well nourished. They had obviously managed to obtain adequate food and water resources from the environment for their sustenance. Yet the new arrivals proceeded without reference to the local people, as if they lived in a parallel universe.

The situation the First Fleeters left behind The new arrivals would not have been used to what we might consider the conveniences and comforts of life. The convicts had been enduring shocking conditions in overcrowded prisons or prison hulks moored on the River Thames or at Plymouth or Portsmouth before

4 – Water supplies for the First Fleet colonists

their departure from England.6 Aside from this, living conditions in English towns and cities for ordinary people, but especially the poor, were difficult to say the least. In London, they were often appalling: accommodation was cramped and dirty in substandard and unsafe buildings, and clothes and bedclothes were often not much better than rags. Scrounging a living was all-consuming; there was never enough food and feeling cold and hungry was a basic condition of life experienced by children and adults alike. The poor resorted to theft to survive. Moreover, the late 1700s was a violent time in England’s history; employment was scarce in rural areas and thousands of people invaded the cities, adding to the problems there. Crime flourished in these overcrowded conditions.7 Raw sewage and other waste ran down the streets and alleys of London in open drains, and garbage was left in the streets to rot. Like many European rivers at the time, the Thames provided the city’s drinking water. It was also the place where waste was discharged, and therefore carried sewage and the refuse of hospitals, slaughterhouses, soap works and factories. As the key London waterway, it was crowded with boats and barges. While wealthier people were able to buy spring water from private companies or water carriers, for most it was difficult if not impossible to get fresh drinking water. No effort was made to protect the river from pollution or to filter the water until well into the nineteenth century. As a result, illness and malnourishment were common. The city water was so bad that at one stage a gin craze swept the city – gin was tasty, plentiful, unregulated and cheap.8 There was no organised sanitation in English towns and cities at the time the First Fleet left. Most people used chamber pots, emptying them outside their windows and into the street. The raw sewage would accumulate in cesspools until the ‘night soil’ men came to clean it out. Nor did houses have internal plumbing. For all, including the more comfortably off, water had to be carried indoors in pitchers or buckets for cooking and other purposes such as bathing. Even in the great houses of the very wealthy, piped water was not available until mining technology in the form of pumps enabled water to be delivered. Further, the advantages of personal cleanliness were not recognised at this time, and washing was infrequent. Those in the higher social classes used perfumes to conceal body odours. For these people, washing was performed using a basin and jug in the bedchamber – a practice that lasted into the twentieth century in some cases. The poor, of course, did not even have this luxury. In less well-off households, a bath could be taken in a tin tub in front of the living room fire, while in the houses of the wealthy, ‘hot and cold’ chambermaids struggled upstairs to fill portable baths. Washing of clothes and bed linen was a major operation and performed at irregular intervals.7 As far as distributing water was concerned, three water companies were established during the eighteenth century to provide parts of London with water. These companies established ponds filled by the tidal Thames as reservoirs for the supply. Water was delivered through hollowed-out tree trunks running underneath the streets. An early use of the Boulton and Watt steam engines beginning in 1778 was to pump water through the existing wooden pipes in parts of London for distribution to households three times a week.9 However, these wooden pipes were of poor quality and often burst, and their contents were mixed with the filth on the streets. It was not until the late nineteenth century that reservoirs, large pumps and cast iron mains began to bring water into most houses in England and in other European countries to make feasible the inclusion of bathrooms, as well as to ease the burden for cooking, cleaning and so on. This advance was linked to a growing understanding of waterborne diseases, especially cholera, and the gradual development of water treatment technology. Flushing toilets were generally a later development.7 Ordinary people in the countryside

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and the poorer parts of major cities had to wait even longer for a standard the Romans had achieved 1900 years earlier.

Water issues for the new arrivals While there was hardship, isolation and uncertainty in the new land, the new arrivals must have initially experienced some feelings of relief – at least because of the open space and availability of fresh water. They had just spent more than eight months confined on a small ship in cramped conditions with only narrow bed spaces while enduring stale air, foul odours and rationed water. At one stage during the voyage, the water ration had been reduced to three pints (1.7  L) per person per day due to a shortage, contributing to an increase in sickness. This meant sea water had to be used for washing clothes and bathing. Forty-five people had died on the voyage, though this was a particularly good outcome for the times in such as long voyage.10 Fifteen tons (~15 000 L) of drinking water had been taken on board before leaving England. Five puncheons of rum (~2300 L), 300 gallons of brandy (1365 L) and three hogsheads of vinegar (~680 L) were also taken on board before departure.12 Water supplies and other provisions for the voyage were replenished at the Canary Islands, Rio de Janeiro and the Cape of Good Hope. (Presumably, water was also carried on the store ships to provide for the animals being taken to the new settlement from the Cape of Good Hope – which included cows, horses, chickens, fowl, ducks and pigs, among others.) The long last leg of the voyage from Cape Town to Van Diemen’s Land was especially challenging and unsettling. The route took the ships along the fortieth parallel of latitude through ferocious weather and a largely uncharted sea. It was cold and there was a shortage of rations, and the 52 days without seeing land must have seemed like an eternity.13 There were no large rivers at the new colony, but at least in the early days, the Tank Stream provided a continuous supply of fresh water, making rationing unnecessary. The First Fleeters also soon found they could get clean water if they dug wells, thus helping the situation. The sandstone of the area around Sydney Cove was porous and held some of the rain that fell on it or in nearby areas. A map of the encampment, sketched by Lieutenant William Bradley, just 35 days after stepping ashore at Sydney Cove already shows the position of two wells near the hospital garden on the western side of the cove. A well had also been dug to a depth of 15 feet to supply Phillip’s house.14 However, pressure on the crucial water supply to the settlement did mount over time, and the Tank Stream proved to be unsuitable as a major supply for so many. In order to

The First Fleet ships The 11 ships of the First Fleet were very small by modern-day standards. The smallest, HMS Supply of 170 tons (~170 t), was only 70 feet (21.3 m) long, and the largest, HMS Sirius of 540 tons, had an overall length of 110 feet (33.5 m) and a width of 32 feet (9.8 m). The Scarborough, the largest of the transport ships at ~430 tons, was 111 feet (33.8 m) long, had a beam of 30 feet (9.1 m) and carried 201 male passengers. Allowing for the space needed for the sailing ship’s gear, and the crew of 30, plus 50 marines, there was little room to move around, even for those who were not convicts and confined below the main deck.11

4 – Water supplies for the First Fleet colonists

conserve water and to make sure there was water available even if the stream was not flowing, in 1792, Phillip ordered three large cavities to be dug out of the sandstone bordering the stream to act as reservoirs. Each of these was about the size of a modern backyard swimming pool, one on the eastern bank and two on the western. These cisterns – or tanks as they were called – gave the stream the name by which it would then be known – the Tank Stream. The water was used for drinking and domestic purposes. But people also put rubbish in the stream, and sewage and polluted water also ran into it from nearby houses and businesses. To further protect the water supply, Phillip decreed that there would be a 15 m green belt along either bank, where the cutting down of trees, keeping of animals and erecting of buildings were forbidden.15 As well as being essential for personal and domestic purposes, water was crucial for farming and, later, for nascent industries. As part of his remit signed by King George III, Governor Phillip was to begin farming as a matter of priority: ‘… you do immediately upon your landing … proceed to the cultivation of the land … for procuring the supplies of grain and ground provisions’.16 Therefore, within four days of arrival, Phillip put convicts to work clearing and planting a piece of land on the east side of the cove and just over the hill in what became known as Farm Cove. He also sent a party of men to clear a small island in the harbour for a garden for the ships’ crews (now Garden Island, part of a naval base).17

Efforts to become self-sustaining This first farming venture on the new land proved to be not very successful. Unfortunately, no plough had been included in the ships’ stores, so the clearing and cultivation of the land had to be done with hand tools, and inferior ones at that, making it a much more arduous task. The difficulty was exacerbated by the fact that the trees were big and the timber was hard – much more so than the new arrivals had been used to in England – and as a result, the tools soon became blunt. To make matters worse, hardly any of the men knew about farming. By the end of 1788, only four hectares had been cleared. The first crop was destroyed by heavy rain and the second failed due to poor quality seed. Overall, barely enough grain was produced to provide for the next year’s planting. On top of this, vegetables grown in the officers’ gardens produced a very poor harvest. While fresh meat was available from kangaroos, possums and emus, the shortage of fresh vegetables was a serious concern for the health of the new colony, as well as a further hardship.18 The soil around Sydney Cove was sandy and nutrient-poor and hence was not suitable for productive farming. Exploration of the country to the west revealed that there was better soil near the Parramatta River, ‘at the head of the harbour’, ~24  km away. A new colony was established there called Rose Hill, and an experimental farm started soon after. This proved to be more successful with former convict James Ruse, to whom Phillip had given a conditional land grant for the new farm, able to make it self-sustaining for his family by early 1791.19 Gradually, despite the hot, dry and generally infertile country and periodic droughts, farming spread in the more fertile and well-watered areas along the Parramatta, Hawkesbury and Nepean rivers. Land grants made to former convicts and to free settlers further facilitated the growth of the area farmed. In 1813 when Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson made their way through dense bush, deep ravines and steep mountainsides to find a way over the Blue Mountains, the colonists discovered great expanses of potential agricultural land and subsequently developed it. In their efforts to establish a self-sustaining colony, the First Fleeters were beset with difficulties beyond their prior experience. They were used to living in a wet country, with large, perennial rivers and streams and reliable rainfall, and they had little knowledge

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about conserving water. But here the country was dry and significant rivers were hard to find. This matter was constantly in their minds. In describing an expedition to explore the country to the west of the new colony in April 1788, Watkin Tench, a perceptive and generally optimistic observer, reported that ‘… in this long march [of four days and return], our gentlemen found not a single rivulet, but were under a necessity of supplying themselves with water from standing pools which they met with in the valleys, supposed to be formed by the rains that fall at particular seasons of the year.’ In considering the ‘prodigious chain of lofty mountains’ running north–south and ~60 miles [97 km] inland, Tench observed, ‘If large rivers do exist in the country, which some of us are almost sceptical enough to doubt, their sources must arise amidst these hills …’ He made the more general observation that: Fresh water, as I have said before, is found, but in inconsiderable quantities. For the common purposes of life there is generally enough, but we know of no stream in the country capable of turning a mill; and the remarks made by Mr Anderson, of the dryness of the country around Adventure Bay, extends without exception to every part of it which we have penetrated.20 Not only this, but there was great variability and unpredictability in the rainfall. In the short-term there were periods of storms and heavy rain, something the First Fleeters experienced soon after arrival. Arthur Bowes Smyth, a surgeon on the First Fleet, reported that on 6 February 1788 ‘… there came on the most violent storm of thunder, lightning and rain I ever saw. The lightning was incessant during the whole night and I never heard it rain faster’.22 In the longer term, there were periods of drought, when little or no rain fell at all. In the early records of the settlement of Sydney, there are frequent references to drought from 1790 onwards. We now know that the area – and Australia as a whole – is subject to the El Niño Southern Oscillation (Chapter 3), which apparently had an impact at that time.23 There were also periods of very high temperatures in the hot summers, when the Europeans must have found the going tough under a blazing sun and a clear sky. The artist Thomas Watling, transported as a result of being convicted of forgery, in 1793 described the ‘… scorching wind, so intolerable as almost to obstruct respiration – whilst the surrounding horizon looks one entire sheet of uninterrupted flame … Fifteen months have been known to elapse without a single shower …’24 A little earlier in a letter to a friend in England, Elizabeth Macarthur related how ‘The months of December and January have been hotter than I can describe – indeed, insufferably so, the thermometer rising from 100 to 112 [37°C to 44°C], which is, I believe, thirty degrees above the hottest day known in England.’25,26 While the First Fleeters found a large diversity of plants growing in the region around Sydney Cove, they found no significant fruits, berries or roots that could sustain them. Neither did they have the fishing skills of those native to the area. From our position in time, it was clearly a defect of enormous proportions that they were unable to learn culturally from the Aboriginal people, despite the skills noted by contemporaries such as Tench, and later by many explorers including Sturt, Mitchell, Leichardt and others. It was absurd that the local people lived well from the land in which the new arrivals were struggling to find enough food and water. The soil, especially in the vicinity of Sydney Cove, was thin and infertile and difficult to bend to their European ways. The new settlers found the thick, spiky bush often difficult to negotiate, and impenetrable in places. In the early days, they were troubled by the theft of food by traditional inhabitants of the region; later, more serious conflict arose as

4 – Water supplies for the First Fleet colonists

Adventure Bay, Tasmania Adventure Bay is located on the east coast of South Bruny Island, itself off the east coast of Tasmania, and was inhabited by the Nuenonne Aboriginal people. It provided shelter for several early European explorers – Abel Tasman (1642), Tobias Furneaux (1773) who named it after his ship, James Cook (1777), Bruni D’Entrecasteaux (1793), and William Bligh (1777, 1788, 1792). A stream flowing into the bay at Two Tree Point – known as ‘Watering Place’ on the charts of Furneaux and Cook – was used to replenish the ships’ supplies of fresh water. Bligh later named it Resolution Creek (Fig. 4.1). It is thought that the two trees standing today at the mouth of the creek – both Eucalyptus globulus (Tasmanian blue gum) – are the same trees depicted in a painting of the area by the George Tobin, the principal artist accompanying Bligh in 1792.21

Fig. 4.1.  Resolution Creek and Two Tree Point, Adventure Bay, in 2017.

the Europeans spread their occupation further into the countryside. None of this is surprising, of course, given the strangers’ unquestioning subsumption of the lands – which included the existing inhabitants’ traditional water holes, hunting grounds and ceremonial grounds – into their own domain. The difficulties of establishing sustainable farming meant that for some time, the colony was reliant on rations brought in by ship. In October 1791, approaching four years after their arrival, Phillip wrote to the Secretary of State in London requesting further food and other basic supplies, as the population had not eaten amply since their arrival.27 Their welfare appeared not to be a high priority in London.

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The effect of isolation on the new colonists should also not be underestimated. They had been dumped in a foreign land not possessing any of the familiar accommodations, sights and sounds of home, on the other side of the world, and without any means of communication other than via the rare and slow ships that came their way. Most of them had little or no prospect of ever returning to their home country. Watkin Tench reflected on this isolation early in 1790, writing: From intelligence of our friends and connections we have been entirely cut off, no communication whatever having passed with our native country since the 13th of May 1787 [32 months earlier], the day of our departure from Portsmouth. Famine besides was approaching with gigantic strides, and gloom and dejection overspread every countenance. Men abandoned themselves to the most desponding reflections and adopted the most extravagant conjectures.28 It would be a further four months before relief was to arrive in the form of the Lady Juliana carrying 221 female convicts and supplies.29 She was followed by three more transport ships a few weeks later.

The colony grows With the influx of more convicts, and later, free settlers, the colony continued to grow in size. By the end of 1791, four years after first arrival, 1259 Europeans lived in Sydney, 1625 in Rose Hill (now Parramatta) and its farming areas, with a further 1172 on Norfolk Island.30 By 1805 the European population of New South Wales had grown to ~7000, and by 1820 to nearly 30 000.31 In keeping with the need to become self-sustaining, the colony also continued to develop as a permanent settlement. The number of buildings grew; tent and wattle and daub accommodation became brick or more permanent timber construction; public buildings appeared; roads were set out; and agricultural infrastructure (animal buildings, storehouses) was built. Early records give impressions of the growing town. Alexandro Malaspina, leader of a Spanish expedition, spent a month in the colony in 1793 and reported that ‘the colony was composed of 4000 Europeans of both sexes’, and that: The town of Sydney, designed to be the centre of commerce and administration, contains about 300 houses, the greater part constructed and roofed with brick and tile (a third part still with straw), gathered together, it would appear, in disorder but fulfilling, according to those informed persons who told us, a plan formed beforehand and suitable to the terrain …32 Nine years later, in 1802, François Péron, the naturalist on the Baudin expedition on his visit to the colony was ‘… astonished at the flourishing state in which we found this singular and distant establishment’, and he wrote of many fine public buildings.33 A small number of colonial artists also help to form an impression of what Sydney was like in the very early days. These include a painting attributed to the convict Thomas Watling (A Direct North General View of Sydney Cove, the chief British Settlement in New South Wales, as it Appeared in 1794, Being the 7th Year of its Establishment) and a coloured engraving by William Stadden Blake (A view of the Town of Sydney in the Colony of New South Wales, 1802), which show the growth and development of the colony.34

4 – Water supplies for the First Fleet colonists

Pollution of the Tank Stream Growth in the settlement at Sydney Cove meant greater demand for freshwater supplies, and there were negative consequences as well as positive. After Phillip had returned to England at the end of 1792, Acting Governor Grose abandoned Phillip’s green belt regulations and allowed fellow officers to build houses and keep animals alongside the Tank Stream. Unfortunately, it was too late for the stream when Governor Hunter, appointed in 1795, tried unsuccessfully to protect the water supply by building fences along its side. Those who had built houses near the stream tore palings off the fence to make a short cut to the water. Filth from pigs and goats kept behind some of the houses oozed into the drinking water. Hunter’s further orders against fouling the stream also made no difference, and the situation got worse. In the following summer there was an outbreak of dysentery.35 Further actions were taken by successive governors King and Bligh, including fencing off the tanks themselves, prohibiting tree removal from the banks to prevent erosion, and reinforcing the regulations against washing, cleaning fish and allowing cattle and pigs to contaminate the stream. Despite all this, pollution and blockages in the water supply worsened. By the time Governor Macquarie arrived at the start of 1810 the situation had become so bad he issued an order that ‘No necessaries [lavatories], slaughter houses, tanneries, dyeing houses, breweries and distilleries shall in future be erected on or near the said area, and all such nuisances should at once be pulled down or suppressed’.36 However, as water was scarce and was needed for many beginning industries, the order was generally ignored. What was not known then was that the filth from the various industries was working its way into the groundwater and leaching into the stream. As in London at that time, the main supply of everyday water was also the repository of personal, communal and animal waste. An understanding of the relationship between disease and bacteria did not develop until later in the nineteenth century; however, it was understood that drinking from the Tank Stream made you ill. An item in the Sydney Gazette reported that, because of ‘the nuisance of people washing linen at and about these basons [the Tanks]’, and despite the severe effects of ‘the long prevailing drought’, many people chose to suffer additional inconvenience rather than ‘run the risqué of being choaked [sic] with soap suds, or poisoned with infectious filth.’37 People who could afford to do so, bought water carted from the nearby Lachlan Swamps, now the site of Centennial Park.38 As in England at the time, clean water was becoming a privilege of the wealthy. The growing town’s water supply was being fouled as a result of private activities and the ordinary people were suffering. By the 1820s pressure for change, in the form of clear government responsibility for supply of clean water to all, was emerging – and not before time. A strong piece in The Australian newspaper in 1826 is indicative of this pressure: Many people trace several disorders which are visited upon the inhabitants of Sydney to want of cleanliness; and that want of cleanliness is chiefly owing to the want of water. During the summer months water is an expensive article to those who do not reside in favorable situations. … and many there are who really cannot afford to pay sixpence for a bucketful... It is downright ill-nature – it is absolute inattention – it betrays almost a wanton indifference to our interests – to the health and welfare and prosperity of the Colony, not to proceed forthwith to afford the town of Sydney a supply of water... we have a right, on behalf of our fellow-colonists, to demand the best services of the Government

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in removing one of the heaviest calamities which a people can have to submit to – THE WANT OF PURE WATER!39

A new source of water In 1824, John Busby, surveyor and civil engineer, arrived in Sydney. He had been appointed by the Colonial Office in England to take up duty ‘in supplying the Town of Sydney with water’ and other matters.40 Busby noted that apart from Tank Stream, there were numerous private wells.41 He inspected many of these and concluded that some provided an adequate supply for the users, in many the supply was scanty, and that ‘not a few are useless during a great part of the year’. He found that in all of them the water was ‘unfit for many domestic purposes, and is generally considered prejudicial to health’.42 Busby decided on the Lachlan Swamps, about four kilometres south-east of Sydney Cove, as a new source. This area of low-lying marshes and lagoons, which would today be called wetlands, was covered with lush vegetation and was alive with birds and animals – frogs, fish, eels, insects. It had been an important Aboriginal waterhole and source of food, but by the 1820s, it was seriously damaged by tree-felling, trampling, grazing and drinking by cattle, goats, pigs, and horses belonging to European colonists, and by the tracks made for the carting of water to Sydney. As well, there was a paper mill and a flour mill at one end of the swamp, and the beginnings of market gardens on the surrounding fertile soils.43 The thoughtless destruction of the local peoples’ resource was not an exception, but typical of the new arrivals’ approach to the country and its people. Busby managed to get approval from London for the building of an underground tunnel or ‘bore’ from the swamps to Hyde Park, through which water would flow under gravity. He was unsuccessful, however, in gaining funds for a proposed reservoir at the end of the tunnel. Work on the 3.6 km tunnel commenced in 1827 from the Hyde Park end, but it took 10 years to complete. This was apparently due in part to exceedingly recalcitrant convict labourers (at least in Busby’s view), and partly to the fact that Busby would not enter the tunnel himself to inspect or supervise the work. The major portion of the tunnel had to be dug – by hand – through sandstone. It varied from 1.2 to 1.8 m wide and was up to 3 m high in places. The route traversed several springs, and water from these and groundwater seepage drained into the bore. A positive result of this was that by 1830, a pipe installed at Hyde Park began to supply pure, filtered water. Some of this water was taken to the waterfront to supply ships.44 The completion of the tunnel was an important achievement for the colony, despite its variation in size, uneven floor and several dead ends. In the absence of a reservoir at the tunnel’s end, water was carried through pipes on trestles to what is now the corner of Elizabeth and Park Streets, from where it was distributed through the town by horse and cart (see Plate 4.1). (We might remind ourselves here of the tunnel-building achievements of the ancients – the many qanats that were built from as early as 1000 BC, and the Tunnel of Eupalinos built in the sixth century BC (Chapter 1).) On completion, Busby’s Bore delivered ~1.5 million L per day of water to Sydney, more than half the capacity of an Olympic swimming pool, but barely enough for the population which had risen to 20  000.45 (By comparison, the aqueduct supplying Roman Nimes produced 20 million L per day nearly 1800 years earlier.) The water was not used to improve public health or to lessen the squalor in which poorer people lived. Rather, it was delivered to those who could pay, including businesses such as flour millers, breweries, tanners and soap manufacturers. In the 1840s,

4 – Water supplies for the First Fleet colonists

work began on laying water pipes to take water from the bore to various parts of the town. By 1844, ~70 houses were connected to the bore for a cost of 10 shillings (one dollar) per year. People could also buy water from new public ‘fountains’ (standpipes) around Sydney46 – a reminder of the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, where residents obtained unlimited amounts of water at conveniently-placed fountains – free (Chapter 2). Problems with the system began to appear after a time. The pipes began to rust, and eels got into them and died and rotted, thus polluting the water. Because there was no reservoir at Hyde Park and Busby had not put sluice gates at the end of the tunnel, there was no way of controlling the flow of water. As a result, the flow from the marshes continued day and night, with great quantities running down the streets unused and into the harbour. (Recall that in many towns and cities of the Roman Empire, water from aqueducts often flowed continuously after generally originating in a perennial spring or river. In these cases, the excess water did find a use in the public baths and ultimately in sweeping the paved streets clean of rubbish.) A worse consequence was the drying up of the Lachlan Swamps as the population of Sydney continued to grow and demands for fresh water increased. A steam-powered pump was installed in 1854 to draw more water from the Lachlan Swamps to supply Busby’s Bore.46 In 1859 a scheme to get water from the more distant Botany Wetlands was commenced; it lasted ~30 years. A government commission in 1869 found that these wetlands had also substantially dried out, though city officials denied this was the case. The commission recommended a dam on the Nepean River. This was the start of a system of reservoirs on the Nepean and Hawkesbury Rivers that form the basis of modern Sydney’s water supply (Chapter 15). A stop-gap sewerage system was initiated in 1859, and in 1889 a working system was built.47 Over a period of 80 years since first setting foot on Sydney Cove, the Europeans had successively destroyed three sources of fresh water that were crucial to their survival, through carelessness, misuse and over-exploitation. In each case, not only had the water source itself been exhausted but the environment of the source with its other benefits had been destroyed forever. This was a pattern that would be repeated again and again in the coming two centuries, and which many civilisations had followed elsewhere in the world.48

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5

The search for water inland The search for large rivers by the European explorers began early in the life of the new colony and continued for more than half a century. Although there were numerous creeks running into the great harbour on which Sydney Cove lay, there were no large rivers. A question that persisted for two-and-a-half decades related to what occurred beyond the rugged mountain range that formed an impenetrable barrier to the west: what sources or repositories of water – rivers, lakes, or an inland sea – lay beyond? This question would not be properly addressed until Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth found a way over the Blue Mountains in 1813. In June 1789, ~16 months after the First Fleet’s arrival, two successive expeditions led by the governor and beginning in Broken Bay, 35 km to the north of Sydney Cove, found a substantial river which was named the Hawkesbury. According to Watkin Tench, the party was able to travel more than 100 km up the river, and ‘the water in every part was found to be fresh and good.’1 As a result, Europeans had arrived at the Hawkesbury by 1794, and the fertile plains along the river quickly produced crops which helped to feed the new colony.2 Shortly after, another expedition came across a river ‘… nearly as broad as the Thames at Putney and apparently of great depth …’ and where ‘Vast flocks of wild ducks were swimming in the stream …’3 This river was named the Nepean, and at this point was estimated to be ~60 km from the coast. Just two years later, in April and May 1791, two successive expeditions confirmed what had been suspected – that the Nepean and the Hawkesbury were the same river. Tench’s description of the river resonates with our image of New South Wales rivers away from the heavy influences of civilisation (except perhaps for the width!): The stream at this place is ~350 feet [107 m] wide, the water is pure and excellent to the taste. The banks are about twenty feet high and covered with trees, many of which had been evidently bent by the force of the current in the direction which it runs, and some of them contained rubbish and driftwood in their branches at least forty-five feet above the level of the stream.4 In his accounts, Tench indicates what the Europeans found as alien and often difficult country when he describes it as ‘trackless immeasurable desert, in awful silence.’3 He described members of one expedition as ‘Garbed to drag through morasses, tear through thickets, ford rivers and scale rocks …’ and recounted how an attempt to cross the Nepean River to reach the Carmarthen (Blue) mountains had to be aborted because the men ‘… found the country so rugged and the difficulty of walking so excessive that in three days they were able to penetrate only 15 miles [24 km], and were therefore obliged to relinquish their object.’5 47

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Once the crossing of the Blue Mountains had been achieved, George Evans, the assistant surveyor of the colony, descended into the rolling plains on the other side – Wiradjuri territory – 160 km further than the point reached by the Blue Mountains explorers, and found two further rivers, which they named the Lachlan and the Macquarie.6 Beyond to the west lay millions of square kilometres and the heart of the continent. What happened to these west-flowing rivers: did they somehow reach the coast in another location, or did they combine and flow into a vast lake or even an inland sea? This became an abiding mystery in need of a solution.

Oxley: the Lachlan and the Macquarie In 1817 John Oxley followed the Lachlan River downstream, hoping to map its course and ultimate destination. His team of 13 was supplemented by two boats and 13 pack horses loaded with supplies. To his dismay, his progress was first slowed and then halted when the river dispersed into a swamp where the horses and men got bogged and the boats were unable to be rowed. In frustration, he turned south-west to reach firm ground, but then it was the ‘barren’ and ‘desolate’ country that caused him to change course yet again. ‘It is impossible to imagine a more desolate region; and the uncertainty we are in, whilst traversing it, of finding water, adds to the melancholy feelings which the silence and solitude of such wastes is calculated to inspire’, he reported in his journal.7 The following year he set out again, this time to explore the Macquarie River, but once again he was defeated by a succession of marshes:8 ‘Without the usual appearances of a bog, our horses were in an instant up to their bellies, and the difficulties we had in extricating them would hardly obtain belief.’9 He knew he had not managed to trace the course of the Macquarie with any certainty, but he speculated he may have reached the outer fringe of an inland sea or large lake.10 Although he reported that he did encounter patches of excellent grazing country, he was gloomy about the possibility of either river being of any benefit to the young colony or the prospects of productive settlement in the area and made several references to its desolation. Like Oxley, other European explorers venturing into the unknown country often found the going tough. Not only was the landscape an alien one, but they encountered large stretches of dry country, a shortage of water, unnavigable rivers, blistering heat, pestering by flies and other insects, areas of impenetrable bush, watercourses varying between completely dry or ‘running a banker’, unpredictable storms, boggy swamplands and more. There were also frequent encounters with ‘the natives’, with unpredictable outcomes. While some interactions were basically friendly, showing mutual interest and cooperation, others were characterised by hostility due, presumably, to foreigners trespassing without approval on their country. The epic journey of Hamilton Hume, the young Australian-born bushman, and William Hovell, an English settler and former mariner, began at Appin 70 km south-west of Sydney in October 1824. The expedition passed Lake George, where Hume had squatted and built a homestead, and a few days later reached the previously-discovered Murrumbidgee River (Fig. 5.1) in full flood – a daunting obstacle. They were unable to build a raft because ‘the timber was found unsuitable’. However, ‘… Mr Hume ingeniously extemporised a punt. He took the wheels off a provision cart, and, with the aid of a tarpaulin, turned it into a punt in which the provisions were dragged across the stream. The cattle were swum across, but everything was got safely over before nightfall.’11 A distance beyond the crossing, in the vicinity of present-day Albury, they reached another large river which they named the Hume, after Hume’s father. It was, in fact, the upper reaches of the Murray, ‘the principal river in Australia’,11 so named later by Sturt

5 – The search for water inland

Fig. 5.1.  The Murrumbidgee River at Hay in 2011 on its way to join the Murray River, some 330 km west of where Hume and Hovell crossed.

during his travels down the lower courses of the river. Due to its width they had to explore upstream and downstream before they found a place where they could cross. Hume and Hovell subsequently crossed the Mitta Mitta, Ovens and Goulburn Rivers before eventually arriving at Corio Bay, the future site of Geelong. From there, they saw potential pastoral and grazing lands stretching to the west. During their 11-week trek they encountered impenetrable scrub, a shortage of water, and periods where they had to crawl on their hands and knees over rock and brush. By the time they had returned by the same route, they had travelled almost 1900 km in 16 weeks. In 1827 the botanist-explorer Allan Cunningham found the Gwydir, Macintyre and Dumaresq rivers further north. These rivers began in the Great Dividing Range and flowed roughly north-west. Further north he chanced upon a vast area of fertile black soil plains and valleys through which flowed the Condamine River. He named the potential pasture land the Darling Downs, now a prosperous agricultural region west of Brisbane.

Sturt, the Darling, and dreams of an inland sea In 1828 Governor Darling sent Captain Charles Sturt to follow the Macquarie River to its mouth. Sturt set out in December, with Hume as his deputy, following the river along its north-westerly course. Even though it was near the end of a long drought and the swamps

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had dried considerably, the party still had difficulty getting through the area that had stopped Oxley a decade earlier. They continued to work along the course of the Macquarie River and at times along a dry watercourse roughly parallel but at some distance (the Bogan River), ultimately arriving at a deep-banked, ‘noble’ river, ‘seventy to eighty yards broad … and literally covered with pelicans and other wild fowl … and the trees that overhung it were of beautiful and gigantic growth’.12 He named it the Darling. On attempting to drink from the river, the party was dismayed to find the water salty, caused – they found later – by salt springs in the bed of the river (see box). They were only saved by finding ‘a small pond of fresh water on a tongue of land’ not far from the river and a little further downstream.12 Sturt explored the Darling for ~100 km downstream, and after returning to a base camp near the Macquarie, followed the Castlereagh River to its junction with the Darling. With a small team he crossed the Darling at this point (east of present-day Brewarrina) heading north-west towards the interior of the continent. After a few kilometres they found themselves on a plain that stretched as far as the eye could see. Sturt wrote, ‘It was dismally brown; few trees only served to mark the distance ... all around looked blank and desolate. … during the whole day we had not seen a drop of water or a blade of grass.’13 Consequently, Sturt and his party retraced their steps and set out to return to Sydney, without having found a satisfactory answer to the riddle of the west-flowing rivers. In the course of his expedition, Sturt’s party had suffered the sorts of hardships previously described by Oxley, including shortage of water. The river beds they had travelled along contained, at best, isolated pools of water, some of which were ‘so mixed with slime as to hang in strings between the fingers’.14 They had, however, received crucial help from the local Aboriginal people in some areas in finding water and directions. Sturt set out again in November 1829, which meant he would once again be travelling in the harsh summer weather. His mission on this occasion was to trace the Murrumbidgee to its mouth – possibly to an inland sea. He carried with him a dismantled whaleboat transported on three carts. He reached the river at the site of present-day Gundagai, and followed it downstream, eventually rebuilding the whaleboat and launching it into the river. He found that the Murrumbidgee flowed into the largest river yet encountered by Europeans. Of this discovery he wrote: It is impossible for me to describe the effect of so instantaneous a change of circumstances upon us. The boats were allowed to drift along at pleasure, and such was the force with which we had been shot out of the Morumbidgee [sic], that we were carried

‘Salt Springs’ in the river bed of the Darling We now understand why the water in the Darling River was salty when Sturt and his party reached the river. In parts of the Murray–Darling Basin, saline groundwater flows naturally into rivers. (The groundwater systems are recharged by a succession of wet years.) In dry years, the water level in the river is low, and large amounts of fresh water are also lost through evaporation. These factors cause the salinity levels to be particularly high, making the water less suitable for drinking. Water flowing through the river system and out to the sea through the Murray mouth is the only natural way that salt can leave the Basin. A non–natural way is through salt interception schemes. (Chapter 14)

5 – The search for water inland

Fig. 5.2.  Map showing major rivers in SE Australia explored by Oxley, Cunningham and Sturt in the period 1817–1830.

nearly to the bank opposite its embouchure, whilst we continued to gaze in silent astonishment on the capacious channel we had entered; …15 He named it the Murray, not knowing – though suspecting – that it was the same river Hume and Hovell had crossed in 1824. Another large river joining the Murray from the north-east he supposed, correctly, was the Darling, which he had first encountered several hundred kilometres to the north (see Plate 5.1). He followed the Murray until it opened into a large lake, which he named Alexandrina, and then flowed into the sea. The return journey, rowing up the river more than 1450 km against the current, was more than arduous, with dwindling supplies reducing the men’s ability to keep rowing for the long periods needed. They were only saved from starvation when, back on the Murrumbidgee, Sturt sent two men on a trek of 150 km to retrieve supplies from the depot they had established earlier in the expedition.16 Major rivers in south-eastern Australia explored by Oxley, Cunningham and Sturt in the period 1817–1830 are shown in Fig. 5.2. In August 1844, at the age of 49, Sturt left Adelaide on one last journey to investigate the land beyond the Darling River. Officially, the purpose was to find out whether there was a mountain range or any rivers flowing west or north in the centre of the continent. In Sturt’s own mind, it was to be a search for his supposed inland sea. This was a long and punishing expedition into dry, sun-baked country with scorching temperatures and where thirst was a constant torment. Sturt pushed his party on through the edges of the

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Strzelecki Desert and Sturt’s Stony Desert to the start of the Simpson Desert, crossing and naming Cooper Creek on the way. Men and horses suffered from lack of water until Sturt turned back after he found only emptiness and desolation.17

Mitchell: seeking the elusive ‘Kindur’ George Clarke, also known as ‘the Barber’, was an escaped convict who lived among the Kamilaroi people well beyond the edge of European settlement for nearly five years and conducted cattle raids on settlers. On being captured by mounted police in 1831, he claimed that during his time living among the Aboriginal people he had seen a great river, the Kindur, and traced it to its mouth. According to Clarke, it flowed across the continent to the northern coast, and therefore had the potential to open up the interior for agriculture and to provide a navigable inland route to the north. He claimed to have followed the Namoi River in a north-westerly direction downstream for 650  km (the length of the Namoi is 840  km), then left this river and travelled over plains eventually reaching the wide, deep, free-flowing Kindur.18 Clarke’s story caught the attention of Thomas Mitchell, the then Surveyor-General. It supported his own theory about the inland rivers and provided him an opportunity to mount an expedition to test the truth of the convict’s claims. His argument was that such a large watershed as the slopes Great Dividing Range should provide sufficient water to form a large river. He wrote, ‘Supposing the course of the desired river to be analogous to that of the Amazons, we must believe its estuary to be amongst those unexplored inlets of the Sea, which Captain King saw on the North Western Coast of Australia’.19 This matter created some general interest in the colony, with The Australian newspaper arguing that Clarke’s claim should be investigated: ‘A trial is worth making. We would strongly recommend, whether the story be well or ill founded, that a party of the best backwoodsmen among our native youths should be supplied with necessaries by the government, and sent forward on an exploring expedition’.20 Mitchell’s expedition set out in November 1831 with the 17 members including 15 selected convicts on a promise of remission for good conduct, bullocks, heavy drays, light carts, horses and two prefabricated canvas boats. They travelled more than 500 km in a north-westerly direction, moving beyond the edge of the lands settled by Europeans, and crossing the Namoi River. Shortly after, they found that progress through the Nandewar Range was almost impossible, so returned to the Namoi and launched the prefabricated boats to travel downstream. This proved impracticable as submerged branches holed the boats. Mitchell was left with no option but to continue by land, leaving the Namoi when it turned more westerly, subsequently crossing the Gwydir River in the vicinity of presentday Narrabri and later, further to the north, the Barwon River. He spent several weeks charting the tributaries between the Gwydir and Darling rivers and recognised that the Barwon was the main tributary of the Darling.21 To his great disappointment, he found no large river flowing north that matched the description of Clarke’s Kindur. To add to this disappointment, the expedition was forced to return to Sydney without exploring further north, due to shortage of provisions and hostility of the long-term inhabitants of the area. He reported that his explorations had shown there was no truth in the Barber’s claims. Despite this, his activities on future expeditions suggest he still harboured hopes of finding a great river. For his part, Clarke continued to insist on the truth of his story of the Kindur up to the time of his execution in Hobart Town on 11 August 1835; however, the generally accepted view is that his claims were an imaginative invention designed to try to avoid punishment.18

5 – The search for water inland

Fig. 5.3.  Cooeyanna Well (Eyre’s Waterhole) in 2015.

Mitchell left Sydney again at the end of March 1835 with the aim of further exploring the Darling River, but this expedition achieved little, other than charting part of the Bogan River and of the Darling downstream to Menindee (Plate 5.2) and further alienating the Aboriginal people it met.22 A third expedition in 1836 aimed at completing the charting of the Darling below Menindee was also not completed, largely due to a shortage of water in the country he planned to cross on his journey to Menindee. However, he did trace the river from its junction with the Murray upstream a short distance. He then travelled up the Murray to its junction with the Loddon River, but was diverted by what he saw to the south (now Victoria) – country so promising he termed it ‘Australia Felix’. In a fourth expedition that lasted 12 months in 1845–46, Mitchell unsuccessfully attempted to find an overland route to Port Essington on the Cobourg Peninsula on the north coast of the continent. However, he did successfully chart unknown areas of the Maranoa, Warrego, Belyando and Barcoo Rivers, and in the Belyando River in what is now central Queensland thought he had found the large, northerly-flowing river he was apparently still looking for. He was mortified to realise later that it was a tributary of the Burdekin River, discovered by Ludwig Leichardt the previous year. By the time Mitchell was on his fourth expedition, Edward John Eyre had already completed his explorations north of Adelaide to the head of Spencer Gulf and beyond (1839, 1840) and tracked west across the arid Nullarbor Plain to King George Sound, now Albany (1840–41). On his northern expeditions he named the Broughton River, sighted the dry salt bed of Lake Torrens and was the first European to see the vast, dry Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre. At one stage after ascending a small hill (near the middle of what is now the Strzelecki Track) he saw nothing but arid country. He named the peak Mt Hopeless before turning back. In these expeditions, finding enough fresh water was critical, and like other inland explorers, Eyre made use of Aboriginal sources. One of these used on his great trek to Albany was Cooeyanna Well (also known as Eyre’s Waterhole), which can still be seen

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today (Fig. 5.3). It is on the Eyre Peninsula a few kilometres inland and was an important source for the Wirungu and Nauo people. Eyre wrote in his journal for 3 November 1840: ‘This curious little hole contained water from five to seven inches in depth, the level of which was maintained as rapidly as a person could bale it out. This was the sole supply for ourselves and horses, but it was a never-failing one.’23

The situation at mid-century As a result of the explorations to this time, the main rivers making up the Murray–Darling Basin – the major river system in Australia, covering one-seventh of the area of the continent – had been encountered by the European colonists. (Of course, the Aboriginal peoples had long-standing familiarity with all the watercourses, and unlike the new arrivals, moved easily through the country.) The explorers had found that the rivers here were unlike those in England or Europe, and that they didn’t always run in well-defined perennial streams. Water levels were typically very variable, ranging from dry to raging floods. Sometimes tremendous inundations spread out on to the floodplain up to several metres deep. Hidden obstacles, such as submerged tree branches, often made navigation hazardous, especially at lower water levels. The deep banks were usually tree-lined, and magnificent, gnarled river gums were common on the larger rivers. Rubbish and driftwood caught in branches high above the stream testified to the height of a flood. There were times when the explorers were able to appreciate the beauty of a river, such as when Sturt wrote of the Macquarie River near the present-day city of Dubbo: ‘The views upon the river were really beautiful, and varied at every turn; nor is it possible for any tree to exceed the casuarina in the graceful manner in which it bends over the stream, or clings to some solitary rock in its centre’.24 For the most part, significant rivers in central and northern Australia, including those draining into Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre and those emptying into northern seas, had to wait until the second half of the nineteenth century to be first encountered by European explorers. These rivers are very different from the ones experienced by Oxley, Sturt and other explorers in the south-east of the continent. The great inland rivers – the Georgina, the Diamantina, Cooper Creek – flow towards the centre of the continent and eventually into Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre, but only occasionally. For most of the time they consist of dry river beds or perhaps disconnected waterholes. In the years when they do flow, due to torrential rains in the north, water spreads into multiple channels across the landscape, and seemingly from nowhere, the country comes alive with plants and animals. In the north and north-west, rivers such as the South Alligator, the Durack, and the Pentecost are at best modest streams in the dry season, but in the wet season they can be raging torrents making the country impassable. Major coastal rivers in other parts of the country supported the early development of colonies that would ultimately become major cities. These included the Derwent (Hobart, 1804), the Brisbane (Brisbane, 1825), the Swan (Perth, 1829), the Yarra (Melbourne, 1835) and the Torrens (Adelaide, 1836) rivers. Darwin was established in 1869, with most of its fresh water coming from wells rather than a river. Inland, Canberra was established in 1913 on the Molonglo River (see Chapter 15).

Rainfall patterns in Australia The new colonists and explorers were only beginning to form a picture of how much rain fell in various parts of the country, and how much it varied from one place to another. Sub-

5 – The search for water inland

sequent generations built up the knowledge we have today. While there are regions of high rainfall of more than 1 m per year – mostly on or near the coast – there are vast areas where the average annual rainfall is less than 200 mm. The distribution is shown in Plate 5.3.25 The wettest area is around Cairns in far north Queensland, with Bellenden Ker having an average rainfall of 7950 mm. At the other extreme, the driest area is around Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre with an average of only 125 mm per year.26 Overall, the average annual rainfall across Australia is 451 mm,27 but this figure is not very helpful in practical terms when the variation and the distances are so great. The European explorers and colonists were also experiencing – to their discomfort – the variable and unpredictable nature of rainfall in most places, exemplified especially by periods of harsh drought and widespread flood. Plate 5.4 gives a picture of how great is this variability across the country.28 From Plates 5.3 and 5.4 it can be seen, for example, that rainfall in Central Australia is not only very low, but it is extremely variable – it occurs on very few days. The variability has major implications for the way water can be used in different regions, as discussed in later chapters.

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6

Aboriginal Australia

Colonisation The newcomers to Australia claimed the country in the name of King George III of England. They acted as if the country was empty, a terra nullius – a land belonging to no-one.1 The reality was quite different. Far from being an empty country, the early explorers saw groups of people in the countryside, or evidence of where they had been, wherever they went. Not surprisingly, numbers were greater near significant streams and rivers. There is ample recorded evidence for this. Early in 1788, Lieutenant Bradley, second-in-command of the Sirius, found a considerable population of Eora, the local Aboriginal people, around the southern and northern shores of Port Jackson when he was out surveying the shoreline.2 This was apart from those who appeared from time to time around the settlement in Sydney Cove. In June 1789, when exploring the country north-west of what is now Parramatta, Watkin Tench reported that ‘Traces of the natives appeared at every step; sometimes their hunting huts … sometimes in marks on trees which they climbed; or in squirrel traps; or … in decoys for ensnaring birds.’3 On reaching the Darling River early in 1829, Sturt recorded in his journal that ‘The paths of the natives on either side of it were like well-trodden roads …’,4 and on his first expedition three years later, Thomas Mitchell reported natives ‘… moving in tribes of a hundred or more parallel to our marked line, or in our rear …’ in his explorations of the country around the Namoi, Gwydir and Barwon Rivers.5 Explorers’ contact with the local people didn’t only occur in New South Wales. It was a similar experience all over the country, wherever the Europeans travelled. For example, the Frenchman Dumont d’Urville described his interaction in 1826 with Aboriginal people living in King George Sound near present-day Albany in Western Australia;6 when Captain George Grey inadvertently landed on the mid-west coast of Western Australia near present-day Kalbarri in 1839, he found a well-watered and densely-populated country, and he described coming to ‘…one of the most picturesque and romantic-looking estuaries I had yet seen: its shores abounded with springs, and were bordered by native paths …’;7 much has been written about George Augustus Robinson and his encounters throughout Tasmania in his role as the governor’s emissary to Tasmanian Aborigines between 1830 and 1835;8 Edward John Eyre, on his epic crossing of dry southern Australia in 1842, recorded that he passed ‘many recent traces of natives, both yesterday and today …’;9 Ludwig Leichardt encountered Aboriginal people in the north of the continent on his journey from Brisbane to Port Essington, north-east of Darwin;10 and Sturt met hundreds of friendly local people on his journey north to Cooper Creek and beyond.11 57

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Aboriginal peoples and their forebears had lived in the country for tens of thousands of years and understood its ways: they knew the plants, the animals and the seasons. They knew where and how to get food, water and shelter. While the new arrivals in Port Jackson were near starvation at times during their first four years and relied on rations shipped in, the local Eora people had ample to eat and drink by using the available edible plants, hunting and trapping animals in the bush, and catching fish in the local streams and the sea. Everything they needed for a successful, healthy life was available.12 They knew where water could be found and carefully protected their known waterholes. While the European explorers battled alien and often hostile country, at times facing desolation, scorching heat, unreliable water sources, thick bush or boggy swamplands, the Aboriginal peoples lived in a way attuned to their environment, and they were able to pass easily through the country. The explorers used help from the local people to find their way and to find life-sustaining water, but in general, the newcomers made little effort to learn from the original inhabitants how to survive in the new country. The country could by no means be called empty. It was well populated by people who were living in harmony with their environment and had done so for tens of thousands of years. As to the question of how people ensured they had a sufficient supply of fresh water, this can only be considered meaningfully in terms of their total approach to the land in which they lived.13

Living as part of the country In reading the early colonists’ accounts of the country that was new to them, it’s difficult not to be struck by widespread references to the park-like nature of the countryside in various locations. These descriptions suggested open woodlands, extensive grassy areas, pathways and plentiful wildlife, more like an English country estate than the Australian countryside we know. For example: ●●

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‘… the trees being at a considerable distance from each other and the intermediate space filled, not with underwood, but a thick rich grass growing in the utmost luxuriancy. … the indisputable tracks of the natives having been lately there …’ – Watkin Tench, April 1788.14 ‘The greater part of the country is like an English park ...’ – Elizabeth Macarthur, c1798, in a letter to a friend in England.15 ‘… and a little further we saw several meadows and 100 acres of land without a tree upon it. Here we saw a party of natives.’ – John Price, 1798, beyond the bounds of settlement, NSW.16 ‘Many hills and elevated flats were entirely clear of timber, and the whole had a very picturesque and park-like appearance.’ – John Oxley, 1818, near present-day Dubbo in NSW.17

In addition, pictures by early colonial artists depicted the country in this way – for example, works by Joseph Lycett (c1775–1828), John Lewin (1770–1819) and Eugene von Guerard (1811–1901). In some cases, the artists had taken the trouble to say that their scenes were accurate; in many cases the specific locations in which they painted the scenes have been identified in recent times, and the accuracy of the topography and many details depicted have been verified.18 These depictions are at odds with our perceptions of the Australian bush as we know it outside settled or farmed areas. How can this be explained?

6 – Aboriginal Australia

Bill Gammage has provided an explanation in his book The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines made Australia.18 Gammage examined the evidence of what the country was like before it was changed by Europeans. He used early written records and paintings supplemented with anthropological and ecological evidence, and knowledge of the fire history and habitats of plants. He identified countless examples from all over the continent and Tasmania in the course of developing his explanation. Aboriginal peoples were far from being passive wanderers over the landscape who were totally subject to the vagaries of the environment. Before European settlement, they actively managed the land in order to ensure there was abundant food and water. Using fire as their chief ally, and a detailed knowledge of the abilities of different plants to tolerate fire, the people shaped the landscape to suit their purposes, working with the country wherever possible, emphasising or moderating its character. (There are frequent references in early colonists’ accounts of the local people burning the country. The term ‘fire-stick farming’ has come into use in recent decades as Aboriginal peoples’ use of fire has become better known.) The Aboriginal peoples’ use of fire was not haphazard but was systematic and discriminatory and depended on a detailed knowledge of the life-cycles of plants and animals. They catered to animals’ preferences rather than only to their needs and in this way attracted the animals to their hunting grounds. The management of the land was carried out in accordance with the Law, a part of the Dreaming, and so was consistent across the continent and through the generations. The work of one generation built on that of previous generations, and therefore, modification of the land took place over a long period. Gammage explains: People catered to preferences. They coupled preferred feed and shelter by refining grass, forests, belts, clumps and clearings into templates [mosaics of plant communities]: unlike plant communities associated, distributed and maintained for decades or centuries to prepare country for day-to-day working. Templates set land and life patterns for generations of people. They were the land’s finishing touches, offering abundance, predictability, continuity and choice.19 As a result of the Aboriginal peoples’ land management over millennia, a mosaic-like landscape was developed. There were forests that provided shelter for animals and there were grassy woodlands that teemed with game.20 The explorer Thomas Mitchell in 1846 described one example near the Tambo River (Queensland) this way: … we traversed fine open grassy plains. The air was fragrant from the many flowers then springing up, especially where the natives had burnt the grass … The extensive burning by the natives, a work of considerable labour, and performed in dry warm weather, left tracts in the open forest, which had become green as emerald with the young crop of grass. These plains were thickly imprinted with the feet of kangaroos, and the work is undertaken by the natives to attract these animals to such places.21 Aboriginal people also grew crops – a fact that would surprise many who studied their Australian history decades ago. These included yams such as warran and murnong, and grains such as native millet and kangaroo grass which, amazingly, supported large populations even in the central deserts. Yams were grown more where rainfall was higher, and grains were predominant in drier areas. A variety of storage methods were used for grain

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and other produce, including vessels, animal skin bags and huts. In his recent book, Dark Emu, Bruce Pascoe examined the recorded observations of Aboriginal agricultural activities made by the first wave of European explorers and settlers and added further detail to the picture drawn by Bill Gammage.22 With food and water abundant as a consequence of these management strategies, Aboriginal people needed to work only a few hours a day – less than their European counterparts – to obtain sufficient food to remain healthy. This allowed them substantial time for leisure activities, including ceremonial obligations. Explorers in different parts of the country commented on their strong physical appearance. In 1845 on Cooper Creek in central Australia, Sturt found that ‘The men of this tribe were, without exception … a well made race, with a sufficiency of muscular development …’;23 on his epic trek from Ninety Mile Beach in eastern Victoria to Port Jackson in 1795, William Clark described the men in his first encounter with Aboriginal people as ‘strong and muscular’;24 when establishing a settlement at Cossack in north-western Australia in 1863, Charles Nairn met ‘great strapping fellows’;25 and Leichardt described ‘fine, stout, well made men’.26

Managing water resources Aboriginal peoples also managed their fresh water resources with great ingenuity. Fish nets were constructed and used in ways to suit specific prey. ‘Coast and inland, thousands of weirs, dams and traps of stone, mud, brush or reeds extended species and harvests. Wicker gates or woven funnels let fish or crayfish upstream on in-tides and trapped them on the ebb. Grass fronds laid over shallow edges gave fish shade and made them vulnerable.’27 Different types of nets of different mesh sizes – seine nets, gill-nets, small bow nets and hoop nets – were used depending on the situation and the fish targeted. This sophisticated technology was well developed and had been in use for many thousands of years.28 Notable examples, of which evidence is still visible today, include fish traps on the Barwon River at Brewarrina in New South Wales, and a system to farm eels and fish in the wetlands of Lake Condah in south-west Victoria. The Brewarrina Aboriginal fish traps (Baiame’s Nguunhu) consist of a complex arrangement of channels, rock weirs and pools covering 400 m of the river bed, built by the Ngemba people to catch fish as they swam upstream (Plate 6.1). The area is still a significant place for Aboriginal people today and was placed on the National Heritage List in 2005. Degradation was caused when stones were removed from the river to allow paddle steamers to cross, and during the 1920s rocks were removed for use in foundations and road building. Despite this, the traps are still in use by the local community to catch fish.29 At Lake Condah, a network of stone eel traps and channels hundreds of metres long and cut into rock were constructed over innumerable generations by the Gunditjmara people. They date back at least 6600 years – about the time the earliest irrigation began in ancient Mesopotamia – and the associated ponds and dam walls pre-date contact by Europeans by hundreds and possibly thousands of years.30 Another example of local people making effective use of the resources of their environment can be found in north-west Tasmania, where fresh water was carried in containers made of kelp, found in abundance along the seashores.31 The people had detailed knowledge of their water sources – whether rivers, creeks, swamps, wells or waterholes – and took steps to see that they were protected. They often surprised the European explorers with their knowledge and skills, given the general view of the new colonists that they were ignorant savages. Two episodes recorded by Sturt, 15 years apart, illustrate this point:

6 – Aboriginal Australia

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In 1829 on his first encounter with the Darling, Sturt’s party came across a group of ~70 Aboriginal ‘huts’ and, ‘… in searching amongst them we observed two beautifully made nets, of about ninety yards in length. The one had much larger meshes than the other, and was, most probably, intended to take kangaroos; but the other was evidently a fishing net.’4 In 1844, Toonda, a Darling River Aboriginal man travelling with Sturt’s party drew ‘in the sand a plan of the Darling for 300 miles of its course, also of the Murray a good distance above and below its junction. He drew all the Lagoons on the western side and gave the name of each; by comparing afterwards the bends he drew with Major Mitchell’s chart, they both agreed. The part he drew was from the junction of the Bogan to the junction of the Murray.’32

Away from the coast, swamps (wetlands) were the Aboriginal peoples’ richest resource. They provided fish, shellfish, birds, eggs, frogs, bulrushes, reeds and nardoo, which was used to make flour.33 In some areas people made dams to extend the swamps or to stop them drying out. They also made dams for animals in dry country, and wells or caches for themselves. In some cases, the dams were made to hold stormwater which was led into them by surface drains. In 1875, Ernest Giles found a dam on the South Australia–Western Australia border in what he described as ‘probably the worst desert upon the face of the earth’.34 While wells were also found in areas where water was not in short supply, they were more common in the desert. Wells were made too deep for animals – up to several metres, or alternatively, the openings were covered. Water in dams attracted animals; wells and caches for people reduced losses through evaporation. The following extract from the record of Ernest Giles on his travels south of Kata Tjuta in Central Australia says something about the explorers’ use of any water they found, as well as the skill of the Aboriginal peoples in protecting it: …[I] was fortunate to discover a small piece of flat rock, which was hardly perceptible among the grass; on it I saw a few dead sticks, and an old native fireplace, which excited my curiosity, and on riding up to it, I found to my astonishment under the dead sticks two splendid little rock-holes or basins in the solid rock, with ample water in them for the requirements of all my horses.35 Wells and caches were often small and well hidden. On his way to Port Essington in 1844, Leichardt described how local people pointed out to them ‘… the most shady road to some wells surrounded with ferns which were situated in some tea-tree hollows at the confines of the plains and the forest’.36 The anthropologist Ted Strehlow travelled thousands of kilometres to witness and record Aboriginal ways. He reported that when following his Aboriginal guide, ‘We would often travel ‘blind’ through thick mulga scrub for several hours, and then halt suddenly before a soak or rock plate invisible even from a distance of fifty yards’.37 When Aboriginal art of the Western Desert began to appear before the general public in the early 1970s, it was in the form of traditional sand paintings done with the hands, transferred onto board using natural ochres and later acrylic paints. These paintings typically showed the homelands of the artist or stories from the Dreaming.38 The locations of waterholes, often groundwater sources such as soakages and springs, showing ‘travelling lines’ going to and from the waterholes, are commonly depicted in these paintings, as in

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Plate 6.2. This practice further emphasises the central importance of the knowledge of water sources in Aboriginal life. Eyre summed up the Aboriginal peoples’ knowledge of water and country well when he wrote in 1845: Another very great advantage on the part of the natives is, the intimate knowledge they have of every nook and corner of the country they inhabit; does a shower of rain fall, they know the very rock where a little water is most likely to be collected, the very hole where it is the longest retained … Are there heavy dews at night, they know where the longest grass grows, from which they may collect the spangles, and water is sometimes procured thus in very great abundance. Should there be neither rains nor dews, their experience at once points out to them the lowest levels where the gum scrub grows, and where they are sure of getting water from its roots, with the least possible amount of labour that the method admits of, and with the surest prospect of success.39

Changes to the country after 1788 The world of the Aboriginal peoples changed forever after 1788. They were displaced, often violently, from their homelands and denied access to their watercourses, fertile lands, sacred sites and the usual sources of their sustenance. As European settlement spread, Aboriginal land and water management was rapidly replaced by farming and pastoral activities based on English methods. Formerly secluded waterholes and fragile waterways were destroyed by stock. During this process, evidence of the original inhabitants’ achievements was destroyed or greatly diminished – rangelands, villages, water management features – meaning that this evidence, and the thriving societies that once existed, were not seen by other than European explorers and the first wave of settlers. In addition, these groups only had eyes for the country in terms of what great towns could be built and what wealth could be captured from the land. Significantly, the country changed following European settlement. The early European settlers didn’t realise that the fertile soil they saw on arrival, and highly prized, was the result of careful management over a very long period. Introduced stock – cattle and sheep – compacted the ground, increasing water run-off, lessening the amount of water soaking into the soil and promoting erosion. Intensive farming and the movement of animals resulted in large-scale reduction of native grasses, exposing the ground to the sun with resultant cracking. Some valued grass species became rare or extinct. In some areas, topsoil was blown away. Soil salinity spread where deep-rooted natural grasses and bushes were replaced with shallow-rooted crops. Wetlands were drained to produce more land for crops or pasture. Rivers and waterways were modified and diverted for irrigation, causing reduction in flows, or were used for transport (of wool). Rivers that once ran clear and were abundant with fish and birdlife became muddy and lifeless. Waterholes that had contained clear water surrounded by greenery were trodden into muddy holes by cattle, making the water unusable by humans. Throughout the country, many small water caches dried up or choked, making life harder in times of drought. Scrub or dense forest replaced open grassy country. Kangaroo, possum, koala and emu populations exploded, reaching plague proportions in some areas. Large, intense ‘killer’ bushfires began to occur intermittently, though no such fires were recorded by the newly-arrived Europeans.40 The changes have been so extensive that it is difficult for us today to imagine what the country was like before 1788.

7

The Great Artesian Basin If you travel along the Oodnadatta Track from Maree to William Creek across the generally flat terrain of desert sand ridges and gibber plains in outback South Australia, you’ll come across some strange-looking mound structures set in a moon-like landscape. These are mound springs, some given unexpected names such as the ‘Blanche Cup’, and ‘The Bubbler’. They typically consist of a central pool of water, an outer rim of reeds and vegetation, an outflow channel, and successive layers of a carbonate cementation of sand, silt and clay forming the characteristic mound structure (Plate 7.1). Mound springs can be up to 8 m high and 30 m in diameter. These structures, a particular form of artesian spring, are places where water from the Great Artesian Basin reaches the surface. The rate at which water flows is very variable, but the amount of carbonate cementation and the height of the mounds indicate that springs have been flowing for a long period over geological time.1 The Great Artesian Basin (GAB) is a giant aquifer – or rather a giant series of aquifers – underlying a large part of Australia. It covers 22 per cent of the continent or over 1.7 million km2, and is among the largest groundwater storages in the world. It lies beneath arid and semi-arid parts of Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia and the Northern Territory, and stretches 1300 km at its widest point (Fig. 7.1).2 The water is stored between the grains in porous sandstone rock wedged between impervious mudstone and siltstone. Water enters the Basin from rain falling on porous sedimentary rock outcrops along the Great Dividing Range,3 known as ‘recharge areas’ (Fig. 7.2). The depth of the GAB ranges from less than 100 m near the edges to three kilometres, and it is estimated to contain 65 000 km3 (65 million GL) of water, or enough to fill Sydney Harbour 130 000 times. It can be compared to a giant saucer with one (eastern) edge slightly raised, and the remainder sloping away to the south-west. Maximum pressure in the Basin is 1300 kilopascals – about six times the air pressure in a car tyre. Average temperature of the water is 30–50°C, but it can reach up to 100°C at the surface and 130°C below the surface.4 The quality of most of the Basin’s water is such that it can be used for most purposes, including drinking. Within the Basin the water moves very slowly – 1 to 5 m per year – from north-east to south-west, and on the way it absorbs minerals. As a result, water towards the lower edge of the Basin is more salty than water in the upper (north-east) portions.5 The water seeps out naturally through artesian springs or seepages (‘discharge areas’). These occur where there are faults or erosion of the confining beds. The total number of individual artesian springs in the Basin is ~600. Along the south-west margin, where the Oodnadatta Track lies, many artesian springs are surrounded by the characteristic mound, hence the name ‘mound springs’. If you scoop up a handful of water from a mound spring such as the Blanche Cup, you hold in your hand water that is nearly two million years old, as it takes as long as this for water that enters the basin through the recharge areas in the 63

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BAMAGA

CAIRNS

MOUNT ISA

QLD

ALICE SPRINGS

ROCKHAMPTION

LONGREACH CHARLEVILLE OODNADATTA

TOOWOOMBA

BRISBANE

COOBER PEDY BOURKE SA BROKEN HILL

MOREE

DUBBO NSW SYDNEY

State boundaries

VIC

Towns GAB extent

Fig. 7.1.  Geographical extent of the Great Artesian Basin. Source: Great Artesian Basin Coordinating Committee (CC BY 4.0).

north to reach the south-western edge.6 The water scooped up is clear, and has a slightly salty taste. There are groups of artesian springs and seepages in many other parts of the Basin, especially near the southern and western edges. These were crucial for the survival of Aboriginal people living in arid regions for thousands of years. They were often the only assured sources of water, were prime sites for hunting, and defined Aboriginal trade routes, along which people carried materials and objects from the Flinders Ranges deep into Central Australia and back. They were also precious cultural sites and are inextricably woven into Aboriginal stories and histories. They remain significant to this day. The springs and seepages are also important as drought refuge areas for much wildlife and as wetlands for migratory birds.7 One large cluster is Witjira-Dalhousie Springs, in an isolated region ~250 km southeast of Alice Springs. Here, there are some 80 artesian springs in an area of 70 km2; they are the only source of permanent surface water for 150 km. Because of their prolonged isolation, they are home to species of aquatic life found nowhere else – crustaceans, snails and fish. They are also an integral part of Aboriginal tradition and life in northern South Australia. The pool of the main spring in this cluster measures ~150 m by 50 m of warm (38– 43°C), highly mineralised water, and has been described as an ‘outback oasis’. In some contrast, artesian springs on Cape York Peninsula have high flows that support lush rainforest and contribute to the baseflow of some rivers.8 Artesian springs and seepages sustained early European exploration where permanent water was scarce. They were vital for Eyre on his trek to Lake Eyre in 1840, and for John

7 – The Great Artesian Basin

Recharge areas

Springs

Potentiometric surface Non-flowing bore (sub-artesian) Flowing bores (artesian)

Mean sea level

Legend Bedrock Aquifer

Fault

Direction of water movement Impervious material

Fig. 7.2.  Operation of an artesian basin. Source: Great Artesian Basin Coordinating Committee (CC BY 4.0).

McDouall Stuart in his expeditions of 1859–1862, the last culminating in the crossing of Australia from south to north. It is ironic that during Charles Sturt’s final expedition in 1844 in which he struggled through the harsh dry wastes of what is now Sturt’s Stony Desert, still in his mind searching for the elusive inland sea (Chapter 5), he had an enormous ‘underground sea’ in the form of the GAB beneath his feet. Unfortunately for him, there were no artesian springs for him to access the water in this region. In 1818 when explorer John Oxley laboured for weeks through reed beds he described as ‘barren scrub’ in northern New South Wales, unbeknown to him he was crossing recharge beds of the GAB, in an area now known as the Macquarie Marshes.4 These inland explorations paved the way for pastoralists, for whom the artesian springs became their critical water sources. Artesian springs also became staging posts of the Overland Telegraph line linking Adelaide to Darwin and the world, which was built in 1870–72 and followed John McDouall Stuart’s route. Water was needed for the working parties of carpenters, blacksmiths, surveyors, linesmen, telegraphers, cooks and storekeepers during construction, and for the staff of the repeater stations during operation. The original Central Australian Railway Line (The Ghan) from Adelaide to Alice Springs, built from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, followed a similar route. Water for its operation and maintenance was required for the locomotives, and for the people who lived along the line – railway workers, fettlers and their families. This water came from artesian springs and bores. Remnants of both of these significant early engineering achievements can still be seen. In the case of the Overland Telegraph line, the remnants are mainly posts and some wire, apart from ruins of repeater stations (for example, at Beltana in northern South Australia). Remnants of the railway include railway sidings, stone buildings, track remains, bridges

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and other railway infrastructure. At Curdimurka siding there is, among buildings and other infrastructure, a water softener (Plate 7.2) whose purpose was to remove harmful salts from bore water which would otherwise cause heavy scaling in locomotive boilers. Another still stands at the Edward Creek siding. At Strangways Springs there was an Overland Telegraph repeating station as well as a railway siding.

Artesian bores The GAB was first ‘discovered’ by European settlers when a bore drilled at Kallara station near Bourke in north-western New South Wales in 1878 produced flowing water from a depth of 53 m.4 At the beginning, bores were drilled near artesian springs, as these were known sources of artesian water. But as people began to realise the extent of the area covered by the Basin, bores were drilled in more central regions. The first large flows were achieved in 1886–87, at Thurulgoona Station near Cunnamulla and at Barcaldine, both in Queensland. Some 700  000  L per day gushed from the 210  m-deep bore at Barcaldine, making news around the world and sparking a boom in bore-drilling. The first bore drilled at Charleville, Queensland, struck water at a depth of 418 m. The pressure of the water was such that it threw up small rocks and fossilised ferns into the air. ‘The water rose to a height of 50 feet above the casing and it took 12 men to cap the bore.’9 In spite of the high cost and uncertainty of success, over 500 bores had been sunk by the turn of the century. By 1915, over 1500 free-flowing artesian bores had been drilled throughout the Basin and thousands of kilometres of open bore drains were dug to carry stock water across properties. The total flow rate of all bores reached a peak of 3000 ML per day in 1918.10 The relationships between the various parts of the GAB – recharge areas, discharge areas (springs), bores, stored water and the confining rock layers – are shown in Fig. 7.2. Bores sunk in positions where the pressure is insufficient for the water tapped to flow freely are referred to as sub-artesian bores. The tapping of the water in the GAB was a great boon to the development of dry areas of Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia. It made it possible to supply water for livestock, for general farm use and for towns, and was crucial for survival during periods of drought. AB (‘Banjo’) Paterson captured the vital importance as well as the drama of finding water ‘down below’ in his poem ‘Song of the Artesian Water’, written in 1896 during the height of the early drilling period. The poem gives some insight into the mechanics of the drilling process at the time; it also makes us reflect on the achievement of drilling to such depths – 4000 feet is 1.2 km – in the late nineteenth century. It begins: Now the stock have started dying, for the Lord has sent a drought; But we’re sick of prayers and Providence – we’re going to do without; And later suggests the anxiety and uncertainty of the process as the drill goes deeper: But there’s no artesian water, though we’ve passed three thousand feet, And the contract price is growing and the boss is nearly beat. But it must be down beneath us and it’s down we’ve got to go, Though she’s bumping on the solid rock four thousand feet below. Ultimately, success:

7 – The Great Artesian Basin

But it’s hark! the whistle’s blowing with a wild, exultant blast, And the boys are madly cheering, for they’ve struck the flow at last…’11 Thargomindah in remote south-west Queensland was the first town in Australia to use artesian water for its water supply, beginning in 1895. Drilling commenced in 1891, and after two years, a strong supply of water was found at a depth of 808 m. The town, 1100 km west of Brisbane and 200 km west of Cunnamulla, has a hot, semi-arid climate where temperatures in the long summer can reach 48°C. It was first settled in the 1860s at a crossing of the Bulloo River. The edition of The Queenslander for Saturday 23 March 1895 reported this significant event, outlining the scope of the scheme and its advantages, such as lower house insurance premiums, which may not be immediately obvious to us 120 years later. The report also captures something of the spirit of the times. To Thargomindah belongs the honour of first having applied a scheme for the general utilisation of the bore water….it having been decided to reticulate the town with water mains. The application of water-power to the electric lighting machinery may come later on … On behalf of the Bulloo Divisional Board, [Mr P. J. Leahy] has now purchased 70 tons of water pipes, which it is estimated will cover a distance of two miles [3.2 km] … The main will run from the bore to Dowling-street, intersecting Sam-street (the other principal thoroughfare). From the points of intersection of both streets, pipes will branch east and west to a sufficient distance to take in nearly all the dwellings. The distance the water will have to travel will be rather an advantage in the case of Thargomindah, since the water when it issues from the bore is at a temperature of 166 deg. Fahr.[74°C], and consequently requires considerable cooling before it is useable. It is nevertheless of excellent quality, and the laying of it on to the houses will be an inestimable boon. At the present time the fire insurance rate averages something like 45s. per cent, and reduction of this heavy tax is not unnaturally looked for. At one time it was thought that the water supply might be pumped from the Bulloo River, which runs close to the township, but the idea of utilising the bore for the purpose had many things to commend it – notably its comparative cheapness and its unquestionable purity … It is expected that in less than three months Thargomindah will have the first reticulated water supply from a bore in Queensland.12 It is worth noting that at the same time, on the other side of the continent, 3000 km away, CY O’Connor was devising a plan to supply water to the remote, dry Eastern Goldfields, which had no suitable supply from either surface or underground sources (Chapter 10). Today, Thargomindah has a population of ~250 and still relies on water from the GAB (Plate 7.3). The new bore produces 5.72 ML of water daily from a depth of 820 m at a temperature of 82°C,13 allowing a plentiful supply for the residents, including watering of front and back gardens. These days, water from the bore first passes to large cooling ponds where the temperature is lowered to 20°C before being piped to houses. This results in less wear and tear on the pipes and fittings. Thargomindah was also the first town in Australia and the third in the world (after London and Paris) to provide hydro-electric power for street lighting. The water pressure from the artesian bore was used to drive turbines (water wheels) coupled to generators from 1898 to 1951, when diesel generators replaced the water turbines. Thargomindah was connected to the national power grid via Cunnamulla in 1988.

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Washdown On the edges of outback towns of western Queensland such as Birdsville, Bedourie and Boulia, bore water is put to what is an unusual use – at least for those living in larger towns and cities – the operation of ‘washdown facilities’. Here, large trucks and road trains are encouraged to wash off the dust gathered from travelling on unmade roads before entering the town – and the facilities can be a bonus for the private traveller as well. A large diameter hose connected to a bore water tank next to a concrete bay gushes water when the pump is turned on. Layers of fine dust covering the car and camper trailer disappear in a wink. And it’s an especially enjoyable job when the air temperature is around 40°C. Further east, vehicle washdown bays have been built in various locations, such as at Ilfracombe, east of Longreach, to help prevent the spread of weeds, particularly Parthenium weed, an introduced species that reduces beef production and costs cropping industries millions of dollars a year.

Water from the GAB remains the lifeblood of many rural communities as well as agricultural, mining and tourism businesses. It is used in households in more than 120 towns and settlements and on hundreds of properties. You can experience this yourself if you reach William Creek, a tiny settlement consisting of a hotel and a couple of houses half way along the Oodnadatta Track, and stay at the camping area opposite the hotel. Here, whether you camp on the dry ground or stay in one of the ‘dongas’, you will appreciate the bore-fed makeshift bathroom facilities, where you can happily wash away your troubles as well as the dust and sweat from the day. One thing that won’t escape your notice is the brown staining on the bathroom ware caused by the mineral content of the artesian water from deep below. The GAB is one of the most important natural water resources in Australia, and the only reliable source of water for human activity and water-dependent biological communities in large areas of arid and semi-arid country in Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia and Northern Territory. The estimated total number of bores tapping the GAB at present is ~4700.9 But the proliferation of bores and the consequent opening up of the country to European settlers was calamitous for Aboriginal people; sheep and cattle trampled Aboriginal grasslands and fragile ecosystems to dust, ruining their livelihood.14

Wasting GAB water Historically, the vast majority of water extracted has been wasted –a senseless level of waste. This is because artesian water that came to the surface under natural pressure was allowed to flow uncontrolled into open bore drains that were dug to carry water to stock. Some of these drains were many kilometres long, and there were thousands of kilometres of drains overall. Water was lost through evaporation in the hot, dry climate, and seepage – estimated at 80 per cent, and up to 95 per cent in some cases, even in well-maintained drains. People treated the water as if the supply were inexhaustible.15 The vast increase in the number of free-flowing bores also resulted in reduced pressure and therefore reduced flows. (Think of a water hose connected to a tap, with an increasing number of pin holes.) As early as 1891, concern about diminishing supplies led to the intro-

7 – The Great Artesian Basin

duction of legislation in the Queensland Parliament to regulate the use of artesian water. This was not successful, however, for a number of reasons. First, was a lack of knowledge about the hydrogeological structure of the GAB and the ultimate origin of the water (there were conflicting theories). There was also opposition from pastoralists and free marketers, and the argument that it was not worth taking such a step if New South Wales did not also do the same. Two decades later, separate pieces of legislation relating to water conservation and supply were passed in Queensland (1910) and New South Wales (1912), which sparked interstate cooperation in further investigating the GAB and mapping its extent. However, this cooperation did not prevent the reduction of artesian water supply during the twentieth century. Hundreds of springs and bores stopped flowing, and the users of artesian water had to resort to pumps, usually driven by windmills, to access the water they needed (Plate 7.4).16 As well as reduced pressure, the water wastage was causing environmental damage. The development of the pastoral industry had involved the construction of thousands of dams and windmills, as well as the bores and the thousands of kilometres of bore drains. Weeds became established along bore drains and feral animals began to invade millions of hectares of land that was previously too dry for them. These animals competed with the native animals for food and habitat or preyed directly on them. The health of important groundwater-dependent ecosystems also became threatened. These ecosystems are unique assemblages of plants and animals in most cases living in shallow springs – watery islands in the desert. In addition, it had become difficult for new water users in or near the GAB to obtain access to groundwater resources. In light of this, it is almost unbelievable that no action was taken on bore rehabilitation (under state schemes) until the 1950s. The rehabilitation introduced then consisted of capping free-flowing bores and replacing drains with (polythene) pipes. Progress was made, but only slowly. By 1999, more than 600 bores had been capped, but with over 3000 uncontrolled bores and 34 000 km of open drains, there was still much more to be done.4 Eventually, in 1999, a truly cooperative Basin-wide program was established – the Great Artesian Basin Sustainability Initiative (GABSI), jointly funded by the Australian, New South Wales, South Australian and Queensland governments. The program continued until funding ceased in June 2017, with the Northern Territory being involved in more recent years.17 It focused on: ●●

●●

●●

assisting landholders to accelerate the work on capping uncontrolled bores, that is, closing the bore outlet and installing taps so the water can be turned on and off as needed. This step also included replacing old, poor quality and corroded bore casings assisting landholders to replace wasteful open earthen drains from the bores with pipes. This means that water can go straight to the stock troughs and tanks without wastage through evaporation, or damage to the environment by encouraging the growth of weeds and attracting feral animals establishing a Basin-wide monitoring network to improve the quality of information about the Basin and enable better management of Basin-wide issues.

By the end of the program, more than 750 bores had been upgraded, 21 390 km of bore drains had been decommissioned and 31  552  km of new efficient pipe drains had been installed. It is estimated that these actions resulted in water savings of more than 250 GL (equivalent to half of Sydney Harbour) each year. This work built on the earlier work commenced in the 1950s and represents the additional savings made under the cooperative

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A case study: from the Western Catchment Management Authority, New South Wales, 2009 ‘Goondablui Bore Scheme. In 2003 the Goondablui Bore Scheme (north-east of Lightning Ridge in NSW) decommissioned three bores which flowed into open bore drains and sunk one more centrally located bore. [The first Goondablui bore was sunk in 1911.] The scheme now services 65 000 ha of grazing and cropping land through 240 km of pipes to 120 troughs across 15 properties. Capping and piping the bore has reduced water consumption from 24 L/s to less than 3 L/s. 640 000 000 L [640 ML] of water is saved each year as well as 600 t (equivalent to 24 semi-trailer loads) of salt discharge. They now use less water per year than was previously used per month.’18

GABSI program. The decades of capping and piping also led to a change in landholders’ attitudes and behaviours in relation to how the Basin’s resources could be best managed.4,17 The benefits to graziers of capping and piping include: ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●●

reducing maintenance and labour costs improving stock and grazing control reducing degradation around drains facilitating control of feral animals improving water quality and pressure increasing the reliability of supply. (see box)

Ian Hall, a grazier near Quilpie in south-west Queensland observed, ‘Our operating costs have been reduced by around $20 000 and that’s a conservative estimate. Even though it was expensive to rehabilitate the bore because of its depth, we’ve really benefited from reduced maintenance and labour costs, and it’s easier to manage our stock’.19 In May 2017 the Australian Government announced $8  million to continue to fund water infrastructure projects in the GAB for two years to 30 June 2019. The purpose of the program was to enable a transition from the GABSI to ‘a new, long-term funding model that encourages greater private investment in water infrastructure’.20 A Strategic Management Plan to guide governments, water users and other stakeholders on the management of the GAB water resources was endorsed by the relevant governments in 2000. This plan had a life of 15 years and ‘envisioned a Basin-wide approach based on cooperation and coordination, underpinned by a better understanding of the Basin and improved technologies, materials and industry practices’.21 At the time of writing (November 2018), the consultation draft of a new Strategic Management Plan for the period 2019–34 had been made available for public comment. In another important move, the Great Artesian Basin Coordinating Committee was established in 2004 to provide advice from community organisations and agencies to Ministers on effective and sustainable management and to coordinate activity between stakeholders.5 These initiatives at last provided a basis for effective monitoring, development and regulation of the Basin’s valuable resources. It was recognised that while supply to towns and pastoral areas had been the main uses of GAB water in the twentieth century, the expansion of mining, tourism and other industries now needed to be taken into account. The mining of copper, uranium, coal, bauxite and opals depends on a reliable supply of artesian water from the Basin. Drilling for oil and gas in the Basin means substantial amounts

7 – The Great Artesian Basin

of artesian water are extracted as a by-product. Coal seam gas, a rapidly-expanding industry, uses large amounts of artesian water. Tourism attractions and developments across the GAB rely on artesian water, and outback tourism is leading to a growing understanding of the Basin’s Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural and environmental values. Overall, total economic production in the GAB area is worth more than $12 billion per year, according to a 2016 report commissioned by the Australian Government.22 However, there is still much about the Basin we do not know,23 and it is important that research continues to improve our knowledge and understanding of this important resource in order to maintain its value for succeeding generations.

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8

Groundwater: more than the GAB Because of its prominence and enormous size, we should not be deceived into thinking the Great Artesian Basin (GAB) is the only significant groundwater source in Australia. There are other major groundwater basins throughout the country which make essential contributions to water supplies for towns and cities, and for agricultural, mining and industrial purposes. Overall, groundwater makes up 17 per cent of Australia’s accessible fresh water, and up to one-third of our total water consumption.1

Groundwater worldwide Worldwide, groundwater makes up a staggering 98 per cent of all liquid fresh water on the planet, dwarfing that found in lakes, rivers and streams, though not all of it is accessible. Major aquifers in countries across the globe provide water for domestic, agriculture, industry and mining purposes. More than half of the world’s water for drinking, cooking and hygiene comes from groundwater. It provides 75–90 per cent of drinking water in European countries, and 95 per cent of the public-water supply for rural populations in the US. It also provides 90 per cent of urban supply in India, 70 per cent in Mexico and 90 per cent in Italy. Many towns and cities, including large cities, rely heavily on aquifers for their water supply. Examples include Bangkok, Tokyo, Tianjin, Mexico City, Beijing, New Delhi and Perth.2 Groundwater is often preferred for drinking water because it is less likely to be contaminated than surface water. Arid Libya in north Africa relies on groundwater for 95 per cent of its fresh water, and Israel, another dry country, relies heavily on this source. In the early 2000s, aquifers under the West Bank were supplying one-third of Israel’s fresh water.3 With the availability of inexpensive pumping technology – primarily due to the invention and ease of use of the turbine pump – there has been an explosion in mining of underground water over the last 50 years or so. The relatively low cost has meant that small farmers have been able to tap groundwater at deeper levels than through hand- or machinedug wells and thereby improve the productivity of their land. This has been the case in both poorer and wealthier countries. However, a lack of regulation of water drawn from aquifers has also been a big factor in this explosion. In India there have been more than 22 million tube wells sunk by farmers, and India now relies on groundwater mining for more than 50 per cent of its irrigation water. In the United States, by 2000, more than 40 per cent of all irrigation was from groundwater, and groundwater became one-quarter of all US water usage by 1996.4 Compared with surface water, groundwater provides a reliable source of fresh water in times of drought. Importantly, aquifers are natural storage reservoirs with no evaporation (and at little or no cost). 73

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As well as improved productivity, this spectacular development in the use of groundwater – occurring mainly (but not solely) in arid and semi-arid regions – has proved to be of great benefit in providing water to poor rural communities and to the urban poor, and in reducing malnutrition in poor countries.5 In short, groundwater is an important economic resource for billions of people in both developed and developing countries. Groundwater, accessed through hand-dug wells, was the main source of fresh water, along with rainwater cisterns, for Roman towns and individual dwellings before the construction of large aqueducts (Chapter 2). Long before that, the ancient civilisations of the Indus Valley used private and communal wells more than 4000 years ago, and from around 3000 years ago, some ancient civilisations tapped aquifers using qanats to provide a steady and reliable supply of fresh water (Chapter 1). Developments over the last half-century are a dramatic extension of the age-old use of groundwater resources.

Consequences of over-extraction There can be serious negative consequences of over-extraction of groundwater – that is, of removing water at a greater rate than it is being replaced. Unfortunately, there are all too many cases where this has occurred – and on a large scale. The Ogallala aquifer, one of the world’s largest, lies beneath the arid High Plains in the United States. It underlies an area of ~450 000 km2 including parts of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico, and contained some 4000 km3 of water, or more than 235 years’ flow of the Colorado River. In the period following World War II, turbine pumps driven by cheap diesel fuel tapped the aquifer in great numbers, mainly for irrigation purposes. By 1971 the number of pumps in West Texas alone had reached 66 000, and in the growing season, these pumps – and all others across the aquifer – going day and night extracted huge volumes of water. The former Dust Bowl area of the 1930s was transformed into an extremely productive agricultural region, and by the 1970s, it was growing 15 per cent of the nation’s corn, cotton, wheat and sorghum. However, this situation was unsustainable; water was being mined at 10 times the rate at which it was being replaced in the aquifer. By 1980, the water level across the aquifer had fallen by an average of 3 m and in some places by 30 m. The rate of pumping was reduced from the late 1970s due to a large increase in the cost of fuel for pumping, the introduction of some regulation, and later, changes in farming techniques. Despite this, the aquifer is still being depleted each year by a volume equivalent to 18 Colorado Rivers, putting at risk the $20 billion per year in food and fibre production that depends on it. Some areas of the aquifer are already dry; others are predicted to run dry between 2020 and 2030.6 The Ogallala water accumulated mostly from now-vanished rivers and is at least three million years old. The aquifer is recharged only very slowly; if it was emptied it would take 6000 years to refill by natural processes.7 Some aquifers worldwide have virtually no recharge, as they are insulated from the planet’s natural water cycle. The water stored in them can only be used once; the reservoir is then empty. In these cases, the terms ‘fossil aquifer’ and ‘fossil water’ are often used. There are different opinions as to whether, or under what circumstances, fossil water should be used at all, because once used it will not be available for future generations. Water governance researcher Elena Lopez-Gunn and her colleagues have argued that the mining of fossil water resources is justified if the following conditions are all met: ●● ●●

The volume of the water reserves can be measured with acceptable accuracy. The planned rate of extraction can be guaranteed over a long period (50–100 years).

8 – Groundwater: more than the GAB

●●

●●

Environmental consequences are properly assessed and are outweighed by the economic and social benefits of using the water. A solution has been thought of for the time when the water finally runs out.8

In India, the water tables are falling sharply due to extraction of groundwater by the enormous number of wells, which continues to increase. This fall means that wells must be sunk ever deeper, threatening the economics of water retrieval and use, and making it more difficult or even impossible for small-time farmers and other users to access groundwater. In some places, the groundwater has already run out. A similar dire situation is occurring in the North China Plain.4 Intensive extraction of groundwater can also lead to land subsidence, as is occurring in the Chinese city of Tianjin, and in Mexico City where the city centre has subsided 7.5 m since 1950 due to extraction of water from aquifers at twice the rate of replenishment. Groundwater is also subject to pollution by agricultural pesticide and fertiliser run-off, as has occurred in India, and chemical wastes from industry.3 In coastal areas, intensive extraction may lead to seawater intruding, making the water unusable.

Groundwater in Australia Groundwater plays a crucial role in Australia, the driest inhabited continent on earth, where huge areas of the country have little surface water available. For many regions, especially in the arid and semi-arid outback areas, it is the only reliable water supply available. Many Aboriginal communities, remote pastoral properties, mining operations and some towns rely on it for their water supply, as we have already seen in relation to the GAB (Chapter 7). Despite this, many of us have little knowledge and understanding of groundwater and its use, especially those of us who live in cities and towns along the eastern and south-eastern coasts of Australia where major water supplies come from more visible sources such as rivers, streams and dams. With a growing population and increasing scarcity of surface water in some areas due to climate change, ground water reserves are increasingly being called on. The estimated annual groundwater use in Australia is ~3.5 km3 (3500 GL), based on 2013 figures. Groundwater is used across many sectors of the Australian economy: the largest user is agriculture (60 per cent), followed by manufacturing and other industries (17 per cent), mining (12 per cent), input into potable water supply networks (9 per cent), and household water supply (5 per cent). In addition to this, groundwater is used as drinking water for livestock, and it supports unique environments and consequently tourism.9 It also has important value as a backup supply in times when surface water is in short supply, such as in droughts. In many areas, it has a crucial role in sustaining stream flows. Most of Western Australia, Northern Territory and South Australia rely to a much greater extent on groundwater than on surface water. In about one-third of Queensland (inland areas), significantly more groundwater is used than surface water, whereas in the other states, especially Tasmania, there is generally less groundwater usage. In the Northern Territory, where 90 per cent of water used is groundwater, there are 35 000 bores, and over-use poses significant risk to springs, soaks and rivers.10 Examples of important groundwater resources include: ●● ●●

the Great Artesian Basin (Chapter 7) the Murray–Darling Basin, where major alluvial aquifers11 form part of Australia’s major food bowl (Chapter 13)

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The Australian Drinking Water Guidelines Based on taste, the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines13 suggest up to 600 mg/L of total dissolved solids (TDS) can be classified as ‘good’ quality, 600–900 as ‘fair’ and 900–1200 as ‘poor’. Water with TDS of more than 1200 mg/L is considered to be unacceptable (unpalatable) for human consumption. Water for irrigation may have TDS of up to 1500 mg/L depending on the crop, though some crops can tolerate higher levels. The recommended maximum TDS for livestock watering is 10 000 mg/L, but above 4–5000 some loss of production can be expected as well as some reluctance to drink.14

●● ●●

●●

the Perth Basin, which supplies a big portion of Perth’s water supplies the Eucla Basin located at the head of the Great Australian Bight and extending 300 km inland, underlying the Nullarbor Plain. It contains sedimentary aquifers of high salinity and so has limited direct application for human or stock use the Amadeus Basin, a huge underground sedimentary rock formation covering ~150  000  km2 and up to 7  km deep, which provides the water supply for Alice Springs.12

This is not a complete list of major groundwater resources, and there are many other aquifers that cover smaller areas and are just as important to local communities, agriculture and in contributing to the Australian economy. The highest concentration of groundwater use is in the Murray–Darling Basin, which covers parts of South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, where an average of up to 3324 GL of groundwater may be extracted annually, primarily to support irrigated agriculture (Chapter 14). While groundwater is present throughout Australia, the quality of the water can vary from one place to another, depending on the level of dissolved minerals. Much is too saline for drinking or agricultural purposes (see box).

Some examples of groundwater use Alice Springs Alice Springs, located in arid country in the Northern Territory and close to the geographical centre of the continent, is the largest centre of population in Central Australia with 28 000 residents (based on 2011 figures). It has a large transient population and an estimated 400 000 visitors per year, the majority of whom are tourists. The town’s location was originally chosen as the site for a repeater station for the Overland Telegraph line in 1871 because it was thought that the Telegraph Station waterhole in the dry Todd River bed was a permanent source of water. Tourism is a major industry, as is Aboriginal art. Activities in the surrounding areas include pastoralism and mining exploration, and there is a defence facility at nearby Pine Gap. The average rainfall is 250 mm per year, but it can vary greatly from year to year, and the annual evaporation rate is ~3000 mm. Nevertheless, the water resources of Alice Springs sustained the traditional peoples – the Arrernte – for many thousands of years. In this dry environment, Alice Springs’ water needs are met from three aquifers in the Amadeus Basin, mostly (80 per cent) from the Mereenie aquifer via the Roe Creek borefield 15 km south of the town. There are no permanent bodies of surface water in the area.

8 – Groundwater: more than the GAB

The use of surface water via dams is not feasible due to the low rainfall, high evaporation rates, unreliable run-off, unsatisfactory catchment areas and the likelihood of transgressing Aboriginal sacred sites. Water in the Mereenie aquifer is 10 000–32 000 years old, with a total volume of 5000– 6000 km3 (5–6 million GL). The water extracted is of good quality, with total dissolved solids (TDS) of 350 mg/L. However, this is basically a non-renewable resource as there is almost no recharge (a small amount reaches it from the Todd River and Roe Creek after flooding rain). Therefore, once used the water source will not be available to future generations. As water is extracted from the aquifer, the water table falls, requiring pumping from a deeper level. Since drilling began in the Roe Creek borefield in 1964, 28 production bores have been put into service and more than 250 GL have been extracted – equivalent to half of Sydney Harbour. During this period the water table has dropped by 60 m to 150 m below ground level and is currently falling by 1–1.5 m each year. Based on the quantity of water in the aquifer and the current rate of extraction, there is sufficient water to last for 300–400 years; it is estimated it will take up to 150 years to reach 380 m below ground level. However, the feasibility of continuing to use the water depends on several factors: the economic depth of pumping, the characteristics of the aquifer at greater depths; and the changing demands for water. As deeper drilling is needed, costs rise. Deep production bores are very expensive to drill and complete, as deep monitoring bores also have to be drilled. Pumping from great depths comes at a high cost, and there are technical depth limits to the equipment available. On top of this, the fuel used in the diesel pumps generates greenhouse gases and is subject to price increases. In addition, there is no guarantee that water quality will remain high enough for household use as extraction occurs from deeper in the aquifer. In fact, experience has shown that deeper extraction often results in more highly mineralised water. Alice Springs water authorities have identified several areas of potential water savings, such as leaks and overwatering of gardens, and efforts are being made to reduce consumption. This has had some effect with average household consumption reducing from 1450 L per day in 2008–09 to 1100 L per day in 2011–12, but this is still higher than that for other dry inland cities such as Kalgoorlie or Mount Isa. Looking to the future, the Alice Springs Water Resource Strategy: 2006–2015 was motivated at least in part by community concern about the sustainability of water resources in the region. The strategy has been based on ‘maximum allowable yield’ (taken to be a working definition of ‘sustainable yield’) ‘… which protects environmental systems and preserves an acceptable amount of water for future generations, so that … total extraction from Amadeus Basin aquifers over a period of no less than 320 years shall not exceed 80 per cent of the total aquifer storage at the start of the extraction or not more than 25 per cent of the total aquifer storage extracted every 100 years’.15 On this basis, water extraction from the Amadeus aquifers will need to be capped at 10 732 ML per year, a rate expected to be reached in 2017. The amount of water available for extraction in the future could also be influenced by additional hydrogeological evidence about the estimate of available storage, improved extraction methods, water recycling and reallocation from other sources. A Water Allocation Plan: 2016–2026 has subsequently been released.16 To what extent does the Alice Springs Water Resource Strategy: 2006–2015 for extraction of water from the Amadeus Basin aquifers meet the criteria for use of fossil water identified by Elena Lopez-Gunn and colleagues as discussed above? On the face of it, the criteria are at least partly met, but a detailed analysis would be needed to properly answer the question.

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The Canning Stock Route The Canning Stock Route is a 1850-km track that runs from Wiluna to Halls Creek in Western Australia. It crosses 800 sand hills and four deserts in some of Earth’s most inhospitable country. The story of its development is a story about water. To the surveyors and drovers, water was essential for their commercial operation; for the Aboriginal peoples, water was at the heart of their social, cultural and economic life. The Canning Stock Route resulted from efforts to find a path through the desert for cattle to be transported from the East Kimberley in the north to southern markets. Alfred Canning was selected to survey a route that had water supplies one day’s bullock journey apart which could supply sufficient water for up to 800 head of cattle. He began his survey in April 1906 and used Aboriginal ‘guides’ to lead him to sources of water – soaks and springs. In an appalling act, he took neck chains and handcuffs with him, and the ‘guides’ (captives) were chained overnight to ensure they stayed with him for as long as he needed, and were given salt water so their thirst would lead them to water sources. Some of the springs and soaks were both secret and sacred, and it is likely that the Aboriginal ‘guides’ steered the party away from these, their choices thereby dictating the route. The fact that the survey was completed at all was mainly due to the knowledge of the Aboriginal peoples along the route. In 1908 Canning led a party to sink wells at the water sources. For each well this involved building timber walls for the upper part of the well, a protective fence around the opening, and ~12 m of troughing for cattle to drink from. There was also a windlass and bucket for raising water. In all, 48 wells were so constructed for the 52 water sources along the route. The deepest well was 31.8 m, the shallowest 1.4 m. Dynamite was used in some cases to supplement hand excavation. The inestimable value of groundwater – in this case from local aquifers – is again demonstrated here. The local people, who had made use of the sources for many thousands of years, did not share the view of the explorers that finding life-saving quantities of water in the hot desert country was a seemingly unlikely event. As was so often the case with the European settlers’ quests for water, the development of the Canning Stock Route led to conflict, essentially because the well structures meant the traditional owners’ access to their water sources had been blocked. Largely because of this, the route was never used to the extent the Kimberley pastoralists had anticipated. The first mob of bullocks – 150 of them – left Halls Creek in January 1911. The last droving run was completed in 1959. Nowadays, the Canning Stock Route attracts four-wheel-drive enthusiasts and adventurers, from all over Australia and beyond, who are keen to experience the challenges of the remote Australian outback and to learn about the culture of the traditional owners of the land it crosses.17

Perth Groundwater is the main source of water in dry Western Australia. It is a critically important resource for major supply systems, agriculture, industry, pastoral properties and households. Overall it provides two-thirds of the state’s water needs. The capital city, Perth, with a population of two million in the greater metropolitan area and growing, relies on

8 – Groundwater: more than the GAB

groundwater for 43 per cent of its supplies. The remainder comes from two seawater desalination plants (39 per cent) and surface water via dams (18 per cent). Traditionally, Perth relied on dams, but with population growth and a dry climate, surface water was insufficient for the city’s needs. The groundwater is drawn from three major aquifers – a shallow, unconfined superficial aquifer, and two deeper, confined or semi-confined aquifers. These aquifers are part of a sedimentary basin, the Perth Basin, which extends for 800 km along the west coast of Australia and from 15 to 20 km inland, and contains fresh water to depths of two kilometres. Water for the public supply comes from all three aquifers and is distributed among them, with more coming from the deeper aquifers to minimise the impact on water-dependent ecosystems. There are also ~170 000 private bores in Perth from which people draw water for gardens and for the horticulture industry. This water comes from the superficial unconfined aquifer, known as the Gnangara Mound since the water table in the region forms a mound shape. The south-west of Western Australia has experienced a drying climate in recent years. Rainfall has decreased by almost one-fifth since 1970, and the science suggests this is linked to human-caused climate change. As a result of this reduction and an increasing population, the extraction of groundwater has increased markedly and exceeds the rate of recharge (from rainfall). Extraction from the Gnangara Mound has more than doubled over the last 20 years, and long-term weather predictions indicate that lower rainfall patterns are likely to continue. There is a limit to how much water can sustainably be drawn from the aquifer.18 To cope with increasing demand and the deleterious effects on groundwater of overextraction and reduced rainfall, current and future plans involve groundwater replenishment. This involves treating wastewater to drinking water standards and recharging it into groundwater supplies. The water is then stored, and removed at a later time for further treatment and inclusion in the public supply system. The aim is to supply up to 20 per cent of Perth’s drinking water through this means by 2060. A trial of the scheme was successfully completed in 2009–2012. This approach has been used elsewhere in the world – for example, in Orange County in California, where groundwater replenishment was originally introduced in 1976 to prevent saltwater intrusion into the aquifer, and later to supplement Orange County’s water supplies.19 One target is to reduce Perth’s water use by 15 per cent by 2030. It has been argued20 that too much of Perth’s supply of high quality water is used in maintaining green and leafy suburban gardens during the city’s long dry summers, and that the association of prestige with the gardens is a hangover from the early days of settlement by new arrivals from England. A more sustainable approach consistent with the south-west’s dry climate is needed. Other important water-saving measures have also been proposed, including better mechanisms to ‘save’ groundwater in wet years so that more is available during droughts, and altering the way water entitlements operate. The latter change would see water entitlement volumes vary according to the water available, rather than the fixed-volume entitlements that operate at present. This would ensure that extractions beyond sustainable levels did not occur in drought years.21

Botany Sands In New South Wales, the Botany Sands aquifer contains a large volume of water in the sandy ground surrounding Botany Bay, covering an area of ~141  km2. The aquifer is recharged by rainwater percolating through sand and sandstone beds. The groundwater

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supports natural pond systems which sustained Aboriginal communities before European settlement. It was this aquifer that supplied early Sydney town with water from the Lachlan Swamps as a result of Busby’s bore and from the Botany Wetlands after 1859, as discussed in Chapter 4. For 100 years or more, the Botany area has been heavily used by industries including tanneries, service stations and depots, metal platers, dry cleaners, wool scourers and chemical industries. As a result, groundwater has become contaminated with chlorinated hydrocarbons – compounds containing chlorine, carbon and hydrogen – including pesticides, industrial chemicals and chlorine waste, among others. While the ‘natural’ groundwater in the aquifer has a salinity level of 500  mg/L, making it suitable for a range of purposes including drinking, the chemical contamination severely limits its use. The New South Wales government’s current management regime has the area divided into four zones, with the use of water from one zone banned completely while water from the other zones is available for limited industrial use subject to annual testing and reporting of water quality. Managed recharge of the aquifer is currently being used on a small scale using stormwater input via the Centennial Park pond system, and there is opportunity for further development of this approach.22

Koo Wee Rup swamp: groundwater use in a high rainfall area The area around Koo Wee Rup (current annual rainfall ~860 mm), 55 km south-east of Melbourne, was a swamp covering some 40 000 ha before ~1900. The swamp was drained into the sea (Westernport Bay) by means of a series of canals, to provide land for dairy and vegetable farming. An aquifer lies beneath this land and water from it has been used for vegetable farming, with particularly intensive use occurring during the 1960s. Due to excessive pumping of water from the aquifer, seawater began entering, turning the aquifer water salty. To prevent this problem, the area was declared a Groundwater Conservation Area in 1971. As a result, regulations were introduced to limit the amount of water that could be extracted each year, and licensed bores were metred. Subsequently, farmers also introduced more efficient farming methods and water use practices. At present, there are new challenges – if climate change results in increased sea levels, this could alter the balance between seawater and groundwater. In addition, drought and land use changes resulting from population growth in the region could alter the rates of replenishment and patterns of use of the groundwater.1 Other groundwater examples Eastern Goldfields

In the early days of goldmining in the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia, groundwater was used in condensers to produce much-needed drinking water. In the present day, large volumes are used in the mining and extraction processes for gold. The salt lakes in the region are discharge areas for the groundwater, where the water evaporates after it comes to the surface, leaving salt behind. The use of saline groundwater in the area is discussed further in Chapter 10. Esperance

The water supply for the town of Esperance (population around 15 000), on the south coast of Western Australia, comes from groundwater via a borefield located within and to the west of the residential area. Water is pumped to two concrete tanks on a coastal headland on the edge of the town for distribution. Water extracted by the bores has a TDS of 340

8 – Groundwater: more than the GAB

Water divining In the 1960s I worked in the Koo Wee Rup area for a time. A colleague and I met a man who earned his living by drilling for water for farmers in the area. We were intrigued to find that he used water divining to determine where to drill, claiming that this enabled him to identify a productive location for the bore most of the time. (He didn’t claim 100 per cent reliability.) For the divining he used a thin forked (Y-shaped) branch from a bush or tree, or a piece of wire shaped similarly. He explained he held this ‘divining rod’ by the branches of the Y horizontally in his two hands in front of him and walked slowly over the ground. The single end of the Y would dip down or twitch when he located water. He had plenty of work, so he obviously managed to locate suitable places to drill often enough. (Unfortunately, due to our own work commitments, we were never able to see him in action.) Divining has a long history, perhaps going back as far as the sixteenth century. However, there is no known scientific basis for it, and on several occasions, scientific tests have concluded that water divining produced results no better than chance. Nevertheless, water diviners are still active in parts of Australia, with many claiming high success rates. Our Koo Wee Rup water diviner was one of these in earlier times; perhaps his success was due to the widespread groundwater in the region.

mg/L and, before distribution, is treated to reduce the potential for causing scaling. Surrounding farms also access the groundwater from the local aquifers through bores.14 Denham

The small town of Denham, on Shark Bay on the coast of Western Australia, is an important tourism centre for the Shark Bay World Heritage site. It lies 830 km north of Perth and is the most westerly publicly accessible town in Australia. The town’s supply of drinking water depends on brackish groundwater, which is desalinated by a reverse osmosis process. Consequently, drinking water is at a premium; a sign in a caravan park laundry in 2017 advised ‘Please use water sparingly; the cost has gone up to $14.23/kL – the dearest water in Western Australia.’ Most properties also have the brackish groundwater available, supplied through a separate system, for toilet flushing, garden watering and helping to reduce the demand on drinking water supplies. Isolated roadhouses

Isolated roadhouses on the Eyre Highway across the Nullarbor Plain in southern Australia, such as the one at Caiguna (WA), 1170 km from Perth and 1620 km from Adelaide, use bore water from aquifers in the Eucla Basin. As mentioned above, this water has high salinity, so it is passed through a desalination plant before being made available for human use. The water is used for operation of the store, café-restaurant, motel units and caravan and camping area. This supply is supplemented by tanks that collect scarce rainwater from the roofs of the roadhouse building and the motel units. Yulara (Ayers Rock resort)

Yulara (Ayers Rock Resort) is the service village for the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. Although located in a dry, inhospitable (but stunning) part of Central Australia, the v­ illage

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provides luxury accommodation as well as camping facilities. The essential water for the resort is supplied by aquifers after desalination from 1500 to 400 mg/L. Mount Gambier’s Blue Lake

The well-known Blue Lake in the city of Mount Gambier in the south-east of South Australia provides the water supply for the city of 26 000 people. The lake is fed almost entirely from a limestone aquifer.23 Tasmania

In Tasmania there are more than 8000 bores and wells that tap groundwater for irrigation, town water, domestic use, stock watering, mining and other commercial uses. While the majority of these are in use, there are also some which have been abandoned. Overall, the state’s groundwater resources are under-used, with the current usage being only around five per cent of the estimated sustainable yield. Nevertheless, there are a few places where the demand for groundwater is relatively high, resulting on pressure on the resources.24

Threats to groundwater resources Threats to the quality and quantity of groundwater resources include contamination of aquifers by pollutants, seawater intrusion, over-extraction of water, climate change and large-scale mining.

Contamination Groundwater can become contaminated by pollutants from a variety of sources: industrial waste; septic systems; stockpiles of contaminated soil; badly prepared landfills; and runoff and seepage from fertilised paddocks, livestock areas and industrial areas. Contamination can also occur when household rubbish and chemicals are dumped inappropriately. Pollutants may seep into groundwater where bore heads are not sealed properly or old abandoned bores are not properly decommissioned (in accordance with state regulations) and sealed. Contamination of groundwater is a severe problem because of the potential to cause serious health issues in humans and animals and the great difficulty and expense of cleaning up polluted aquifers. Seawater intrusion Sea water intrusion is a potential cause of contamination for aquifers in coastal areas. It can occur when the water level of a coastal aquifer drops due to excessive pumping of groundwater and sea water moves in to (partially) replace the groundwater. In the longer term, it can also occur due to sea level rises resulting from climate change. If the seawater moves far enough inland to reach bores, it can make the water too salty to be usable. The example of Koo Wee Rup has already been mentioned. Other areas of potential problem include parts of Adelaide (SA), Perth, Broome and Esperance (WA), Port Phillip Bay (Vic), and the Burdekin and Bowen areas of Queensland.1 Over-extraction The adverse – sometimes dire – consequences of over-extraction, including from nonrechargeable aquifers, have already been discussed. These include ground subsidence; increased or infeasible costs of deep drilling; reduced water quality at greater depths; disturbing the balance of interaction between surface water and groundwater; and reduced

8 – Groundwater: more than the GAB

water available for the future. Despite all of this, the use of fossil groundwater is increasing in some of Australia’s arid areas.25

Climate change Climate change also has an effect on the availability of groundwater. In periods of low rainfall or high temperatures, the demands on groundwater for irrigated agriculture, for towns and cities and water-dependent ecosystems increases at the same time as the recharge of aquifers is reduced – a ‘double whammy’ for groundwater resources. Over the past few decades, many areas of Australia have experienced a drier climate, particularly in eastern, south-eastern and south-western parts. During 1997–2009, large areas of southern Australia, including the Murray–Darling Basin, experienced prolonged drought (the ‘Millennium drought’), the most severe in 100 years of recorded rainfall history.14 Mining The growing mining sector is a large industrial user of water. Much of the mining occurs in arid or semi-arid country where there are few competing uses for the water. However, mining is increasingly occurring in agricultural areas such as the Hunter Valley in New South Wales, the Murray–Darling Basin and parts of the south-west of Western Australia. Mining in these areas is often controversial because of the competing uses for water resources. While mining offers substantial benefits to Australian society, it can also affect the quality of groundwater through shafts and tunnels intersecting groundwater systems; contaminated or saline water produced in the mining process being allowed to seep into the ground; and storage of waste materials leaching contaminants into groundwater. It can affect the quantity of groundwater through deliberate lowering of the water table to allow safe extraction of materials and the use of groundwater in mining processes. Overall, the major water management issues are the discharge of pollutants into the environment, and the impacts on other users of groundwater due to the consequential reduction in pressure.26

The Charmichael coal mine proposal Since around 2013, a proposal for a giant coal mine – the Carmichael mine* – in the north of the Galilee Basin in central Queensland has attracted huge controversy in terms of its financial viability, economic benefits and damaging environmental impacts – one of which concerns the effects on groundwater. The $16.5 billion investment would result in the largest coal mine in Australia and one of the largest in the world. The mine has been granted an unlimited 60-year water licence, and under the proposal, 12 GL of water would be extracted each year to access the coal seam. Removing this water would reduce pressure in the aquifer, which could affect flows in the nearby Great Artesian Basin, including reducing the amount of water reaching the Mellaluka and Doongmabulla Springs complexes, both of which have extremely high conservation value. Removing groundwater is also expected to increase the duration of zero- or low-flow periods in the Carmichael River system. Clearing the land for the mine itself – an area of ~170 km2 – will likely reduce local rainfall considerably. As at November 2018, the future of the proposal remains uncertain.27 * Also known as the Adani mine

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Coal seam gas Coal seam gas (CSG) is natural gas (mainly methane) found in coal deposits. The gas is usually extracted from coal beds 200–1000 m below the surface. Potential sources of CSG cover large areas of Queensland, and significant parts of New South Wales and in the Gippsland and Otway basins in Victoria. Coal seam gas has been produced commercially in south-east Queensland from the Bowen Basin since 1996 and from the Surat Basin since 2006, but due to advances in technology it has been experiencing a boom in recent years. The scale of CSG operations is substantial: at the end of 2011 there were more than 1100 wells extracting gas from coal in more than 50 commercially producing gas fields in Queensland, and ~89 producing wells in the Camden gas field south-west of Sydney. Furthermore, exploration and development are continuing. The coal seams are usually filled with water and it is the pressure of the water that keeps the gas bound to the coal. To extract the gas, wells are drilled down to the coal seam and large volumes of the water pumped to the surface in order to release the pressure so the gas can flow up the well. Both gas and water come to the surface, where they are separated. The gas is passed through a processing facility and then distributed by pipeline to residential and industrial customers or to a liquefying plant. The water, which is usually brackish, is piped to a treatment plant. Within a gas field, many of the wells are only a few hundred metres apart. A major export industry has developed in liquefied natural gas (LNG). This involves cooling the natural gas to –161°C so it becomes liquid, thereby decreasing it to 1/600th of its original volume and making transport over long distances more feasible. In some gas fields, hydraulic fracturing, known generally as ‘fracking’, is carried out to increase the gas flow. This procedure involves pumping large volumes of a fluid under pressure down the well to cause fractures in the coal seam and thereby create further pathways for gas flow. The fluid used consists of water, sand and a small amount of chemical additives. The sand holds the fractures open.28 Potential impacts of CSG mining on groundwater include the scale of the reduction in the quantity of groundwater; the effects of pressure reduction on surrounding aquifers, which could be above or below the coal seams; the likelihood and the impacts of leakage between aquifers due to pressure reduction and fracking; and the consequences of water released into the environment being not treated to a safe level. The risk of this last impact is significant if storage ponds holding extracted water overflow in rain or flood, or if large volumes of extracted water are released into streams. (One proposal reported in late 2018 involved the dumping of tonnes of salt waste in the headwaters of the Murray–Darling Basin.)29 The spread of CSG mining has caused controversy and argument, including in the popular press, not only because of the effect on groundwater reserves and quality, but also because of its use of prime agricultural land in some areas, the huge numbers of wells, and the chemicals used in the fracking process.30 Victoria has had a moratorium on onshore CSG exploration and development since 2012.31 Where fracking is used, additional potential impacts include the possibility that the fractures extend beyond the coal seams into other aquifers thereby inducing leakage between aquifers. In such cases it is possible that saline groundwater can leak into aquifers that contain good quality water. Leakage can also cause a reduction in pressure in aquifers. In addition to the potential impacts listed above, concerns have been expressed about the safety of the chemicals used as additives in the fracking process. Gavin Mudd, an environmental engineer from Monash University, believes a serious shortcoming is that the long-term environmental risks of CSG mining have not so far been assessed very effectively.32

8 – Groundwater: more than the GAB

Ongoing controversy has surrounded the proposal by the energy company Santos to develop a $3 billion (Narribri) CSG project in north-western New South Wales. Concerns have been raised over reports of leaking wastewater ponds and pipelines in preliminary work on the project. Further, the project could involve up to 850 wells being sunk in the Pilliga Forest. A critical issue here is that the Pilliga Forest is one of the known recharge areas for the GAB. If groundwater were to be contaminated in this region, or pressure reduced, there would be a danger of widespread effects on groundwater quality and quantity.33

0 0 0 In relation to groundwater overall, a major challenge is to increase our knowledge of groundwater reserves and the data that describe their extent, location and characteristics. It is also essential that we improve our understanding of the potential impacts of mining and other activities on groundwater quality and quantity and the circumstances in which these may occur, and to manage the impacts effectively. The National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training, established by the Australian Government in 2009, has a key role in this area. Concerning CSG, there is much still to be learned about the cumulative regional impacts of multiple developments. In this respect, development is moving ahead of established knowledge and understanding. All this emphasises the need for continuing focused research in these areas. Effective regulation to avoid contamination, waste and diminishing resources for future generations is crucial. A sound knowledge and understanding of groundwater resources and the impacts of our activities is the basis for effective regulation. The Great Artesian Basin Sustainability Initiative has been one of the success stories of Australia’s recent environmental policy history. Although it has now terminated (see Chapter 7), it should spur governments and other authorities to continue working towards sustainable husbanding of the nation’s groundwater resources.

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9

Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre and its basin Lake Eyre has iconic status in Australian society, although most Australians living near the edges of the continent and in Tasmania have little or no personal association with it. The lake has become part of Australian folklore due to its location in the relatively inaccessible outback, the huge area it covers, the vagaries of its filling, the dramatic changes produced in the region when rains come, and the many stories associated with it throughout the history of the land. It has inspired artists, writers, photographers and travellers. Despite the harshness of the country, it has supported Aboriginal communities through countless generations. In recognition of this, since 2013 it has been known officially as Kati Thanda– Lake Eyre, to include the original name by which the local Arabana people have known it. Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre is located in arid and semi-arid country in South Australia, some 700 km north of Adelaide. Covering an area of around 9500 km2, it is the largest lake in Australia and the fourth largest terminal lake in the world.1 It was not mapped until 1897, nearly 60 years after its first sighting by Edward John Eyre, and a quarter of a century after completion of the Overland Telegraph line which passed along its southern edge – testifying to the inhospitable nature of the surrounding country. The annual rainfall is less than 125 mm and the annual evaporation rate a staggering 2500 mm (2.5 m).2 The lake is in two parts, with Lake Eyre North (~120 km long by 60 km wide) being much larger than Lake Eyre South (~60 km by 25 km). The two are connected by the 15-km-long Goyder Channel. Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre sits above the southern rim of the Great Artesian Basin, and mound springs release some of this underground water not far from the lake’s southern edge (Chapter 7) (Fig. 9.1). The challenges involved in negotiating the harsh country around Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre are vividly portrayed in an account of the efforts made by a party of nine scientists to establish a weather station on the south-east shores of the lake in December 1951.3 The party travelled from Adelaide with their equipment in three vehicles: a jeep; a 5-tonne International truck carrying food and heavy equipment; and ‘Myrtle’ – a borrowed 1929 Chevrolet covered ‘ute’ (which ‘performed magnificently’ despite at times ‘boiling indignantly’ and incurring five punctures). This was the third expedition that year, and it followed ‘phenomenal’ rains in 1949 and 1950 which converted the lake from a dry saltpan to an inland sea. Local advice was obtained from Muloorina Station, 42 km south-east of the shore, over gibber plains and sandhills. The purpose was to gather several consecutive days of weather data including data on evaporation, and biological information. The author describes the searing heat, up to 116°F (47°C): ‘No breath of wind stirred the glassy waters of the lake, no shade relieved the pitiless glare; the air was heavy, lifeless, difficult to breathe’.4 In contrast, on occasions ‘a terrific wind’ blew up and continued for 12 and more hours. In such cases everything movable in the camp had to be lashed to the jeep, and sand drifted deep over the camp. When the wind 87

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John Olsen and Lake Eyre John Olsen, one of Australia’s most celebrated artists of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, has had a long relationship with Lake Eyre. He first visited the lake during the major flood in 1974 and was inspired by its stillness and beauty, its immensity, and the burst of life brought forth by the arrival of water in the desert. Olsen described it as ‘…covered by a bowl of endless sky with inviting silences, there is, as you stand on the edge of the lake, a feeling that you are standing on the edge of a void’.6 The visit inspired his first Lake Eyre paintings including Lake Eyre, 1975 and Arrival at the Void, 1975. He completed many more over the subsequent four decades.

was from the east, it caused the lake to recede a significant way. Party members found that the mud bottom of the lake was treacherous; even where the water had receded and the surface was covered in salt, the apparent firmness was deceptive: ‘under the salt was a soft, treacherous mixture of clay, sand, water and salt, firm in places, but nowhere really safe’. However, the beauty of the environment was also appreciated – ‘the deep blue of the lake, merging with the sky at an almost invisible horizon’ at midday, and the arresting scene in the evening, ‘when the long shadows of the nitre-bush tussocks crept along the dunes and the changing hues of a seemingly never-ending sunset merged gradually into night’.5

The Lake Eyre Basin Most of the time, Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre is empty of water and contains only salt – a great salt plain in a harsh landscape dried by sun and wind. The lake is fed by the rivers of the Lake Eyre Basin, a giant catchment of 1.2 million km2 covering parts of the Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia and a small part of New South Wales – almost onesixth of Australia (Fig. 9.1).7 The catchment lies wholly within the arid and semi-arid

NT

QLD

SA NSW N W

E S

Fig. 9.1.  Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre and the Lake Eyre Basin showing the courses of the Georgina, Diamantina and the Cooper Creek systems. Ref.

9 – Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre and its basin

deserts of Central Australia. It is one of the largest internally draining river systems in the world, and given the absence of dams on its rivers, ‘one of the great natural river systems’ as well. The Lake Eyre Basin is about the size of France, Germany and Italy combined, and roughly the size of the Murray–Darling Basin. The Basin is like a saucer in the middle of the continent, with Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre its lowest part. Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre itself lies below sea level – 15 m below at the deepest part of the lake – and is Australia’s lowest point.8 When a big flood arrives, which happens only rarely, the country undergoes dramatic change. All the creeks and rivers are ephemeral, flowing for short periods after rain, with long dry periods between rains. In these predominantly flat desert areas, the occasional rainfall events are even more unpredictable and more variable than those in other arid parts of the world. In addition, the watercourses are mostly shallow, and when they do flow, the water spreads widely into multiple channels, floodplains, lakes and wetlands. The result is that the volume of water in a river decreases as it moves downstream, unlike ‘normal’ rivers in temperate climates where the volume of water flow increases due to the contribution of tributaries. The area, predominantly in south-western Queensland, where extensive networks of braided rivers, lakes and channels form on the vast floodplains after heavy rains is known as the Channel Country. From the air, this forms some of the most distinctive landscape in Australia (see Plate 9.1). The key rivers of the Channel Country are the Georgina, the Diamantina, and Cooper Creek as well as their tributaries. The most prominent (though very small) outback towns in the area are Birdsville, Windorah and Bedourie.9 The river systems of the Basin feed into Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre from all directions, though most water comes from the north and east. The mighty Georgina–Diamantina system contributes the most, at ~64 per cent. The catchment of the Georgina–Diamantina covers an enormous area – ~405 000 km2, twice the size of England. The Georgina River has its beginnings north-west of Camooweal near the Queensland–Northern Territory border from where it travels south and south-west. After it is joined by the Hamilton River it becomes Eyre Creek,10 then flows along the eastern edge of the Simpson Desert to the giant expanse of Goyder Lagoon, where it is joined by the Diamantina. In all, the main channel is 1130 km long. The Diamantina River (Fig. 9.2) rises in Kirby’s Knob south-west of Kynuna in western Queensland. It first travels north-east then turns and begins its long journey south-west, spreading out across its flood plain in a braided network of channels (as does the Georgina), passing Birdsville before reaching the Goyder Lagoon, 800 km from its origin. In years of small flows, both rivers terminate at the Goyder Lagoon. In flood years Goyder Lagoon is a huge wetland of interconnected channels, a giant ecological soak, 120 km by 30 km, that can support thousands of breeding waterbirds. In years when there is enough water to fill Goyder Lagoon, the Warburton River emerges (from the junction of Eyre Creek and the Diamantina River) and 250 km further on in very wet years it flows into Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre from the north.11 The largest of the Basin river systems, Cooper Creek, is probably the best known, because the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition established a base on its banks where both Burke and Wills ultimately perished in 1861 after their harrowing return from the Gulf. The waters of this river, named by Charles Sturt in 1845, rarely reach Lake Eyre, contributing only 17 per cent of the lake’s water when they do.8 The Cooper has a particularly long course, commencing in the Great Dividing Range west of Rockhampton in Queensland. Its two main tributaries are the Thomson River, which passes near Longreach, and the Barcoo (one of the few rivers with an Aboriginal name), which passes through Blackall.

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Fig. 9.2.  Waterhole in the Diamantina River at Birdsville, October 2015.

Channel country Even in dry weather, all through the basin country there are signs of what it might be like in the wet. Lines of trees show the paths of watercourses, the majority dry most of the time but some with permanent waterholes, such as the wetlands on Eyre Creek at Cuttaburra Crossing some 120 km north of Birdsville. ‘Floodways next 11 km’ and similar signs indicate the spreading nature of the shallow channels. Most of these are un-named, and a few have local names that don’t appear on maps, such as ‘Little Thaggamorra Creek’, ‘Four Mile Creek’, and ‘Chinaman’s Creek’. In other places, a sign will denote a series of ephemeral watercourses – ‘Calendula Channels’, ‘Cooramirina Channels’, and ‘Hamilton Channels’, where the road crosses a succession of dips. In some locations, such as near the site of the Goyder Lagoon, intermediate fence posts on station properties finish well short of the ground, so that debris carried by floodwaters can pass under the fence rather than pile up against it and possibly push it over. You cross the catchments of the Georgina–Diamantina rivers and the Cooper Creek as you drive through central west Queensland from Boulia in the west towards Barcaldine, and then cross the Thomson River – from which the Cooper forms – just west of Longreach.

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These two rivers combine 40 km upstream from Windorah to form Cooper Creek, which then flows south and west towards Lake Eyre North. South of Windorah, the Cooper breaks up into many branches, in times of flood spreading out across the plain 60 km wide on its way towards Innamincka, just over the South Australian border. One result of this is that if you are driving east from Innamincka to, say, Thargomindah, you cross the Cooper – in its many branches – several times. West of Innamincka the Cooper divides into two branches, the North West Branch feeding the Coongie Lakes, a series of shallow freshwater lakes that are abundant with life – more than 350 species of plant life and a great variety of animals including waterbirds, frogs and more. The Coongie Lakes National Park is recognised as a wetland of international importance, and is part of a protected area of the floodplain, the Innamincka Regional Reserve, covering 20 000 km2.12 The main branch of the Cooper continues south-west towards Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre, filling lakes and swamps, including Lake Hope, on the way. The Neales River (from the west) and the Macumba (from the north) are much smaller river systems that rarely flow into Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre. In the south, the Frome River and the Warriner and Margaret Creeks flow into the lake in flood years. In the dry season (‘the Dry’), the main river channels are completely dry, or at best restricted to strings of waterholes and claypans; the networks of branching streams-beds, hollows and flood plains generally remain without water. Relatively few of the waterholes are permanent, but those that are can be up to several kilometres in length, although usually not more than 50 m wide (Plate 9.2). They provide the most dependable and widespread sources of water for wildlife in the desert.8 The permanent waterholes and the periodic flows of considerable volumes of water enabled Aboriginal people to live in substantial numbers in the Channel Country. John McKinlay, the explorer who travelled through the area in 1861 looking for Burke and Wills, noted that Aboriginal people ‘seemed to pour out from every nook and corner where there was water’.14 Aboriginal trade routes crossing the continent followed the rivers and waterholes, and the goods traded (red ochre, grinding stones, ground-edge axes) were thus distributed across vast areas of northern and Central Australia.15 Flooding – and the filling of Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre – occurs following intense heavy rains in northern Queensland 1000 km away. The rivers flow slowly south, bringing moisture and alluvial nutrient to the area and filling channels, waterholes, flood plains and wetlands on the way. The water only moves on when these are completely saturated. The water will travel all the way to Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre and fill it to a significant depth only after exceptional rains over the catchment area. The strength of flow of the rivers also depends on which of the many tributaries flow into the main rivers and how strongly they flow. Following heavy rains in the catchment area the water takes 3–4 months or more to reach Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre (see Plate 9.3). Once the rain starts, roads in the region deteriorate rapidly and soon become impassable, making travel across the country out of the question. As the water flows across the country, it undergoes an amazing transformation. Seeds and eggs that have lain dormant, perhaps for years, spring to life; the red desert country turns to green; and the rivers become alive with aquatic animals. Great flocks of waterbirds gather in the Basin to breed, ready to feed on the masses of aquatic invertebrates in the flooded waterways. The sunburnt desert becomes a series of water-filled wetlands. The water stimulates a burst of growth in the eucalypt, coolibah, river red gum and yapunyah trees that line the main waterways – trees that have lain largely dormant to conserve water during the long Dry. Aquatic plants germinate and grow, and grasses and bushes spring up from seeds able to survive for up to a decade without water. Flowers

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Along the Birdsville Track Cooper Creek crosses the Birdsville Track ~100 km from its point of entry into Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre (Fig. 9.3). On the rare occasions that a major flood enables the Cooper to flow into the lake, the Birdsville Track becomes impassable. When the flood is particularly large, the South Australian Government operates a ferry (on a detour from the main track) to transport cars across the flooded river. In the more usual dry periods, the crossing is trouble-free. The Cooper’s bed covers a wide area – perhaps a few kilometres – because of its numerous shallow watercourses. This is typical of the spreading nature of the rivers in the northern parts of the Basin. The Birdsville Track became a legendary stock route in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century for the movement of cattle from the Channel Country south to the rail head at Marree. The track follows a string of artesian bores ~50 km apart that were drilled by pastoralists and the government to provide a reliable source of water for the drovers and cattle. Supplies for the remote stations and townships were also laboriously carried along the track by camels, donkeys and bullock teams, and later by motor vehicles. In earlier times, the track was an important route for Aboriginal trade and custom that followed the waterholes of the Diamantina River and Goyder Lagoon.13

Fig. 9.3.  The crossing of Cooper Creek on the Birdsville Track in (the usual) dry weather.

appear. The pervasive nardoo, an aquatic fern and an important source of food for Aboriginal communities for many thousands of years, spreads across the flood plains as the waters recede. Vast numbers of microscopic animals, and small animals including crustaceans and insects, spring to life in the rivers and creeks. Insects include water beetles, dragonflies, mosquitoes and midges. Large invertebrates increase in numbers – shrimps, freshwater

9 – Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre and its basin

Nardoo Nardoo is an aquatic fern (Marsilea drummondii), a perennial resembling a four-leaf clover, that is found in wetland areas across inland Australia. The spores are contained in hard sporocarps which are nutritious. Aboriginal people grind them between two stones to form a powder which is mixed with a little water to form a dough which is then cooked in ashes. It is thought that the roasting removes the enzyme thiaminase which breaks down vitamin B1 and is harmful to humans. After they returned to the camp at Cooper Creek in April 1861, in poor condition following their trek north to the Gulf of Carpentaria and back, Burke and Wills ultimately relied on nardoo as their food source. Unfortunately, they did not roast the ground sporocarps, nor did they supplement their diet with fish as the Aboriginal people did. This contributed to their death.17

mussels, freshwater crabs, snails and yabbies. The great diversity of tiny and large invertebrates and plants provides a feast for larger animals including frogs, fish, turtles and other reptiles. In the occasional large floods, as water pours into Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre it carries huge numbers of fish, which continue to breed in the lake. Hundreds of thousands of waterbirds – pelicans, cormorants, herons, ibis, spoonbills, duck species and swans – feed on the fish, invertebrates and plants. Birds of prey appear and make the most of their opportunities. Australia’s largest breeding colonies of pelicans are found on Lake Eyre when it fills. It has been estimated that 100 000 pelicans raised 90 000 chicks on the lake in 1990. For all the waterbirds, it is a race against time to build up condition, breed and raise offspring before the water recedes. When it inevitably does, lakes and waterholes gradually dry, and the land returns to its more usual desert state. Many birds fail to escape before it is too late; fish are trapped, or die before the water goes due to increasing salinity as the water evaporates. These are true boom and bust conditions.16

Effects of floods on Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre Even when the rivers do flow, it is usually only a small amount if any that flows into Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre. The lake is very shallow, and often a thin film of water covers only a part of the surface. From 1979 to 2011, water has flowed into the lake in 23 of the 33 years – more often than is generally believed. The great 1974 flood resulted in the lake being filled to a depth of more than 4 m, the highest for more than 100 years. Before that, it was filled in the 1950s, and after in 1990, and in successive years 2009, 2010 and 2011.8 These large floods are well remembered by the people living in the outback. It is also the large floods, where a large proportion of the lake is covered in water, that people in other parts of Australia remember and that attract tourists. Travellers fly from Adelaide or Parachilna or Marree to see the rare event from the air, or make the long drive along the Oodnadatta Track to the tiny settlement of William Creek where they are able to take a scenic flight over the lake in a light plane. Those who drive can turn off a few kilometres before William Creek onto a rough four-wheel drive track that wends its way for 63 km to the desolate – and often windswept – Halligan Bay and the shores of the lake. Here, the extreme shallowness of this vast body of water, with its depth increasing almost imperceptibly over the soft floor, cannot help but impress the visitor. However, even when the lake is full, the water only lasts for 2–4 years due to the high evaporation rate.7

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World land speed record Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre achieved notoriety via a different path in early 1963 when the British seeker-after-records Donald Campbell decided to make an attempt on the world land speed record on the rock-hard salt flats of the lake. Unfortunately for him, soon after establishing a base at Muloorina Station southeast of the lake in early 1963, continued rain made any wheeled activity on Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre impossible. Campbell and his team returned in 1964 for another attempt but once again, rain intervened, softening the track and causing him to wait frustrating weeks until the lake bed hardened. Eventually, on 17 July 1964, Campbell’s specially built car, Bluebird, ‘screamed across the salt pan’ to set a new record of 403.10 miles per hour (648.73 km/h) for a wheel-driven vehicle.19

The Lake Eyre Yacht Club, whose determined members await the filling of the lake, is based at Marree. Data collated by the club show the water in Belt Bay on the southern edge of Lake Eyre North reached a depth of 1.5 m or more on seven occasions between 1979 and 2012.18

Management of the Lake Eyre Basin Because of the nature of the Basin, the natural extremes of drought and flood mean that the land is vulnerable to wind and water erosion. Inappropriate management has the potential to make the situation much worse. The wetlands depend for their existence on periodic inundation, and man-made changes to the natural cycle can have seriously negative consequences. The natural cycle of flood and drought also has direct economic importance; floodplain graziers and the pastoral industry depend on river flow and seasonal flooding – as flood waters recede, grasses spring to life on the flood plains. When there is plenty of water due to flooding, it seems an attractive option to store water for future use. However, it is not a viable option in this area due to the flat topography and the very high evaporation rate of 2500 or 3500 mm per year. Threats to the health of the Basin include the following: ●●

●● ●● ●●

●● ●● ●● ●● ●●

major water developments including irrigation and mining, or the cumulative effects of minor water developments including bores and diversions intensified land use around waterholes, including the increasing numbers of visitors isolation of floodplains through the construction of levees and road embankments modification of Basin catchments, such as vegetation clearing and inappropriate grazing, soil management and cropping practices impacts of pastoral activities, mining and tourism presence and spread of introduced plant and animal pests intensified water extraction and drawdown stocking rivers and waterholes with non-native fish impacts of climate change.7

The increasing numbers of tourists and travellers poses a threat to some areas of the Basin, especially around waterholes and rivers. High levels of human activity cause soil

9 – Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre and its basin

compaction, loss of riverside vegetation, loss of habitat, erosion, and declining water quality. Effective management of Basin resources is critical if the economic value from its pastoral and tourism activities are to be maintained, and its natural, cultural and environmental values preserved for future generations. This must include education for low impact camping and recreational activities. The Basin is managed in a collaborative arrangement under The Lake Eyre Basin Intergovernmental Agreement. This agreement was made by the Australian, Queensland and South Australian Governments in October 2000 and was joined by the Northern Territory Government in 2004. Its purpose is ‘to ensure the sustainable management of the water and related natural resources associated with cross-border river systems in the Basin, and to avoid downstream impacts on associated environmental, economic and social values’. The agreement includes some guiding principles recognising the significance of the Basin for ‘ecological, cultural and tourism reasons, and the need to make decisions which will foster ecologically sustainable development using a precautionary approach and take account of significant knowledge and experience of local communities’. To assist in implementing the agreement, there is a Ministerial Forum, a Community Advisory Committee and a Scientific Advisory Panel.7 The intergovernmental agreement – long overdue – was the result of intensive and widespread lobbying by graziers, environmentalists, scientists, local councillors and many community members against a proposal to develop Cooper Creek for irrigation near the town of Windorah in the Channel Country. This outcome had the effect of providing some protection from development for the Cooper and other rivers of the Basin.16

Country of the Lake Eyre Basin If you drive up the Birdsville Track, from Marree in northern South Australia to Birdsville, just over the Queensland border you can experience some of this Basin country. You need to turn left shortly after the Clifton Hills homestead (and ~130 km north of Mungerannie) onto the un-signposted (old) Birdsville Inside Track (‘four-wheel drive only’). A circular piece of tin on a short stick marks the whereabouts of the turn-off. After you make the turn, it’s not long before you leave the gibber of the sun-blasted Sturt’s Stony Desert (How did he do it?) and enter the softer landscape of floodplains. First you pass along the edge of the dry Goyder Lagoon and across the floodplain of the upper Warburton Creek, and later, the floodplain of the Diamantina River. You can only do this when the track is dry, but as you wind along it you can easily see you are on a vast flood plain – here, apparently dead grey bushes, interspersed with splodges of hardy green; there, flat, open dry-mud plains; elsewhere, grey, stalky bush-grasses in places that show clear signs of being pressed to the ground by the passing floodwaters; occasional small trees; later, sand dunes appear, dotted with green bushes and small trees, now parallel to the track, now converging so the track climbs over them; the track varying from grey to yellow, with changes from predominantly dried mud to predominantly sand – and always the clear blue sky reaching down to the horizon all around. It’s difficult to imagine the country in an inundating flood – the contrast with the present is too great. But dry is how it usually is, and only those who live on the scattered stations or who have the benefit of a small aeroplane or helicopter, have the privilege of experiencing it in its wet transformed wonder.

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The three river systems of the Channel Country – the Georgina, the Diamantina and the Cooper – were incorporated into the Queensland Wild Rivers Act 2005 in 2011, thereby protecting the core wetlands and floodplains from potentially negative impacts of mining and irrigation activities.20 Following a change of government in Queensland in 2012, the new (Liberal National) government repealed the Wild Rivers Act 2005, with future protection to be determined under a new Regional Planning Interests Act 2014. Under the new legislation, broadacre agriculture, the construction of dams and weirs, and gas exploration and production in ‘strategic environmental areas’ would be subject to a regional interest development proposal.21 Those opposed to the repeal called the government ‘environmental vandals’ and argued that the change produced ‘much weaker legislation that will make it easy for the mining and resources companies to trash our rivers and floodplains’ and that the rivers needed even greater protection. The proponents argued that the previous legislation was a ‘stifling blanket’ for agricultural development.22 Since a further change of government in Queensland in 2015, the situation concerning protection of the Channel Country rivers is unclear. The new (Labor) government opposed the repeal of the Wild Rivers legislation when it was in Opposition and promised to restore protection when returned to office. The issue has remained controversial. The government took no action in its first term, nor in the year after its re-election in 2017, though it claimed a commitment to protecting Queensland’s unspoiled rivers and to consulting with traditional owners and other stakeholders.23 This episode demonstrates that continued vigilance is needed if the environmental values of the Lake Eyre Basin are to be maintained. With water being such a vital resource, there will always be temptations to introduce developments that have economic benefits for some, or for the short-term, but detrimental effects for others and for the long-term health of the Basin itself. While the responsibilities of the parties to the Intergovernmental Agreement concerning the sustainable management of the Lake Eyre Basin are set out in the agreement, we all have a responsibility to ensure that the participating governments implement the agreement in a way that preserves the health and biodiversity of this magnificent area for future generations. The recent publication of a compilation of essays and viewpoints focusing on the Lake Eyre Basin and its rivers, edited by Richard Kingsford, is an important contribution to the debate about the sustainability of the river system.24

Northern rivers beyond the Lake Eyre Basin Other rivers in the north of Australia, beyond the Lake Eyre Basin – in Western Australia, Northern Territory and Queensland – are subject to a tropical climate as are the upper reaches of the Georgina, Diamantina and the Cooper, and therefore share some of the same characteristics. The Fitzroy, Durack and Drysdale rivers (Western Australia), the Daly, Victoria and Roper rivers (Northern Territory), and the Flinders, Leichardt and Gilbert rivers (Queensland) are just a few of the 55 river systems in the north that have not suffered significant changes to their flow or catchments. They are some of the last freeflowing rivers left on the planet. These rivers combined extend over 1 million km.25 The land across northern Australia experiences four months or so of flooding rains followed by eight months with little or no rain when evaporation far exceeds precipitation. However, the size, length and timing of the annual wet seasons can vary dramatically between subregions across the country, and from year to year, and are often unpredictable. The rivers flood in the wet season, overflowing their banks, cutting roads and making

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much of the nearby country impassable. In the Kimberley in the north-west of the continent for example, main roads through the region, such as the Gibb River Road, the Kalumburu Road and the Mitchell Plateau Road, are cut by raging rivers and streams and are therefore impassable from around November to May during the wet season (‘the Wet’). As the Dry approaches, rivers subside and can be forded at points where they cross roads or other vehicle tracks (see Plate 9.4). On the few sealed main roads, high bridges allow for continued traffic other than in exceptionally high floods. Roads and tracks on the Cape York Peninsula are similarly impassable during the Wet. During the Dry, road travel involves innumerable creek crossings, most of which are unbridged apart from a few of the larger ones such as the Wenlock River and the Archer River. The Jardine River in the north is crossed by ferry. Flows are greatly reduced in the Dry – in many cases to a trickle or a string of waterholes. In the main these water sources are not maintained by rain but by water from underground aquifers, which in turn, are replenished in the Wet.26 Only a handful of the rivers flow all year round. These include the Daly River and the Ord River. The Daly River in the Northern Territory begins in the World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park and flows through the spectacular Katherine Gorge (as the Katherine River) on its way to the Timor Sea. In the Dry, its flows are maintained by groundwater. The Ord River is 650 km long and flows through the Kimberley region of Western Australia to Cambridge Gulf. It was dammed in stages in the 1960s and 1970s to provide year-round water for irrigation (Chapter 11). Lawn Hill Creek, another perennial watercourse in the savannah country of northern Queensland, is fed by springs to the west under the Barkly Tablelands, and has carved out the spectacular Lawn Hill Gorge in Boodjamulla National Park (Plate 9.5). In Cape York Peninsula, whereas most of the creeks and rivers are seasonal, Eliot Creek flows all year round, allowing hot and dusty travellers during the Dry to take a refreshing dip in Fruit Bat Falls. This is because the sandstone bedrock acts as a sponge absorbing rainfall during the Wet and releasing it during the Dry. Northern Australia has relatively few dams compared with other climatically humid parts of Australia, and as a result more of its flood plains and associated wetlands are intact.25 The rivers in the north support a rich Indigenous cultural life extending back perhaps 65 000 years, extensive wetlands and a great diversity of ecosystems. Wetlands are important stop-off points for migratory birds, and they contribute much to the enormous biodiversity of northern Australia.27 The area is currently under threat from possible large scale industrial development, including big mining and irrigated agriculture projects and water resource developments.

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10

The golden pipeline

A new gold rush in Western Australia Gold was discovered in a remote and arid area of Western Australia the Aboriginal people called Coolgardie, in September 1892. Two prospectors resting their horses found nuggets poking through the soil. After they deposited the 554 ounces (15.7 kg) they had collected with the mining warden at the town of Southern Cross 190 km to the west, a frenzied rush to Coolgardie began.1 In June the following year, three down-on-their-luck prospectors happened upon more alluvial (surface) nuggets a few days’ ride – 40 km – away in what is now known as Kalgoorlie, when they were forced to stop to replace a shoe on their horse. These discoveries acted as a magnet to individuals and groups hoping for a quick path to riches. Miners travelled to the area by cart, horseback and foot; 4500 miners arrived in Coolgardie in1892, and 5000 the following year. By 1898 Coolgardie was the third largest town in Western Australia after Perth and Fremantle. With the discovery of gold at Kalgoorlie, the non-Aboriginal population in the region exploded. Many of the new arrivals came from Victoria and South Australia; the gold rushes of the eastern colonies (and California) were by this time long over. Smaller numbers travelled from England, the United States and China. The output of these new goldfields was substantial – 280 000 ounces (7938 kg), worth more than £1 million ($2 million), by 1896. By 1902, the yield had a value of nearly £8 million.2 There was not only alluvial gold; it was soon discovered that Kalgoorlie was on top of a huge gold reef. The area a little south of the original discovery was later termed ‘The Golden Mile’. Substantial external money was being invested, including from British investors, and it became clear that the region could support a significant mining industry for some time to come.

Shortage of fresh water However, there was one serious obstacle to further development or even sustainability – the severe shortage of fresh water. The Kalgoorlie region is semi-desert with an annual rainfall of only 260 mm and annual evaporation 2500 mm. It has no rivers, and the only lakes are salt. The area is relatively flat, ~400  m above sea level and remote from the coast and other centres of population – that was especially the case in the late nineteenth century. The Aboriginal population at that time was relatively sparse, but the people knew where to find water at different times of the year and had sustained themselves there over a long period. In particular, they relied on gnamma – natural holes in rock that captured rainwater.3 99

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The gold rush had a severe impact on the natural environment to the extent that it could no longer support the original inhabitants. The Kalgoorlie Miner of 16 December 1897 reported an interview with a local Aboriginal man Tickenbutt (aka Fred McGill) and recorded that: They have a good deal of trouble getting water … Before the white man here came [sic] the blacks obtained water at the different rocks with which they were well acquainted. They got plenty of food, too, by watching at the rocks for kangaroo and emu, when they came to drink, and spearing them there.4 Many prospectors and explorers who travelled unprepared in the area only survived because the Aboriginal people showed them water supplies, soaks and gnamma holes. The travellers followed paths between water sources. Water shortage in the goldfield’s settlements meant hardship everywhere. There was great difficulty – often impossibility – of getting sufficient water for domestic use: for drinking, cooking, washing, bathing and for watering stock. It presented serious problems for gold mining and prospecting. Instead of recovering the gold by sluicing, dry-blowing had to be used. This involved pouring the alluvial soil from a height, usually from one dish to another, so the wind would ‘winnow’ the lighter soil and leave the gold. A wide variety of dry-blowing machines was developed, from crude affairs consisting of sieves on frames – ‘rockers’ and ‘shakers’ – to somewhat more sophisticated examples complete with bellows. Dry-blowing was very unpleasant work. One miner wrote, ‘Surely no form of labour is more exasperating than that of dry-blowing. Dust gets into the eyes, clogs the nose and makes the throat as dry as a lime kiln.’2 Further, with no water to spare, hotels, homes and other early buildings made of highly inflammable materials, such as canvas, hessian or wood, were often destroyed by fire.5 Water scarcity affected social as well as domestic activities, and visitors as well as residents, though not necessarily resulting in total hardship, as these two comments illustrate: At the hotel where I had dinner it was impossible to get a second cup of tea, the waiter informing me that water was too scarce. Frequently they have to serve beer and wine instead of tea. (Diary of John Aspinall, a young prospector from New Zealand, 1 November 1895)5 I was sometimes asked to an afternoon tea party, where, if water was off, and therefore there could be no tea, we were given champagne. (Mrs Arthur H Garnsey, Nurse in Kalgoorlie, 1899)5 An especially serious consequence of the shortage of water was the terrible lack of sanitation in the camps and towns of the goldfields. Human waste contaminated the soil, and the dust that settled on roofs was washed into water tanks when it rained. Sickness followed, with typhoid fever a major killer and the number of deaths increasing with the population. In 1892, 55 people died from the disease. The number had increased to 325 in 1895 and to 400 the following year. Overall, 1900 people are known to have died from typhoid fever, but the true number is probably higher.6 The high price of available water exacerbated the problem as people would use any water that was available without charge. Run-off from rain flowed into depressions where men collected the precious liquid, too often dangerously polluted. John Aspinall recorded

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in his diary on the 1 April 1895 that ‘This morning it rained hard for about two hours leaving pools of water everywhere so that for once you can get a wash for nothing.’ Few people understood that typhoid spread through polluted water.5

Attempts to overcome the water shortage Efforts to overcome the water shortage were made from the start. Chief among these was the use of ‘condensers’, an apparatus for distilling existing water from salt lakes and brackish or salty ground water, including water from mines that were flooded (Fig. 10.1). In these, the water was boiled and the steam condensed, leaving impurities behind in the boiling vessel. John Aspinall described condensers this way in March 1895:7 The condensers usually consist of two square 200-gallon [900-L] iron tanks built with a sort of oven underneath. A pipe 5 or 6 inches [13 or 15 cm] in diameter and about 60 feet [18 m] long leads from each tank, being doubled back with a bend so that the end comes back close to the tank. The steam gets cooled going along the pipe and the water drips from the pipe into a galvanised iron tank. Such a condenser as I have described will condense 400 gallons a day.8 Larger and more sophisticated condensers were developed over time. At Broad Arrow, a mining settlement ~40  km north of Kalgoorlie, five giant saltwater condensers with capacities ranging from 1000 to 40 000 gallons (4500–180 000 L) a day were set up. They required the use of thousands of tonnes of timber to fuel the boilers.9 The price of water fluctuated widely, depending on whether it had rained recently. Aspinall reported that ‘Water (condensed) sells at 3d [3 pence, ~3 cents] a gallon and has a very insipid taste, resembling boiled water with a dash of galvanised iron and several other unrecognisable substances including smoke’.5 On another occasion he wrote, ‘We took 60 gallons of water at 6  pence per gallon and had to go to nearly every condenser in town before we had sufficient’.8 Later the same year (August 1895), he recorded that water at Broad Arrow also sold for 6 pence a gallon, ‘condensed’. In Norseman, 200 km south of Kalgoorlie, where gold was discovered in 1894, the state government and, ultimately, several commercial operators, ran wood-fired condensers on the edges of Lake Cowan and Lake Dundas, two salt lakes in the vicinity. Water from these condensers typically cost thirsty miners 25 shillings ($2.50) for 100 gallons (455  L). A slightly cheaper option was water collected from rock pools in the various outcrops around town. In this case a ‘drink’ cost two pence, a gallon cost one shilling, and 100 gallons, 16 shillings.10 Water was also carted to the goldfield towns by camel trains, and later the railway, mostly from Burlong Pool, a semi-permanent pool on the Avon River near Northam, 500 km west of Kalgoorlie. It was the only major source of fresh water between Perth and Kalgoorlie before a dam was built at Merredin. It was also a site of significance to the Noongar Aboriginal people as the summer home of Wargul, the water snake.11 Miners, horses, railway contractors and others heading to the goldfields also used the pool as a watering point. The shortage of water on the goldfields was of national interest. Under a heading ‘Water Famine at Coolgardie: Water Trains to be Run’, the Adelaide Advertiser reported on 5 May 1894 that the Western Australian Government had completed negotiations with the railways contractor to run water trains from Northam to Southern Cross in order ‘to prevent

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Fig. 10.1.  Water barrels, camels and men at a condensing plant, Coolgardie in the 1890s. Source: Coolgardie Goldfields Exhibition Museum.

a water famine on the goldfields’.12 Gold had been discovered in the vicinity of Southern Cross in the 1880s and by 1891 mining at Southern Cross was in full operation.11 After the railway line was completed through to Kalgoorlie in September 1896, trains were used to carry water from Burlong Pool all the way to Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie. The government supplied 250 ‘travelling tanks’ in which water could be carried by train. In the late 1890s, up to six trains a day filled with water were leaving Burlong Pool headed for the goldfields.13 The Sydney Morning Herald reported that in one week in December 1901, 413 000 gallons (1 858 500 L) of water were hauled to the goldfields.14 Adding to the demands for water were the steam trains themselves whose engines needed water to convert to steam for their power. For this purpose, water reservoirs and tanks were built along the line as it was being constructed (Fig. 10.2). In the early days when construction was taking place, the trains had to carry enough water for the engines for the outward and return journeys, as there was no water east of Northam. This often left little space for other needed cargo, including water for the goldfields. Added to this, the water that was available, at times even that from Burlong Pool, was not of sufficient quality – too saline or too dirty – for the steam engines. The use of both carted water and condensers was critically important, for both human and locomotive use.13

The Goldfields Water Supply Scheme Despite all the actions taken to solve the water shortage, the crisis continued, with inconvenience, hardship and disease persisting. Agitation for improved provision was taken up

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Fig. 10.2.  Water tank at Cunderdin built ~1892 to supply the railway steam engines. Water was fed to it by gravity from a rock catchment and reservoir on Cunderdin Hill.

by newspapers and organisations. A telegram to the premier from the Progress Committee at Kalgoorlie reported in the Western Argus on 2 February 1895 read ‘Health of town most unsatisfactory. Fever spreading, deaths daily, and business threatened. No sanitary measures enforced or enforceable.’5 In its publication of 27 July 1896, just before the railway line reached Kalgoorlie, the West Australian newspaper opined: So far as the fields are concerned, the water question is of more vital importance than anything else that can be thought of, and until there is a good supply of healthy, good and cheap water obtainable the fields will have to drag along slowly and miserably, because people are afraid to come and settle in a country where they know … that typhoid and other forms of disease are prevalent on account of bad water – and dear and scanty at that.5 Even after completion of the railway line, new problems emerged. In December 1897 the West Australian reported that ‘… a serious block had occurred on the line at Southern Cross, in consequence of the locomotives there been [sic] unable to obtain water’.13 The Government was accused of mismanagement. The premier of the newly self-governing colony, Sir John Forrest, visited the goldfields in 1895 and saw for himself the enormity of the problem. The aridity of the environment would not have been a surprise to Forrest. Earlier in his life, he had been a surveyor and

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explorer. In 1869 he led an expedition, much of it through uncharted wilderness, in search of clues to the fate of the explorer Ludwig Leichhardt. The following year, a team led by him was the first to cross from Perth to Adelaide by land. In 1874 he explored a central route, setting out from Geraldton and travelling east to Mount Peake and then south to Adelaide. His party travelled from waterhole to waterhole and had several narrow escapes from death by thirst. Sixteen of his horses were not so lucky.15 This last expedition, in particular, made Forrest a celebrity, but it must also have given him a keen understanding of what it meant to live under conditions where water is lacking. Following his visit, Forrest asked his chief engineer, CY O’Connor, to find a solution to the water crisis. Charles Yelverton O’Connor was born in Ireland where he had studied the new profession of engineering. He showed an enormous capacity for hard work and superior ability in surveying and financial management. At the age of 21, he migrated to New Zealand where he worked for 26 years in surveying for the construction of roads and railways, and assisted in the construction of a permanent harbour at Westport on the west coast of the South Island. He was that country’s under-secretary for public works in 1891 when he was recruited by Forrest to be Engineer-in-Chief of Western Australia. His brief from Forrest was ‘Railways, harbours, everything’.16 O’Connor’s first major project was the development of a new harbour at Fremantle at the mouth of the Swan River that would be the port-of-call for all overseas mail and passenger services. The lack of a deep-water port close to Perth was hindering the development of the colony. His innovative plan attracted significant criticism, but he was supported strongly by Forrest, and the harbour was successfully completed in 1898. Fremantle became a major international port; the harbour is vital to the economy of Western Australia to this day.17 The railway system was also improved and expanded greatly on O’Connor’s watch, but even this attracted criticism. O’Connor had only one year’s rainfall records to go on when he was asked to find a solution to the water shortage in the Eastern Goldfields. In 1895, believed to be a wet year, only 6.79 inches (172.5 mm) fell in Coolgardie. Coupled with the high evaporation rates, this led him to decide that the construction of dams in the region was not the answer. In any case, the reservoirs that had been built had proved inadequate. The only area where there was sufficient rainfall and where it was feasible to build a dam was in the hills 30 km east of Perth. In coming to this conclusion, O’Connor had to use the rainfall and evaporation rates for Perth over the previous 10 years – as there were no actual records of rainfall and evaporation at the site of the proposed reservoir at that time.5 He proposed that a weir to form a storage reservoir be built on the Helena River in what is now the Darling Range. Water would then be pumped from this reservoir along a pipe to Coolgardie (later extended to Kalgoorlie, due to the increase in population there). This plan was simple in concept but hugely ambitious in scale and presented enormous problems (Fig. 10.3). Aside from the construction of the weir itself, the distance the water would have to be piped was 350 miles (560 km). But there was an even more challenging problem: the water’s destination was more than 1000 vertical feet (300 m) above its source in the Darling Range. Long pipelines had been built elsewhere in the world, but not a pipeline of such length and running uphill.2 To get the water through, O’Connor proposed that eight steam-powered pump stations with holding reservoirs be built along the pipeline. The pipeline itself would be made of steel pipe 30 inches (762 mm) in diameter. This would deliver 5 million gallons (22.7 million L) per day. Arriving at this final proposal had involved a tremendous amount of detailed work. Along the way, O’Connor and his staff at the Public Works Department developed 31 dif-

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Menzies Kalgoorlie Southern Cross 7 Northam PERTH Freemantle

3 Mundaring

Coolgardie

Merredin Norseman

Esperance

Albany SOUTHERN OCEAN

Fig. 10.3.  Map showing route of pipeline, and locations of pump stations No. 3 at Cunderdin and No. 7 at Gilgai.

ferent proposals, including the detailed consideration of 17 possible dam sites in the Darling Range.18 The project would be hugely expensive – an estimated £2.5 million ($5 million). However, Premier Forrest was determined that it should go ahead and presented the plan for the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme to parliament in July 1896. There was criticism from several politicians, but after a long debate, Parliament approved raising a loan of £2.5 million from England – more than Western Australia’s entire annual budget. Obtaining the funds from England proved difficult, and there was a lengthy delay before they were finally approved and available. Work on the project started with the Mundaring Weir on the Helena River in 1898. Criticism of the scheme mounted during this delay and continued during its construction. Opponents of the scheme resented the amount of public money being spent on the far-away goldfields, which were populated to a large extent by people from the eastern colonies and immigrants from overseas – ‘t’othersiders’ as they were dubbed. And this was occurring while Perth still had problems with its own water supply. There was also criticism of the scheme itself, with it being described by detractors as ‘a scheme of madness’.19 O’Connor’s integrity and competence were also attacked, especially through the Sunday Times, whose editor was the politician F.C. Vosper.16 Its edition of 22 October 1899 included ‘All that O’Connor knows about engineering could, without crowding, be stated in a very small book…’ On another occasion, a journalist opined that ‘This man has exhibited such gross blundering … he has robbed the taxpayer of this State out of millions.’20 On the other hand, the people living in the goldfields represented more than half the population of the colony, and they continued to agitate for a decent water supply, especially in view of the wealth the goldfields was generating. The feeling was sufficiently strong amongst the miners that moves were made to separate the goldfields from Western Australia.16

Construction of the weir The construction of the weir involved building a branch railway line from Mundaring to transport materials needed for the construction. Over 300 people were involved in the

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construction; workers and their families living in tents or hessian and slab huts in the valley below the wall. There were stores, a butcher, a billiard saloon, boarding houses, a police station and a school. When completed in the middle of 1902, the weir wall of concrete and rock was 230 m wide and 30.4 m high, the highest in the southern hemisphere.19 The storage capacity of the reservoir was 21.16  GL (21.16 million m3), equivalent to the water in 8500 Olympic-sized swimming pools. In each of the two valve houses, it took 1000 turns of the valve wheel to fully open or close the valve to regulate the flow of water from the reservoir (see Plate 10.1).21

The pipeline O’Connor faced difficult decisions concerning the pipes to be used. While most water supply pipelines of the time were made of cast iron, steel pipes performed better under pressure, particularly when the pipes were large. In addition, steel pipes were lighter than cast iron and therefore easier and cheaper to transport. However, it was not possible at that time to make large steel pipes out of one piece of metal; separate pieces had to be joined with a watertight seal. The usual method was to use rivets, but O’Connor was worried that the lumps caused by the rivets inside the pipe would create turbulence, and therefore additional friction to the flow of water, and that this would be significant over the long distance. Rivets would also be likely to cause rust and to leak. A new method of making steel pipes had recently been invented by Mephan Ferguson, a Melbourne manufacturer. In this rivetless method, two long sheets of steel were formed into half-cylinders and the edges thickened, forming ‘dovetails’. Two H-shaped bars (‘locking bars’) the same length as the half-cylinders were placed over the edges, so that a complete cylinder was formed, with one locking bar on each side. The locking bars were then squeezed tight under great pressure using a hydraulic press, as shown in Fig. 10.4. This produced a length of pipe which was smooth on the inside and stronger and more reliable than using rivets. Strength was important, as it was calculated that the pressure exerted by (a)

(b)

Fig. 10.4.  Application of the Locking Bar method. (a) Before (top) and after (bottom) hydraulic closure (information plaque, Mundaring Weir, National Trust of WA). (b) Section of pipe showing locking bar (Cunderdin Museum).

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Fig. 10.5.  A trainload of pipes weighing about a tonne each. Source: Coolgardie Goldfields Exhibition Museum.

the water in the pipes would be more than 400 pounds per square inch – more than 10 times the pressure in an average car tyre.22 Each pipe making up the pipeline was 28 feet (8.5 m) long, the length that would fit on a railway wagon. The pipeline mostly followed the railway line, a route that was reasonably straight and flat, also making the transport of the pipes to where they were needed simpler. (Fig. 10.5). Joining the lengths of pipe was a critical process. The joins had to withstand the pressure of the water in the pipe without leaking. The ends of the pipe were inserted into a 20 cm steel ring which allowed a 6 mm gap which was packed with rope. Molten lead was then poured in and hammered into place as it cooled. This process, called caulking, was slow and labour-intensive. A caulking machine invented by James Couston, a Victorian engineer, ultimately sped up the process, though there were initial difficulties in getting it to work effectively (Fig. 10.6). The pipes were coated with asphalt and coal tar impregnated with sand to help protect the steel from corrosion.23 For most of the line, the pipes were laid in a trench and buried because of the concern that if exposed, expansion and contraction with the extreme changes in temperature that occurred in the desert might cause damage. This work was carried out by gangs of men who lived in primitive conditions and worked to a tight timetable.24 In some parts, where the soil was very salty, the pipes were laid above ground to avoid corrosion.5 In all, ~60 000 pipes were used. It is impossible not to be reminded of the Ancient Romans’ building of aqueducts to deliver water to their towns and cities some 18 centuries earlier when thinking about the building of the goldfields pipeline. The aqueduct for the city of Carthage was built to solve

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Fig. 10.6.  Caulking the joints. Source: Coolgardie Goldfields Exhibition Museum.

the water shortage in the important naval and trading port. The water travelled 90  km across arid North African countryside from a productive spring at Zaghouan (Chapter 2). In this Roman aqueduct and all others, most of the aqueduct ran underground, and the Roman engineers were meticulous in preventing leaks and in ensuring the inside of the water channel was as smooth as possible. In both the ancient and the modern conduits, a key factor was the gradient of the channel. A fundamental difference between the two, apart from the material of the pipe – stone against steel – was that the Roman aqueducts depended on gravity for the transport of the water, whereas in the goldfields pipeline, the water had to be pushed uphill, against gravity. This last was one of O’Connor’s great challenges.

The pump stations Many of the scheme’s critics were sceptical that water could be pumped so high (390 m) above the level where it left the weir. But O’Connor was confident; it was not uncommon for water to be pumped uphill by smaller amounts elsewhere in the world. He chose the sites for the eight pump stations strategically so that the water could be raised in stages. The first pump station was near the weir’s outlet and the eighth some 50  km west of Coolgardie. In his design, pump station No 1 pumped water into a tank at No 2, pump station No 2 pushed the water to a tank at No 3, and so on; in effect, there were eight separate pipelines.5,25 The pumps were driven by steam engines. A large concrete tank to receive the incoming water was built at each pump station (except at No 3 where an existing railway dam was used). These tanks also acted as an emergency supply should a fault occur on the line. Initially, coal was used to fuel the boilers for making the steam, but within 18 months of the scheme’s opening, wood, cut and collected locally, was substituted as it was cheaper.26 At

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No 3 pump station at Cunderdin, for example, there were three boilers, and three steamdriven horizontal pumps that drew in water from the holding tank and pushed it out to continue its journey east. From 1904, when wood was used, each boiler devoured 8 t of wood per day, or 9000 t per year for the three boilers. There were four firemen who worked in shifts, responsible for the boilers, and engineers who had the responsibility of maintaining the engines.24 Gangs of woodcutters supplied the wood (see Plate 10.2). Once the pump stations were operational, workers were needed around the clock to tend the steam engines and pumps, provide firewood, stoke the boilers and carry out maintenance. When pump stations were not located in a town, such as at Cunderdin, small settlements grew up to accommodate the workers and their families. Some of these were quite isolated. Schooling and sickness were the biggest worries for isolated families. Schools opened and closed according to the number of pupils. The No 7 pump station at Gilgai was the most isolated of all. ‘Trains did not stop there, and supplies were thrown off as they whistled through.’5 Unless a family kept a cow or goat they had to rely on condensed milk. Fresh meat was obtained from rabbits and pigeons. … when news of Dad’s transfer came through, our dear mother sat down and wept … For 25 years she had gallantly fought the adversities of ‘Siberia’ (as No 7 was called), but now, (with) the prospect of being close to doctors, schools and shops a reality, all her emotions came to the surface. So with great joy and anticipation we moved to No 6. – Rose Birss (nee Wall), No 7 resident 1930–36.27 In another comment, Rose Birss explained how ‘… every now and then the gangers used to come through that were working on the pipeline itself, and they would have their families with them. And they just lived in tents, you know, just moved up and down the line repairing the pipeline.’27 Residents made their own entertainment, as Persis Lawson, who lived at No 8 in the 1930s, relates: … at No 8 there was a gramophone that wouldn’t play, but Mrs Lawson used to hide under a table covered with a cloth. The owner would ‘wind up’ his gramophone and when he tapped his foot she’d start singing. The record would go round with no sound and when he wanted her to stop he would tap his foot again – and oh, the kids used to think it was marvellous.5

The final stages, amidst continued criticism Public criticism of the project continued throughout its construction. O’Connor was subject to ridicule and accusations of corruption, in Parliament and elsewhere, and he was repeatedly forced to defend himself. Unfortunately, the chief supporter of the project, and O’Connor’s main champion, John Forrest, had departed for Melbourne after Federation, leaving O’Connor to face the criticism alone. The new premier, George Leake, was an opponent of the project from the start and offered his engineer-in-chief little support. In February 1902, a royal commission into the goldfields pipeline was announced. O’Connor was clearly the main target, and he would be forced to defend his every decision in detail. It all became too much for him, and in the early morning of 10 March, he rode his horse into the sea at Fremantle’s South Beach. After dismounting and letting his horse go, he took his own life.

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O’Connor maintained his confidence in his scheme to the end. His suicide note included the following comments: The position has become impossible. Anxious important work to do and three commissions of inquiry to attend to …The Coolgardie scheme is all right and I could finish it if I got a chance and protection from misrepresentation but there’s no hope for that now …28 Even after his tragic and unnecessary death, the Sunday Times was still criticising him. The royal commission cleared him of any corruption; the winding up of his estate showed he owned no property and his estate was valued at less than £200.29 The final destination for the water was Mount Charlotte, a hill on the edge of Kalgoorlie, and coincidentally, close to the site of the first discovery of gold in the area. The top of the hill was excavated by pick and shovel to accommodate a storage tank. The soil removed was formed into a circular mound to support the sides of the tank which were made of reinforced concrete. Originally uncovered, the tank was later roofed to keep the water clean and to prevent evaporation.5 The Goldfields Water Supply Scheme was successfully completed just 10 months after O’Connor’s death. At a ceremony at Mount Charlotte reservoir on 24 January 1903, huge crowds gathered to see Sir John Forrest, first premier of Western Australia but at that time Federal Minister for Defence, turn a valve to send water streaming into the reservoir. This arid inland gold town of 30 000 people now had its own reliable supply of fresh water, as did its near neighbour Coolgardie. The water has flowed ever since; its arrival changed life in the goldfields forever. Wealth and prosperity, reflected in the buildings and infrastructure, ultimately replaced the hardships of the first few years. Kalgoorlie soon became one (a)

(b)

Fig. 10.7.  The pipeline in 2015: (a) A general view; (b) Close-up of a section of old pipe.

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of the largest cities in Australia at that time. At the opening ceremony, Forrest observed, perhaps rather grandly, ‘… it will be said of us, as Isaiah said of old, ‘They made a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.’5 On completion, the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme pumped its life-giving liquid through the longest freshwater pipeline in the world and the first major pipeline to be made of steel.19 Each day, 23 million L of water were delivered to the goldfields,5 having been raised 390 m above its source at Mundaring Weir by the series of eight steam-driven pump stations. (By comparison, the Roman aqueduct at Nimes delivered roughly the same amount daily – 20 million  L/d; the aqueduct at Carthage 32 million  L/d (Chapter 2)). Nearly everything for the project – cement, steel for the pipes, machinery to pump the water – had been imported from overseas, namely Germany, Great Britain and the United States. The final cost of the project, which was carried out by the Public Works Department under O’Connor’s direction, was £2.65 million ($5.3 million), only slightly more than O’Connor’s estimate of £2.5 million made seven years earlier (and which did not include the extension from Coolgardie to Kalgoorlie). The scheme is still regarded today as one of the greatest hydraulic engineering works in the world.19

Development of the scheme since 1903 The scheme has been extended and upgraded since it was first built. In the 1930s the pipeline was lifted out of the trench and re-laid above ground on concrete collars because corrosion and leaks were resulting in significant loss of water. Some pipes were replaced, all were given a thin (approx. 2 cm thick) lining of concrete, and all joins were welded, making it the longest welded steel pipeline anywhere in the world. Significant lengths of the pipeline still contain the original steel pipes to this day; they are identified by the characteristic locking bars down each side (Fig. 10.7). An interesting modification at one stage was the replacement of some of the steel pipes with wooden pipes in the 1930s to save on the use of steel and to provide employment during the Depression years. These were made from karri or wandoo staves bound together with wrought iron wire and coated with tar; some wooden pipes lasted for 30 years.30 In 1936 a branch line was extended the 165 km from Coolgardie to Norseman, thereby solving the water problems that had plagued that mining community for the 40 years of its existence. Some sections of the main pipeline were enlarged, and branch lines were extended north and south to serve communities of the Wheatbelt through which the pipeline passed. The height of the Mundaring Weir wall was increased by 9.75 m in 1946–51, resulting in a tripling of the capacity of the reservoir to 63.6 GL from its original 21.16 GL. In the 1970s the scheme was extended to service the nickel industry and the growing township of Kambalda 75 km south-east of Kalgoorlie.5,19 The old steam-powered pump stations were phased out and replaced by electric stations and their capacities increased, beginning in 1954. More recently, regulation of water flow by remote control has been introduced. Additional storage reservoirs were built along the route, including at Kalgoorlie. When an earthquake of magnitude 6.9 on the Richter scale occurred near Meckering in 1968, the pipeline was damaged and 120 m of it had to be replaced. However, there was no disruption to the water supply beyond Meckering because the storage reservoirs along the line were all full.31 Today, the re-named Goldfields and Agricultural Water Supply Scheme contains an incredible 9000 km of pipeline supplying 33 000 rural and town services. Only 30 000 of the 100 000 or so people served by the scheme live in Kalgoorlie. The pipe network itself

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holds 330 million L of water. Water takes 5–11 days to reach Kalgoorlie, and an average of 90 million L of water is pumped each day.5,32 In recent years the climate has become drier. Since 1970 rainfall in the Perth area and in the Wheatbelt has reduced by around 20 per cent, and the reduced rainfall means that extra water has to be pumped into Mundaring Weir to continue to meet the needs of the communities the scheme serves. This water comes from a variety of sources – groundwater, other dams, and a desalination plant at Kwinana south of Perth. In an ironic twist, this means that people in the Eastern Goldfields are again drinking desalinated water, though from a more sophisticated source than the condensers used more than 100 years ago, and in relatively small quantities.5,19 The pipeline bringing this supplementary water to Mundaring Weir can be seen on the far side of the reservoir in Plate 10.1. In 2009 the Goldfields and Agricultural Water Supply Scheme was recognised as an International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Association of Civil Engineers. This was only the third project in Australia, after the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Snowy Mountains Scheme, and the forty-seventh worldwide to be given the award, emphasising the significance of CY O’Connor’s achievement.5,19 It is also included on Australia’s National Heritage List. Driving along the Great Eastern Highway from Mundaring to Kalgoorlie today, the pipeline is an almost constant companion, sometimes near, sometimes further away, faithfully following the undulations of the dry land, now on one side of the road now on the other, passing under side-roads; occasionally disappearing from sight behind the bushes and trees of the Great Western Woodlands, the old steam pump stations never very far from the road; through Western Australia’s famous Wheatbelt;33 through Grass Valley, Meckering, Cunderdin, Tammin, and Kellerberrin; through Doodlakine, Hines Hill, Merredin, Burracoppin, and Bodallin; through Moorine Rock, Southern Cross, Yellowdine, Boorabbin and many others; leaving the road near Woolgangie and reappearing some kilometres further on at historic Bullabulling. On and on it goes, carrying its precious cargo that is being relentlessly pushed up to Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie, perhaps one metre further every second. Gold-mining in Kalgoorlie continues to the present day, 120 years after the first discovery. The Golden Mile proved to be one of the richest gold deposits in the world and has produced more than 50 million ounces (1.42  million  kg) of gold since mining began. Water is vital for gold-mining, and the current consolidated mine uses ~12 GL per year. Of this, ~17 per cent is potable water from the goldfields water supply system, and the rest is hypersaline water obtained from groundwater and water recycled from operations.34 In 2015 the city of Kalgoorlie-Boulder had a population of 30 000. Nearly half the water used annually is for residential purposes, with over one-half of that being used for gardens and lawns. Just over a third of the water is used for mining and industrial purposes (based on 2001–02 figures).5 Travelling around the city, it is hard to believe that the water used to provide these services and facilities, including the substantial Goldfields Oasis Aquatic Centre, in an arid region in one of the driest inhabited places on earth (the state of WA), is delivered all the way from Perth by a pipeline system founded 120 years ago. While not on the same scale as the grand public baths in the cities of the Ancient Roman Empire, the aquatic centre provides a range of water-based sporting, recreational, social and ‘fun’ facilities for young and old, including a 50-m indoor heated Olympic pool, leisure pools, giant water slide, water playground features (‘Wipeout’, anyone?), spa and sauna, as well as family change rooms and barbecue facilities. In recognition of the limits of water availability and a drying cli-

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mate, the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder uses recycled water from the water treatment plant in city’s parks and reserves and promotes water saving measures, including installation of rainwater tanks, mulching of gardens and planting of native species. The water supply scheme devised and supervised by CY O’Connor has therefore provided a vital reliable supply of fresh water for the gold-mining operations and the goldfields communities for well over a century. It has also enabled the settlement and development of many towns and thousands of farms, creating new communities throughout the Wheatbelt. O’Connor’s original design, and the decision made in 1895 to spend the huge amount of public money needed to build and support the scheme, has thus been vindicated. It would have been a different story, however, had the supply of gold run out after a few years as had occurred in so many other locations. Whether or not the Goldfield and Agricultural Water Supply Scheme is a suitable model for water supply in the modern day is discussed later in this book.

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11

Adding water to the land: irrigation Agriculture is the largest consumer of water in Australia, representing 58 per cent of total water consumption nationwide in 2015–16.1 The great bulk of this – 92 per cent – is used in irrigation. The remainder includes uses such as livestock drinking water or dairy or piggery cleaning.2 In 2015–16, some 8400 GL or 8.4 km3, were used in irrigation out of a total of 9400 GL used for agriculture. This was a decrease of 3 per cent on irrigation water used in the previous year, in keeping with a 3 per cent decrease in water used for agriculture overall. The decrease was due to drier and warmer conditions with lower rainfall, particularly in Victoria and South Australia.2 Irrigation is used to supplement rainfall and thereby increase the productivity of land, or to make arid areas economically productive. In the driest inhabited continent on the planet and with the most unpredictable rainfall, these are critical operations in Australia. The gross value of irrigated agricultural production for Australia in 2015–16 was $15.0 billion, a decrease of 0.6 per cent on the previous year. Foods and other consumables produced through irrigation include vegetables, fruit, dairy products, cotton, grapes, nursery products, sugarcane, meat cattle, cereals for grain and seed, nuts, rice, sheep and other livestock. In 2014–15 dairy production was the agricultural activity that consumed the greatest amount of water, taking 14.2 per cent of all agricultural water use. This was followed by cotton farming (12.8 per cent) which suffered a drop in usage from the previous year of 58 per cent, and rice farming (10 per cent). Actual water uses in 2014–15 were: dairy production, 1596 GL; cotton growing, 1432 GL; and rice farming, 1126 GL.1,2,3 Given the significance of these figures, it is important to know more details about the how, what and when of water use for irrigation.

Sources of irrigation water The area of irrigated agricultural land in Australia in 2015–16 represented ~0.6 per cent of all agricultural land – 2.1 million hectares (21 000 km2), the same as for the previous year.1 Overall, most irrigation occurs in the south-east part of the country, with 58 per cent of all irrigated land being in the Murray–Darling Basin which accounted for 57 per cent of Australia’s total irrigation water use in 2015–16.4 Most water used for irrigation comes from Australia’s major river systems – the Murray–Darling system in eastern Australia and the Ord River in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Other significant irrigation systems are on the Burdekin River in Queensland, in the south-west of Western Australia and in the MacAlister District of Victoria. Irrigation also occurs around other rivers along the east coast of the continent, as well as in other parts of Australia, including the ‘least arid’ state of Tasmania, where irrigation projects continue to be developed across the state.5 115

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Ground water from the Great Artesian Basin is another important source. It provides for livestock and crops over much of north-eastern Australia via natural springs and manmade bores.6 In Australia as a whole, about one-fifth of irrigation water comes from the ground. Most water for irrigation in the Northern Territory, about half in South Australia and something less than half in Western Australia is obtained from groundwater sources, but a much smaller proportion in the other states. Town or country reticulated mains supplies make a small contribution to irrigation water, and a small but increasing amount of recycled water is also used, including water recycled both off-farm and on-farm.2 Worldwide, irrigation takes about 70 per cent of fresh water extracted. About one-sixth of the world’s cropland receives irrigation water, while the remainder manages with rain alone. Irrigation allows land to be, on average, twice as productive as rain-fed land (up to four times as productive in the developing world). Irrigated crops produce about 36 per cent of the world’s food; in developing countries 60 per cent of cereals are produced by irrigated land. Globally, the major part of irrigation water is pumped from aquifers – many of which are increasingly under threat, especially in India, the United States and China – and about 30 per cent comes from dams.7 Irrigation today is an extension – albeit a super-charged one – of methods practised thousands of years ago in Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley and China, as discussed in Chapter 1. Irrigation methods spread and were improved over the centuries, but dramatic improvements occurred during the twentieth century with the increased capacity of earthmoving machinery, improved pumping technologies, the availability of light weight flexible piping, and more recently, greatly increased knowledge about soils and plant nutrition.

The beginnings of irrigation in Australia The beginnings of large-scale irrigation in Australia were somewhat hesitant, and were focused in northern Victoria on the Murray River and its tributaries. On a small scale, farmers had been experimenting with irrigation as early as the middle of the nineteenth century – in the Riverina District of New South Wales and in the valleys of the Derwent and Clyde rivers in Tasmania. Hand-pumping of water from streams to make land more productive was occurring in Victoria in the 1850s. By 1857 David Milburn of Grange Farm in Keilor was hand-pumping water from the Maribyrnong River onto his two-acre orchard. Chinese market gardeners on the Yarra flats near Melbourne also irrigated their vegetables.8 The possibilities of large-scale irrigation were discussed among enthusiasts, but it was not until the 1877–81 drought that serious action was taken. In this dry period, thousands of small farmers had to cart water many miles to keep livestock alive, and water trains were sent to some of the worst affected areas. The Victorian Government established a Royal Commission on Water Supply in 1881, and information was collected from France, Italy, India and Egypt. The commission’s chairman, the up-and-coming young politician Alfred Deakin, visited California to inspect progress there – a visit the agricultural writers for The Age and The Argus newspapers had already made. Deakin concluded that if Victoria was ‘to utilise her abundant natural advantages, bring her productiveness to the highest point, and secure to the agricultural population of her arid districts a permanent prosperity, it must be by means of irrigation.’9 He was convinced that the best approach was to concentrate on cultivating fruit and vegetables intensively on small blocks, rather than irrigating to boost yields of grain and milk on larger properties – that is, for ‘higher value’ uses rather than ‘lower value’ uses.

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The Irrigation Act of 1886 was a direct result of the royal commission. It allowed local irrigation trusts to borrow money from the government to finance their works, while the government itself would build major storages. In a significant step, the Act transferred the ownership of all national water to the Crown, meaning no private individual could own a river or control the use of its water. Similar laws followed in other states. Disputes over water ownership that had caused major conflicts in American projects were thus avoided.10 The government began its first project, building a weir across the Goulburn River near Nagambie, in 1887. This became the first major diversion structure for irrigation in Australia. It raised the summer level of the river by more than 13 m, forming Lake Nagambie in the process, and allowing water to flow by gravity along two earthen channels which led off just above the weir. Water in the channels flowed in north-easterly (now the East Goulburn Main Channel) and north-westerly (now the Stuart Murray Canal, Plate 11.1) directions across flat country and was contained by raised levee banks. A growing network of irrigation channels spread from these, especially in the first decades of the twentieth century, and farm channels tapped into them. After 1910, the flow of water to each farm was regulated by the Dethridge wheel (see box). The Waranga Basin water storage, some 2 km north-west of the weir and constructed between 1902 and 1905, vastly increased the capacity of the system. This construction essentially involved the building of an earthen embankment across a natural depression which had been a swamp and from which the trees had been removed some years earlier. As a result of this, irrigation channels were extended a further 160 km west to the Loddon River, and later, beyond to the eastern Mallee districts. A remarkable technical feature of these channel systems was the flat grade, which was necessary because of the nature of the extensive northern plains. For example, the Waranga Western Main Channel was designed with an operating grade in its first 10 km of only 1 in 26 000. (In Chapter 2 we saw that the gently sloping Roman aqueduct serving Nimes had a grade as low as 1 in 12 500.) Apparently, these grades were greeted with disbelief by visiting British engineers in the 1960s, but they have proved to be successful in practice, due in part to the low volume of silt carried in most Australian rivers compared to those in other countries.11 The Goulburn irrigation system’s capacity was almost doubled again by the building of the Sugarloaf Reservoir12 (later named Eildon, following an expansion) close to the source of the Goulburn River in the Great Dividing Range. The reservoir was completed in 1922 and its filling to capacity in 1927 meant the Goulburn Valley irrigation areas could be expanded with confidence.13 The extension further west of the Goulburn’s irrigation channels enabled a link with another major water scheme in the Wimmera–Mallee. This huge region of western ­Victoria was without permanent creeks or rivers and had few natural water courses. Beginning with Wartook reservoir in the Grampians (completed 1887) and Lake Lonsdale west of Stawell (1903), by 1929 there were more than 9000 km of supply channel and the same length of farmers’ take-off channels coursing north from storages in and close to the Grampians.15 The Wimmera–Mallee scheme filled farmers’ earthen dams and also supplied 41 towns. Both here and in the Goulburn Valley, the assured supply of water enabled the areas to become rich agricultural regions recognised throughout Australia and overseas. In the towns, ready supplies of piped water gave residents and town authorities confidence to develop gardens and facilities to enhance their environments for living.13

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Dethridge: the wheel and the man The Dethridge Direct Measuring Water Meter, now known as the Dethridge wheel, was invented by John Dethridge, an outstanding engineer who worked with rivers, weirs, dams and irrigation for most of his life. Due to his all-round ability, he rose through the ranks of his profession to become one of three commissioners of the newly-formed State Rivers and Water Supply Commission from 1911. This simple but ingenious device was designed to measure the flow of water from the irrigation supply channels into farm channels. It consisted of a metal drum on an axle, with eight V-shaped vanes attached to the outside of the drum. Water flowing past the wheel caused it to revolve and register on a counting device attached to the axle, thereby providing the basis on which farmers were charged for water (Fig. 11.1). Dethridge refused to patent the device, making it available to all who wanted to use it. It became standard throughout Victoria and New South Wales irrigation areas, and the symbol of irrigation in Australia. Dethridge wheels became extremely popular because they were relatively cheap, robust, simple to use and reasonably accurate. Around the end of the twentieth century, tens of thousands were still in use in Australia and other countries including the USA, Israel and parts of Africa. In recent years, however, there has been a trend towards using more accurate electronic meters to measure water flow in irrigation systems. During his life, Dethridge had responsibility for major river works including the weir on the Goulburn River at Nagambie, the Waranga Basin and the design of the

Fig. 11.1.  An operating Dethridge wheel north of Cohuna, Vic. in 1915. The supply channel is on the right, the farm channel on the left.

11 – Adding water to the land: irrigation

Sugarloaf Reservoir (later called Eildon Weir). He was the Victorian representative at the Interstate Conference of Engineers in 1913 which formulated the River Murray Agreement. When the River Murray Commission was set up on 1 February 1917, Dethridge acted for his state. Over the following years he directed the construction of the Hume Dam, and designed two of the series of locked weirs built on the Murray – those at Torumbarry below Echuca, and at Mildura. These were innovative structures. Each consisted of a row of steel trestles mounted on wheels so that they could be removed from the river during floods, thus allowing the passage of timber debris from forests upstream. Most of his works still survive, standing as his monuments.14 There is a Dethridge Wheel Memorial at Griffith, New South Wales, that commemorates the pioneers of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area.

The Murray River Meanwhile, a more radical approach was adopted on a section of the Murray River. When he visited California, Deakin had met Canadian-born pioneers of irrigation the Chaffey brothers – George and William – from an irrigation settlement in the desert ~60 km east of Los Angeles on the Santa Ana River. The Chaffeys specialised in buying up land and water rights, levelling the land, supplying it with irrigation channels and then selling it to farmers in 10-acre blocks.16 After discussions with Deakin, the brothers became interested in the possibilities of irrigation in Victoria, apparently not fully appreciating the differences between key features in the two countries, especially in relation to land and water rights. In Australia, George Chaffey went on a tour of the Murray Valley and became convinced it had potential for an irrigation fruit colony along the lines of his successful Californian model. After some frustrations and delays, the Chaffey brothers entered into separate agreements with the Victorian and South Australian governments for the establishment of irrigation settlements at Mildura and Renmark respectively in 1887.17 They started in a desolate area of the abandoned Mildura sheep station, clearing the Mallee scrub, digging many kilometres of water channels, and laying out the township of Mildura. (There is a replica of the red-gum slab homestead built in ~1847 in Mildura.) George designed massive steam-driven pumps to be used for pumping great quantities of water from the Murray. The first of these was installed at Mildura. It was planned that the water would flow under gravity in the channels to where it was needed once it had been raised from the river. George oversaw the development of both irrigation areas, William stayed in Mildura, and a third brother, Charles, arrived to manage the Renmark development. The government took responsibility for the construction of the large dams and weirs, and the local irrigation trusts looked after the smaller dams and channels as well as managing the system, financed by government loans in accordance with the 1886 Irrigation Act. The loans were to be repaid by the growers once their land became productive. An advertising brochure was developed and widely distributed in the English-speaking world. The results were impressive. By 1893, some 8000 acres (3238 ha) were under irrigation and 3500 people had become pioneer fruit growers at Mildura, and 1000 at Renmark. Orchards, vineyards and green pastures were thriving in what was previously dry Mallee scrub.18 But there were problems and setbacks: more water was lost through evaporation and seepage than expected; yabbies undermined the banks (problems which also applied to the Goulburn scheme); the cost of lifting water from the river was high; some of the plantings were not appropriate to the soil and conditions; there was still a lot to be learned about

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effective irrigation; and some farmers refused to pay the necessary levies. A fundamental flaw was the failure of the farmers to realise that irrigation could only be successful if they grew crops that were suitable for more intensive farming methods; it was not economically feasible for irrigation to be used merely as a supplementary water supply. The Chaffey brothers went into liquidation in 1894 and the Renmark Irrigation Trust and the Mildura Irrigation Trust took over their work. George Chaffey went back to the United States. William stayed on, becoming a prominent citizen and was elected Mildura’s first mayor in 1920. He helped develop the dried fruit industry and died in Mildura in 1926. The Chaffey name lives on in Mildura through Chaffey Avenue, Chaffey Secondary College, the George Chaffey Bridge over the Murray River on the Sturt Highway from Robinvale, and in Renmark through the Chaffey Theatre. In the Riverland area of South Australia, vineyards, citrus, fruit and nut orchards, and pasture now cover ~40 000 ha of irrigated land.19 The problems encountered were intensified by the onset of the grim Federation drought – a severe drought that lasted from the mid-1890s until 1902. During this period the flows in the Murray were seriously depleted, and water levels were too low for the river transport of produce to city markets. (Mildura was 260 km downstream from the nearest railhead at Swan Hill.) As a consequence, much of the produce was spoiled before reaching its intended destination. The view that the Murray was an unfailing supply of water proved to be false. Despite all this, there was in Victoria a growing belief in irrigation. The government bailed out the Mildura scheme. Under the Water Act of 1905, irrigation trusts were abolished, except for the First Mildura Irrigation Trust, and their assets and debts became the responsibility of the newly-formed State Rivers and Water Supply Commission, which took control of rural water supplies – central direction rather than local control. These early developments became the basis for the irrigation industry in Australia.20 Under the Water Act of 1989, four water corporations within the state-owned water sector in Victoria now provide rural water services, including water supply, drainage, and salinity mitigation services for irrigation, domestic and stock purposes. The largest of these is Goulburn–Murray Water which covers an area of 68 000 km2, involving 70 per cent of Victoria’s stored water and 50 per cent of Victoria’s underground water supplies. It is Australia’s largest irrigation delivery network, with around 6000 km of supply channels and 3000 km of drains to capture run-off. It includes both pumped and gravity-fed irrigation systems.21

Major river works It was not until 1914, after another three years during which the Murray ceased to flow, that a formal agreement between the Australian, New South Wales, Victorian and South Australian governments concerning use of the water from the Murray was reached: the River Murray Waters Agreement.22 The agreement set out the principles for sharing water between the states. Importantly, it gave the Australian Government a coordinating role, though the states held the real power. It also led to the building of the huge Hume Dam (completed in 1931) upstream from Albury and 2225 km from the river mouth. Its purpose was to hold back water from the winter rain and snow melt from the Great Dividing Range, so it could be made available for irrigation in the dry summer months. A series of 26 weirs and locks was also planned for the river. Ultimately, 14 were built between 1922 and 1939 – 10 downstream from Mildura, one at Mildura, one at Euston (between Mildura and

11 – Adding water to the land: irrigation

Swan Hill), one at Torrumbarry (between Cohuna and Echuca) and one at Yarrawonga. The purposes of the weirs and locks were to: ●●

●● ●● ●●

store water in the weir pool, which could be used for irrigation, town supply or industry regulate river flow downstream raise the level of water upstream of the weir to improve the navigability of the river allow riverboats to navigate through the weir via the locks.23

The weirs and locks downstream from Mildura were primarily to ensure the river remained navigable for riverboats, but also provided a raised water level, thereby reducing the height through which water needed to be pumped for irrigation and town use. The weirs at Mildura and further upstream – at Euston, Torrumbarry and Yarrawonga – were built primarily for water supply purposes. Each of these weirs held back some of the river’s water, raising its level at that point, and consequently allowing irrigation by gravity. These significant engineering works were all crucial in consolidating and supporting the expanding irrigation ventures in Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales. Irrigation systems and the water storages that fed them were further developed and expanded during a large part of the twentieth century: the Murray and Murrumbidgee rivers were connected to the Snowy River through the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme so water could be diverted to them in times of drought; the capacity of the Eildon reservoir was increased in 1935 and again in 1955; the Hume Reservoir was enlarged in 1961; and in 1973–79 the Dartmouth Dam on the Mitta Mitta River was built forming the Dartmouth Reservoir. This is the farthest upstream and has the largest storage capacity of any dam in the Murray River system, representing 40 per cent of the system’s capacity when full. Many additional storages were also built, some making use of existing lakes or swamps. The result was a complex system involving many regulators and weirs on both permanent and ephemeral streams, and increased lengths of channels – all resulting in the opening up of new tracts of land for irrigation.24

North of the Murray River Irrigation on the New South Wales side of the Murray developed rather more slowly than in Victoria. The two major sources of water were the Murray and Murrumbidgee rivers. The Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area was established in 1912, created by the diversion of water from the Murrumbidgee near Narrandera.25 The construction of a dam on the upper reaches of the river 60 km south-west of Yass – the Burrinjuck Dam – commenced in 1906 and was completed in 1928. Irrigation channels were dug, allowing gravity feed to the gently sloping land in the target area between the Murrumbidgee and Lachlan rivers west of Narrandera. The state government sponsored this major development work through its Water Conservation and Irrigation Commission, as it was keen to see the region more closely settled. The irrigation scheme would insulate farmers to some extent from the hardship and unpredictability of the Australian cycle of drought and flood, enabling a more reliable supply for supporting crops and communities throughout the year. As with the irrigation schemes developing south of the Murray in Victoria, there were setbacks: information on crop and soil types was wrong or inadequate, and many types of produce trialled were unsuccessful, including tobacco, peanuts and ostriches. On one occasion, thousands of peach trees had to be pulled out and replanted with different varieties because they were the

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wrong type for use in the cannery.26 Government support meant development of the scheme could continue, though many farmers experienced hardship and poverty. The irrigation area continued to develop further after World War II. Blowering Dam on the Tumut River was added as additional storage, and Burrinjuck Dam was upgraded by raising the height of the wall by 12 m. Seven major weirs were built along the course of the Murrumbidgee between Wagga Wagga and Balranald.27 The Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area at present covers an area of 660 000 ha and has over 3500 km of supply channels and 1600 km of drainage channels. It supports livestock as well as a wide variety of crops, cereals, citrus, vegetables and, more recently, expanding areas of walnuts and cotton. Since 1999, it has been managed by the privatised, unlisted public company Murrumbidgee Irrigation Limited.26 John Oxley, the first European to gaze on the area in 1817, regarded the country ‘so extremely impracticable, and so utterly destitute of the means of affording subsistence to either man or beast’, that he thought it very improbable that ‘these desolate plains be ever again visited by civilised man’.28 He would no doubt be amazed at the changes irrigation has wrought. The New South Wales government through the Water Conservation and Irrigation Commission also managed the development of irrigation in the Murray Valley north of the Murray and south of the Murrumbidgee – the Southern Riverina region. However, this did not make significant progress until well after the signing of the River Murray Waters Agreement in 1914. In earlier times, periods of drought had led individual landowners to begin experimenting with irrigation, using steam-driven pumps and weirs on larger rivers and creeks. This sometimes led to violent conflict with downstream neighbours; some resorted to explosives to remove weirs and release water which had been held up.29 Development on a large scale began in 1933 with the construction of a weir on the Edward River (an anabranch of the Murray) 24 km west of Deniliquin, to raise the level so that water could be channelled to the Barham–Wakool region. Further developments in neighbouring areas followed, including construction of the Mulwala Canal, which commenced in 1935, to service these schemes. This canal, the largest irrigation channel in Australia, draws its water from the Murray River at Lake Mulwala (formed by the construction of the Yarrawonga Weir) and extends 156  km to the west through Berrigan, Finley and Deniliquin. At a point where the canal had to cross the Edward River to supply the country to the west, syphons were built (the Lawson Syphons) to carry the canal beneath the river. Nearly two millennia earlier, the Ancient Romans had built syphons to carry aqueduct water down one side of a deep valley and up the other side. They used a series of thick lead or stone pipes to do this (Chapter 2). The Lawson Syphons consist of two pipes 3.6 m in diameter made of reinforced concrete. The water first flows for 760 m under the Edward River and adjacent billabongs, then surfaces for ~1000 m, and subsequently enters a second syphon for a distance of 150 m under the Aljoes Creek, from where it re-surfaces into an open channel to service the Deniboota Irrigation Area. The Lawson syphons were completed in 1955, after the interruption of World War II.29,17 The development of the irrigation network in the Southern Riverina was completed in 1964. In 1995 control and operation of the irrigation system was handed to the irrigators it served, through the formation of the privatised company Murray Irrigation Limited. Today the irrigation system supplies 740 000 ha of farmland as well as providing town water supplies in the region. Rice has become a major product of this area.29 The privatisation or corporatisation of all irrigation areas and districts in New South Wales had been completed by1997, with the aim of encouraging management and control by the local irrigators.30

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If you drive through these areas today, you can’t help but be struck by the seemingly endless lengths of water channels criss-crossing the country. It is astounding to consider the enormous volumes of water drawn from the Murray, its tributaries and anabranches needed to fill all the channels, let alone provide water to sustain such large and wideranging agricultural enterprises. In many places, especially the country near Mildura and Renmark, the contrast between the green and sometimes lush irrigated vegetation and the unirrigated arid dun-coloured landscape is stark.

The Ord and Burdekin rivers The Ord River Irrigation Area in north-west Western Australia began in the mid-1960s when the Ord River was dammed to prevent seasonal flooding and to provide a year-round source of water for irrigation. In the first stage, a diversion dam was built forming Lake Kununurra and 31 farms were supplied with irrigation water. The second stage involved building a large dam wall across the river where it enters the Carr-Boyd Range 40  km south of Kununurra, to form Lake Argyle, and was completed in 1972. The storage was increased further 20 years later, and a hydro-electric power station was built below the wall. Lake Argyle is now the largest freshwater storage in mainland Australia, holding 10 700 GL (10.7 km3), more than 18 times the volume of water in Sydney Harbour. It covers an area of 980 km2.31 On completion of the main Ord River dam in 1972 and the filling of Lake Argyle, 14 000 ha of irrigated farmland in the Packsaddle Plains and Ivanhoe Plains, adjacent to Kununurra, were potentially available. In the following years a variety of crops were trialled in the area, including cotton, sorghum, safflower, hay, chickpeas, chia, red grapefruit, mangoes, melons, hybrid seeds and sandalwood. In more recent years, tropical forestry, particularly Indian Sandalwood trees, have occupied more than 50 per cent of the land area and taken more than 50 per cent of irrigated water. Some crops did not prove to be successful. Extensive planting of cotton was abandoned in 1974 because of increasing production costs, largely due to pests. A trial of rice also suffered from pest damage. A sugar mill was built in the mid-1990s but was dismantled in 2008. The Western Australian Government has funded an expansion of the irrigation scheme by enabling the release of an additional 13 400 ha of land (the Ord Irrigation Expansion Project).32 A further expansion (Stage 3) involving the investigation of irrigated agriculture in an additional 6000 ha of red loamy soils – the Cockatoo Sands – was commenced in 2012. Development of an area north-west of Kununurra – Mantinea – is also under investigation. This is despite the fact that a great amount of public money has been committed to the scheme and analyses show that the contribution to date has not produced anywhere near the economic returns forecast.33 The Burdekin River rises on the western slopes of the Seaview Range near Ingham, Queensland, and flows into the Pacific Ocean at Upstart Bay near Ayr. It is Queensland’s largest river, having a large but very erratic flow. The construction of Burdekin Dam was completed in 1988, forming Lake Darymple. This storage, which has a capacity of 1860 GL, provides water for irrigation, for the urban needs of the twin cities of Townsville and Thuringowa, and for replenishment of downstream aquifers. The Lower Burdekin, below the dam wall, is northern Australia’s largest irrigation area, with ~80 000 ha under irrigation, predominantly for growing sugarcane, but also some horticultural crops including capsicums, eggplant, rockmelons, squash, pumpkins, watermelons and sweet corn. The Lower Burdekin Irrigation Area comprises two regions – the Burdekin Haughton Water Supply

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Scheme on alluvial flood plains below the Burdekin Dam, and a region on the Burdekin River Delta, which predominantly relies on groundwater.34 There is also some irrigation in the Daly River catchment in the Northern Territory, where groundwater from high-yielding bores is used. Further development in the area is being considered.

Methods of irrigation Methods of irrigation developed and diversified during the latter part of the twentieth century. With improved knowledge of plant growth and soil types and improvements in technology and farming techniques, as well as greater concern for how available water is used, wastage has decreased. However, while some irrigation methods are inherently more water efficient than others, there is potential for loss with any method through poor planning, inappropriate choice of method, poor application and poor maintenance. The following are the main irrigation methods used today. Surface irrigation. The earliest method was the flooding of an area of flat land by the release of water from a supply channel or other stream. The basin irrigation used by farmers along the Nile in ancient Egypt (Chapter 1) was a simple form of surface irrigation. In more recent times, surface irrigation includes gravity systems where the water flows from the higher end of the paddock to the lower. In furrow irrigation, the paddock is divided into several small channels (furrows) and the water travels along these. The crop is planted on the high areas between the furrows. Furrow irrigation is used extensively in growing sugarcane, for which sophisticated enhancements have been developed, including the use of lie-flat flexible fluming with outlets for each furrow. In such cases, concrete cylinders are often used to regulate the head (pressure) in the fluming or mains pipe downstream, thereby maintaining a safe pressure throughout the system regardless of the changing head as a result of pump operation or bore level changes. In border check irrigation, the water is applied to large bays ~20–80 m wide, which have no furrows. The main problems associated with surface irrigation are obtaining uniformity of water distribution and avoiding over-watering – that is, applying more water than the soil can hold. Surface irrigation methods have generally been poorly designed and managed in the past, and have often operated on a ‘best bet’ or local knowledge basis. A detailed understanding of the interactions between soil characteristics, water supply and crop growth, and attention to furrow geometry are necessary to design efficient surface irrigation. Attention has been given to these factors in recent years.35 Sprinkler irrigation. A wide range of sprinkling equipment is available for use depending on the soil and crop type. Sprinkler irrigation is commonly used in horticulture and for some grain and fodder crops. Field crop (overhead) sprinkler systems can be readily seen when driving around farming areas and may be fixed or movable (Plate 11.2). Microsprinkler systems may be used for horticulture, allowing a more focused watering rather than wetting the whole area. Advantages of sprinkler systems include their use for germination and crop establishment, as small amounts of water can be applied frequently, normally with a low labour requirement. They are also portable and can easily be switched on and off as needed. Disadvantages include high capital and operating costs and high losses due to evaporation. Unless there is appropriate soil investigation beforehand, effective design and scheduling and proper maintenance, sprinkler irrigation can result in excessive pooling of water and run-off (which can be damaging as well as wasteful) and excessive deep percolation. There is also the danger of damage to crops if saline or reclaimed water is applied to foliage.

11 – Adding water to the land: irrigation

Drip irrigation. This is a technologically advanced method in which irrigation is closely matched to the crop requirements on a daily (or sub-daily) basis. Its characteristics are that water is applied frequently at low application rates, uniformly to all plants in an area, and directly to the root zone. In drip irrigation, water is pumped around the area in pipes to emission points close to the plant root zones. The installation of the pipes, pump and other hardware, together with the design of the system, is expensive, meaning drip irrigation is capital intensive. Because of this, careful planning of anticipated productivity gains against capital outlay is crucial. However, in terms of water use against productive outcomes, this irrigation method is by far the most efficient – though clearly not feasible for all crops.35

Negative consequences of irrigation While the advantages of irrigation for food production are easy to see, there can also be negative consequences. These include altering the course of rivers and their depletion through over-use, damage to riparian communities, waterlogging and increasing the salinity of soils. Over-use of river water for irrigation can result in a serious reduction in flows, even to the extent that rivers do not reach their mouths for certain periods. Riparian communities – those on the river banks – include plants (rushes, grasses, bushes, trees), animals (large and small) and in some cases, wetlands. These communities suffer when river flows are depleted and water levels lowered. Intensive irrigation tends to raise the water table and waterlog the soils. Even worse, raising the water table brings salt near to the surface – or to the surface – and soils become too saline for growing crops. As described in Chapter 1, early farmers irrigating in the Nile delta were able to avoid this problem because each year the Nile floods washed excess salt out into the sea. On the other hand, ancient Mesopotamia had nothing to compare with the cleansing Nile floods, and over time the salt built up in the soil, drastically reducing its productivity and ultimately making it useless for agriculture. Evaporation in the hot, arid country resulted in a white crust of salt on the soil surface; tablets from 1800 BC record ‘black fields becoming white’.36 Salt occurs naturally in Australian soils, accumulated over thousands of years through the evaporation of inland seas, the depositing of windblown ocean salt and the weathering of rocks. In the past, this salt was kept from reaching the surface by the natural vegetation, because in the semi-arid climate, the deep-rooted woodlands and forests soaked up most of the rain that fell, and therefore kept the water table and the salt in it deep in the soil. When European settlers cleared the deep-rooted trees and shrubs and planted shallow-rooted crops and pastures which did not use as much water throughout the year, the water table rose, bringing the salt to the surface. The application of excess irrigation causes the water table to rise in a similar way, again resulting in higher salinity of the topsoils. Although the scale of irrigation salinity is not as severe a problem in Australia as dryland salinity, it still affects large areas of agricultural land.37 (See also Chapter 14, ‘Salinity management’.) By the 1920s, waterlogging of soils and reduced crop yields, especially in intensively irrigated areas, showed that drainage was essential – a fact that was not appreciated previously. Subsequently, surface drains were incorporated into irrigation systems, and design rules were developed after some experimentation and cases of litigation against water authorities. Other drainage methods, including underground drains, were developed later.11

Modernising irrigation systems Key challenges for irrigation systems are reducing the very significant water losses and improving efficiencies in the delivery of the water. Approximately 30 per cent of water is

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lost in a traditional open channel irrigation system due to leakage, seepage, evaporation and inaccurate measurement of the volume of water delivered to farms. In the Goulburn– Murray Irrigation District alone, this is estimated to be ~800 GL per year (0.8 km3!) as a long-term average.38 In recent years, modernisation programs are being implemented to reduce these losses. This has been driven mainly by growing demands on the water available coupled with the effects of prolonged droughts, and predictions of reduced availability in future years due to climate change. The need to provide greater water security for farmers – that is, more certainty in annual allocations – has also been a significant factor. Modernisation involves using a combination of methods to upgrade and replace the infrastructure that delivers water to farmers. These methods include: ●●

●●

●●

●●

●● ●●

reconfiguring the system to future needs, including de-commissioning redundant channels and rationalising on-farm arrangements – for example, making modifications due to changed needs or farm consolidation. Incentives in the form of compensation as well as the potential for better service and improved flow rates support these processes automating the main irrigation channels using radio-controlled, solar-powered technology to open and close the channel gates and monitor flows 24 hours per day. With this automation technology, discrepancies in water delivery as well as maintenance needs can be identified. It can also ensure that precise amounts of water are delivered when and where they are needed, shortening ordering times and providing more consistent and reliable delivery of water to irrigators pipelining. The use of high pressure pipelines to deliver irrigation water has big advantages in that it eliminates losses due to evaporation, leakage and seepage. However, this is not economically viable as a replacement for large capacity channels lining channels with clay or plastic to stop water lost through leakage and seepage. Plastic is generally used on the smaller capacity channels and clay lining used on larger channels renovating channel banks to reduce leaking and seepage replacing inaccurate on-farm water meters with modern meters. Dethridge wheels, which have been in use for a century or so, typically show an error of 6–8 per cent, and up to 17 per cent – in favour of the farmer.38 Computer-operated aluminium flume gates, each operated by its own solar panel, are now used in many irrigation areas in place of Dethridge wheels. A flume gate is a combined flow measurement and control gate designed to regulate flow in open channels. It has the advantages of accurate flow measurement, precise motor control, power supply (solar power and battery) and radio telecommunications all integrated in a single device. These gates also replace the time-honoured ‘drop bar’ methods where channel flow was adjusted by placing or removing wooden planks (bars) across the flow, held in position by slotted wooden posts set into the channel banks. Once installed in channels and at thousands of farm access points, these devices are linked in real time across an entire irrigation system and can measure and deliver water accurately, and identify where leakage, seepage or theft may be occurring (Plate 11.3).

Various components of these modernisation methods have been or are being applied in irrigation systems across Australia. These are supported by funds from the Australian and state governments following the implementation of the Water Act 2007 and concern about over extraction from rivers and streams coupled with the effects of the Millennium drought (Chapter 14).

11 – Adding water to the land: irrigation

There are many examples, of which the following five illustrate the combination of methods used in different locations and situations: ●●

●●

●●

●●

●●

South Australia: Electronic water meters coupled with a telemetry system have been installed by the Central Irrigation Trust in irrigation districts supporting high value horticulture along the Murray River in South Australia. The aim of this project was to enhance the precision of water delivery and crop watering in the fully-piped irrigation areas and to enable remote reading of water meters.39 Western Australia: Harvey Water, a private irrigators’ cooperative in dairying and horticulture in Western Australia ~100  km south of Perth, has replaced open channels with pipes to reduce wastage through seepage, evaporation and leaks, as well as to divert highly saline flows entering the main irrigation supply dam.39 New South Wales: In the Murrumbidgee Valley, modernisation projects include rebuilding old irrigation channels, replacing some channels with pipelines, and installing modern flow meters in place of Dethridge wheels.26 Victoria: The aim of the Sunraysia Modernisation Project – the biggest upgrade of irrigation infrastructure in the history of that region – is to modernise the irrigation systems across the Mildura, Red Cliffs and Merbein irrigation districts. It involves upgrading pump stations, replacing sections of channels with pipelines, installing modern metering systems and upgrading regulators. Goulburn–Murray: The Northern Victorian Irrigation Renewal Project (NVIRP) involves the modernisation of the huge Goulburn–Murray Irrigation District. The project includes the application of all the methods listed above. The NVIRP estimated the overall pre-modernisation system losses as follows: unplanned spills or releases, 8–12 per cent of total system loss; evaporation, 10–15 per cent; inaccurate metering, 20–25 per cent; leakage, 25–30 per cent; seepage, 10–15 per cent; other, such as due to losses in natural waterways, 15–20 per cent. The project is the biggest investment of its kind in Australia and the most significant upgrade to the district’s irrigation infrastructure in its 100-year history. It is claimed that the project will result in one of the most advanced irrigation systems in the world. The $2-billion-dollar project, jointly funded by the Australian and state governments, has undergone two management ‘resets’ because it was falling behind time and budget. It has now been re-named the ‘Connections Project’ and is ongoing at the time of writing.40

In the past, when driving around an irrigation region there was the ubiquitous Dethridge wheel to remind you of the nature of farming in the region. These days, it’s increasingly an angled solar panel atop a 2–3 m metal stalk above the concrete edges of a flume gate that signifies irrigation (Plate 11.3). Such modernisation initiatives mean greater efficiency and utility and therefore improved production for the farmer. The water savings mean more water is potentially available for maintaining the health of natural streams, rivers and wetlands, and for meeting other demands, such as town water supplies and industry and recreation needs.

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12

Dams and reservoirs: storing water

The beginning of the age of dams In the nineteenth century, as the growing town of Sydney exhausted successive supplies of fresh water – the Tank Stream, the Lachlan swamps, the Botany swamps (Chapter 4) – the city authorities1 turned to the Nepean River for a new source of supply. A royal commission into the water crisis recommended in 1869 that the catchment of the Upper Nepean, which covered 1000 km2 south of the city, be developed. The catchment is in one of the highest rainfall zones of the mid-New South Wales coast. The population of Sydney at this time was around 60 000 people. This was a necessarily ambitious proposal. The first stage to capture the headwaters of the Nepean River involved constructing a small weir about 3 m high across the Nepean River near Pheasants Nest and connecting it by a tunnel 7 km long to another weir on the Cataract River at Broughton’s Pass. The water would then be gravity-fed through 64 km of tunnels, canals and pipes (collectively known as the Upper Canal) into a reservoir at Prospect, ~30 km west of the city. From here, the water was to be distributed to several service reservoirs around the city. The Prospect Reservoir was to be huge for the time, with an embankment 24 m high and more than 2 km long, and a capacity of 48.3 GL. When completed in 1888 it was the first earth fill embankment dam in Australia. By this time the population of Sydney had grown to 358 000.2 Following a severe drought in the Upper Nepean catchment in 1901–02, another royal commission recommended a further four dams in the catchment above the two existing weirs. The Cataract Dam, above the Broughton’s Pass weir, was the first of these to be built. Completed in 1907, the dam wall was 49 m high and 247 m long, and the reservoir formed had a capacity of 94.3 GL. Water from the dam discharged into the Cataract River and then via the Upper Canal to Prospect Reservoir. It was constructed of sandstone blocks, each weighing 2.0–4.5 tonnes and quarried on site. Cataract Dam was the biggest engineering project in Australia and the fourth biggest in the world at the time.3 The Mundaring Dam (known as Mundaring Weir) in Western Australia was completed in 1902, the same year construction of the Cataract Dam began. It was made of concrete and rock and was 230 m wide and 30.4 m high, then the highest in the southern hemisphere. The capacity of the reservoir formed was 21.16 GL (Chapter 10). In terms of size, it was therefore surpassed by the Cataract Dam in 1907. These two major water supply projects marked the beginning of what would become a pattern for three-quarters of the twentieth century – the building of larger and larger dams on strategic waterways, primarily for the purposes of supplying cities and agricultural communities with their fresh water needs. This development was pushed along by the 129

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nature of the Australian climate and the requirements of growing populations, and enabled by improved engineering knowledge and techniques.

What dams are A dam is a barrier that holds back water to form a reservoir or lake, usually by obstructing the flow of a stream. (In general usage the term ‘dam’ is often taken to refer to the reservoir formed by the dam.) Dams are typically made of earth, rock or concrete. Their purpose can be for water storage, irrigation, the production of hydroelectricity or flood control. The reservoirs formed are also often significant sites of recreation – swimming, fishing, boating, water skiing and sailing. They therefore have great economic and social benefits. Most dams in Australia have been built to store water when it is plentiful for use at times when it is most needed. There are four main types of dam structure in Australia: ●●

●●

●●

●●

Embankment dams are made of rock, gravel and sand, with the finest materials placed in the centre to form a waterproof core. Embankment dams are heavy enough to resist the force of the water that builds up behind the wall. Gravity dams are thick, massive structures that can hold back huge quantities of water by their own weight. They are made of stone masonry or concrete and may be tied to their foundations by steel cables within them. Arch dams are concrete dams that are curved in plan with the convex side facing the reservoir (upstream side). The arch transfers the load of the water to the sides (abutments). Arch dams are suitable for use in narrow canyons with strong abutments capable of resisting the thrust produced by the arch. Buttress dams are another form of concrete dam in which buttresses on the downstream side transfer the load to the base (foundation) of the dam.

Dams are designed to incorporate a method of releasing water from the reservoir, and a means of letting excess water go. Outlet pipes are usually built through the bottom of the dam during construction. These allow water to be supplied from the reservoir for downstream use, and for the reservoir to be emptied if necessary. A spillway is a channel cut lower than the top of a dam and is made of concrete in a large dam. Spillways are designed to allow water to flow out of a full dam rather than flowing over the top of the dam and causing damage. Some dams have gates in the spillways which can be used to increase the amount of water stored as well as to control downstream flooding.4

Dams in Australia There are more than 820 significant dams in Australia, with a total capacity of more than 91  000  GL (equivalent to 182 Sydney Harbours). Most of these are located in the more southern latitudes where the climate means that storages are needed to last through the dry summers. Fewer than 10 per cent are located in Northern Australia.5 Of the 820, over 500 are large dams, usually taken to mean dams with a wall height of 15 m or more, or a minimum of 10  m if the capacity of the reservoir is at least 1.0  GL.6 As well, there are countless numbers of small dams, including farm dams used for watering stock, pasture and for household functions. This reflects the low, variable and unpredictable rainfall in many parts of Australia, and the low volume of run-off – overall only 13 per cent – reaching waterways.7 The situation is unlike that in other countries, for example European countries, where perennial rivers and streams can be relied on to provide water throughout the year.

12 – Dams and reservoirs: storing water

Government tank at Ivanhoe, New South Wales Ivanhoe is a small township on the Cobb Highway between the Darling and the Lachlan rivers ~200 km south of Wilcannia in western New South Wales. When people of European origin first settled there, the nearest water supply was 25 km away at Kilfera Lake. Drinking water had to be carted from here by dray. In the late 1930s a project to construct a series of three earthen ground tanks (dams) was financed by Government Relief Grant moneys. The construction was carried out by four sevenhorse scoop teams, commencing in 1938. The work included many kilometres of drains to divert run-off into the storage. One tank, when completed in 1940, was 4.9 m deep and held 18 ML of water.8 Water tanks, small and large, were and still are an essential resource for backblock properties in remote low rainfall areas without access to natural drainage channels for their supplies. High earth banks reduce evaporation by forming a zone of still air over the water surface. Numerous catch drains radiating from the tank direct surface water run-off into the tank. In the early days, they represented the most important improvement on the properties, for without water neither stock nor settler could survive long.

While the following discussion focuses mainly on large dams, the importance of smaller, non-farm dams to Australia’s early development and current prosperity should not be overlooked. As European settlement spread in the latter part of the nineteenth century, the development of the country was closely related to the spread of railways. So, railway authorities had to build water storages of significant sizes, including dams and reservoirs, to provide a reliable water supply for the steam locomotives, especially during the dry seasons and droughts. Some of the dams had unusual and advanced features. For example, the 75-Miles Dam built to supply water for use on the Brisbane to Sydney line from 1888 to 1930 was the first concrete arch dam built in Australia and possibly the world. It was 5 m high, forming a reservoir with a capacity at the time reported to be between 1.3 and 1.8 ML.9 It is still in use. European colonists began building large dams quite early in their efforts to provide a water supply to keep pace with the growth of settlements. The earliest was the dam that formed Lake Parramatta, built in 1857 on Hunts Creek to augment the water supply to the growing city of Parramatta. An interesting feature was that it was a masonry arch dam with a concrete extension added in 1898, making a height of 15 m. It is claimed to be only the second arch dam built in modern times, and the twelfth since Roman times around 100 BC. The lake had a capacity of 3 ML, small by today’s standards but significant at the time. The reservoir supplied drinking water to Parramatta until 1909, when the city was connected to the Sydney main water supply. The dam is now State Heritage listed.10 Table 12.1 shows the first five large dams built in Australia, covering the 11 years from 1857 to 1868 and four states – New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania. The first large dams built in South Australia (1872) and Western Australia (1891) are also shown. Other dams mentioned previously in this chapter or the previous two chapters have been included in the table to place them in the time sequence with other dam-building projects. Dimensions listed are the heights and capacities that apply at present; many of the dams have been modified since they were first constructed, often resulting in increased capacities. In all, 34 large dams were built between 1857 and the end of the century, almost

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Table 12.1.  Large dams built in early Australia, including the first five Year

Name

Purpose

Type

Height*

Capacity*

1857

Lake Parramatta Sydney

Water supply

Masonry arch

15 m

3 ML

1857

Yan Yean Melbourne

Water supply

Earth fill embankment

10 m

33.1 GL

1866

Enoggera Brisbane

Water supply

Earth & rock fill embankment

23.5 m

4.5 GL

1867

Lower Reservoir Hobart

Water supply

Earth fill embankment

18 m

213 ML

1868

Spring Gully Bendigo, Vic

Irrigation

Earth fill embankment

18 m

2.5 GL

1872

Hope Valley Adelaide

Water supply

Earth fill embankment

22 m

3.6 GL

1887

Wartook Stawell, Vic

Water supply Irrigation

Earth fill embankment

11 m

29.4 GL

1888

Prospect Sydney

Water supply

Earth fill embankment

26 m

50.2 GL

1890

Goulburn Vic

Irrigation

Concrete gravity

15 m

25 GL

1891

Victoria Perth

Water supply

Concrete gravity

25 m

860 ML

1892

Stephens Creek Broken Hill, NSW

Water supply

Earth fill embankment

15 m

20.4 GL

1902

Mundaring WA

Water supply

Concrete gravity

71 m

76.4 GL

*Heights and capacities are present-day dimensions.11

half (16) of these in Victoria. All but one (Yan Yean) of the early Victorian dams were in growing population centres in country areas, including Ballarat, Bendigo, Stawell and Castlemaine. Most were for water supply, but a few were built for irrigation.11 Dam-building progressed steadily in the first half of the twentieth century so that by 1950 there were 130 large dams (as measured by their current dimensions). The highest was Burrinjuck Dam on the Murrumbidgee River near Yass in New South Wales, completed in 1928 and enlarged in 1938.12 This is a concrete gravity dam with a height of 91 m and a capacity of 1026 GL, built to supply the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area. The building of new large dams increased markedly after 1950, partly as a result of the post-World War II boom and partly due to increased engineering knowledge and capability. By 1970 there were 288 large dams in Australia, and this number grew to 474 by 1990, after which growth slowed considerably.13 The largest dams were built in these periods, and these are summarised in Table 12.2. It is notable that the designed purpose of all of these dams was either irrigation or the generation of hydroelectric power. This was also the case for the next five largest dams (not listed here), including the Hume Dam (Fig. 12.1). The building of Australia’s largest dam, the Gordon Dam (Plate 12.1), was at the centre of the controversy surrounding the flooding of the original Lake Pedder.

The world context The pattern of large dam building in Australia was consistent with that in other parts of the world.13 It was sparked by the building of the Hoover Dam (also known as the Boulder

12 – Dams and reservoirs: storing water

Fig. 12.1.  Hume Dam – outfall side showing gate lifting apparatus.

Dam) in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, some distance downstream from the Grand Canyon in the United States. Writing about water storages on a world scale, Steven Solomon claimed this set a new standard of achievement in large dam building. The dam, completed in 1936, was enormous and dwarfed all previous dams in history. Of concrete arch construction and an astonishing 221 m high, it was ‘six times higher than the Britishbuilt marvel of the first low Aswan Dam on the Nile even with its 1929 extension, and more than twice as high as any other dam on earth.’15 It created the world’s largest manmade reservoir, Lake Mead – 177 km long with a capacity of more than 38 000 GL. A significant innovation, according to Solomon, was that Hoover Dam was built as a multipurpose dam – for irrigation, power generation and flood control – whereas in the past, dams had been designed for a single purpose – irrigation or water supply or flood control or improved navigation or generating power (by water wheels before electric power was known). Different purposes often had conflicting needs: flood control required low reservoir levels to hold back flood swells, whereas full reservoirs were needed for maximum power generation. When built, the Hoover Dam had the world’s largest hydroelectric power plant, which was upgraded in the 1980s.16 Until the early 2000s, it was possible to drive on the road along the crest of Hoover Dam – from Nevada to Arizona – and gaze down at the water in Lake Mead on one side and deep down to the emerging Colorado River at the bottom of the walls in Black Canyon on the other. Nowadays, the road passes along a new bridge high above and a little downstream of the dam, for security reasons. More’s the pity. Following Hoover, many other giant dams, some larger again, were built in the United States and other parts of the world, among them the Bratsk Dam in Russia (1964), the

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Table 12.2.  The five largest dams in Australia at the present time11,14 Year

Name

Purpose

Type

Height

Capacity

1974

Gordon S-W Tasmania

Hydroelectricity

Concrete arch

140 m

12 450 GL

1972

Ord River Kimberley, WA

Irrigation

Earth & rock fill embankment

99 m

10 760 GL

1958

Eucumbene Cooma, NSW

Hydroelectricity

Earth fill embankment

116 m

4798 GL

1979

Dartmouth N-E Vic

Irrigation

Earth & rock fill embankment

180 m

4000 GL

1956

Eildon^ Vic

Irrigation

Earth & rock fill embankment

83 m

3390 GL

^Originally named Sugarloaf reservoir, built 1915–29

Daniel Johnson Dam in Canada (1970), the High Aswan Dam in Egypt (1970) and the Guri Dam in Venezuela (1986). By 2000, around 60 per cent of all larger river systems in the world passed through dams or other man-made structures such as canals or locks, and most of the best dam sites, apart from in Africa, were already in use.16 World water expert Peter Gleick noted that by 2000 the building of large dams, reservoirs and canals had been so extensive that the resulting distribution of fresh water across Earth’s landscapes accounted ‘for a small but measurable change in the wobble of the earth as it spins’.17 By this time also, the era of giant dam-building across the world had passed its peak. However, major dam projects still continue to be developed, some of which have received international publicity because of their size and potential consequences. These include the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River in China, completed in 2012 (one of the largest in the world at 181 m high and with the largest hydroelectric power station in the world), and dams on the Mekong River in South-East Asia, all primarily for hydroelectric power production. The mighty Mekong River is one of the world’s great river systems. It rises in southern China and travels 4400 km through six countries: China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam before discharging through multiple mouths into the South China Sea. More than 60 million people depend on the Mekong River and its tributaries for food, water, transport and many other aspects of their daily lives. The river’s annual flood cycles are crucial for sustainable production of food crops on the floodplains. China has built six giant dams high upstream and 14 more are planned in the next decade. As well, 11 mainstream dams are planned for the Mekong Basin in Laos and Cambodia. Already, the river flow has been affected, and authorities warn that planned dams will threaten the livelihood and food supply of more than 40 million people, including millions in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam’s food bowl.18

Adverse effects As we have seen, large dams can provide many benefits. They can be used to provide drinking water, to supply water for irrigation, to generate hydroelectricity and provide opportunities for recreation. But they also have adverse impacts. The reservoirs formed by dams flood river valleys, natural landscape and sometimes farmland. People living in the way of the reservoir may have to be moved, causing fragmentation of communities and families. In the early days of large dam-building in Australia, Aboriginal lands and food sources were damaged or destroyed. The town of Tallangatta of more than 1000 residents

12 – Dams and reservoirs: storing water

in northern Victoria had to be moved in 1956 when the Hume Dam was expanded. On a much larger scale, the building of the giant Three Gorges Dam caused the displacement of more than 1.2 million people from the cities and towns flooded. Plants and animals in the flooded areas may not adapt to the new environment, and alien fish species introduced to the reservoir inadvertently or for recreational fishing further alter the ecological balance.19 In Sumatra, the plan to build a huge dam for hydroelectric purposes as part of China’s vast ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative threatens the habitat of ‘the rarest ape in the world’.20 Downstream, changes to the river’s flow and water quality usually produce irreversible effects. Dams may block fish migration, harm water quality and temperature, and alter riparian (river edge) and floodplain habitat, thereby affecting the lives of plants and animals. Large bodies of water in a hot, dry environment lose huge amounts of water to evaporation. On a typical summer day with up to 5 mm of water lost in evaporation, 1 ha of water surface could evaporate 50 000 L of water.19 Lake Argyle, formed by the building of the Ord River Dam in Western Australia where evaporation rates are high, loses ~1850 GL of water each year due to evaporation – about three-and-a-half Sydney Harbours.21 Dams are also affected by sedimentation – the gradual build-up of silt. All rivers contain sediment. In a reservoir, where the water is still, the sediment sinks to the bottom. As sediments accumulate, the reservoir gradually loses storage capacity meaning the dam becomes less effective in fulfilling its purpose. The rate at which this happens varies widely. Between 1890 and 1960 many dams in Australia became fully silted, some in less than 20 years. Most of these were in New South Wales, and not surprisingly, their failure affected the local economy.7 The rate of siltation is less in large dams and where catchments are forested, as there is less eroded soil washed into the reservoir. Holding silt behind the dam can also have adverse effects on the productivity of downstream areas. The Mekong River delivers sediment packed with nutrients to farms and paddy fields downstream and the plans for major dams have raised alarm because of the effects on people’s livelihoods. On top of all this, dams cost millions or even billions of dollars to build. In its final report in 2000, the World Commission on Dams recorded that a ‘considerable portion’ of the 45 000 large dams built worldwide fell short of their physical and economic targets, often suffered delays and significant cost overruns, and were typically less

Scooping out the sediment I had a friend who was a farmer in South Gippsland in Victoria. He cleaned out his farm dams – one a year, in rotation – because of the build-up of sediment. An old-time farmer, he always used a draught horse, never a tractor – an appropriate choice in hilly South Gippsland. The draught horse pulled a scoop. Starting at the outside rim of the dam and gradually working towards its centre, he guided the scoop by its two handles into the mud while the horse pulled. When the scoop was full enough, he directed the horse to the bank of the dam, where he lifted the handles, so the pull of the horse emptied the mud onto the bank. It was a long, hard, sweaty job, always done in the middle of summer when the dams were at their lowest. (If there was too much water, the job had to wait until the next year.) Each dam could take several days to complete. He would often be accompanied by two or three of his children when they were not at school, who would spend the day ‘over at the back paddock’, entertaining themselves by playing around the dam, catching eels …

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profitable in economic terms than expected. They found there was a persistent failure to assess the range of negative impacts and implement adequate mitigation, resettlement and development programs for those displaced, and that this has led to the impoverishment and suffering of millions of people. They concluded that because the environmental and social costs of large dams have been poorly accounted for, ‘… the true profitability of these schemes remains elusive.’ The commission developed a set of strategies to be applied to planning for future large dam projects.22 In the same vein, the European Union’s Framework Directive on water policy (2000) specifically discouraged new dams where economically viable alternatives exist.16

Dams for hydroelectricity The building of large dams for hydroelectricity – electrical energy generated when falling or flowing water is channelled through water turbines – has big advantages. Once functioning, both operating costs and greenhouse gas emissions are low – an especially important factor in a time where dangerous climate change is a major concern worldwide. In addition, the use of water in producing electricity is not consumptive. That is, once it has passed through the turbines the water can be used downstream for other purposes – town supply, irrigation, industry or the environment. ‘Hydro’ is a renewable energy source. In the case of developing countries, the generation of large quantities of electricity via water power can be not only a major contributor to raising the standard of living of the broader population, but also a welcome source of income for a government if it sells some of the power produced to a neighbouring country. But the effect on downstream communities, including those in other countries, has to be taken into account. If most or all of the power generated is sold to neighbouring countries, as is the case in Laos,23 people downstream lose twice – they lose their livelihood and they gain no share in the power generated as a result of their loss. But we should not overlook the significance of small or extremely small hydro installations. I have seen microhydroelectricity plants upstream from small mountain villages in Nepal, a country with one of the lowest per capita incomes in the world. These are of inestimable value to the residents of the village and cost little to operate. Such plants are the waterwheels or windmills of villages in earlier times, now providing energy for a range of purposes – lighting, heating and other domestic or small business uses. In addition, replacing wood fires means better health for villagers, especially women and children, a reduction in deforestation and lower carbon emissions. Hydropower provides some level of electricity generation in more than 160 countries. In Australia there are more than 100 operating hydroelectric power stations, with capacity to generate a total of 7800 megawatts. In 2011 these power stations produced 6.5 per cent of Australia’s electricity supply. They are situated in the areas of highest rainfall and elevation, mostly in New South Wales (55 per cent) and Tasmania (29 per cent). There are also power stations in north-eastern Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia as well as a minihydroelectricity project in South Australia.24 In Western Australia there are hydropower stations at the Ord River Dam (30 megawatts) in the north-west and Wellington Dam (2 megawatts) in the south-west. The hydropower station at the Wivenhoe Dam in Queensland is the fourth largest in Australia by generating capacity, at 500 megawatts. At the other extreme is the plant at Thargomindah in western Queensland that used water discharging under pressure from the Great Artesian Basin to generate the township’s electricity until 1988 when the town was connected to the national grid, as we saw in Chapter 7. Hydroelectricity facilities have also been built at irrigation dams, such as at the Burrinjuck, Hume and Dartmouth dams. In such cases, arrangements have to be made so that

12 – Dams and reservoirs: storing water

water released for the generation of electricity does not interfere with irrigation releases. At Dartmouth, the downstream river flow is controlled using three surge control dams and a regulating pondage. As well, irrigation releases can bypass the power station if necessary. In the cases of the Burrinjuck and Hume dams, water is made available for power generation only when releases are made for downstream water users or the environment and during flood operations. The largest hydro scheme in Australia is the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme in south-eastern Australia. At 3800 megawatts, it provides nearly half of the nation’s hydro generating capacity. It is one of the largest and most complex integrated water and hydroelectric power schemes in the world, and during its 25-year construction was regarded as a major nation-building project as well as a major engineering feat. It was completed in 1974. The scheme collects and stores the water from the upper reaches of the Snowy River that would normally flow east to the coast and diverts it through trans-mountain tunnels and power stations. The water is then released into the Murray and Murrumbidgee Rivers for irrigation (Chapter 11). The Snowy Mountains Scheme comprises 16 major dams, seven power stations (two of which are underground), a pumping station, 145 km of interconnected trans-mountain tunnels, and 80 km of aqueducts. In 1967, the American Society of Civil Engineers rated the Snowy Mountains Scheme as one of the seven civil engineering wonders of the modern world.25 This is a far cry from Australia’s first mechanised use of water power – to drive a mill, built on private land, with a creek flowing into Rushcutters Bay. Its establishment in 1812 was considered so significant that Governor Macquarie attended the opening and officially started the mill working. The water wheel was ~7.3 m in diameter and there was one pair of stones (for grinding grain). A dam was built to store the water required to power the wheel.26

Pumped hydro Interestingly, the 500-megawatt power station at Wivenhoe Dam* uses the ‘pumped hydro’ method of generating electricity. In this approach, excess electricity from the grid (such as during periods of low demand) is used to pump water uphill from a lower reservoir to a higher one. At peak power demand times, water is released from the upper reservoir to flow through turbines to the lower reservoir. There are smaller pumped hydro schemes at Shoalhaven in New South Wales, and at Tumut 3 in the Snowy Hydro Scheme. A new 250-megawatt project – the Kidston pumped hydro project – north-west of Townsville in Queensland, with an expected completion date of early in 2021, includes two important innovations. First, two disused mine pits at different levels (around 200 m) at an abandoned goldmine site act as the upper and lower reservoirs. Second, the project includes a 270-megawatt solar installation, meaning that the system will be powered by renewable energy – a world first for the integration of solar generation and pumped hydro storage. In March 2017 the Prime Minister announced an ambitious plan to increase the current 3800-megawatt output of the Snowy Hydro Scheme by 50 per cent using the pumped hydro method. A feasibility study was conducted during 2017, but as of November 2018, little information concerning environmental risk assessment or environmental impact was available.27 * There is also a smaller 4.5-megawatt power station powered by water discharging from the Wivenhoe Dam into the Brisbane River.

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Hydro power is a major resource in Tasmania where it provides much of the state’s electricity. The hydro scheme there involves 50 major dams, many lakes and 29 power stations, with a total capacity of 2600 megawatts. The scheme also contributes to the Australian electricity network through Basslink, the undersea connector that runs under Bass Strait.28 The first European colonists in Tasmania used water to power their innumerable flour mills and mining operations for nearly a century, which is not surprising in a region of high rainfall and many waterways (Figs 12.2 and 12.3). As the new technology of electricity became available, they were quick to install small hydroelectric schemes. The first major hydroelectric scheme was based on the Central Plateau’s Great Lake for the manufacture of zinc and was built between 1911 and 1916. In 1929 the newly re-constituted Tasmanian Hydro-Electricity Commission (HEC) was given far-reaching powers to exploit the state’s waterways, and it became the most powerful government business in the country as it developed new schemes. As the schemes became larger and more costly, they encountered increasing public opposition. In the late 1960s, the proposal to build a scheme based on a dam on the south-west’s Gordon River drew widespread protests and demonstrations because of the associated flooding of the beautiful Lake Pedder and its unique ecosystem. To facilitate the plan, the Tasmanian Government, in a scandalous act, revoked Lake Pedder’s National Park status. As a result, and despite the protests, the Gordon Dam was built as proposed and 240 km2 of Tasmania’s wilderness was flooded, including Lake Pedder. The new lake so formed was also called Lake Pedder.29,30 The bitter debate over the flooding of Lake Pedder raised environmental awareness across Australia and sparked a re-evaluation of the relative merits of exploiting or preserving significant wilderness areas. In 1980, when the HEC proposed the second stage of the Gordon River Power Development (Gordon below Franklin), it encountered even stronger opposition. The conservation movement argued that the reservoir that would be formed – 27 times the size of Sydney Harbour and flooding 35 km of the Franklin River – would destroy ‘Tasmania’s last wild river’. It won UNESCO World Heritage listing for the Franklin and a promise from the incoming Australian Government following a recent election that it would stop the dam project. The HEC abandoned the scheme after a High Court ruling that the Australian Government did have the constitutional power to halt the construction of the dam.30 As an alternative, the King River scheme was built. Opened in 1992, it was the last major hydroelectricity scheme to be built in Tasmania.31

Lakes: natural water storages The largest natural lakes in Australia have no water most of the time, and usually appear as dazzling expanses of salt stretching into the distance. These include Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre (SA, area ~9500 km2), Lake Torrens (SA, 5745 km2), Lake Carnegie (WA, 5714 km2) and Lake Mackay (WA, 3494 km2), just four of the hundreds of ephemeral – and usually salty – lakes scattered throughout the country.32,33 This says something about the character of much of the Australian landscape. One of these – Lake Cadibarrawirracanna – has the distinction of having the longest place name of any in Australia. It is situated just north of the outback road between William Creek and Coober Pedy in South Australia. There are few large freshwater lakes compared with other inhabited continents – that is, Europe, Asia, the Americas and Africa, and those that do exist are relatively tiny. In contrast, Lake Baikal in Siberia, the deepest (and oldest) lake in the world has a depth of

12 – Dams and reservoirs: storing water

Waterwheels used in Tasmania in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Fig. 12.2.  The Pelton wheel used water pressure to drive equipment via a flat leather belt at the Kelvin mine near Zeehan (West Coast Heritage Centre, Zeehan).

Fig. 12.3.  The ‘Overshot’ water wheel used the weight of falling water to turn the wheel for equipment such as stamp batteries (Beaconsfield Mine and Heritage Centre).

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1.63 km, and holds 20 per cent of the world’s unfrozen fresh water reserve – ~23 000 km3. The lake is 640 km long and 80 km wide and there are 27 islands in it. More than 300 streams and rivers flow into the lake but only one – the Angara River – flows out.34 There are hundreds of species of plants and animals that are endemic to Lake Baikal, including the Omul fish, favoured by locals for its flavour. You can buy freshly-caught Omul cooked in smoky burners at the edge of the lake near the village of Listvyanka. You can also partake of a Russian banya there, involving a sauna, self-flagellation with birch brushes and a plunge into the icy waters of the lake. Despite their relatively small size and rarity, there are some beautiful fresh water lakes in Australia. These include the deepest, Lake St Clair in Tasmania, with a depth of 200 m. This lake is the source of the Derwent River on which the capital, Hobart is located. It lies at the southern end of the famous Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park, part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage area. This is the end point of the Overland Track, a six-day walk that starts from Cradle Mountain in the north. Those who undertake the walk also pass Dove Lake, Crater Lake, Lake Wilks and others of rugged beauty near Cradle Mountain at an altitude around 1000 m. With its mountainous terrain and higher rainfall, the west of Tasmania has many smaller lakes. In the Walls of Jerusalem National Park and the adjoining Central Plateau there are innumerable small lakes dotted across the landscape. Further east, the larger Great Lake (a natural lake and man-made reservoir) and Lake Sorell are just two of the lakes in the central highlands, both popular for fishing. The Blue Lake at the city of Mount Gambier in South Australia is situated in the crater of an extinct volcano. The particular attraction of the Blue Lake is its colour; from December to March it turns a deep cobalt blue, returning to grey from April to November. The cause of the change of colour is not fully understood. For the residents of Mount Gambier, the lake is important because it is the primary source of water for the city, supplemented by bore water as needed. It was formed by a volcanic eruption 4800 years ago, is ~79 m deep and it covers an area of 70 ha. It is continually replenished with high quality water by a large aquifer. Water pumped from the lake is stored in two large tanks from which it travels by gravity to the city.35 There are also pink lakes – in western and north-western Victoria, south-eastern South Australia and south-western Western Australia. In several cases, the colour is caused by the release of a red pigment called carotene by algae in the water. Hutt Lagoon, a salt lake south of Kalbarri in Western Australia, is particularly beautiful at times, showing stripes of pink and blue (Plate 12.2). Lake Wabby on Fraser Island off the coast of Queensland is one of a few small green-coloured lakes in Australia and is formed by the bank-up of windblown sand on the island. Several lakes in northern Victoria, including Kangaroo Lake, Lake Charm and the Reedy Lakes System form part of the Torrumbarry Irrigation water supply scheme. However, the fact remains that the largest bodies of fresh water in Australia have been formed by the construction of large dams.

0 0 0 Since the peak of large dam-building in the twentieth century, planners now give more attention to the possible adverse environmental and social effects as well as to the benefits of adding a new large storage. Improved knowledge, enhanced monitoring capabilities and greater community awareness support this. Nevertheless, proponents of new dams in various parts of Australia including the north continue to press their case.

Colour plates Plates

Plate 1.1.  Ancient karez (qanat) near Turpan in 2001.

Plate 2.1.  The Pont du Gard, France.

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Plate 2.2.   Raised footpath and stepping-stones across a street in Pompeii. Note grooves caused by chariot wheels.

Plate 2.3.  Remains of cisterns on the hill above ancient Tiddis, Algeria.

Plates

Plate 4.1.  Busby’s Bore, c.1845 (by Woolcott, Charles Henry. From the collection of the Mitchell Library (SSV1/Wat/1).

Plate 5.1.  The junction of the Darling (on the left) and the Murray (right background) in June 2010.

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Plate 5.2.  The Darling River ‘running a banker’ near Menindee in December 2010 after a wet year.

Plate 5.3.  Australia’s average annual rainfall distribution 1961-1990. Bureau of Meteorology (CC BY 3.0 AU).

Plates

Plate 5.4.  Map showing how rainfall varies from year to year (based on data from 1900-2003). Low variability means rainfall is more consistent from year to year. The darker the shading, the more extreme the variability. Bureau of Meteorology (CC BY 3.0 AU).

Plate 6.1.  A section of the Brewarrina Aboriginal fish traps (August 2011). Courtesy Bradley Moggridge, ref. Maclean K, Bark RH, Moggridge B, Jackson S, Pollino C (2012) Ngemba Water Values and Interests: Ngemba Old Mission Billabong and Brewarrina Aboriginal Fish Traps (Baiame’s Nguunhu). CSIRO, Australia.

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Plate 6.2.  Uta Uta Tjangala: Goanna Story, 1971 (Ref. Bardon & Bardon 2004, p. 339). © Estate of the artist licenced by Aboriginal Artists Agency Ltd.

Plate 7.1.  The Blanche Cup mound spring near the Oodnadatta Track, South Australia.

Plates

Plate 7.2.  The remains of a railways water softener stands at the abandoned Curdimurka siding, with other remnant infrastructure of the Overland Telegraph line and the Central Australia Railway line.

Plate 7.3.  The bore at Thargomindah in 2011.

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Plate 7.4.  Marlo Bore in 1961, 450 km south of Alice Springs. Note windmill and continuous water flow.

Plate 9.1.  Channel Country. © ABC 2009 Julia Harris.

Plates

Plate 9.2.  Part of a waterhole on Cooper Creek near Burke’s grave in November 2011 following floods earlier that year.

Plate 9.3. 

Cooper Creek winds its way into Kati Thanda Lake Eyre in a wet year, August 2010.

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Plate 9.4.  Rivers can be forded in the Kimberley as waters subside at the end of the wet season. The Gibb River Road where it crosses the Pentecost River, June 2012. (Cockburn Range in the background.)

Plate 9.5.  Lawn Hill Gorge, Boodjamulla National Park.

Plates

Plate 10.1.  Mundaring Weir in 2015. Note inflow pipe on the far side of the reservoir.

Plate 10.2.  The old No. 6 pump station at Ghooli, east of Southern Cross. All pump stations originally had steel chimneys, as here, later replaced in some with brick.

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Plate 11.1.  The Stuart Murray Canal where it leaves the Goulburn Weir today, on its way to Waranga Basin.

Plate 11.2.  A sprinkler irrigation installation in a crop near Ouse in the Central Highlands area of Tasmania. This irrigation method allows close control of the amount of water administered but is subject to evaporative losses.

Plates

Plate 11.3.  Solar power-driven aluminium flume gates – the new symbol of irrigation, replacing the Dethridge wheel (Loddon Valley irrigation area, April 2016).

Plate 12.1.  The concrete arch Gordon Dam in south-west Tasmania – Australia’s largest – in February 2017, with water level still depressed following exceptionally low rainfall in the first part of 2016. The dam has a double curvature – from top to bottom as well as side to side – enabling the dam’s concrete volume to be significantly reduced.

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Plate 12.2.  Hutt Lagoon near Kalbarri in Western Australia.

Plate 13.1.  Peery Lake in December 2010 following heavy rains in its northern catchment.

Plate 13.2.  Looking across the floor of Mungo Lake from the top of the Walls of China Lunette, in June 2010.

Plates

Plate 15.1.  Scarce water: street-side coin-operated water supply in Coober Pedy.

Plate 15.2.  Water is a scarce commodity in large areas of Western Australia. Sign on the North-West Coastal Highway near Carnarvon.

Plate 17.1.  The Snowy River near the Victoria–New South Wales border in November 2014.

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Plate 17.2.  A quiet creek becomes a surging cascade within an hour of a sudden March afternoon downpour deep in Kakadu National Park (NT).

Plate 17.3.  The Lower Darling River reduced to puddles in May 2016. Source: Jeremy Buckingham/ Flickr CC BY 2.0.

13

The Murray–Darling Basin The rivers of the Murray–Darling Basin have supported Aboriginal communities for more than 50 000 years, and probably a great deal longer than that.1 Archaeological evidence points to the length of continuing occupation, and direct evidence from the accounts of the early European explorers shows that Aboriginal people were widespread and numerous. They lived not only along the larger rivers – the Darling, the Murray and the Murrumbidgee – where especially large populations were observed, but also in the vicinity of other rivers of the Basin, such as the Namoi, Gwydir, Barwon and Bogan, as we saw in Chapter 6. Furthermore, reports of the early European explorers receiving help from the local people in relation to sources of water and navigation were commonplace. The Aboriginal communities lived in accord with an environment that sustained their cultural, social, economic and spiritual life. Ceremonies preserved their traditions from one generation to the next. The rivers and their surroundings were their spiritual and economic lifeblood.2 They used the natural resources of the rivers and the animals and plants in the vicinity for water, food, shelter, tools, weapons and cultural objects. These included fish, crustaceans, water rats, turtles, kangaroos, possums, birds and their eggs, reeds, trees, grasses and their seeds, and fruits. Wetlands were a particularly bounteous resource. Weirs, dams and traps were used but these had a low impact on the streams; the rivers still flowed free and clear. Mitchell reported in 1835 that ‘the waters of the Darling were fresh and sweet’, echoing the observations of other European explorers.3 It was also evident that the people were able to find abundant, nutritious food; many early European explorers reported that the men they encountered looked strong and healthy. The communities’ use of firestick farming over many generations (Chapter 6) changed the mix of vegetation in some areas, but these changes were far less dramatic than the changes to be wrought later by the European arrivals after 1788. Today, more than two centuries later, these same rivers and their environs are still a major source of food and water, but for very different and greatly expanded sets of communities – mostly those of European and other non-Indigenous origins. Now, the primary uses of the rivers are those of irrigating land to grow food (fruits, grapes, vegetables, dairy products, cereals, nuts, rice, meat cattle) and other consumables such as cotton, and supplying water for towns in the regions. But in the process of making the change from the past, the rivers have been extensively modified. Instead of running free, fluctuating with the seasons and experiencing floods and droughts, they are regulated and controlled by diversions, dams, pumps, weirs, locks and gates so that their water can be made available year-round to produce food for growing populations. The communities within the Basin are no longer self-sufficient but are part of a network of communities across Australia and overseas among which food and other goods are traded. 157

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Fig. 13.1.  The Murray–Darling Basin showing main rivers. The waters of the northern catchments run to the Darling River and the waters of the southern catchments run to the Murray River. Source: Murray–Darling Basin Authority, CC BY 4.0.

13 – The Murray–Darling Basin

Along with these modifications, the demands on the rivers have been such that the health – even the survival – of the rivers and their associated wetlands and forests is under threat. This threat reached critical proportions during the Millennium drought that lasted from 1997 to 2009.4 During this time the mouth of the Murray closed and required dredging to keep it open to the sea; the terminal lakes dried out significantly and became increasingly salty and acidic;5 and salinity spread up the river, threatening Adelaide’s water supply. With little rain to replenish them, water levels in the Basin’s storage reservoirs dropped alarmingly, stream flows were greatly reduced, and in some cases river beds became dry, with the result that there was distressingly little water for farm irrigation. In addition, iconic wetlands dried, notable forests (Barmah, Gunbower, lower Murray floodplain forests) were threatened, and water in the world-renowned Coorong, adjacent to the Murray’s mouth, became too salty to support the many fish, bird and plant species that had previously thrived there. A dispassionate observer of the history of the past two hundred years or so could say quite reasonably that European settlers have managed to push the Murray–Darling to the brink of disaster. How did this happen? To understand, we need to look more systematically at the makeup of the Murray–Darling Basin and the ways we use the water of its rivers.

The Murray–Darling Basin as a geographical entity The Murray–Darling Basin is one of the largest river systems in the world – and one of the driest. It is a huge shallow saucer with 23 major rivers covering an area of more than 1 million km2 in south-eastern Australia – equivalent to one-seventh of the country’s total area and almost three times the size of Germany. It covers three-quarters of New South Wales and more than half of Victoria, as well as significant portions of Queensland and South Australia and all of the Australian Capital Territory (Fig. 13.1). Because of its size, there is a great range of climatic and natural environments. However, most of the country is arid or semi-arid, except for a higher rainfall region along the east and south (Plate 5.3).6 The Basin contains the three longest rivers in Australia – the Darling River (~2740 km long), the Murray River (2530 km) and the Murrumbidgee River (1690 km). It contains a giant network of rivers, creeks and watercourses, but many of these only carry water in times of flood, remaining dry at other times. Because the Basin is largely flat, rivers flow over plains for most of their length, and therefore tend to meander across the countryside. The actual length of the Darling, for example, is about three times the straight-line distance it travels. In New South Wales and Queensland, the Basin also includes the Lachlan, Bogan, Macquarie, Castlereagh, Namoi, Gwydir, Macintyre, Narran, Condamine, Balonne, Culgoa, Barwon, Warrego and Paroo rivers – most of which have been mentioned earlier in this book (see also Fig. 5.2). In Victoria, the Mitta Mitta, Kiewa, Ovens, Goulburn, Loddon, Campaspe, Wimmera and Avoca Rivers are included, amongst others.6 Water run-off in the Basin is much less than in other large river systems around the world, and the variability of river flows is much greater than on any other continent. The average annual inflow of the Murray River is only ~16 per cent of that of the Nile, 3 per cent of the Mississippi and 0.25 per cent of the Amazon.7 High evaporation rates, vast floodplains and significant water diversion for towns and agriculture mean that even heavy rainfall may not reach the river, and in most years the majority of water is extracted for human uses before it reaches the mouth or the lower reaches of the river.

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The Murray–Darling Basin supports a vast range of plants and animals in a variety of ecosystems including sclerophyll forests, wetlands and arid lands. There are 120 species of waterbirds, 46 species of native fish, and 124 families of macroinvertebrates,8 as well as hundreds of plant species.6 Some of these are under threat due to changes to their environment that are (mostly) the result of human intervention. Natural cycles of flood and drought are characteristic of the climate, with streams flooding in wet seasons and contracting in dry seasons – sometimes to a series of waterholes or even running dry in the case of smaller streams. Indigenous plant and animal life in the Basin is adapted to these cycles. The Basin contains ~30  000 wetlands, including many of national and international significance, including the Barmah Forest, Gunbower Forest, Gwydir Wetlands, Macquarie Marshes, and Narran Lake – all Ramsar-listed sites.9 Wetlands are areas of ground where shallow, still or slow-moving water covers the soil for all or part of the year. They include swamps, marshes, billabongs, lakes, lagoons, complex braided channel systems and extensive floodplains. Wetlands are a critical part of the natural environment. They provide breeding and feeding habitats for many kinds of organisms, fish, invertebrates, waterbirds and plants. A wide diversity of species, including many plants and animals found nowhere else, are supported by wetlands. Importantly, wetlands also reduce the impacts of floods, absorb pollutants and act as natural filters to improve water quality. In addition, many wetlands are areas of great natural beauty, adding diversity to the landscape and providing a focus for a range of recreational activities.6,10 In 1848, after his last expedition, Charles Sturt made some observations about rivers in the Basin, recognising the cycle of flood and drought. He argued that the climate seldom experienced other than ‘partial rains’ and was: … subject to severe and long continued droughts. Its streams descend rapidly into a country of uniform equality of surface, and into a region of intense heat, and are subject, even at a great distance from their sources, to sudden and terrific floods, which subside, as the cause which gave rise to them ceases to operate; … they cease to flow in their lower branches, assume the character of a chain of ponds, in a few short weeks their deepest pools are exhausted by the joint effects of evaporation and absorption, and the traveller may run down their beds for miles, without finding a drop of water with which to slake his thirst.11 He added, by way of illustration, that on a recent expedition along the banks of the Darling River, when they were more than 300 miles (480 km) from its source, ‘… it was converted in a single night, from an almost dry channel, into a foaming and impetuous stream, rolling along its irresistible and turbid waters …’, due, he concluded, to ‘heavy rains in the mountains.’11 He experienced the Murray River somewhat differently, rising from a low in July ‘… at the rate of an inch a day until December, in which month it attains a height of about seventeen feet [5.2 m] above its lowest or winter level. As it rises it fills in succession all its lateral creeks and lagoons, and it ultimately lays many of its flats under water’. He observed that: The natives look to this periodical overflow of their river, with as much anxiety as did ever or now do the Egyptians, to the overflowing of the Nile. To both they are the bountiful dispensation of a beneficent Creator, for as the sacred stream rewards the husbandman with a double harvest, so does the Murray replenish the exhausted res-

13 – The Murray–Darling Basin

ervoirs of the poor children of the desert, with numberless fish, and resuscitates myriads of crayfish that had laid dormant underground; without which supply of food, and the flocks of wild fowl that at the same time cover the creeks and lagoons, …11 Just over 2 million people, 10 per cent of Australia’s population, were living in the Basin and depending on its water at the time of the 2006 population census. In contrast to the situation two centuries earlier, only 3 per cent of the Basin’s population (69 500 people) were Aboriginal people, representing 46 Indigenous Nations. Significantly, more than 1.3 million Australians who live outside the Basin also depend on its water resources, including the inhabitants of Adelaide, the capital of South Australia. Major pipeline networks carry the water over great distances. The Basin contains ~40 per cent of Australia’s farms and 70 per cent of Australia’s irrigated land area. Fifty per cent of Australia’s irrigated produce, worth ~7.1 billion dollars, comes from the Basin. It is Australia’s most important agricultural region, producing one-third of the national food supply and exporting produce to many other countries.12

Working rivers As European explorers spread further inland from Sydney Town during the first half of the nineteenth century (Chapter 5), settlers followed, using water from rivers and wetlands as well as natural rainfall for their human needs, for stock and for establishing crops. In Chapter 11 we saw how large-scale irrigation began on the Goulburn, Murray and Murrumbidgee rivers late in the nineteenth century. One pressing need from the farmers’ point of view was to manage the typical cycle of flood and drought in a way that ensured there was sufficient water available in the regular dry seasons and the periodic long dry periods and droughts, as well as during the wet winters. With government support, the rivers were modified by diverting water to farming areas, building weirs to raise water levels to allow flow under gravity, installing giant pumps to suck water from the rivers (such as at Renmark and Mildura), and by building dams on the rivers to store water from snowmelt and rain in the wet seasons for release in the dry seasons as needed. Another reason why there was an interest in regulation of river flow was that between the 1850s and the 1930s, paddle steamers were an important transport and communications link for distant stations and settlements, especially along the Murray and the Darling. Rivers were difficult, if not impossible, to negotiate when the water level was very low (see box). Most rivers in the Basin can now be considered to be ‘working rivers’ – regulated so that water can be captured, extracted or diverted to support agriculture, communities and industries. Rivers and associated floodplains and wetlands also provide other important services, including fish stock for anglers and an environment for tourism, recreation and cultural values.

The Darling River The Darling River officially starts where the Culgoa River joins the Barwon River downstream from Brewarrina in northern New South Wales. It then proceeds on its meandering journey through Bourke, the tiny settlements of Louth and Tilpa, then through Wilcannia, Menindee, Pooncarie and on to Wentworth where it flows into the Murray (Fig. 13.1; Plate 5.1). During this 2740-km journey, it drops vertically only 84 m, an average gradient of 1 in 33 000 – a mere 3 cm/km.

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Rivers as transport highways A boom in sheep farming began in the 1820s, mainly in the south-east of the country, and wool developed into an important export for the colonies.13 As settlement spread further inland, transport of the wool to an appropriate port became a significant issue. Initially, bullock wagons were used. A fully-laden wagon drawn by up to 13 pairs of bullocks could carry up to 12 tons and travel 12miles (19 km) a day.14 The roads and tracks that existed were rough, and the going was tough. Hills presented major problems, both going up and coming down, and on wet and muddy roads there was a danger of capsizing. When this happened, the only solution was to unload the bales, right the wagon and reload it – a slow and laborious process. As well, the bullock teams needed feed and supplies of water for their long journeys. Once unloaded at their destination, the returning bullock wagons carried flour, sugar, tea, rum and other requirements for the farm workers. After the 1860s, bullocks were gradually replaced in most areas by camels or horses. With the advent of steam-driven ships, and with lobbying from property owners, the South Australian Government in 1850 offered a prize of 2000 pounds (~$4000) for each of the first two steamers to travel from Goolwa, near the mouth of the Murray River in South Australia, to the junction of the Murray and Darling rivers, 550 miles (880 km) upstream. The challenge was met by two men – Francis Cadell in the Lady Augusta (first) and William Randell in the Mary Ann (second) in 1853. This event opened up the possibility of river transport – widely used in England, Europe and the United States – for properties near navigable rivers. Consequently, river transport using steam-powered vessels with a shallow draft, especially paddle steamers, developed rapidly on the Darling and Murray rivers, and to some extent on the Murrumbidgee. These rivers became important water highways and played a major part in the European settlement and the economy of the surrounding areas of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. Major ports were established along the rivers at Wentworth at the junction of the Murray and Darling rivers, at Wilcannia and later at Bourke on the Darling, and these became busy centres of trade until the early 1900s.15 The steamers transported wool and other local produce to market. On the return journeys they carried needed supplies for the sheep stations and towns. Remote Wilcannia, 1776 km by river from Goolwa and nearly 1000 km west of Sydney, owed its growth and considerable prosperity to the river trade and became known as the ‘Queen City of the West’. In 1887, as many as 222 steamers and their barges loaded wool and other produce weighing a total of 26 552 tons, and 218 steamers unloaded stores weighing 36 170 tons at the port.16 In later years, the town’s prosperity declined with the steamer trade. The Federation drought that finished in 1902 was also a factor in this decline. The river didn’t flow for 364 days, a record that still stands. Wilcannia today has a population of ~600, but many of the historic and impressive sandstone buildings from this era remain standing, a testament to the heyday of the riverboat era. Wentworth, at the junction of the Darling and Murray rivers, became the busiest inland port in New South Wales and the third busiest port after Sydney and Newcastle. A total of ~300 steamers plied the winding courses of the Murray–Darling river system during the riverboat era. They travelled up the Darling River as far as Brewarrina, well beyond Bourke. Most of the steamers that operated were sidewheelers, as they were more manoeuvrable in the narrow twisting rivers than the American-style stern-wheelers.

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One paddle steamer towing barges could carry 2000 bales of wool, which would today take about 20 semitrailer trucks to transport. It could do this more quickly, reliably and cheaply than could bullock teams. The steamers could also carry items that were both heavy and bulky, such as steam engines and mining equipment, and more fragile items, such as window glass and pianos. They contributed to an increase in the standard of living and a reduction in the sense of isolation for those living in more remote areas.15 (But in many ways this was not new. The original inhabitants of the region had long before made use of the rivers for their own transport. This was in the form of bark canoes cut from trees in such a way that the trees were not killed. Trees containing the scars cause by this canoe-bark removal can still be seen in some places – Fig. 13.2.) While river transport was a great advance on the use of bullock teams, there were still some significant hazards. Snags in the river (submerged tree branches or logs) could damage the hull or paddles of a steamer, and clay reefs and sandbars could slow or stop progress. These problems occurred mostly in summer when the river was low. On the other hand, during floods, the steamers had much more freedom and could steer away from the river’s normal course, taking short cuts across country. There were sometimes mechanical problems, and there was always the threat of fire due to sparks from the engine’s furnace. On occasion this caused a fire in the cargo, and even the destruction of the steamer. In 1872 the boiler of the paddle steamer Providence exploded with great force soon after leaving Menindee on the Darling while laden with 200 bales of wool and towing a barge also laden with wool, bound for Adelaide. The captain, engineer, fireman and cook (who was blown into an overhanging tree) were

Fig. 13.2.  Scar on an ancient River Red Gum tree where bark had been removed by a stone axe in a single piece without breaking it. The bark would have been cured and then shaped into a canoe.

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Fig. 13.3.  Remains of the boiler from the P.S. Providence.

killed. Two other men on the steamer survived, as did the two men and a boy on the barge, though one was thrown a considerable distance into the river and suffered a broken leg.17 The remains of the Providence’s boiler can still be seen on the river bank opposite where the explosion occurred (Fig. 13.3). The steamers used massive amounts of timber to fuel the boilers for power. This was obtained from the riverbanks, causing long-term reduction in habitats for animals and a reduction in riverbank stability. The operators also removed snags and blasted rock bars where they interfered with navigation. Snags and fallen trees provided valuable fish habitats and the rock bars often caused pools to form that provided drought refuges for fish and other wildlife. Fish traps constructed by Aboriginal peoples as sources of food were early casualties of the growth of river transport. Wharves had to be built to accommodate the seasonal variations in the height of a river. For example, the replica of the 1898 wharf at Bourke, built in 1994 to the original plans, shows the three levels of the original for low, medium and high water levels in the Darling (Fig. 13.4). The original 1898 wharf replaced earlier temporary wharves to service paddle steamers operating mainly from Echuca and Morgan (both on the Murray). The last paddle steamer to Bourke arrived in 1931. A Darling story – 1 ‘Capt. Charlie Payne had a reputation of having sunk more boats than any man on the river. Once, when he was at Bourke, he was ordered downstream on a rapidly falling river. He left at once with his steamer, towing two barges. The first barge hit a snag and sunk [sic] near Dunlop Station; the second went down at Curranyalpa Reef. With the water falling rapidly, he had no choice but to continue on without an attempt to salvage the barges. But the steamer was finally holed and sank near Wilcannia. Payne and his crew finished the trip arriving in the steamer’s dinghy.’16

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Fig. 13.4.  Replica of the 1898 wharf at Bourke showing three platforms for different flood levels.

A Darling story – 2 ‘There are the remains of a boat downstream from Bourke that chased the floodwaters 22 km out across the plains to collect its cargo, only to be left stranded there for all time as the waters receded. Or so the story goes. You hear it everywhere along the Darling and down the Murray: same story, but the location of the boat is always somewhere else, somewhere not too far away, but not too close either.’18 River trade reached a peak between 1870 and 1880 when more than 30 000 bales of wool as well as other produce were carried downstream.19 Despite its advantages, river trade gradually declined as railways spread out from Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney, and later, with the improvement in roads and motorised transport. In addition to this, the nature of the Australian rivers and the population distribution made them less advantageous as transport corridors than the rivers and canals of England and Europe. The riverboat trade finally ended in the mid-1930s. A few paddle vessels still operate as tourist attractions from several ports on the Murray and Darling rivers, including Echuca, Mildura, Wentworth and Bourke.

(You might name the river differently if you were doing it today. You might say the Darling begins near Toowoomba in Queensland, taking the course of the Condamine– Balonne–Culgoa. Or perhaps you would consider its source the Severn River which becomes in turn the Dumaresq, Macintyre, Barwon and ultimately, the Darling. Each of these routes is a continuing watercourse as can be seen on a map, which changes its name arbitrarily.) By the time it reaches the outback town of Bourke in north-western New South Wales, the Darling has been joined by several rivers to the east and south, including the Gwydir, Namoi, Macquarie and Bogan. Between Bourke and Wilcannia, two more rivers join from

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the west – the Warrego which flows down from Queensland through Cunnamulla, and the Paroo, an ephemeral stream and the only unregulated river in the Basin. The Darling passes through arid and semi-arid country and is regarded as ‘the lifeblood of outback New South Wales’. Two of its defining characteristics are: ●● ●●

very variable flow – many of its tributaries are dry for extended periods very long flow travel times, due to its very shallow gradient. It takes ~15 days for water to flow from Bourke to Lake Wetherell near Menindee.

While there are some low concrete and stone weirs on the Darling – at Bourke, Menindee and Pooncarie – the largest regulation of the river is via the Menindee Lakes, ~200 km upstream from the junction with the Murray at Wentworth. These were originally natural overflow lakes that only filled when the Darling broke its banks in flood. As the flood receded the water drained back into the river. During droughts and long periods of low flow, the lakes dried up. The area was important to the Aboriginal people for hundreds of generations, and later, it was a lifeline for early European explorers; Sturt, Mitchell and Burke and Wills used the lakes on their expeditions between 1835 and 1860. After discussion and argument that went back as far as 1894, work was begun in 1949 to modify the four largest of the 19 lakes with a system of weirs, levees and channels so that water flowing down the Darling could be held back behind the main weir and diverted into the lakes.20 The work was completed in 1968. As well as the weirs, levees and channels, the system contains two inlet regulators and four outlet regulators.6 The main weir on the Darling River – the one furthest upstream in the lakes system – raises the water level to 12 m above the river bed with the assistance of levees which stretch 30 km up the eastern side of the river. On the western side, the water flows into four small natural lakes. All this is called Lake Wetherell. From here, water can flow under gravity successively into Lakes Pamamaroo, Menindee (the largest) and Cawndilla. Further downstream, water is released into the Darling River from Lakes Wetherell and Menindee. Water can also be released from Lake Cawndilla for environmental flows along the Great Darling Anabranch (see below). The maximum capacity of the lakes is 1730–2050 GL (more than three times Sydney Harbour), depending on conditions. In accordance with the Murray–Darling Basin Agreement, water may be released from the lakes to meet downstream needs in the Murray when the volume of water in the lakes rises above 640  GL and until it drops below 480  GL.6 Inflow into the lakes is very variable and often occurs in large pulses after flooding rains in the catchments upstream. In many years there may be no inflow at all. When floods do occur, the water takes a long time to reach the river, and much of it is absorbed by the flood plains or lost through evaporation. The purposes to which the stored water was originally put were: ●● ●● ●●

●● ●●

for stock, irrigation and domestic needs along the Lower Darling River to increase flows in the Murray as required, including for Adelaide’s water supply to augment the water supply for Broken Hill for urban and mining needs. (A pipeline runs the 110 km north-west from Menindee to Broken Hill) for flood management along the Lower Darling River to provide opportunity for recreational activities.

The lakes are shallow, and when they are full their total surface area combined is ~50  km2. Consequently, loss of water through evaporation in the hot, windy, semi-arid environment is a major problem – estimated to average more than 400 GL (four-fifths of Sydney Harbour) annually. If the water is not used within a certain period of time, the rate

13 – The Murray–Darling Basin

Wilcannia Boat Club In the early days the people of Wilcannia put the Darling River floods to recreational use. There was a boat club with a floating boat house that was moored a little upstream from the wharf and bridge. Apparently, it periodically broke free from its mooring and had to be towed back. Regattas were held whenever the river level was high enough. There was a picnic atmosphere and crowds of people attended. Events such as single sculls, double sculls, fours, skiffs and pleasure boats were held, as well as swimming events such as ‘100 yards, all comers’. There is a photo in the State Library of New South Wales taken ~1910 that shows rowing teams, and rowing boats with ladies and hatted gentlemen in dark suits, on an expanse of water reaching up to the foliage of large trees that lined the normal course of the river.21

of evaporation means there will be little or no water left to use. Therefore, when increased flows in the Murray are needed, water from the Menindee Lakes is released first, before water from upstream storages such as the Hume or Dartmouth reservoirs, which are not subject to as much loss from evaporation. When the lakes have plenty of water, Menindee is an attractive place for water-based recreation, including boating, water skiing, swimming, fishing and bird watching. About 20 km north of the Menindee township along the Broken Hill road is a turnoff to Sunset Strip, situated on the north shore of Lake Menindee. Here, beachside holiday houses among the trees face onto the waters of the lake. However, increasingly, in recent years the lake level has been low, or even dry, as occurred in 2016. (In October 2016 the Menindee Lakes experienced the lowest inflows on record, even lower than those experienced during the Millennium drought.22) In such times the houses face red dirt, a situation that has disappointed and angered tourists and holiday home owners, many of whom live in Broken Hill. The lack of water is caused when there is extended drought in the northern Murray– Darling Basin coupled with upstream extractions, resulting in very low inflows to the lakes. These low inflows are not enough to balance the evaporation, downstream releases and local use. Broken Hill, a city of 19 000 people, has also suffered. In 2015 it was estimated that the remaining Menindee storages would be able to feed the Broken Hill pipeline only until early 2017. Broken Hill’s other water sources were also running out. Some blame the authorities for releasing water from the lakes; others, including farmers, claim water is being ‘pirated’ upstream, above Bourke, in both New South Wales and Queensland where intensive cotton farming has resulted in reduced downstream flows.23 Many, both downstream in South Australia’s Riverland and further north in Queensland, are condemning of the lakes, arguing that the system ‘is insane’ and has been ‘designed to maximise evaporation’.24 The New South Wales government, which is responsible for the operation of the Menindee Lakes system, decided in 2016 on a new, more secure water source for Broken Hill. The proposal was to replace the Menindee pipeline, but without making any other changes to the Menindee Lakes system. The project involved the construction of a 270-km pipeline from the Murray River near Wentworth, through which the water would be pumped the necessary 280 m uphill to the Broken Hill treatment plant. It was completed in February 2019, at a cost of nearly $500 million. In the meantime, dwindling supplies

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from the Menindee pipeline were supplemented by groundwater, new supplies of which were found beneath the Darling River flood plain in 2013. Not everyone was happy with this project. Many believed that the simple and just solution was to allow more water to come down the river from the north, and that any further expenditure on infrastructure was unnecessary.25,26 At first sight the new plan seems rather extreme and yet another drain on the Murray River’s resources. However, it does have the advantage of not drawing more water from the Lower Darling (below Menindee) which is already under considerable stress – to such an extent that horticulture irrigators along this stretch of the river have made an offer to the government to bulldoze their orchards and vines in exchange for compensation for the return of their irrigation licences (Chapter 14).27 In the bigger picture, aside from the issue of river health, we are left to contemplate the economics of removing (downstream) irrigation of orchards and horticulture in favour of (upstream) irrigation of cotton. In 2017 the New South Wales government proposed changes to the Menindee Lakes system with the aim of reducing losses due to evaporation and finding water savings for the environment, but the plans have sparked further controversy.28 The Great Darling Anabranch is the ancestral path of the Darling. It extends from its junction with the Darling River just below Menindee Lakes to the Murray River, about 20 km west of Wentworth, and runs roughly parallel but a few km to the west of the Darling. A series of lakes along the anabranch connect to the Darling during floods, providing important habitat for water birds and fish. Although it was a naturally ephemeral system, the anabranch was managed as a permanent water storage and supply for landholders until the early 2000s. A pipeline was constructed in 2007 to secure a water supply for landholders, and return the Great Darling Anabranch to an ephemeral system. The anabranch also receives periodic environmental flows from the Lake Cawndilla. One outcome of this change has been an increase in fish diversity; the Great Darling Anabranch has been identified as an important habitat for the viability of native fish species in the Murray–Darling Basin.29 The Darling River is an integral part of outback history, both Indigenous and nonIndigenous. The great chronicler of nineteenth-century Australia, Henry Lawson, spent time in Bourke and referred to the Darling in his poems and stories. In 1891 he wrote The Song of the Darling River, which depicts the rapid changes which occur from flood to drought. It begins: The skies are brass and the plains are bare, Death and ruin are everywhere – And all that is left of the last year’s flood Is a sickly stream on the grey-black mud;30 Some would say the romance of the Darling has disappeared with the coming of the modern era. However, it still is ‘the lifeblood of the outback’, and walking along its banks between, say, Louth and Tilpa and watching the brown water drift lazily by, you can’t help but reflect on the crucial role this river has played – and still plays –in the history of this part of the country. At the same time, the river is a shadow of its former self in the period before European settlement, when its waters ran ‘fresh and sweet’,3 and it was ‘seventy to eighty yards broad … and literally covered with pelicans and other wildfowl’.31 The extreme stress it is now under due to the excessive demands placed on it emphasises the pressing need for a soundly-based, consistent, Basin-wide plan for the river and its tributaries.

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Some special places in the Murray–Darling Basin There are many special places in the Murray–Darling Basin. Here are four examples.

The Barmah–Millewa Forest The Barmah–Millewa Forest straddles the Victoria–New South Wales border and covers ~66  600  ha (66.6  km2) of floodplain between Tocumwal, Deniliquin and Echuca. The Barmah Forest is in Victoria and the Millewa in New South Wales. The site includes several lakes, wetlands, grass plains and sandhills. The dominant tree type around the wetlands and along the Murray River, and for which it is best known, is the river red gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) (Fig. 13.5). It is the largest river red gum forest in Australia, with trees that reach 30 m in height and some stands over 400 years old. National Parks on both sides of the Murray were declared in 2010. These are popular places for recreation and tourism. There are walking tracks, camping sites and an elaborate bird observation structure.

Fig. 13.5.  Old and young river red gums in the Barmah Forest next to the Murray River, 2016.

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Barmah–Millewa is an important part of Australia’s heritage, and has significant cultural values for Aboriginal communities. It is listed as a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention and is a key breeding ground for several birds, including yellow-billed spoonbill, nankeen night heron, royal spoonbill, intermediate egret, great egret and Australian white ibis. The forest provides habitat for numerous threatened plant and animal species, including birds, fish and reptiles, and supports colonies of breeding waterbirds during appropriate seasonal conditions. In addition, there are great numbers of invertebrates, including crustaceans and myriad insects. The forests and wetlands rely on periods of wet and dry, with periodic large floods giving them the resilience to cope with the highly variable Australian conditions.6,32 The narrowest section of the Murray River – the Barmah Choke – lies a little upstream from Echuca. In its natural state, before European settlement, the river would flow over the Choke in winter and spring and flood the forest. Irrigation works on the river mean that the forest now only gets flooded in exceptionally wet years. Because of these extensive irrigation works and the long drought from 2001–2009, the Barmah-Millewa Forest was in serious decline – including its grass plains, trees and animals. On one assessment, up to three-quarters of the red gum forests were stressed, dead or dying. ‘The floodplain has reached crisis point. Without substantial returns of water to the floodplain, these forests will die. Red gums have survived for millennia, but the current challenge is by far the greatest.’33 More recently, several environmental works and measures have been completed or are planned in an attempt to restore the natural flooding and drying of the forest. The works are funded through the Living Murray Program, and make use of ‘environmental water’ entitlements.34 Subsequent surveys have shown that health problems persist, indicating that continued attention is needed to ensure the long-term health of the forest. The program of works is within the overall responsibility of the Murray–Darling Basin Authority, and there is an Indigenous Reference Group that includes representatives from the Yorta Yorta Nation and New South Wales Aboriginal land councils.6

The Paroo River The Paroo River is the last remaining unregulated and free-flowing river of the Murray– Darling Basin. It has no dams, canals or irrigation schemes, apart from a small weir at the township of Eulo where a small date farm takes water from it.35 It rises west of Augathella in Queensland and flows generally south towards its confluence with the Darling upstream from Wilcannia. However, its flow is intermittent, and it only reaches the Darling after exceptional rains in its northern catchment. It usually terminates in the floodplains south of Wanaaring in northern New South Wales. When it does flow, the Paroo feeds Ramsarlisted wetlands: Currawinya Lakes in southern Queensland and Paroo River Wetlands in northern New South Wales which contain the wonderful Peery Lake. At times of flood, these wetlands support great numbers of waterbirds of many species. It is estimated that at peak times as many as 250 000 birds from 63 species gather in the Paroo River Wetlands, including the threatened freckled duck.36 You can reach Peery Lake by following a dirt road (when it’s reasonably dry) north-east from White Cliffs (Plate 13.1). But there are grey clouds over the Paroo. Some irrigation – even for growing hay – is occurring based on New South Wales licences issued in the 1960s for ‘floodplain harvesting’ – that is, storing water that flows across a property. Other property owners are not happy about this development because their floodplain grazing depends on having water available to flow over the floodplains, which occurs seldom enough. Chris Hammer gives a colourful account in a book describing his travels through the Basin. One long-term grazier of 45 years summed up his views thus: ‘Our attitude to water is that everyone should

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have their share, including nature. It should flow through, it’s yours when it’s on your country and while it’s flowing through, but once it’s gone, it’s down onto another place doing a bit of good there.’37 Henry Lawson also wrote a poem called The Paroo, in which two bushmen, ‘half-mad with flies and dust and heat’, search in vain for water in the Paroo.38

The Macquarie Marshes The Macquarie Marshes are located ~100 km north of the town of Warren in central western New South Wales, on the lower floodplain of the Macquarie River. One of the largest remaining inland semi-permanent wetlands of the Murray–Darling Basin, they cover an area of ~200 000 ha (2000 km2) and are of international importance. It was these marshes that stopped explorer John Oxley’s progress on his second expedition in 1818 (Chapter 5). The Marshes constitute one of the Basin’s most biologically diverse wetland systems supporting some of the largest waterbird breeding events in Australia’s recorded history. Within them, there are a variety of wetland types, ranging from frequently inundated, semi-permanent wetlands to ephemeral wetlands inundated by only the largest floods. The Macquarie Marshes Nature Reserve, covering part of the total marshes area, was created in 1971 and was listed as a Ramsar Wetlands site in 1986. The wetlands in this site include common reed beds, lignum shrub lands, river red gum forests and woodlands, coolibah woodlands and open water lagoons. They support a diversity of animals including colonial nesting waterbirds, migratory shorebirds, frogs, fish and reptiles. They also contain some of the highest densities of micro-invertebrates in wetlands anywhere in the world. These micro-invertebrates form the basis of the food web for many larger animals. The Marshes are also an iconic natural area with important links to Australian people through the history of Aboriginal interaction and, over the past two centuries, through associations of people of European origin in their various roles. Some of the Marshes are on private land and consequently have important economic and social benefits. The nature reserve does not cater for day visitors or campers, but when conditions are suitable, the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service runs guided activities around the reserve. There is a viewing platform on a dirt road through a non-reserve section of the marshes ~100 km north of Warren; however, the dirt roads are closed or otherwise inaccessible in wet weather. Threats to the Marshes include major factors under human influence, such as changes to the flow regime of the Macquarie River resulting from river regulation and water extraction and the consequential alteration of channels and flood plains as well as pests, weeds, drought, fire and climate change.39 Willandra Lakes A startling feature of Willandra Lakes is that they don’t contain any water. Before they dried out ~19 000 years ago, they were a major site of human occupation for at least 50 000 years. There are five large interconnected dry lake basins and 14 smaller basins ranging in area from 6–350  km2.The World Heritage-listed region covers 2400  km2 in semi-arid country in south-west New South Wales. Today, the dry saline lake-bed plains are vegetated by saltbush and salt-tolerant grasses. A characteristic of the region is the crescent-shaped sand dunes or lunettes that fringe the eastern shores of most lakes. The most spectacular is the lunette at Mungo Lake where a section is known as the Walls of China (Plate 13.2). The whole area is a place of desolate beauty where climate, wind and water have sculpted the landscape over the last two million years.40

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The relatively fresh water in the lakes once supported a lush environment with prolific water and animal life, which provided abundant food for the communities that lived in the region. Much fossil evidence of human habitation has been found. In 1968 the cremated remains of ‘Mungo Lady’ were discovered in the dunes of Lake Mungo, and in 1974 the burial remains of an Aboriginal man, ‘Mungo Man’, were found nearby. Both are estimated to be 40 000 years old. In 2003, 460 fossilised footprints made by children, adolescents and adults in wet clay 19 000 to 23 000 years ago were found – the largest collection of its kind in the world. Part of the World Heritage region is designated as Mungo National Park, which includes two-thirds of Lake Mungo, including the Walls of China. This park can be reached in dry weather by travelling on dirt roads east from the Darling River, or north-east from Mildura.

The lower Murray River The Murray River is the main waterway and the spine of the Murray–Darling Basin. Together with its tributaries, it provides water for irrigation and for the supply of towns and cities. But as well as this, the lower Murray provides water supply for the city of Adelaide – population 1.3 million – and for large parts of country South Australia. The first pipeline from the Murray was built between 1940 and 1944 after it was realised that most sites in the country’s driest state where water could economically be stored in reservoirs had been developed. More pipelines were built over the following 30 years. There are now five major pipelines: ●●

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●●

●●

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Morgan to Whyalla: two pipelines, the first built 1940–44, the second in 1962, to cater for the growing population in the Upper Spencer Gulf; length 379  km, can deliver 66 000 ML annually. Branches go to Iron Knob, Jamestown, Peterborough and many other small towns and farming districts. The second pipeline passes under Spencer Gulf for 14 km. Mannum to Adelaide: the first major pipeline from the Murray to service Adelaide, began operating 1955, 60 km. Murray Bridge to Onkaparinga near Hahndorf: the second metropolitan pipeline, to the southern fringe of Adelaide, completed 1973, 49 km. Swan Reach to Stockwell: supplies Barossa Valley, Lower North and Yorke Peninsula areas, first used 1960s, 54  km; designed to supplement existing supply; services townships and farmland. Tailem Bend to Keith: completed late 1960s, 143  km but feeds 800  km of branch mains.41

Giant electrically-driven pumps extract water from the river and push it towards its destination. The 379 km-long pipeline from Morgan to Whyalla has four pump stations along its path, prompting comparison with the Goldfields Water Supply line in Western Australia built more than 40 years earlier. In fact, the engineers for the South Australian project visited the Goldfields scheme before work began. Like the Goldfields pipeline, the Morgan–Whyalla pipe is above ground and made of concrete-lined, continuous welded steel.42 The line to Onkaparinga has three pump stations to lift the water 418 m. The water is treated before pumping at Morgan, Swan Reach and Tailem Bend, while for the Adelaide pipelines, treatment occurs at the end points. These pipelines further emphasise the enormous demands made on Murray River water, though these amounts, large as they are, pale in comparison with the amount of water drawn for irrigation.

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Lake Victoria has a major role in securing South Australia’s water supply. This is a naturally-occurring shallow lake ~60 km downstream from the junction of the Darling and Murray rivers. It was modified in the 1920s by building embankments and regulators so it could be used as an ‘off-river’ storage. Lake Victoria is the smallest of the four major Murray–Darling Basin storages, but because it is located near the end of the system it has a big influence on the management and flows along the entire river.6

Barrages From its headwaters in the Australian Alps, the Murray River travels more than 2500 km on its way to the Southern Ocean, south of Goolwa in South Australia (Fig. 13.1). In its last 100  km, it flows through Lake Alexandrina (connected by a narrow channel to Lake Albert) and the Murray Estuary before reaching the mouth. These are the Lower Lakes. They are large in area (though shallow), and together hold nearly four times the water in Sydney Harbour. Following a decision by the River Murray Commission, between 1935 and 1940, five barrages were built across the channels that link Lake Alexandrina to the Coorong (a shallow, salt-water lagoon) and the Murray mouth (Fig. 13.6). The purpose of the barrages is to: ●●

●●

●●

ensure that the lakes and the lower reaches of the river remain fresh, and to prevent ‘reverse flows’ of sea water into the river during storms or high tides keep the water at a sufficiently high level to enable irrigation by gravity to reclaimed river flats maintain a pool of water for pumping to Adelaide and south-eastern South Australia (This was not feasible before the barrages were constructed because the river water was often too salty.)

Tailem Bend

Lake Alexandrina

Murray Mouth

Goolwa Barrage Mundoo Barrage

Lake Albert Coorong

Boundary Creek Barrage

Ewe Island Barrage Tauwitchere Barrage

Fig. 13.6.  The Lower Lakes showing the position of the barrages. Ref. ‘All about the barrages’, Fact Sheet, MDBA, 2011.

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Fig. 13.7.  One of the barrages near the Murray mouth. ●●

manage the release of water to control water levels, quality and environmental outcomes in the Lower Lakes, Coorong and Murray Mouth.

The barrages can be adjusted to stop sea water flowing into the river, or to stop river water from flowing to the mouth (Fig. 13.7), depending on which water level is higher and the needs of the river communities and the environment. The total length of the five barrages is 7.6 km.6

A controlled and managed system With the building of the Lower Lakes Barrages, a wholly controlled river system was completed. Water is held back and stored as needed and released when required for downstream purposes. Flow and water levels are controlled according to planned schedules and diverted for use at designated locations. The Murray, the Darling, the Murrumbidgee, and most other rivers in the Murray–Darling Basin are no longer natural, free-flowing rivers, but are engineered and monitored to meet specific water needs. The only ways water can be added to the system are through increased rainfall in the Basin or increased snow fall on the Australian Alps to feed the sources of the Murray and Murrumbidgee rivers and their highest tributaries. Unfortunately, decreases rather than increases have been the trend in recent decades, and lower rather than higher rainfall is projected for the near and middle-term future due to climate change.43

14

Saving the Murray–Darling Basin? For more than a century, the demands on the water in the Basin have been continually increasing with more extensive irrigation, the granting of more water entitlements and the escalating needs of a growing population. As a result, the Basin water has been over-allocated. That is, greater water entitlements have been approved for the various uses – irrigation, town and community supplies, and industry – than are able to be sustained in the long-term by the resources available. This situation was brought to the forefront of public attention during the Millennium drought, referred to in the previous chapter, when farmers and their communities suffered hardship and uncertainty over their future, streams and wetlands and lakes dried, and the Murray stopped flowing into the sea. It was a critical situation that led the Australian (Coalition) Government in 2007, at last, to take radical new action. A $10 billion water management plan was proposed which included funding for the Basin states to modernise their irrigation infrastructure, to boost water efficiency on farms, and to address over-allocation in the Basin including buying back water entitlements. Significantly, the plan also involved the Australian Government taking more control of the management of the ailing river system in place of the existing consensus-based joint management by the four Basin states (New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Queensland) and the Australian Capital Territory. The proposal had the in-principle support of both major political parties.1

The Murray–Darling Basin Authority The Water Act 2007 of the Australian Government established the Murray–Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) as an independent expertise-based statutory agency that replaced the former Murray–Darling Basin Commission. The MDBA is responsible for planning the Basin’s water resources in the interests of the Basin as a whole, and also has operational, monitoring, research and communication roles. It works in collaboration with the ‘Basin states and the Australian Government, with river dependent industries and communities’, and engages in partnerships, including with the research community and with Aboriginal organisations. Its primary roles include: ●●

●●

●●

preparing, implementing and reviewing an integrated plan [the Basin Plan] for the sustainable use of the Basin’s water resources operating the River Murray system and efficiently delivering water to users on behalf of partner governments measuring, monitoring and recording the quality and quantity of the Basin’s water resources 175

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●●

●●

●● ●●

supporting, encouraging and conducting research and investigations about the Basin’s water resources and dependent ecosystems advising the Australian Government Minister for Water Resources on the accreditation of state water resource plans providing water rights information to facilitate water trading across the Basin engaging and educating the Australian community about the Basin’s water resources.1

Responsibilities cover both surface water and groundwater, and the role of determining the sustainable amount of water that can be taken from the system. These arrangements were preceded by almost a century of different forms of collaborative management between the Basin states and attempts to restore the health of the rivers. The signing of the River Murray Waters Agreement in 1914 (Chapter 11) was followed in 1917 by establishment of the River Murray Commission to administer the agreement. The agreement was amended significantly in 1982 to expand its scope to include water quality issues and environmental and recreational matters, following alarming findings from investigations into salinity levels in the river in the late 1960s. The agreement underwent further change in 1987 and was renamed the Murray–Darling Basin Agreement, as a result of increased understanding of environmental problems in the Murray–Darling system and further negotiations between the relevant ministers of the four governments (Australia, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia). In 1992 a completely new Murray–Darling Basin Agreement replaced the 1987 agreement and the Murray–Darling Basin Commission was formed to implement it. Its role was to advise on all aspects of water, land and environmental issues throughout the whole Basin, as well as to manage the allocation and delivery of water to the three Murray River states. The health of the Murray continued to decline. The mouth had closed in 1981, and algal blooms appeared on most rivers across the Basin in 1992 and more recent years – and an audit of the Murray River waters in 1995 showed that continued increase in the use of water from the river would exacerbate problems such as salinity and water quality, and worsen the inconstancy of water supply. As a result, in a significant step in 1996 the Murray–Darling Ministerial Council (the relevant ministers from the four governments) imposed a Cap on the amount of surface water that could be diverted from the rivers of the Basin. The Cap varied in volume from year to year depending on climatic conditions. The application of the Cap stopped the growth in water use but was not successful in making sure that the overall level of use was sustainable in the long-term. Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory joined the agreement in 1996 and 1998 respectively.2 In 2002 the Living Murray program was introduced to ‘create a healthy working river – one that assures us of continued prosperity, clean water and a flourishing environment’.3 A key issue to be addressed by this program was how much water should be returned to the environment. The Ministerial Council decided on 500 GL ‘as a first step’. However, despite this there were many gaps left, including the thousands of wetlands that rely on environmental water being available. In a major step in 2004, the state and Australian governments agreed on a National Water Initiative setting out a broad suite of water reforms. Topics covered included planning for environmental flows, water pricing and trading, dealing with over-allocated or stressed water systems, managing urban and rural demands, and standards for water accounting. It also included reforms designed to return a sustainable balance to the Basin. The National Water Initiative has remained as Australia’s enduring national blueprint for water reform.4

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Looked at in retrospect, the many measures taken – or not taken – in recent decades were inadequate patch-ups applied too late to an ailing system, despite some steps being in the direction needed. They represent a failure of governments to address the fundamental issues properly and to ensure necessary Basin-wide action was taken. The Water Act 2007 was the eighth major attempt since the late 1980s to substantially reduce the volume of water extracted from the Murray–Darling Basin for irrigation and to provide more for the environment.5 It represented a last minute opportunity to redress these inadequacies and restore the Basin to a sustainable and healthy working state, especially in relation to the health of the natural environment and the quality of water for users. The new 2007 proposal for managing the Murray–Darling Basin was not received well by everyone. Some, including a few senior members of the government, denied that overextraction was a problem and argued that the source of the water crisis was drought rather than over-allocation.6 In addition, not all of the states were immediately willing to cede their powers to the Australian Government. Disagreement and conflict over the use of water from rivers in the Basin has always existed – between the states; between upstream and downstream users; between different views on what rights property owners have to water that flows through their property; and between views as to whether water should be set aside for environmental watering.7 It was therefore not surprising that such conflict would continue after the passing of the Water Act 2007, despite the dire condition of the Basin’s rivers (Fig. 14.1). In the meantime, the first comprehensive audit of the health of the Basin’s rivers, the Sustainable Rivers Audit, was released in June 2008. This was prepared for the Murray–

Fig. 14.1.  Dry bed of Stephens Creek east of Broken Hill, NSW in June 2010.

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Darling Basin Ministerial Council and was based on data gathered in 2004–2007. The audit found that only one of the 23 river valleys, the Paroo, was in ‘good’ health, while seven were in ‘poor’ health and 13 were rated as having ‘very poor’ health.8 Following a change of national government as a result of elections in December 2007, the incoming (Labor) government continued the commitment to the Murray–Darling Basin reforms and added a further $3 billion to the budget.

The Basin Plan Perhaps not surprisingly, in the drafts of the Basin Plan developed by the MDBA, it was the proposed changes to water entitlements – to the various users in the different catchments and to the environment – that caused the greatest argument. The Basin Plan set limits on the amount of water – both surface water and groundwater – that could be taken for agricultural, industrial and urban use (consumptive use). This was done by defining ‘sustainable diversion limits’ (SDLs) for each catchment and aquifer in the Basin – that is, the amount of water that could be diverted annually from the river(s) in a catchment and from each aquifer on a sustainable basis. The intention was that the SDLs would make more water available to the environment ‘to improve and maintain the health of waterways, lakes, major wetlands and floodplains within the Basin, as well as protect the habitats for animals and plants that rely on its water.’ It was the first time in Australian history that comprehensive limits on groundwater extraction had been set. The aim of the SDLs for groundwater was to ensure that this water was not over-allocated, and that levels of use by communities and environments were sustainable.1 The SDLs were not fixed amounts but represented limits on average diversions over the long-term. In drier years the actual diversions for catchments, and for the environment, would be less, and in wet years, more. But the long-term average for the Basin as a whole was not to exceed the Basin SDL. The development of the Basin Plan went through three main stages: the publishing of a Guide for discussion and feedback, followed by a Draft Plan and ultimately the Basin Plan, approved by parliament. The Guide to the Murray–Darling Basin Plan was released by the MDBA in October 2010 and consultation meetings planned for the affected regions. The key proposals concerning water availability were: (a) for surface water, an overall reduction in current diversion limits of 3–4000  GL per year (22–29 per cent), which would be returned to the environment; (b) the amount of reduction would vary across the 18 catchments, ranging from zero to 35 per cent; (c) for groundwater, reductions in 11 of 78 groundwater areas of up to 40 per cent.1 Under these proposals, the Murray mouth would be open for ~90 per cent of years, but there would not be sufficient water for both the Coorong and the Victorian red gum forests to be watered in the same year. It was estimated that the loss in agricultural production could be of the order of $805 million, with the loss of 800 jobs Basin-wide. The document made it clear that between 3000 and 7600 GL of extra water were needed to maintain a healthy, functioning river system. Reductions at the lower end of this range were proposed – that is, minimum water needed to sustain the health of the river system – because the authority was concerned about the amount of economic damage that could be caused to agricultural communities.9 Many, including environmental groups, welcomed the plan to return significant amounts of water to the environment, though there was concern, including from the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, that based on the best available science, any amount less than 4400 GL was insufficient.10 On the other hand, irrigators and their communities, especially in the Murrumbidgee, Murray and Goulburn Valley areas, were outraged at the

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The Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists15 In a June 2010 report,10 the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists argued that the best available science suggested that to achieve a healthy state in all catchments of the Basin, the environment’s share of the existing Cap on diversions would have to increase by ~4400 GL per year. This was based on expert advice that a working river needs to have at least two-thirds natural flow to remain in a healthy state. For this to be achieved, it would mean the long-term SDL for the Basin for surface water would be 7170 GL. In the preceding few years, state and Commonwealth government programs had resulted in ~1200 GL being obtained for the environment, leaving a deficit of 3200 GL. Returning this extra 3200 GL to environmental flows represented a reduction of ~30 per cent on the existing Cap on diversions across the Basin as a whole, meaning a reduction in water use of 30 per cent overall. The Wentworth Group identified the reductions in diversions needed for each of the 18 catchments in the Basin to achieve the required 30 per cent reduction overall at the lowest economic cost, using an analysis carried out by the Centre for Water Economics, Environment and Policy at the Australian National University. On this basis, 16 of the 18 catchments required a reduction of less than 10 per cent. However, in two catchments – the Murray and the Murrumbidgee – the reductions required were substantial, at 39 per cent and 65 per cent respectively. The loss in profits was estimated to be less than 3 per cent for most catchments, and of the order of 12 per cent and 26 per cent for the two most affected catchments. In recognition that such reductions would cause significant disruption in these two catchments, the Wentworth Group identified a preferred approach to achieving the necessary reductions. This involved using some of the Australian Government funds already set aside to fund an economic development program to assist communities to make the transition to a future with less water.

size of the cuts in water earmarked for them and alarmed at the effects they expected it would have on their communities. They claimed that reductions in water for irrigation would result in a reduction in farm earnings with flow-on effects throughout rural communities. The chief executive of the National Irrigators Council called the proposed cuts ‘a dagger to the heart of regional Australia’.11 Others claimed that food security would be put at risk: that the proposed cuts ‘would kill rural communities and push up food prices’11 and threaten the viability of many country towns.12 There was even talk of ‘riots in the streets’.13 On the other hand, the Chief executive of the Australian Water Association said that the Guide signalled a ‘once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take a considered and holistic approach to water planning in the basin’.14 ‘Full and frank’ public forums called to discuss the Guide to the Murray–Darling Basin Plan at Renmark in the Riverland, Deniliquin and Griffith in the Murrumbidgee area and Shepparton in the Goulburn Valley in particular were attended by large numbers of people expressing their anger at the proposed reductions. At a meeting of ~4000 people in Griffith, some locals burnt a pile of copies of the Guide to show their anger and disgust.16 A few days after the release of the Guide one newspaper journalist ventured the view that it had become a ‘political hand-grenade’ for the (Australian) government.17 Although there was wide agreement that implementation of the proposals would mean some hard times ahead in rural Australia, not all experts agreed the situation would be as dire as many suggested. Water economist Quentin Grafton from the Australian National

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University pointed out that during the previous years of drought, farmers had been forced to work with more severe water reductions than those proposed in the Guide, yet figures for that period showed the economic impact on agricultural production had been minimal. This was because of an increase in productivity by farmers during the period, improvements in efficiency of water use, and implementation of water trading which had allowed available water to go to the highest value uses.18 As criticism of the Guide continued, there were indications that the MDBA would reduce the target for environmental flows to 2800 GL. In May 2011 the Wentworth Group withdrew its support for the Murray–Darling Basin Plan19 because the reduced amount was well below the minimum of 4400 GL the group considered was required (see box). In an illustration of the tensions involved, the chairman of the Riverina and Murray Regional Organisation of Councils welcomed the withdrawal, arguing that the group’s claims were unreasonable, not ‘scientifically based’, and would result in the destruction of irrigation communities.20 The MDBA chairman resigned in late 2010 over concerns about balancing environmental needs against social and economic impacts under the terms of the Water Act 2007. He had also expressed the view that he did not want to see less than 3000 GL returned to the environment. After a year of consultation, argument and counter-argument, and a parliamentary inquiry to investigate the social and economic effects of cutting water entitlements, the Draft Basin Plan was released in November 2011. It had a substantially reduced allocation of 2750 GL per year of surface water for the environment, and consequent increases to the catchment diversion limits. The MDBA claimed the reduced allocation to the environment was due to a change in their methodology, and that the new amount for environmental flows would be sufficient to ensure the long-term health of the Basin, but not everyone was convinced. The move to the new SDLs was proposed to take place over the period 2012– 2019 to allow time for adjustment.1 In early 2012 the Wentworth Group released a statement setting out in some detail what it considered were the failings of the Draft Basin Plan.21 In developing the statement, the Wentworth Group drew on a recent CSIRO review,22 amongst other sources. The failings identified included that the Draft Plan did not specify the volume of water required to develop a healthy working river as required by the Act, and it did not take into account the effect on surface water flows of increasing groundwater extractions by over 2600 GL (many groundwater systems in the Basin are linked to river systems). In addition, no information was presented as to how effectively the plan would cope with long dry periods such as the one experienced during the previous several years of the Millennium drought, or deliver the volumes of water required keep the Murray mouth open as a functioning (Ramsarlisted) estuary and export the 2 million tonnes of salt that accumulate in the river system each year. Despite these arguments, the Australian Parliament approved the Basin Plan in November 2012 with the support of the major political parties. The plan set a target for recovery of an additional 2750 GL of surface water for environmental flows, to be recovered through further buying back of water entitlements from willing sellers, or exchange of water entitlements for Australian Government investments in modernising irrigation infrastructure. The Basin SDL was therefore set at 10 873 GL per year for surface water, compared with the 7170 GL recommended by the Wentworth Group. An environmentally sustainable level of extraction of groundwater was determined to be 3324 GL per year, meaning that existing diversion levels could be maintained or increased for all but one of the 66 groundwater units in the Basin. A framework for monitoring and evaluating progress was

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also approved. This includes annual Statements of Assurance issued by the MDBA and Basin governments and published on the MDBA website. These provide information on compliance and progress in implementing the Basin Plan, and compliance with the water trading rules. In addition, the MDBA provides information on real-time river levels, rainfall and other features via its website. In a supplementary move, about one month before the Basin Plan was approved by the parliament, the prime minister of the day announced that an additional amount of $1.7 billion would be made available to recover an additional 450 GL of surface water for the environment, taking the new total to 3200 GL. Most of the money was to be used to make farms more water efficient and to remove ‘capacity constraints’, such as low-lying bridges that limit water flows, and would be applied over the decade from 2014. Modelling carried out by the MDBA had indicated that significant ecological improvements could be achieved with 3200 GL compared to 2750 GL.23 Overall, the Basin Plan aims to achieve a ‘healthy, working Basin’, including healthy and resilient rivers, wetlands and floodplains, and ‘productive and resilient industries and confident communities’. It is intended that the environmental flows are delivered so that the water passes through rivers and wetlands in ways that mimic natural conditions as far as is possible.1 The Basin states all committed to the Basin Plan and to the recovery of the additional 450 GL of surface water in the months following approval of the plan by the Australian Parliament, and the Basin Plan Implementation Agreement was signed by all parties in August 2013.

Implementing the Basin Plan24 The implementation process involves all parties – states, irrigation communities, the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder (CEWH) – in reconciling their actions and processes with the plan requirements and making adjustments as needed. The CEWH is an independent statutory office established under the Water Act 2007 and is responsible for managing all water entitlements purchased by the Australian Government. It is advised by a range of stakeholders and experts and works with local communities to decide how to deliver the water it has acquired.25 New sets of skills were required to plan, deliver and monitor the use of the extremely large portfolio of water this new body is building for environmental and social benefit. The existence of the CEWH means the environment will continue to be supplied with water purchased as entitlements for the environment or from investment in infrastructure improvements. That is, water for the environment will be permanently outside the consumptive pool. For this reason, water policy expert Daniel Connell believes that the CEWH will prove to be the most important water management institution in the Murray–Darling Basin. Water purchased by the CEWH has to be used in accordance with the Environmental Watering Plan developed by the MDBA, but it is not constrained by other forces within or outside the Murray–Darling Basin, including the states.5 Monitoring and evaluation to ensure the integrity of the process and the effectiveness of the outcomes are essential. This is especially so because of the complexity of the Basin Plan, the long implementation period, and the likelihood of adjustments or variations being sought by one or more parties. While the MDBA and state governments do carry out some monitoring, including issuing Statements of Assurance, many experts contend that major long-term evaluations are also necessary.26 Without these, they argue, it is not possible to know if the objectives of the Basin Plan are being achieved. They point out that

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cycles of wet and dry occur over decades, that managing sustainability of the Basin will likely be more challenging in a drying climate, and that monitoring and evaluation in the early years have been episodic and uncoordinated. In addition, given that $13 billion27 of taxpayers’ money is being applied to the process, it is imperative to confirm that the money is well spent.28 A comprehensive and ongoing monitoring and evaluation scheme can also assess deficiencies or deviations in the plan implementation, including those claimed by the National Irrigators Council,29 as well as the effects of other changes to the plan whatever the source. There is some ongoing work in this area. The Long-term Intervention Monitoring Project was initiated by the Department of Environment and Energy in 2014 to monitor and evaluate environmental outcomes from the water being delivered into the Murray–Darling Basin by the plan. It involved independent teams of researchers and consultants in monitoring seven selected areas across the Murray–Darling Basin over a period of five years, and then scaling up those results to deduce the health of the Basin as a whole.30 Outcome are summarised later in this chapter.

Salinity management Salinity management is one of the most challenging environmental issues in the Basin. While salt occurs naturally in the Basin, high salinity reduces land productivity and makes water unsuitable for some uses, depending on the level of dissolved salts (see also Chapters 3, 11). Irrigation and land clearing generally exacerbate salinity problems. The only natural way for salt to leave the Basin is in the water flowing through the river system and out to sea via the Murray mouth. Big river flows help this process. Salinity can also be managed through salt interception schemes. These are large-scale pumping schemes that divert saline groundwater and drainage water away from the river system, usually into a salt management basin some distance from the river. There are currently 17 salt interception schemes along the Murray River and one on the Upper Darling River, and these prevent approximately 500 000 t of salt from reaching the Murray River each year. Salinity in the landscape can also be addressed through improved farming practices in both dryland areas (e.g. use of deep-rooted plants; minimum tillage cropping) and irrigation areas (e.g. improved irrigation efficiency).1,31

The situation five years after acceptance of the Basin Plan As a result of the Water Act 2007 and the Basin Plan 2012, we now have a better knowledge and understanding of the Basin’s water resources, as well as better governance and planning and improved dissemination of information through the MDBA’s website. By June 2018, the Basin Plan had been in operation for more than five years, and it was nearly 11 years since the Australian Government’s $10 billion intervention in 2007. The MDBA estimated that by 30 June 2018, 2118 GL per year of surface water had been recovered. This is 77 per cent of the surface water recovery target of 2750 GL per year to be achieved by 30 June 2019. This included water recovered through buy-backs and through infrastructure efficiency improvements.1 However, it was still a long way short of the 4400 GL recommended by the Wentworth Group as the minimum required for a healthy Basin. Furthermore, by that date the water recovery target had been adjusted downwards as explained later in this chapter. The environmental water that was delivered to different parts of the Basin over the previous five years or so contributed to the Basin’s health, including local improvements in

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Fig. 14.2.  Picnic Point, NSW, where the Edward River (to the left), an anabranch of the Murray, begins its journey (Nov. 2011).

salinity, water quality and the condition of fresh water species in river reaches that had received additional water.32 In addition, water markets had become fully operational, enabling irrigators and other water users to manage and trade their valuable water entitlements as necessary. On top of this, investments in modern irrigation infrastructure (Chapter 11) had likely reduced water losses and increased efficiency.33 All the same, it is impossible to be definitive about the effects of environmental watering at this stage because rainfall in the Basin – and therefore stream flows – increased markedly following the end of the Millennium drought (Fig. 14.2). In July 2015 the Australian Conservation Foundation reported that, although the amount of water being returned to the environment each year under the plan fell short of the 4000 GL believed necessary, the 2000 GL delivered in 2014 to important sites in the Basin via ‘environmental watering events’ were making a difference to the health of red gums, wetlands, fish, birds and other wildlife across the Basin. Among the observations was a sighting of ‘millions upon millions of golden perch fingerlings’ after a release of environmental water reached the Great Darling Anabranch, and that ‘water delivered to the Lower Lakes, Coorong and Murray Mouth kept salinity levels down and allowed vegetation to flower and fruit, providing food and habitat for birds, fish and invertebrates’.34 Three and a half years into its program, the Long-term Intervention Monitoring Project reported there were environmental changes of the types and magnitudes expected at that stage of the plan, based on their monitoring of fish, birds and vegetation. The authors also argued that it would take more than a decade before large-scale changes became evident.30

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Growing concerns However, since the Basin Plan was approved, there have also been changes that provoked concern or criticism. In 2014 a new Australian Coalition Government changed the environmental water recovery strategy for the Basin by making infrastructure investment the main focus. A cap of 1500 GL per year was placed on buy-backs, and these were re-phased over six years rather than four, so that water buy-backs would no longer be the main focus for water recovery. The stated purpose of the change was ‘to ensure the Murray–Darling Basin remains Australia’s primary food bowl’ and that ‘Australian farmers produce as much food and fibre as is sustainably achievable for the Australian people, and for export to the world.’25 However, many experts argue that an emphasis on farm infrastructure is less effective than buy-backs because (a) it is more expensive, (b) capital investments can encourage inflexible farming systems that can be caught out by future water scarcity, and (c) increasing irrigation efficiency could actually reduce the amount of water that flows back into rivers, because more of it stays on the farm. Coupled with this is the serious question of to what extent taxpayers’ funds should be used to finance capital improvements on private farms. In addition, contrary to earlier arguments over the Basin Plan, there is evidence that many sellers remain in agriculture, and that job losses are small, with the Government water purchases being critical in helping farmers to adjust.35 In September 2015, responsibility for water policy and resources was controversially transferred from the Department of the Environment to the Department of Agriculture, subsequently renamed the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources. Hence, the responsibilities for overseeing the MDBA and implementing the Murray–Darling Basin Plan fell to the Minister for Agriculture. The change was the result of political negotiations within the government ‘to give water greater focus on outcomes for agriculture’ , rather than an overall plan for improved implementation.36 It was also claimed that the change was made to ‘boost [the then agriculture minister’s] burning desire to build dams’.36 This change, together with the recent restrictions on water buy-backs, suggested a possible move away from concern for the overall health of the Basin and towards an emphasis on provision of water for agriculture. In a separate analysis, natural resource management specialists Graham Marshall and Jason Alexandra argued that there has long been a strong alignment of water bureaucracies with irrigation interests, and that irrigation interests have a much greater influence over the agriculture portfolio than the environment portfolio.37 The Basin Plan continued to attract the attention of the Australian Parliament. In June 2015 the Senate set up a select committee to consider the social, economic and environmental effects of the plan and associated Commonwealth programs. The committee’s report, tabled in March 2016, included several dissenting reports as well as a list of recommendations. Several of the recommendations concerned delaying or obstructing the implementation of the plan, changing the Water Act 2007, making modifications to the lower lakes area of the Basin, and actions relating to possible negative consequences of environmental watering events.38 No action had been taken on these recommendations or were in prospect at the time of writing. Some of the changes suggested a possible softening of resolve to ensure the environmental health of the Basin, a situation which would be to the detriment of all users and all those dependent on the Basin’s products. Such a softening appears to have been confirmed by a recommendation from the MDBA in November 2016 for a reduction in the surface water recovery target of 70 GL in the northern Basin – that is, to reserve more water for irrigators – contingent on commitments from the Australian, Queensland and New South

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Wales governments to implement a range of measures aimed at improving water management in the north.39 At the same time as supporting this move, the Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources also cast doubt on the feasibility of recovering the additional 450 GL agreed to by all parties in 2012–13. Together, these reductions would mean a diminution in the target volume of water to be restored for environmental flows from 3200 to 2680 GL. The propositions sparked outrage from South Australia, the ‘most downstream’ state, and at their meeting on 22 November 2016, members of the MDBA Ministerial Council40,41 were unable to reach agreement. Environmental groups and others reacted angrily to the proposals, arguing they indicated a slowing of the implementation process and a prioritising of irrigation needs over the needs of the rivers, wetlands, floodplains and the wider environment. Points made in the criticisms included that it is impossible to have a healthy agriculture sector without a healthy river system; South Australian (downstream) farmers could suffer if the planned flows were not returned to the environment; uncertainty in the current situation made it difficult for farmers to plan; Indigenous communities were not consulted; and reversing environmental water allocations would have negative impacts on environmental, socioeconomic and cultural heritage fronts.42 Local farmers, environmentalists and scientists said they were fearful for the future of the Macquarie Marshes as a prolific breeding ground for thousands of waterbirds if the MDBA were to proceed with the plan to reduce the amount of water flowing into the northern Basin. Garry Hall, owner of a mix of marshland and grazing land in the area commented, ‘Water is the key driver of ecosystem function in a wetland, and the less water, the less birds, the less bugs, the less bacteria in our soil. It distorts the whole ecosystem, which includes cattle production, and when the dry is longer, we sell less beef.’43

Allegations of water theft Adding to the alarm was an investigative report aired on the Four Corners program of the Australian Broadcasting Commission in July 2017.44 The program provided evidence that large quantities of water were being pumped, sometimes illegally, from the Darling River by large upstream irrigation businesses, thereby leaving downstream farmers and communities short of water. The program claimed that the New South Wales Government, though a party to the Murray–Darling Basin Plan, was turning a ‘blind eye’ to these events. Further claims of illegal excess water extraction were reported in Fairfax Media.45 The resulting imbalance in water availability along the Basin rivers was exacerbated by private water-trading companies buying downstream water licences and selling them to irrigators upstream. The program also claimed that one of the water companies involved ‘owned more water than anyone else in Australia, apart from the Australian Government’.44 The point is made in Chapter 16 that where private companies are involved in trading water, which is publicly owned, appropriate guidelines and strong oversight, with sanctions, are essential. Huge private companies, in particular, can have a substantial influence on operations and outcomes in relation to water management overall. Although the agriculture minister downplayed the impact of the alleged water theft – suggesting the outcry over it was a ploy to strip more water from rural communities – within a week the prime minister, under pressure, announced an independent interstate review, to report by the end of 2017.46 Further controversy was sparked at around the same time when the agriculture minister was accused of nominating a person to the board of the MDBA who added unreasonably to the representation of irrigation interests on the board, and who had advocated against implementation of the Basin Plan.47

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When the review reported in November 2017, it gave a scathing assessment of compliance with the plan in New South Wales and Queensland. It found that both states had low levels of compliance resourcing, with New South Wales having one officer for every 355 GL of water diversions, and Queensland one officer for 235 GL. In contrast, South Australia had one officer for every 56  GL diverted. It said that the two states were ‘bedevilled by patchy metering, the challenges of measuring unmetered take, and the lack of real-time accurate water accounts’. In 2016–17, New South Wales issued 44 warning letters and notices, Queensland, 14; South Australia, 355; Victoria, 562; and the Australian Capital Territory, one. The review also found that the two states, as well as Victoria, had a conspicuous lack of transparency in their compliance systems. It also reported that in NSW, which had 21 000 water licences, dealing with the business of compliance had been low priority for the state’s 20 responsible agencies for the past 20 years. The review made several recommendations, including a requirement for each state to review and publish its compliance arrangements by 30 June 2018, delivery of a ‘no meter, no pump’ policy and a mandate for standardised metering.48 In early March 2018, eight months after Four Corners investigated the issue, the New South Wales Government announced it would prosecute alleged water theft on the Barwon-Darling – at about the same time as the state ombudsman released a scathing report saying WaterNSW had given the government incorrect figures on its enforcement actions.49 Following the publication of the review, the Government of South Australia, the state most at risk when large quantities of water are taken from Basin rivers in upstream states, announced its plan for a royal commission into breaches of the Murray–Darling Agreement.50 In October 2017 the MDBA determined that a further 605 GL of (surface) water would be available for consumptive use (mainly irrigation) if a specified set of 36 water-saving infrastructure projects aimed at increasing efficiency, and costing $1.3 billion, were implemented. That is, implementation of the projects would enable the amount of water recovered for the environment to be reduced by a further 605 GL – ~30 per cent more than the volume of water in Sydney Harbour. This finding was submitted as a recommendation for the approval of parliament in early 2018.51

Escalating criticism of the plan’s implementation In the meantime, wider concern had been growing about progress in implementing the Basin Plan as a whole. Statements of alarm from national and state environmental organisations – ‘Tragically the people charged with that job, the Murray–Darling Basin Authority, have taken a step away from sustainability, they’ve abandoned the goal …’; ‘the Basin Plan is unravelling from both ends’; ‘Indigenous communities had been left out of the consultation’52 – appeared to have gone unheeded. In early 2017 a study from the Australian National University produced the particularly dismal conclusion that there had been no discernible impact in terms of reduced water use on a per-hectare basis, or in terms of reduced water diversions, despite the billions of dollars spent. The lead author, water economist Quentin Grafton, called for a rethink on water policy, with a focus on ‘evidence and facts rather than rhetoric and special interests’.53 Further, in June the same year a report from the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists included a damning assessment of the present situation.54 The authors reported that ‘water recovery has slowed to a trickle’ (p. 1), and that, while there had been some progress towards the water recovery target and in localised areas, ‘…there is no evidence yet that water recovered to date has led to an overall improvement in the condition of river systems across the basin…’ (p. 2) They argued that policy and legislative changes made by the Aus-

14 – Saving the Murray–Darling Basin?

tralian Government and planned by states and ‘well-funded irrigator groups’ (p 2) risked undermining the reform efforts and leaving people living downstream and future generations to bear the cost of a degraded river system. The group identified ‘five actions that COAG [the Council of Australian Governments55] will need to take in order to deliver the Basin Plan in full and on time’. These included putting communities at the centre of the reform, guaranteeing recovery of the full 3200 GL per year of surface water, ensuring water recovered achieves measurable improvements in the river systems, building trust through greater transparency, and preparing for a future with less water (p 3). Other authorities have argued that it is essential to give attention to improving water quality and building ecological infrastructure.56 In February 2018, 12 leading experts on the Murray–Darling Basin signed The Murray– Darling Declaration. They included water scientists, economists, and specialists in water policy, environmental management, river ecology and food resources. They argued that there was little evidence of Basin-wide improvements since 2011, that some states were not committed to compliance with the plan, and that recent plans to reduce the amount of water to be acquired for the environment did not satisfy the requirements of the Basin Plan. They called for a halt to further expenditure on irrigation infrastructure pending a scientific and economic audit, an audit of all Basin water recovery achievements and plans, and the establishment of an independent and expert scientific advisory body.57 The Declaration and its associated criticisms were immediately rejected by the MDBA, the Australian Government and the National Irrigators Council.58 In a letter drafted shortly before he retired in January 2018, the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, David Papps, expressed his increasing concern that the states’ policies as expressed in their resource plans could ultimately undermine CEWH functions.59 As the time approached for the proposed reduction in the surface water recovery target of 70 GL in the northern Basin and 605 GL in the southern Basin to be put to the parliament, bitter argument developed, with the federal government claiming the Basin Plan was in danger of unravelling if the proposed reductions were not approved. New South Wales was particularly trenchant in its criticism of any attempt to block the proposal, and along with Victoria, threatened to withdraw from the plan entirely – despite having committed to the whole plan in 2012–13.60 In the end, in June 2018, the government was able to get the recommendations for the two sets of reductions through the Senate, where they did not command a majority, but only after agreeing to certain conditions demanded by the Labor Opposition. These conditions included that the extra 450 GL of water agreed to at the time of approval of the Basin Plan would be delivered, that there was a comprehensive response to the allegations of water theft and corruption in the northern Basin/northern New South Wales, as well as consultation and engagement with Aboriginal peoples in water planning and governance. Critics remained unhappy, arguing that there was no guarantee that the 36 proposed water-saving projects would result in the required amount of water being allocated for environmental purposes. In particular, it was pointed out that the proposed 605  GL of environmental water savings would take effect immediately, whereas the 36 supporting projects don’t have to be implemented until 2024 – six years ahead – placing the environment under threat in the interim.61 In the meantime, there had been yet another analysis carried out by the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists which showed that only one of the proposed infrastructure projects was consistent with the Basin Plan and related agreements. The analysis contained advice as to how the projects could be modified in line with the Basin Plan.62

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As far as surface water recovery for environmental flows in the Basin is concerned, the outcome of the parliament’s decision in June 2018 meant that the new target was 2075 GL per year plus 450  GL per year of efficiency measures by 2024.1 This compares with the original targets of the Basin Plan of 2750 GL per year plus an extra 450 GL per year gained mostly by efficiency measures. It contrasts with the Wentworth Group’s insistence that a minimum of 4400 GL per year are required. In mid-December 2018 federal and state water ministers announced that they had agreed that an additional volume of up to 450 GL would be returned to the environment, provided it did not have a negative socio-economic impact on river communities, based on criteria agreed to by the states. It is difficult to see how this changed anything, especially without knowledge of what were the specified criteria.63 The matter is taken up again in the final chapter of this book.

15

Water for cities, towns and farms

The capital cities All the capital cities except for Hobart and arguably Melbourne suffered from continuing shortages of clean water supplies in their early decades. All took over prime Aboriginal land and water and food resources, forcibly removing the original inhabitants, starving them out of their homelands. All polluted – even destroyed – their initial fresh water sources, which had formed the lifeblood of the settlements, and suffered ill health as a consequence. All struggled to adequately meet the water needs of their growing communities, and all suffered restrictions on water use at various stages in their development. The struggle continues to the present day. In the middle of the nineteenth century, very few major cities around the world had any distributed water supply. Around this time, people were becoming aware of the link between dirty water and disease, and it was recognised that water could act as a medium to remove debris and filth from cities, provided a system was constructed to drain the water away.

Sydney As the rapid growth of Sydney continued into the twentieth century, the authorities battled to keep up with the city’s need for fresh water. Already Sydney residents had suffered rigorous water restrictions due to the drought in 1901–02, when the use of watering hoses, buckets and watering cans was banned.1 Following the completion of the ground-breaking Cataract Dam in 1907 (Chapter 12), two more dams were completed – both in the Blue Mountains area – by the end of 1908. Dam building continued over the next half century, interrupted by the two world wars and the Great Depression, in an effort to keep up with the city’s demands. This included completing the remaining three Upper Nepean dams that had been recommended by the 1902 royal commission (Chapter 12). Building a dam across the gorge of the Warragamba River south-west of Sydney’s centre was commenced in 1948 and took 12 years – planning had begun following an eight-year drought during which strict water restrictions were again imposed on the city. The dam had been first recommended to the 1869 royal commission (Chapter 12) but was considered too ambitious at the time in both engineering and economic terms. It took almost a century for these limitations to be overcome. The Warragamba Dam project involved the government acquiring properties in the valley and relocating residents, demolishing or moving buildings, moving known graves, clearing trees and diverting the river so construction could start. A township of 3500 people to house workers and their families as well as supporting services was also 189

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developed. The dam was completed in 1960. Later, studies of rain and flood events showed that the dam could be subject to floods much larger than it was originally designed for, so the height was increased by 5 m to 142 m in 1987–89. The wall was also strengthened using post-tensioned steel cables to tie the upper wall to its base.1 The capacity of the Burragorang Reservoir formed by the dam is 2031 GL, about four times the volume of Sydney Harbour. It is not only Sydney’s largest water storage, but the largest urban water supply reservoir in Australia. Today, Sydney’s population of some five million is supplied with water from reservoirs formed by seven major dams to the west and south of the city, and several secondary storage reservoirs. Lake Burragorang supplies ~80 per cent of Sydney’s water. There is also a seawater desalination plant at Kurnell on Botany Bay 25  km south of Sydney that can produce 250 ML of drinking water a day, sufficient for up to 1.5 million people. The plant can be scaled up to produce 500 ML/d if circumstances in the future require it. It is activated when reservoir levels fall below 70 per cent full and de-activated when levels reach 80 per cent.2

Melbourne Melbourne was founded on the banks of the Yarra River in 1835, in the territories of the Kulin nation. The country surrounding the lower reaches of the river consisted of marshlands, lagoons, billabongs and lakes – rich sources of food for the local people. To the west and north were extensive grasslands resulting from thousands of years of Aboriginal land management by fire-stick farming. The Port Philip area was one of the more heavily populated regions of Australia, due to the plentiful water and diverse food available.3 The new arrivals got their water supplies – for human and domestic consumption, and for stock – from the Yarra and other rivers, creeks and lagoons in the vicinity. (An earlier shortlived penal outpost, established in 1803 near present-day Sorrento, had used six wooden barrels sunk into the sand to tap groundwater as their source of supply.4) This was attractive country to the Europeans for its rich pastoral possibilities. Many also appreciated the charm of the grasslands, one describing the country as ‘enchantingly beautiful’.5 Melbourne’s population grew rapidly, reaching 7000 within five years and 100  000 within 20 years, helped along by the gold rushes of the 1850s. As the population grew and the new settlers needed water further afield for human use and for sheep and cattle, they often sought out Aboriginal guides to find obscure waterholes and springs – as had occurred and was occurring in other parts of the country.6 In the course of this expansion, the Yarra became degraded; a rocky waterfall in the centre of the settlement was ‘blasted out of existence’, and slaughterhouses, tanneries and factories lining the banks discharged their waste into the river.7 In 1840 water pumps were installed on the north bank of the river, and water was sold door-to-door from water carts for three shillings a barrel, equivalent to ~30 cents for 550 L.8 As the increase in population continued and new buildings and industries were added, there was a need for a more sophisticated water supply system. The Board of Commissionaires of Sewers and Water Supply was formed in 1853, and the city’s first water supply reservoir, Yan Yean, was completed in 1857. This reservoir was built on the Plenty River, a tributary of the Yarra, 30 km north of Melbourne. It has a capacity of 33.1 GL and was formed by building only the second large dam wall in Australia. It was designed by James Blackburn (see box), and water was piped to Melbourne via iron mains. On New Year’s Eve in 1857, some 7000 people crowded onto Carlton Gardens to watch a powerful spout of water emerge from pipes newly-laid under the city, coming from what was then one of the

15 – Water for cities, towns and farms

James Blackburn and Melbourne’s water supply James Blackburn was a civil engineer, surveyor and architect. When employed as an inspector for the commissioners of sewers in London, he forged a cheque for 600 pounds because of ‘extreme financial distress’. Despite laudatory testimonials he was sentenced to transportation for life, arriving in Hobart Town in November 1833. His wife and daughter joined him two years later. On arrival he was immediately employed in the Department of Roads and Bridges and was given an unusual level of responsibility and authority for a convict. From 1836 to 1839 he carried out a large part of the island’s road-making, surveying and engineering work. He was granted a free pardon in 1841. Blackburn entered into private practice with another former convict and was the successful contractor for several buildings, bridges and engineering projects, including a water supply scheme for Hobart and an irrigation scheme for the Midlands. However, these last projects were not realised. In 1849 he sailed with his family to Melbourne where, with four other men, he established a company to sell filtered and purified water to the public. He was concerned about the quality of Melbourne’s drinking water, which at the time was Yarra River water held in a storage tank at the corner of Elizabeth and Flinders streets. The company’s aim was to provide a ‘quality of water more abundant and better than is obtainable in almost any town in Europe’. Later the same year he was appointed city surveyor and in 1850–51 conceived and designed the Melbourne water supply from the Yan Yean reservoir via the Plenty River – his greatest non-architectural achievement. Unfortunately, he did not live to see the completion of the reservoir. He was injured in a fall from a horse in 1852 and died in Collingwood from typhoid in 1854. He was arguably one of the greatest engineers of his period in Australia.10

biggest artificial water storages in the world. The iron mains were replaced by an open channel in the 1860s due to corrosion and contamination problems.9 In the early 1880s, following dry years and low water levels in Yan Yean reservoir, Wallaby and Silver Creeks (both north of the Great Dividing Range) were tapped to provide an additional supply. The water was carried by aqueduct to Yan Yean via a new storage, Toorourrong Reservoir. This storage acted as a settling basin before the water travelled the final 8 km to Yan Yean.11 A largescale dam construction program was begun in the 1920s, following increasing complaints about water quality and lack of water pressure. The first of these was Maroondah Reservoir 55 km from Melbourne, completed in 1927. Two more reservoirs were completed before World War II, and five more in the 40 years after the war, all prompted by population growth, dry periods and intermittent drought leading to water restrictions. The last built and the largest storage is Thomson Reservoir (third largest in Australia behind Warragamba and Wivenhoe), completed in 1984. It has a capacity of 1068 GL, ~60 per cent of Melbourne’s total storage capacity, held behind an earth and rock fill embankment. It is only the second Melbourne reservoir to draw water from north of the divide.12 All of Melbourne’s supply reservoirs except one (Greenvale) lie in the ranges to the east and north-east of the city. These largely forested catchment areas, some of which are closed

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to the public, provide the favourable conditions that result in Melbourne having one of the highest-quality city water supplies in the world. During the Millennium drought, when inflows to storages were greatly reduced, a decision was made to build a desalination plant at Wonthaggi on the south-east coast of Victoria, ~135 km from Melbourne. This was completed in 2012, but it was not until March 2016 that the state government announced it had made its first order from the plant due to a ‘significant decline’ in storage levels – 50 GL to be delivered in the summer of 2016–17.13 Further quantities were ordered for the following two summers.

Brisbane The early water supply for the first European settlement on the site of Brisbane in 1825 (home of the Jagera and Turrbal Aboriginal peoples) was from a creek that flowed into the Brisbane River at the present location of Creek Street. Wells also provided water for the town as it grew. In ~1839 a small dam was built across the creek because it sometimes dried up. A water main was installed to take water from the dam to the site of the present Treasury Buildings with a branch leading off in a northerly direction. The main was formed from a series of hollowed-out ironbark logs. Water was pumped along the pipeline by a convict-operated treadmill pump. When Brisbane was opened to free settlers in 1842, water was also obtained from a creek in present-day Victoria Park.14 Over time, the supply dam became grossly polluted, suffered leaks and dried up at least once every year. Despite the supply being inadequate for the growing town, residents had to put up with the situation until after Queensland became a separate state in 1859. Water carriers operated a flourishing business selling water for two shillings per hundred gallons (20 cents per 450 L). In a major advance, Enoggera Dam was built on Enoggera Creek in 1866. The reservoir so formed held 4.5 GL of water and a 20-cm cast iron main connected it to Brisbane where water was sold to residents for two shillings per 1000 gallons – onetenth the price charged by the water carriers. Severe droughts in the 1880s and 1901–03 coupled with continued population growth showed further developments in the system were needed. In 1893 a pumping station to draw water directly from the Brisbane River was completed. Water was pumped into a reservoir on the slopes of Mt Crosby from where it travelled via a 60-cm main for 30 km or so to Brisbane. Between 1916 and 1919 a sedimentation basin and filters were installed to remove sediment from the river water that had sparked complaints from consumers. Chlorine was added to the water in 1925 to kill any harmful organisms so that Brisbane, at last, had a good drinking water supply – 100 years after original European settlement.14 Between 1916 and 1984, several further dams were built at various distances from Brisbane. There are now 26 reservoirs supplying Brisbane and surrounding areas of south-east Queensland. (This includes supplies for rural irrigation in south-east Queensland.) The largest of these is Wivenhoe Dam, built across the Brisbane River in 1984, ~80 km northwest of Brisbane. At full supply level the reservoir holds 1165 GL, ~2000 times the daily water consumption of Brisbane. However, the dam was also built for flood mitigation, so it has specially designed gates that, when closed, allow the storage of up to an additional 1967 GL. If the gates are closed when a flood occurs, the flood waters can build up in the extra storage volume behind the gates and be released in a controlled way by opening the gates by a measured amount. By this means, the height and speed of the flood waters in the lower valleys, and consequently the amount of damage, can be reduced.15 This mechanism was severely tested in the extreme floods of January 2011 (see box).

15 – Water for cities, towns and farms

Wivenhoe Dam and the Brisbane floods of January 2011 In January 2011, Brisbane and surrounding areas suffered devastating floods that caused widespread damage, disruption and loss of life. These were the first large floods to test the flood mitigating capabilities of Wivenhoe Dam since it was completed in 1984. The severity of the floods caused controversy and recriminations, including accusations that the flood damage was exacerbated by, or even resulted from, incorrect operation of the flood mitigation mechanism of the dam. Subsequently, the Queensland Floods Commission of Inquiry found that, to a large degree, the floods were handled to the best of the relevant authority’s ability under the systems in place at the time, but that the flood mitigation manual should be reviewed to clarify the operational procedures contained in it and the basis on which flood engineers should make decisions under the manual. It also recommended that ‘should the Bureau of Meteorology predict a wet season of greater or equal severity, the level of Wivenhoe Dam should be lowered to 75 per cent of its full supply level [to allow greater storage of flood waters] for the duration of the wet season.’16 The commission also emphasised that: no dam can guarantee the prevention of floods in areas downstream of it; all dams have limits to the amount of water they can hold without their structural integrity being threatened; and dams of every size will let water out in large floods. Furthermore, all floods are different – the amount of mitigation provided by a dam will depend on the amount of rain that falls, where it falls and over what period. A large flood is indistinguishable from a small flood when the first rain falls.17

A desalination plant able to deliver 125 ML/d was built at Tugun on the Gold Coast in 2009 to supply water to the surrounding area and Brisbane. Water from the plant was blended with treated dam water and used to supplement drinking water supplies in 2009 and 2010 – the final years of the Millennium drought – and during floods in 2011 and 2013.

Hobart The island of Tasmania accounts for less than one per cent of Australia’s land area and has a little more than two per cent of Australia’s population, but it contains 12 per cent of Australia’s fresh water resources.18 Given this and the fact that Hobart is a relatively small city (population 212 000 as at 2011 census), it hasn’t suffered many of the problems concerning water supply and quality experienced by the other state capitals. In contrast to most Australian cities, the bulk of Hobart’s water supply is obtained directly from rivers, mainly the Derwent River.19 Hobart was established at Sullivan’s Cove on the west bank of the Derwent River in 1804, where there was an adequate supply of fresh water from a creek later to be known as the Hobart Rivulet. An earlier attempt to establish a British colony a few kilometres up the river on the east bank at Risdon Cove was abandoned due to lack of fresh water. In a shocking start for the colony, the shooting of Aboriginal people at Risdon Cove in 1804 was followed by a campaign organised by the colonial government to eradicate the Aboriginal people from the island.20 The wealthier settlers in Hobart Town were able to have wood stave barrels full of water delivered to their homes by water carrier. An old standpipe still existing in Lord Street,

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Sandy Bay, is the point at which water carriers used to fill their barrels. Most of the population had to draw their own water and carry it to where it was needed. In 1831 an aqueduct was built to bring water to the town from a rivulet at the base of Mount Wellington. As Hobart Town grew, industries such as tanneries, sawmills, breweries, distilleries, blacksmiths and shipyards were established, and these also drew on the water supply. Moreover, some industries used the rivulet as a place to dispose of waste water. Consequently, it became badly polluted and, as it was used as a source of drinking water, a spate of disease epidemics followed. Eventually, as a result of impassioned pleas from residents, in 1846 a Board of Commissioners was elected to manage the affairs of the settlement – now a city of perhaps 40 000 people. By this time, elegant sandstone public buildings had replaced the early mud and timber structures of the pioneering days, and many fine colonial mansions were being built by the colony’s more successful citizens. The first major water works were built over the period 1861 to 1895 to transport water from Mount Wellington to the Sandy Bay Rivulet, located to the south of Hobart Rivulet. The works consisted of one large reservoir and a series of smaller reservoirs, iron pipes and wooden and sandstone channelling to conduct water to the reservoirs and to the city. Further storages were constructed in following decades with the continued growth of the city. As in the other capital cities, work proceeded only after considerable debate and argument.21 Today, Hobart’s water is supplied from Mt Wellington (20 per cent), Mt Field (20 per cent) and the upper reaches of the Derwent River including Lake St Clair (60 per cent).18 The headwaters of the Derwent River are highly modified – regulated and managed due to the requirements of the Upper Derwent hydroelectric power stations. The largest Hobart water storage is Risdon Brook reservoir, with a capacity of 3.6 GL and located ~12 km from the city.

Adelaide If you drive around the countryside in South Australia, you can’t help but see pipelines. You can’t escape them. They follow roads, they go around Spencer Gulf, they climb over hills and cut across paddocks. They are the water arteries of the state, vital to agriculture, industry and households. If you follow the biggest ones, they will eventually lead you back to the Murray River – at Morgan or Swan Reach or Mannum or Murray Bridge or Tailem Bend. South Australia is the driest state in Australia. Only 3.3 per cent of the land area has an average annual rainfall of more than 500  mm, while ~83 per cent receives less than 250 mm. (By comparison, Melbourne’s average rainfall is 648 mm, Sydney’s 1215 mm, and Broken Hill’s 260 mm.22) There is very little run-off within the state and the single most important source of supply is the River Murray.23 As a result, development of the state has depended to a high degree on water transported over long distances. In this way, the water supply is dramatically different from that in other states. Colonel William Light chose the site of Adelaide – the land of the Kaurna Aboriginal nation – for the first European settlement in South Australia based on its closeness to a permanent water supply, the River Torrens. It was 1836, and this was to be a colony of free settlers. The first settlers pitched their tents and built their huts close to the river. The colony grew around what is now North Terrace, Rundle and Hindley streets. Like many other rivers in Australia, the level of water in the Torrens varied greatly with the seasons, in dry seasons becoming a series of waterholes, and after heavy rain upstream, a ‘raging torrent’. In a history of South Australia’s early days, Maureen Leadbeater reports that ‘many a settler and his horse were swept away and drowned’.24 Some people dug wells for water, but this water was often found to be brackish or saline.

15 – Water for cities, towns and farms

Fig. 15.1.  Carting water in the early days. Source: ‘The history of SA Water’ (CC BY 3.0 AU).

As the colony expanded, water carters delivered water to the household storages – wooden casks or iron tanks – of those who could pay (Fig. 15.1). The carters used buckets to fill their barrels at strategic points on the river. As the principal source of water, the Torrens was used for drinking, bathing, watering stock, and disposing of rubbish and sewage.25 Trees along the banks were cut down. In a replay of the early days of settlement in Sydney, three years after the first arrivals, in 1839, Governor Gawler banned people from bathing, washing clothes or throwing dead animals into the river within one mile (1.6 km) of the settlement. There had been a dysentery epidemic that year – five children died in one day. By this time, similar to the situation in the other expanding colonies, the Kaurna people were unable to maintain life as a group because of the loss of their land.26 By 1850, the population of North and South Adelaide had grown to 11 000, and there were 36 water carters supplying water at from 1.5 to 3.0 shillings (15–30 cents) per load of 90 gallons (409 L). (At that time, wages for blacksmiths and bricklayers were six shillings a day, and for labourers four shillings).24 The price of water increased by 25 per cent in the early 1850s when many water carters joined the rush to the Victorian goldfields. Also, by this time the River Torrens, once a clear woodland stream, was a succession of ugly, muddy pools, its banks denuded of the gums and undergrowth that had previously made it a beautiful place. There were frequent complaints about the water and many suggestions made for schemes to ensure a reliable supply of fresh water. Eventually, a reservoir was built at Thorndon Park, ~14 km north-east of the city. This reservoir was filled with water diverted from the Torrens. Work was completed in 1860 – 24 years after first settlement – and water

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was piped to some streets in the town in the following year at a price only 6 per cent of the rate charged by the water carriers. Until the mains were extended another 14 km to Port Adelaide, water had to be carted there in railway trucks.27 A second reservoir at Hope Valley, completed in 1872, was filled by an 8-km-long aqueduct from the Torrens.28 However, complaints about the quality of the water continued, as illustrated by the item ‘Our Water Supply – the Torrens and Its Tributaries’ in the Advertiser, 6 February 1884: All can appreciate the advantages of pure limpid water compared with the turgid, unwholesome fluid supplied to our homes. … From time to time indignant householders complain of the presence of gratuitous fish in the pipes, too small to be fit for the kitchen, too big to be pleasant in the drinking water.29 The construction of seven more reservoirs was undertaken in the following decades. All were filled from local streams, run-off and the Onkaparinga River.30 The largest, Mount Bold Reservoir with a capacity of 45.9 GL, was completed in 1938. In the early 1950s, the Adelaide authorities turned to the Murray River as other possible sources of reliable supply were exhausted. The first pipeline bringing water from the Murray River to Adelaide came into operation in 1955. Water pumped from the river at Mannum is delivered into three reservoirs in the River Torrens system and the Little Para reservoir after a 60-km journey. The second metropolitan pipeline, from Murray Bridge to the Onkaparinga River south of Adelaide was completed in 1973. From the Onkaparinga River the water is carried by channel to the Mount Bold reservoir.31 This supply from the Murray was made feasible after completion of the barrages near the Murray mouth. With the aim of providing long-term water security for the city, a seawater desalination plant was built in the industrial suburb of Lonsdale, on the east shore of Gulf St Vincent, 24 km from the city. A pumping station pushes the water along a 12-km pipeline to Happy Valley where it is blended with water from the Happy Valley water treatment plant before entering the metropolitan distribution system. The plant began producing drinking water in 2011 and is capable of producing 300 ML/d.31 The proportion of South Australia’s water drawn from the Murray River varies from year to year and depends mainly on the dryness of the state – that is, how much surface water is available. In the year 2012–13, it was 55 per cent (up from 46 per cent the previous year), with the desalination plant contributing 16 per cent. Notably, the proportion drawn from the Murray did not reduce with the desalination plant coming on line as some had hoped, due to an increase in overall consumption of ~7 per cent as well as reduced inflow to reservoirs.32

Perth The sources of Perth’s water supply have been outlined in Chapter 8 during the discussion of groundwater. To summarise: 43 per cent of the city’s water comes from the ground; 39 per cent from desalinated seawater (two plants); and 18 per cent from surface water via dams. On top of this, there are ~170 000 private bores from which people draw water for gardens and for the horticultural industry. This high level of dependence on groundwater and increasing dependence on desalinated seawater due to a drying climate make a significant point of difference from the water supplies of the other state capitals. Another point of difference is the completed trial of a groundwater replenishment scheme using recycled wastewater, and incorporation into future planning of a target (20 per cent of total supply by 2060) for water supply from this source. Proposed water savings measures have also been outlined in Chapter 8.

15 – Water for cities, towns and farms

The Water Corporation of Western Australia, which is the principal supplier of water, waste water and drainage services in Western Australia, has stated goals for 2030 to reduce water use by 15 per cent; increase water recycling by 30 per cent for use in parks, gardens and industry; and develop 70–100 GL of new water sources including desalination, groundwater replenishment, and securing groundwater. There are nine reservoirs that supply water to Perth, all spread along 75 km of the Darling Ranges east of Perth, with capacities ranging from 3.14 GL (Serpentine Pipehead) to 208.2 GL (South Dandalup). These nine do not include Mundaring Weir which supplies the goldfields and agricultural areas.33 In 1829 Captain James Sterling established a European settlement on the northern banks of the Swan River in Noongar country, just east of Mount Eliza (which now forms part of Kings Park). A big factor in his decision was his assessment that there were reliable supplies of fresh water, including wetlands, streams and springs. When the wetlands dried up in the first summer, settlers resorted to using groundwater from shallow wells. The colony’s first reservoir was excavated in 1832, in order to power a mill.34 The colony survived for 62 years using only shallow wells, several swamps and lakes and a few freshwater springs for drinking water supplies, despite harsh conditions including periodic droughts. For the wealthier residents, rainwater tanks, fed from house roofs for a few months of the year, were a bonus. The lack of a proper public water supply for such a long period presented a major threat to public health and to quality of life and limited the expansion of the colony. Not surprisingly, there were water shortages and outbreaks of disease, especially among poorer people, as wells became polluted due to poor drainage and due to the existence of cesspits in nearby sandy soil. In 1885 a newly established Sanitation Commission for the now City of Perth concluded that piping water from the Darling Range ‘must eventually be the source from which Perth shall be supplied with pure water’.35 A reservoir with a designed capacity of 624 ML was eventually built by a private company over the period 1889–91. A 30-cm cast iron pipe carried water 27 km to a storage reservoir on Mount Eliza. The government declined to fund the project due to borrowing limits imposed by the Colonial Office in London, and its own view that water supply was really a municipal matter. There were difficulties with the scheme once it was completed due to contaminated water, and complaints about water availability, loss of pressure and high cost. Ultimately, in 1896 the newly established state government bought the entire scheme and ensured that necessary improvements were made quickly. These included drilling a deep bore in the city to augment the supply.36 Further dams were built over subsequent decades as the city grew, and these provided the bulk of the city’s water until the second half of the twentieth century.

Darwin Darwin is the only one of the Northern Territory’s five main centres with a dam for water supply. About 85 per cent of the city’s water comes from the Darwin River Dam, ~50 km south of Darwin. The remainder comes from two bore fields ~50 km to Darwin’s southeast. Water from these two sources is piped to a storage and transfer station where it is blended and then piped to various parts of the city. The water supply is affected by the Top End’s high average temperatures, high rates of evaporation year-round, a monsoonal wet season of 4–5 months per year, and a long rain-free dry season of 7–8 months. The rainfall also varies considerably from year to year. The Darwin River Dam, which refills during the annual wet season, was built in 1972 and extended in 2010. It now has a capacity of 320 GL.37 Water consumption in the dry season is twice the consumption in the wet season. Darwin region households consume annually more than twice as much water as the

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Keeping cool In earlier days, two simple but innovative devices made life during the hot weather a bit more pleasant – or even possible –for farmers and for those living without modern conveniences. Both depended on the fact that heat is used up in evaporating water. The water bag Canvas and hessian water bags (Fig. 15.2) were used in Australia from the midnineteenth century or earlier. Once the bag was wet, the water was retained inside and would keep cool due to evaporation of moisture on the outside of the bag. The bags were hung on fences, in the shade of trees, in shearing sheds, and in the twentieth century often on the front of motor vehicles. Before the days of air-conditioned tractor cabins, if you were working all day in hot paddocks under a blistering sun, fencing, harvesting wheat, baling hay, or picking fruit, the cool clear water from a water bag was a life-saver.

Fig. 15.2.  Australian water bag.

Coolgardie safe The Coolgardie safe was widely used in the early days in European Australia to keep foods cool and to preserve perishable foods in summer. It had various forms, but in essence, it consisted of a metal-framed structure with sides made of hessian and with a water tank on top. (Alternatively, the sides were of perforated metal with hessian pieces draped over them.) The legs of the safe were placed in a tray of water – or in four small tins of water, one for each leg – to deter ants from getting into it. When pieces of cloth were placed in the top water tank and draped over it onto the sides of the safe, water soaked down the hessian and any breeze would keep the contents of the safe cool because of the gradual evaporation of the water on the hessian.

15 – Water for cities, towns and farms

Fig. 15.3.  Old Coolgardie safe in Coolgardie Goldfields Exhibition Museum.

When I was a boy, my parents kept a Coolgardie safe in a shed near the back of the house (Fig. 15.3). (We didn’t have any other means of cooling food.) It was very effective in keeping milk, butter, cream, meats and the like cool in hot weather. The Coolgardie safe was invented in Coolgardie, Western Australia. They were used particularly in country areas from the 1890s to the mid-twentieth century when they were replaced by ice chests, where ice was available, and ultimately by refrigerators.

national average of 213 kL per property, and significantly more than other cities with a similar climate such as Cairns, Townsville and Mackay, posing a significant challenge for the Territory’s water authority. In the early days of European colonisation of Larrakia land from 1869, Darwin residents relied on bores, wells and overhead tanks, which were often depleted by the end of the dry season. Wells and bores were up to ~25 m deep, and water was pumped from them by windmills or oil- or kerosene-powered pumps to overhead tanks and flowed from there by gravity to house tanks. Windmills or pumps were usually shared between four or more houses. People who could not afford a pump used pulleys and a bucket to get the water to their houses – a practice reminiscent of the Roman era. In hard times, many people were forced to get water from others or to have it transported in, which was costly. In the water shortages of 1913, water sold for the equivalent of three cents a bucket. Until after the end of the Second World War, the absence of a sewerage system was a huge problem as it threatened drinking water supplies with pollution.38 Darwin’s first dam, One-Mile railway dam, was built in 1894. It held 22.7 ML and was replenished by a spring at the bottom of the dam. Darwin suffered continual water shortages until the construction of Manton Dam began in 1939, and it received its first reticulated water system in 1941. Continued population growth resulted in the need for greater water supply and the building of the Darwin River Dam provided this.

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Canberra and the Australian Capital Territory Water for the national capital (home to the Ngunnawal people) derives from three rivers – the Cotter, the Queanbeyan and the Murrumbidgee (transferred via the Snowy Mountains Scheme), using a series of dams in a complex arrangement.39

Water sources for regional and remote cities and towns Cities and towns in country areas obtain their water supplies from rivers, streams, reservoirs, lakes or groundwater, depending on their location. In the eastern and south-eastern regions of Australia that are not far from the Great Dividing Range, including Tasmania, rivers, streams and reservoirs are usually the sources of supply. In the drier central and western parts of the continent, groundwater is the primary provider. Numerous examples have been covered in the course of discussions in Chapters 7–14; other examples outlined below indicate the nature and range of water sources used across the country. In towns in flat country, water is usually pumped into elevated water tanks – often ‘water towers’ –to provide sufficient pressure for supply to the town users. In the past, water towers were usually made of concrete and were often located in the main street or other prominent position in the town, forming something of a town feature (Fig. 15.4). Modern structures are generally made of steel. Examples can be seen in many places, including Bairnsdale (Vic.), Longreach (Qld), Owen (SA), and Darwin (NT). Sometimes water towers were built to supply water to steam engines – for example, at places along the Perth-Kalgoorlie railway line in Western Australia. Figure 10.2 shows the 1892 water tank at Cunderdin.

Fig. 15.4.  Old water tower at Nathalia, Victoria.

15 – Water for cities, towns and farms

Victoria Ballarat, Maryborough and Daylesford in central Victoria are supplied by reservoirs, with the provision for Ballarat and district being supplemented by groundwater. In Victoria’s East Gippsland, Paynesville, Swan Reach and Metung get their drinking water from the Mitchell River, and Orbost from the Rocky and the Brodribb rivers. Further north towards the mountains, water from Butchers Creek supplies Omeo. In each of these cases, the water is pumped into storages for distribution to the towns. New South Wales Bathurst in eastern New South Wales obtains its water from two reservoirs, one on Campbell’s River and one on Winburndale Rivulet. Narrandera in the Riverina region is supplied by three bores near the Murrumbidgee River. At Bourke in the north-west, a weir on the Darling River forms a pool from which water is pumped to four service reservoirs for distribution throughout the town. North Queensland Burketown, Normanton and Karumba on the Gulf of Carpentaria are supplied by two of the substantial rivers that drain the Gulf Country – the Nicholson in the case of Burketown and the Norman River for the others. Water for Bamaga and the four other remote Aboriginal and Islander communities near Cape York – the northernmost part of the Australian continent – is piped from the Jardine River via a treatment plant. The tiny settlement of Laura in the southern part of the Cape York Peninsula uses bore water from a depth of around 200 m, which is treated before use. On the north coast, Cooktown originally relied on shallow wells, but now gets its water from the nearby Annan River. A bit further south, the water supply for the city of Cairns comes from Copperlode Falls Dam and the Behana Creek. Charters Towers, 140 km southwest of Townsville, is supplied via a weir on the Burdekin River. Longreach, further southwest in the centre of the state, gets its water from the Town Waterhole on the Thomson River. There are limits on the volume that can be taken from it because of lack of water in the river during the dry season. Longreach residents also have access to bore water, though this is not suitable for gardens. In addition, some houses have rainwater tanks. So, visitors can be given a choice – would they like their tea made with tap water (from the river), bore water, or rainwater?40 Tasmania Tasmania has an abundance of fresh water for domestic consumption. Only 5 per cent of Tasmania’s water is consumed for irrigation, industry, commerce and domestic use. There are 48 catchments across the state. Water for towns and cities is derived from rivers, streams, lakes and other storages. For example, the main supply for Launceston, Tasmania’s second city, comes from St Patrick’s River and the North Esk River. Despite the abundance of fresh water overall, there are some areas of the state where there are difficulties in transferring water from where it is available to where it is needed.18 South Australia Country towns in South Australia get their water from groundwater basins, the Murray River and a limited number of reservoirs. Treated wastewater and stormwater are becoming increasingly important sources of water for non-drinking use. The first regional reservoir, formed by Beetaloo Dam east of Port Pirie, was built between1885 and 1890 to supply the Yorke Peninsula. The pipelines that take Murray River water to Whyalla have branches

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Goyder’s Line ‘Goyder’s Line of rainfall How a Famous Boundary was Delineated Following the saltbush across South Australia How by following the fringe of the salt-bush zig-zag across South Australia from the Victorian border just below Peebinga to the north of Melrose, south to Moonta, across Spencer’s Gulf, and from Franklin Harbor to the Gawler Ranges, the late G. W. Goyder unerringly separated the land where the rainfall is good from that where it is poor is one of the romances of agricultural development in this state.’41 Thus, began an item in The Mail, Adelaide on 2 April 1927. George Woodroffe Goyder was born in England in1826. After studying surveying, he emigrated to Australia in 1848 and became surveyor-General of South Australia in 1861, holding that position until the end of 1893. During this period, he offered advice and made far-reaching decisions on many aspects of surveying, railway building, forestry and mining. He often went into the field on horseback checking on surveyors and doing some of the work himself. During the severe drought of 1863–66, Goyder travelled north to assess the properties of pastoralists who were ‘doing it tough’. He travelled almost 5000 km on horseback, surveying native vegetation as he went. He marked off a line as the northern limit of the region where cropping was feasible. It became known as Goyder’s Line of Rainfall from 1865 (Fig. 15.5). His line coincided with the limit of saltbush country. It separated lands suitable for agriculture from those suitable for pastoral use only and marked areas of reliable and unreliable annual rainfall. Not surprisingly, not everyone agreed with his line; some even called it Goyder’s line of foolery.

CEDUNA

GO

YD

PORT AUGUSTA

ER

’S

ORROROO WHYALLA

LINE

COWELL

EL

AD

MORGAN

E

AID

PINNAROO

Fig. 15.5.  Map showing the path of Goyder’s Line. Source: Based on Primary Industries and Resources, South Australia.

15 – Water for cities, towns and farms

Following particularly wet seasons in the early 1870s, many farms were established north of Goyder’s Line. They prospered for a few years, but when rainfall returned to more normal levels, the farms became unviable and most were abandoned. Many of the ruined sandstone homesteads are still visible today, standing as sad testament to the misplaced optimism of some settlers. Goyder was regarded by those who were familiar with his work as an extremely competent, conscientious and fair-minded man. He was a keen water conservationist, and constructed wells and dams on northern stock routes. He strongly rejected the view that ‘rain would follow the plough’ or that rainfall would increase when more trees were planted. While he had a major influence on early South Australian life and in the Northern Territory, where among other things he recommended the future site of Darwin, he is almost solely remembered for his line. Several features in South Australia and the Northern Territory carry his name, including Goyder Railway Station, Mount Woodroffe, the Goyder Highway and Goyder’s Lagoon. The local newspaper of the town of Orroroo is named Goyder’s Line Gazette, and there is a corrugated iron statue of the man in the town.42

that also supply Iron Knob, Port Augusta, Peterborough, Jamestown and other small towns and farming districts. There is also a branch that delivers water to consumers between Kimba and Lock, centre of a grain-producing area on the Eyre Peninsula. However, most water for the Eyre Peninsula comes from underground basins via bores, wells and springs, and is of good quality. Whyalla, on the west coast of Spencer Gulf, was established in 1901 by Broken Hill Proprietary Limited as a port for shipping iron ore from Iron Knob to Port Pirie. But the arid environment and lack of natural fresh water made it necessary to import water from Port Pirie by barges across the Gulf to supplement the meagre rainwater supplies. The opening of the pipeline from the Murray River in 1944 ensured the survival of Whyalla and the development of the new steel and shipyard industries. The tiny, remote fishing township of Fowlers Bay on the Great Australian Bight gets its drinking water from rainwater soaks (sand dune aquifers) in the sandhills, as Aboriginal people had done. Nowadays, plastic pipes lead from the soaks to the township. Water is pumped the 2 km by windmills and solar-powered pumps. The pipeline from Swan Reach on the Murray carries water to the Barossa Valley and the lower North and Yorke Peninsula areas, and supplements other supplies for towns and farmlands. The Tailem Bend to Keith pipeline has several branch mains servicing townships and farms in the Coonalpyn Downs area. Towns further south rely on groundwater for their main supply. There are also ‘minor’ pipelines in the Lower Lakes areas that supply drinking water and some irrigation water to Langhorne Creek and other places, and to Hindmarsh Island and Point Stuart. Apart from the Adelaide supply, two other desalination plants have been built in recent years. One, for desalinating seawater, is at the town of Penneshaw on Kangaroo Island where the small community doesn’t have any other source of fresh water. The other is at Hawker on the edge of the Flinders Ranges. This plant, which began operating in 2014, treats hard, salty water from a local groundwater basin to make it more palatable. There are also ~50 mostly small private desalination plants throughout the state used for irrigation or industry.43 Remote communities rely on local catchments and groundwater supplies.

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Coober Pedy Coober Pedy is situated in the desert 850 km north of Adelaide and 680 km south of Alice Springs. Opal was first discovered there in 1915, and it now produces the bulk of the world’s white opal. Because it is located in a stony and treeless desert, the supply of water was always a major obstacle for miners. The rainfall is only ~150 mm a year and is unreliable, and the temperature can reach 50°C in the summer. In the early days, miners had to bring water with them or buy it from water carters who used camels carrying two 65-L barrels each. Understandably, the miners used the water sparingly – only for drinking and cooking. Many miners lived underground – often in abandoned diggings, and many still do to this day. When I first visited Coober Pedy in the hot summer of 1961, there was not much to see above the ground as we approached it along the rough stony road from Port Augusta to Alice Springs. But in the last three decades or so since the new Stuart Highway was completed and sealed in 1987, the town has seen a huge growth in visitors and tourists and now has a population of some 3500 people, with (aboveground) shops, motels and other facilities. In 1919, the government sank two bores for groundwater. Water from one was too salty but the other, several kilometres from town, was of reasonable quality, and the water could be carted to the mines. In 1921 the government built a huge concrete tank with a capacity of 500 000 gallons (2.273 ML) to collect and store rainwater. Because of the low rainfall, it took several years to fill. Water from the tank was expensive and in some years had to be rationed. In 1967 a solar desalination plant was built, enabling the production of fresh water from saline bore water. However, dust soon covered the solar panels, and when a willy-willy (whirlwind) broke most of the panels, the project was abandoned. Finally, a reverse osmosis desalination plant was built in 1971, and water was reticulated to town residents by 1985. A new bore, 24 km from town on the Oodnadatta road, and a new 2.2 ML storage tank now meet the needs of the expanded population including hundreds of tourists who pass through each day. Water is pumped through an underground pipe to a waterworks for treatment. Treatment is expensive and water costs $5 for 1000 L (Plate 15.1).44

Western Australia Towns in a broad path between Perth and Kalgoorlie are supplied by the Goldfields and Agricultural Water Supply Scheme, the heart of which is CY O’Connor’s pipeline (Chapter 10). Otherwise, towns in Western Australia generally get their water supplies from the ground unless they receive a substantial annual rainfall of, say, 750 mm or more. A lot of the country is too flat to dam a river, even if the river was a reliable source of water (see Plate 15.2).45 Towns in the south-west of the state obtain water from several surface and groundwater sources that are largely independent and not connected to a major scheme. However, some towns including Harvey, Waroona and Yarloop are supplied through the Perth system. Harvey Reservoir, capacity 56 GL and 142 km south of Perth, supplies the Harvey Irrigation Area.

15 – Water for cities, towns and farms

Harding River Dam, capacity 64  GL and 23  km east of Roebourne on the mid-west coast, supplies drinking water for the West Pilbara towns of Dampier, Karratha, Roebourne, Wickham and Point Samson. Broome, on the north-west coast, is a lush oasis between the desert and the ocean. It has a hot and harsh climate and receives an average of only 600 mm of rain a year. There are no lakes or rivers, but it owes its existence to groundwater from the Broome aquifer. The Broome bore field, 12.5 km north-east of the town, has recently been expanded to 20 bores including one using hybrid solar-diesel power. Water is piped to three storage tanks – one of 10 ML and two of 15 ML – from where it is distributed to the city.46 The primary source of water for Kununurra, 2220 km north-east of Perth and 735 km north-east of Broome, is a bore field 2.5 km north-east of the town centre. Water is pumped to three storage tanks around the town. Wyndham, on the Cambridge Gulf, is the only major port in the East Kimberley and services agriculture, tourism and extractive industries in the surrounding areas. The town is supplied by Moochalabra Dam (645 ML) on the Moochalabra Creek ~15 km to the south of the town. After treatment, water is sent to a storage tank on Mount Dixon.

The Northern Territory Across the Northern Territory the primary water source is groundwater, which makes up 90 per cent of potable water. Apart from Darwin, Katherine and Pine Creek also have access to some surface water as well as groundwater. Alice Springs and Tennant Creek are completely reliant on groundwater. The Alice Springs water supply is especially costly to operate because the electronic bores extract water from ~150 m underground as we have seen in Chapter 8. Water and sewerage services are also provided to 72 Indigenous communities including 20 major remote towns in geographically isolated regions in both tropical and arid environments. In Adelaide River, Alice Springs, Batchelor and Yulara, non-potable water supplies are reticulated to parts of the town for irrigation. Apart from Katherine and Yulara, water supplies in the Northern Territory require limited treatment and in most cases are only disinfected before use.38

0 0 0 For urban supplies in general throughout Australia, water from storages is sent to a treatment plant (often called a ‘water filtration plant’) before delivery for domestic use, to ensure that the water meets the relevant national, state or municipal standards for drinking water. The treatment usually involves filtration to remove particles, disinfecting (using chlorine) to kill microorganisms that may cause disease, treatment with fluoride to help prevent tooth decay (in most cases), and chemical treatment to control acidity and prevent pipe corrosion.47 The treatment process varies from one plant to another, depending on the quality of the water received and how far it has to travel to the user.

Water for farms Farms are not connected to reticulated town water, so farmers have to organise their own supplies and plan their use over time. They employ dams, creeks, rivers, streams, bores, wells, rainwater tanks and irrigation channels (in irrigation areas). Water is essential for

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the needs of livestock, crops, weed spraying, firefighting, washing equipment and machinery, and garden watering, as well as for the many household purposes including drinking. Ensuring sufficient supplies is especially challenging for properties away from rivers and reliable streams and where rainfall is low. Water tanks collecting rainwater from roofs have always been crucial for domestic use. Water is often pumped to an overhead tank from a bore or a dam for additional nondrinking purposes including domestic and farm use such as cleaning. Shed roofs form another source of water which may be saved in a storage tank and led to troughs in nearby paddocks for stock watering as needed, or pumped to supplement the house tank. Farm dams may be filled by run-off, springs, creeks, bores or irrigation channels. Especially in times of water scarcity, farmers have to budget their water over the seasons to ensure it will be available when required, and to ensure the planned stock and crop loadings can be met by the predicted supply. This is important in both ‘dryland farming’ (i.e. farming in non-irrigated areas) and in irrigation areas when there are restricted allocations of irrigation water. Errors can be costly in terms of reduced production, stock losses, or the need to buy in additional water – either via tankers or irrigation water. Budgeting involves estimating the volume of water available, including allowing for evaporation and seepage from dams, and the rates at which stock drink water and irrigation water is needed for crops. It also involves taking steps to minimise water losses. Farmers must also make sure that the quality of water available is suitable for the purposes for which it is to be used – for livestock, crop irrigation or human consumption. In some areas, the level of minerals dissolved in groundwater obtained from bores may render the water unusable – animals won’t drink it and it is too salty for crops. Another factor is that as water evaporates from dams the remaining water becomes more saline. In these times of water scarcity, government authorities, including departments of primary industry and the like, offer guidelines for effective use of water on farms and water saving measures. One example is the Western Australian Government’s support of a scheme to help farmers develop a water supply plan to identify ways to improve the sustainability of their on-farm water supplies into the future.48

16

Living with scarcity

Looming shortages Water scarcity is looming as a persistent challenge in many parts of Australia. In the southwest of the continent, rainfall has decreased by almost one-fifth since 1970, and traditional supplies are projected to dry even further.1 This includes the area around Perth (Chapter 8), and the Western Australian grain belt, which has experienced decades of drying – to a far greater extent than was projected in the late 1980s by the best available climate models of the time.2 Rainfall affects streamflow and groundwater replenishment and consequently what water resources are available. In parts of south-eastern Australia, extended dry periods in 2015–16 resulted in water shortages and the necessity for water to be trucked in to farms and some country towns.3 In late 2015 conditions were severe in the Wimmera–Mallee regions of Victoria – 50 regional towns and cities faced water restrictions, and farmers expected further reductions in their water allocations.4 In the Murray–Darling Basin, where historically water has been over-allocated, farmers in many parts were still feeling pain due to water shortages as they adjusted to allocation limits introduced as a result of the Murray–Darling Basin Plan. The dry conditions continued, with September 2018 being Australia’s driest September on record.5 The capital cities of Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth have all been forced to introduce water restrictions in recent years. During long dry spells, restrictions severely curtailed many uses of mains water that residents had come to take for granted and affected domestic, commercial, industrial and recreational uses. In 2008 the Productivity Commission estimated the annual cost of water restrictions to Australian households alone to be ‘a multi-billion dollar figure’.6 Water savings measures introduced in the domestic sphere included installation of water-saving shower heads and toilet cisterns (toilet flushing represents ~26 per cent of internal household use7), and restrictions on garden use, path washing and car washing. As it became apparent that the need for water savings would continue, these cities established permanent water-saving rules as a baseline, above which restrictions may apply according to conditions. For example, in Melbourne at the time of writing (late 2018), there are permanent use rules in force that apply to the use of hand-held hoses; the cleaning of hard surfaces; the watering of lawns and gardens (residential, commercial and public) and public playing surfaces; and the operation of fountains and water features.8 There has also been a trend towards the introduction of drought-tolerant trees and shrubs and replacing exotic plant varieties with indigenous examples. Against the trend, the Queensland Government abolished its water commission and the permanent water conservation measures by legislation on 1 January 2013.9 207

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It is not only in the big cities or low-rainfall regions where water shortages can occur. In what would have been a surprise to most Australians, news media reported in March 2016 that Tasmania’s hydroelectric dams were only holding 14 per cent of their capacity.10 This followed a period of the lowest rainfalls in a century in the ‘wet’ state. As a result, the government was relying on 100 imported emergency diesel generators to keep up electricity supplies11 until winter rains arrived to replenish the reservoirs. Tasmania has experienced a decrease in rainfall since the mid-1970s, resulting in reduced run-off. Projections point to a continued decline in inflows to hydroelectric catchments through the twenty-first century – largely due to declining rainfall in the central plateau area – leading to reduced overall power generation capacity.12 Adelaide is facing a particularly difficult future in water supply according to a project completed by the Goyder Institute in 2014.13 This detailed study showed a significant reduction in future run-off into the large storage reservoir in the important Onkaparinga catchment due to climate change and reduced rainfall. But this is only a part of a more general picture. The Water in Australia report prepared by the Bureau of Meteorology for 2013–14 indicated declining rainfall in most of eastern Australia and along the west coast, but increased and more extreme rainfall periods in the north and north-west of the country. The severe drought in southern Queensland and northern New South Wales, which began in 2012, continued into 2013–14. As a result, streamflow in these areas was very much reduced.14 The corresponding report for 2016–17 showed average and drier than average conditions prevailed along the east coast and much of the south-west. However, there was a significant increase in mean rainfall measured across the whole of Australia as the result of very much above average rainfall in some parts of the country including the north and the centre, and in parts of eastern South Australia and western Victoria. In 2017–18 Australia’s total rainfall was a little below average. The north-west had unusually wet conditions, but below average rainfall was experienced over much of the east of the continent, ‘with some areas slipping into worsening rainfall deficiencies’. In summary: dry in the east and southwest; wet in parts of the north and west.15 Further, a summary based on recent data concluded that national level environmental indicators showed that soil moisture and river flows fell to near record lows in 2015. However, the national indicators conceal regional variations. For example, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory received good rains across most of the state in 2015, while in Queensland, the relatively poor conditions of 2014 deteriorated further. The authors observed ‘that for most of the country, our environmental fortunes are closely tied to the highs and lows of rainfall’.16 Coupled with rising populations, the trends mean there will be increasing water scarcity in southern and eastern parts of the country. These trends are summarised in the 2018 State of the Climate report, the fifth such biennial report prepared by the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO. Rainfall in April to October has been decreasing in the south-west of Australia since 1970 and has decreased in south-east Australia since the 1990s. At the same time, rainfall has increased across parts of northern Australia. Long-term average streamflow has decreased in most regions of southern Australia and has increased in northern Australia where rainfall has increased. Southern Australia is expected to experience decreases in average rainfall and more time spent in drought. Most of the country can expect an increase in rainfall intensity.17 Water scarcity is not confined to Australia but is a concern in many parts of the world – a critical one in some places. It affects not only drinking water but also agriculture and industry, and consequently threatens food supply and restricts economic development.18 It

16 – Living with scarcity

has the potential to lead to tension, hostility and conflict and has done so in the past in places such as the Middle East, India, Kenya, Mexico, China and the United States.19 International water expert Brian Richter has developed a list of the world’s most depleted freshwater sources. The list covers areas in 22 different countries, from Uzbekistan to Chile, Israel to China and South Africa to the USA. Notably, it also includes the Murray–Darling Basin in Australia. Richter reports that the World Economic Forum has placed water supply crises near the top of its list of global risks. Of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations Development Programme, one (SDG 6) focuses specifically on the provision of universal access to safe and affordable drinking water and sanitation facilities (and several more do so indirectly).20 In his treatise on the role of water in the rise and fall of civilisations, Steven Solomon argues that water is surpassing oil as the world’s scarcest critical resource. This is crucially important for the future sustainability of the planet, especially when we consider water’s interaction with three other global challenges – food shortages, energy shortages and climate change.21 Gwynne Dyer’s book Climate Wars is provocative and at times frightening. He paints some near-future scenarios illustrating how global warming could lead to conflict as nations compete for diminishing water and food resources.22 It is indicative of the growing recognition of the threat of water crises that we are beginning to see publication of novels with life-and-death conflict over water at their heart.23 The early European colonists in Australia struggled to come to terms with the drought and flood cycles of their new home, and they fought against them in their attempts to impose English farming practices on a very different landscape and climate. We now understand much more about the climate and the factors that affect it, notably the El Niño and La Niña events of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation cycle (Chapter 3). While these events are a natural part of the global climate system, scientists believe climate change is making the intensity and length of the droughts and floods greater.

New sources of water With increasing water scarcity due to declining rainfall and reduced run-off, climate change and increasing population, there is need to find ‘new’ sources of water or to reduce waste and overall consumption. This applies to both urban and rural areas. It is important to remind ourselves that the total amount of water on the planet does not change – only its distribution, as we saw in Chapter 3. In terms of new sources, the main focus here is on urban supply, both for capital cities and for cities and towns in regional areas. The sources and methods include desalination, recycling wastewater, managed aquifer recharge, stormwater harvesting, water sensitive urban design, rainwater tanks and water trading. Each of these has certain benefits, challenges, disadvantages and location-dependent feasibility issues.

Desalination Desalination is a technological process that involves removing salts and other minerals from seawater or brackish (salty) groundwater (Chapter 3). The ‘condensers’ used to obtain fresh water in the early days of Kalgoorlie were a rudimentary application of this process. However, despite marked efficiency improvements, including the introduction of more sophisticated mechanisms, distillation remained a heavy user of energy. A breakthrough came in the 1960s when, as the result of a couple of decades of research sponsored by the

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United States Office of Saline Water, a new less energy-intensive method emerged. It was found that by applying pressure to one side of a thin polymer membrane it was possible to separate the water from the dissolved salts; the water could pass through the membrane but the salts could not. This process is called reverse osmosis. In a typical reverse osmosis plant about half the salt water being processed ends up as fresh water, leaving behind a heavily concentrated waste known as brine.24 Improvements in the membranes and other parts of the desalination process over subsequent decades led to marked increases in efficiency. As a consequence, large seawater desalination plants were constructed in the Canary Islands and the Middle East in the 1980s. It was during this period that the first reverse osmosis desalination plant was constructed in the Maldives, as discussed in Chapter 3. Current state-of-the-art seawater desalination plants consume ~3–5 kWh (kilowatt-hours) of energy per 1000 L of water produced, compared with 20–30 kWh/1000 L for the most efficient distillation processes.25 Despite this improvement, desalination is still an energy-intensive process. The seawater desalination plant built for Adelaide in 2012 uses ~5 kWh of energy to produce 1000 L of water. This is three times as much energy as that needed to pump water over the 60 km from the Murray River to Adelaide, and more than 15 times as much as that needed to treat the same amount of river water in the water treatment plant.26 Energy (electricity) is expensive, and importantly, its consumption results in greenhouse gas emissions which contribute to global climate change. The Adelaide plant uses energy from renewable sources in order to minimise greenhouse gas emissions. Critics argue that this approach is counterproductive, because energy from renewable sources would have been used to meet other energy needs in the city had the desalination plant not been built. However, a counter argument is that the existence of a reliable customer willing to pay the premium for renewable energy likely encourages further investment in the industry. The desalinated water costs about $1/1000 L (which covers energy, chemicals and membrane consumption) plus fixed costs of $30 million per year regardless of how much water is produced. This includes pumping to the Happy Valley treatment plant, but not the capital cost of constructing the plant ($1.824 billion). It is difficult to compare these costs with water from other sources because of the different starting points and assumptions. However, corresponding operating costs for water from the reservoirs in the Mount Lofty Ranges and from the Murray River are $0.24 and $0.44–0.74/1000 L respectively. These figures include operating and maintenance costs, but do not include the very considerable capital costs for the construction and installation of the dams, long pipelines and pumps.25 Higher costs for obtaining fresh water from any source inevitably mean higher costs for consumers. Large seawater desalination plants have been built in recent years for the capital cities of Perth (2006 and 2012), Brisbane (2009), Sydney (2010), Adelaide (2012) and Melbourne (2012), with capacities ranging from 125 ML per day to 410 ML per day, and construction costs from $387 million to $3.5 billion. The operating costs in the discussion above focus on the Adelaide plant, but similar principles apply for the seawater desalination plants for the other cities. Apart from high energy use and high initial cost, other issues with seawater desalination plants concern their potential to affect coastal ecosystems in two ways. First, the intake pipe can suck larval fish into the plant’s filters and can kill adult fish by trapping them on the screens that cover the pipe. Later generation plants have minimised these problems by locating the intake further offshore where fewer marine organisms live compared with the near-shore environment, and by making changes to the design and orientation of the intake. Second, the hypersaline discharge produced by the purification process

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Seawater and sunlight produce vegetables in the desert Using only seawater and sunlight, Sundrop Farms is growing tomatoes in desert country near Port Augusta on the shores of Spencer Gulf, ~300 km from Adelaide, in a ‘first in the world’ high-tech process. Four giant greenhouses produce 15 000 t of tomatoes each year to meet a 10-year contract with a national supermarket chain. Water for irrigation comes from Spencer Gulf via a thermal distillation plant. Concentrated solar energy, produced by a large array of mirrors, provides the heating needs of the greenhouses, heats the water for the distillation process and also produces steam to drive turbines to make electricity. The desalinated fresh water is stored in a 25 ML pool covered by plastic to prevent evaporation, and one ML each day is pumped to the greenhouses. Because the distilled water is pure, nutrients required for tomato growth can be added in optimal quantities. The plant uses no expensive fossil fuel, has a minimal impact on the environment, and uses a minimal amount of natural fresh water – a crucial factor in times of water scarcity.30

and returned to the sea has the potential to damage marine life. This discharge is about twice as salty as seawater, significantly denser and contains some chemicals added during the desalination process. To minimise this potential damage, modern plants contain systems designed to mix the discharge rapidly into the surrounding water in an area well offshore. For example, in Perth’s first desalination plant, completed in late 2006, the 300-m long outlet system incorporates 40 jet nozzles in the last 180 m of the pipe.24 In the Brisbane plant, the inlet and outlet structures are located 1.5 km out to sea.27 However, environmental impacts are still not well understood; the 2018 report of a six-year study based on the Sydney desalination plant suggested that there might be less damage to marine environments than previously thought.28 There are now thousands of desalination plants around the world, providing a crucial source of fresh water in countries where river and groundwater sources are severely limited. The largest plants are found in Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. However, the total amount supplied is still less than one per cent of all fresh water used worldwide.18 Saudi Arabia has planned to build the world’s first large-scale solar-powered desalination plant using solar cells to provide much of its power needs during daylight hours. It was due to be commissioned in 2017 and produce 60 ML of water per day. However, the project has fallen behind schedule, and it may be 2021 or 2022 before such a scheme is in operation.29 In an innovative project which perhaps points a way to the future, a company has recently begun ‘growing vegetables in the desert’ in South Australia using desalinated seawater and sunlight (see box). Desalination is also used in some places to make brackish groundwater suitable for drinking, as is the case for the towns of Hawker and Coober Pedy in South Australia, Yulara in the Northern Territory, and Gascoyne Junction in Western Australia. In addition, there are numerous industrial desalination plants, including those for gold mining (Tennant Creek, NT), power stations (Mount Piper, NSW) and irrigation (Langhorne Creek local farmers, SA). The Bureau of Meteorology in 2012-13 identified 87 such plants with capacities greater than 50 ML per year throughout Australia, with a total production capacity of some 430 GL per year.31 Similar concerns regarding high energy use, high cost

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and disposal of the remaining concentrate apply in these cases as for seawater desalination. However, where the intake water is less salty or the output is used for non-drinking purposes, the energy use and operating costs are likely to be somewhat reduced. In every case, special water treatments lead to higher costs. It is the large seawater desalination plants for the capital cities that have generated the most controversy, because of their size, cost and environmental consequences. Many people also believed there were viable alternatives including conservation measures, recycling wastewater, and stormwater capture that had not been sufficiently explored before a desalination decision was made. Perth was probably an exception, because projections had shown decreasing water availability over a long period. For the other capital cities, the governments chose the desalination option during extended periods of drought when water storages were at extremely low levels and severe water restrictions were in force. Desalination was seen as a once-and-for-all means of ensuring a rainfall-independent water supply for the future. Looked at in this light, desalination was an attractive choice; no government would want to be held responsible for a capital city running out of water. As well, it is likely that initiating a major new capital works project held more appeal for the politicians involved than smaller scale, low-tech improvements. In each case the decision was intensely political. A further source of controversy has been that once the drought ended and the reservoirs began to fill again, ratepayers’ anger was inflamed at such an expensive asset lying idle for long periods between droughts, and still at very considerable ‘standby’ costs paid to private operators.32 This issue is taken up again in Chapter 17.

Recycling wastewater Water recycling involves ‘cleaning’ water that has already been used then putting it to another use. For towns and cities, it means taking wastewater from homes, businesses and industries via a sewerage system to a sewage treatment plant where it is highly treated and used for purposes appropriate to the level of purification. In earlier times, wastewater, including sewage, was dumped into rivers or used as an agricultural fertiliser. In Roman cities where water was supplied by an aqueduct, wastewater and sewage were discharged into rivers, and sometimes used for irrigation. In late nineteenth century Paris, sewage farms were built along the Seine close to the city, and even in the first decades of the twentieth century, farmers were still using untreated wastes from sewage farms in Paris, Berlin, and the more arid parts of the United States to irrigate their land.24 As cities increased in size in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and awareness of the connection between waste and disease grew, sewage treatment plants were developed. In modern wastewater treatment plants, the wastewater passes through several processes to achieve the level of purification required for the end use. The processes are in three stages. Primary (mechanical) treatment includes filtering out large objects, aerating the sewage, and sedimentation. In the secondary (biological) treatment stage, organic material is broken down and nutrients removed by bacterial action and further aeration and sedimentation. In the third stage, where the end use of the effluent requires it, disinfection, biological filtration and chlorination are applied.33 In sewer mining, wastewater is extracted from a sewer main at an appropriate point, then treated and reused locally. Local use saves on distribution infrastructure and costs. Sewer mining is not appropriate for all locations, depending on the quality of the effluent water at that point in the system, and the existence of a suitable buffer distance between the sewer mining site and adjacent buildings and activities. In Port Augusta in South Aus-

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tralia, a scheme extracts raw wastewater from the sewerage system and treats it to produce recycled water for parks, playing fields and the municipal golf course.34 At the present time in Australia, as well as around the world, recycled water is used mainly for watering public parks and gardens, golf courses, agricultural irrigation, and in some industries for power plant cooling, boiler feed, industrial processes and mining operations. However, more attention is now being given to wider uses, including residential uses. Large quantities of treated wastewater are also discharged into the environment – via inland waterways and coastal waters.35 Modern-day regulations in Australia and other developed countries ensure that water meets the required standard for its intended use, whether for irrigation, industry, households, the environment, or even for drinking.36 Benefits of using recycled water include reducing demand for mains drinking water and pollution loads on waterways, and helping to support a sustainable water supply for the future. Australia has been slow to exploit the benefits of recycling water. In a comprehensive review in 2004, the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering made several recommendations, including encouraging the installation of ‘in-house’ recycling systems in new high-rise office and apartment buildings, locating new developments close to small disaggregated treatment plants, and greater use of wetlands for water treatment, especially stormwater.37 Nationally, recycled wastewater was expected to reach ~20 per cent of all wastewater flows in 2015. This was against a target of 30 per cent by 2015 set by the Australian Government in 2007,38 to be achieved with financial and other support from the National Water Commission. Based on 2015 figures, all states recycle a proportion of wastewater and stormwater, but proportions vary considerably between states. The highest percentages39 are for South Australia and Western Australia (both 30 per cent) and Victoria (26 per cent), and the lowest are for Tasmania (7 per cent) and Northern Territory (6 per cent). Of the capital cities, Adelaide recycles ~37 per cent, Perth 31 per cent and Melbourne 26 per cent. Canberra recycles the great majority of its wastewater, but this is returned to the Murrumbidgee River, rather than being used elsewhere. Outside the capital cities, high percentages of wastewater are recycled in Western Australia (50 per cent), Victoria (30 per cent) and Queensland (28 per cent), but less in the other states. Several smaller centres such as Coffs Harbour (NSW) and Mackay (Qld) have made significant investments in recycled water capacity.37 (These figures all include recycled stormwater, although this does not add significantly to the overall figures except in the case of South Australia.) The Bureau of Meteorology listed 268 water recycling sites with capacities greater than 50  ML per year across Australia in 2012–13, representing a total capacity of more than 940 GL per year. These included coastal and inland sites and covered all states, including places such as Margaret River (WA), Alice Springs (NT), Emerald (Qld), Nyngan (NSW), Ballarat (Vic.), Port Augusta (SA) and Sorell (Tas.).30 In some locations, recycled water that has been treated to the highest standards for non-drinking use is piped to homes. This water may be used for flushing toilets, watering gardens including fruit and vegetables, car washing, fighting fires, and washing laundry (in washing machine only); but not for domestic purposes such as drinking, cooking, indoor cleaning, bathing, filling evaporative coolers, filling swimming pools or playing under sprinklers. A separate reticulation system is used for these and the pipes are colourcoded light purple to distinguish the recycled water supply from drinking water supply. The Rouse Hill water recycling plant in Sydney supplies up to 2 GL of recycled water each year to a service area covering 32  000 properties. Safety signs (‘recycled water –do not drink’), are required on taps to help ensure recycled water is used appropriately. Tap

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handles are removable and residents are advised to take them off when not in use. According to Sydney Water, customers in this area use up to 40 per cent less drinking water (from the mains supply) on average than other customers in greater Sydney.40 In the Adelaide area, effluent from the Christies Beach wastewater treatment plant has been provided to 8000 homes in the southern suburbs since 2011. Another pipeline delivers recycled water to market gardeners in Virginia on the outskirts of Adelaide where it is used to grow fruit and vegetable crops.41 In Melbourne, several housing estates around the outer suburb of Cranbourne use a dual pipe system to access recycled water for watering gardens, flushing toilets and watering streetscapes and open spaces.42

Recycled wastewater for drinking Treating wastewater to a standard suitable for drinking is another step again. The current Australian Drinking Water Guidelines were developed by the National Health and Medical Research Council in 2011 and updated in 2017. They are designed to provide an authoritative reference for the community and the water supply industry ‘on what defines safe, good quality water, how it can be achieved and how it can be assured’.43 They are consistent with the guidelines of the World Health Organization for drinking water quality. Purifying water to these standards is obviously more exacting – and more expensive. However, there is another factor working against the use of recycled wastewater for drinking purposes – people’s objection to the idea of drinking treated sewage, often referred to as the ‘yuck factor’. David Sedlak, a professor of Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, has given a detailed account of the issues involved in the development of water recycling to drinking water standard in his book.24 In a process known as Indirect Potable Reuse (IPR), water recycled to drinking water standard is deliberately introduced into a drinking water supply, such as a reservoir, river or groundwater aquifer, where it mixes with ‘natural’ water before being removed and treated before its delivery to customers. (Potable water is water suitable for drinking.) Such a scheme was proposed for the inland city of Toowoomba but did not proceed because of community opposition (see box). The Toowoomba proposal for using recycled water Toowoomba is an attractive city of 125 000 people in the Darling Downs area of south-east Queensland at the summit of the Great Dividing Range. The lift to pump the water to the city is one of the highest in Australia and makes up nearly half the cost of delivering water to the city’s residents. In 2006 the city was suffering a severe water shortage and storages were at very low levels. The Toowoomba City Council proposed a scheme whereby wastewater would be subject to advanced treatment to reach drinking water standards and then sent to a storage reservoir where it would mix with natural water. The combined water would then follow the normal course of treatment before being delivered to the community. The proposal and associated campaigns created a good deal of interest in the national media. The city council argued that the proposed scheme was the most economically and environmentally effective way to fix the city’s critical water shortage. The campaign against the scheme was waged by a group calling itself ‘Citizens Against Drinking Sewage’, emphasising emotional reaction rather than a rational consideration of the benefits and drawbacks. In a plebiscite held to determine if the project should proceed, 62 per cent of residents voted ‘No’.35,44

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Examples of existing unplanned indirect potable reuse In New South Wales, effluent from Penrith is discharged into the Nepean River upstream of the offtake for the Richmond drinking water supply. In Queensland, Toowoomba discharges treated effluent into the Condamine River upstream of the drinking water offtake for Dalby. Towns and cities along the Murray River discharge treated wastewater into the Murray; Adelaide pumps drinking water from the same river further downstream. Effluent from the nearby towns of Kilcoy, Woodford, Toolgoolawah and Esk flows into the Somerset and Wivenhoe reservoirs, which supply Brisbane’s water. Water from the reservoirs passes through a treatment plant at Mount Cosby before reaching Brisbane. In London (UK), effluent from around 360 sewage treatment plants is discharged into the Thames River upstream of the London water supply extraction point on the river. Las Vegas (US) gets ~90 per cent of its public water supply from Lake Mead, the massive reservoir formed by Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. Large quantities of treated water are returned to the lake. In the inland regions of South Africa, the return of wastewater flows to rivers has been considered a significant part of water management. For example, in the Hartebeespoort Dam which supplies Johannesburg with drinking water, up to 50 per cent of the flow is recycled water.35

It is important to note here that there are many examples in Australia and around the world where unplanned indirect potable reuse occurs. That is, where recycled water (usually from another community) is introduced into a river or other water source somewhere upstream of the drinking water supply intake35 (see box above). This means that IPR is already occurring in Australia, though not in a planned way, except in the case of Perth. It also shows that the Toowoomba proposal was not as radical as it might first appear. In Perth, where groundwater is a crucial component of the city’s water supply, an IPR scheme in the form of a groundwater replenishment program is in operation. Under this scheme, wastewater is treated to drinking water standard and injected into aquifers that supply much of the city’s water. The treatment includes ‘normal’ wastewater treatment followed by ‘ultrafiltration’, reverse osmosis and ultraviolet disinfection. Modelling showed that the recycled water will spend up to 30 years in the aquifer before emerging through customers’ taps. A successful three-year trial of the scheme was completed between 2010 and 2012. Based on these trials and the projected water needs of the city, an expansion of the scheme due to be completed in 2019 will mean it will be possible to recharge 28 GL of recycled water a year into groundwater supplies.45 The Western Corridor Recycled Water Scheme, part of the South East Queensland Water Grid, also has an IPR component. It was constructed by the Queensland Government in 2006–2008 in response to severe drought, population growth, and climate change. The scheme consists of three advanced wastewater treatment plants to purify water to ‘exceed drinking water standards’. The later stages of the treatment include micro-filtration, reverse osmosis and ultraviolet radiation. Water was supplied in the first instance to power stations, and it has the capacity to supply other industry as well as agricultural users. Significantly, the scheme includes a pipeline to Wivenhoe reservoir so the recycled water can be used to top up drinking supplies for South East Queensland. The scheme was designed to provide water when needed, such as in droughts. In June 2013 it

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was placed in the ‘care and maintenance’ mode, ready to be restarted as a ‘drought response measure’.46 Indirect Potable Reuse is also applied in some overseas countries where drinking water is in short supply and the conditions are suitable. Orange County is one of the five counties making up the greater Los Angeles area in the United States and has a population of more than three million. There, recycled water is used to replenish a groundwater basin from which the county gets a substantial amount of its drinking water. In the city of El Paso in Texas (population 700 000), recycled water is treated to drinking water standard and used to replenish the Hueco Bolson aquifer which is a major source of water supply for the city.35 In Singapore, a small proportion of recycled water is introduced into water supply reservoirs via the NEWater scheme. Introduction of the scheme followed a two-year testing program to demonstrate the reliability of the process. The major use of the recycled water is for industries that require very pure water such as for the manufacture of computer chips; only about one per cent of the drinking water supply is recycled water. In the England, Essex and Suffolk Water supplies its customers with up to 40 ML of recycled water per day. In this case effluent from a water treatment plant undergoes further treatment before entering the River Chelmer. Water is pumped from the river to a storage reservoir and is then treated again before being delivered to customers.35,47 However, only one country – the African country of Namibia – has adopted the use of recycled water for direct potable purposes. The water reclamation plant at Goreangab started to supply water directly into the distribution system in 1967 and was extensively upgraded in the 1990s and in 2002 to be in line with the latest water treatment technologies. The recycled water supply is used intermittently, at times of peak demand. It contributes up to 25 per cent of the drinking water supply of the city of Windhoek.35 The cost of providing recycled water varies considerably according to the particular circumstances of the site and the nature of the system used. Purification to drinking water standard is obviously more expensive in capital and operating costs than treatment for other purposes such as irrigation of non-food crops. Costs rise significantly where the water has to be piped any distance, due to the expense of laying the pipes and the operation of the pumps needed to move the water. However, estimates from both the Goyder Institute and the National Water Commission indicate that costs for indirect potable reuse are generally within the range of seawater desalination costs.25,35 In its paper on using recycled water for drinking, the National Water Commission concluded that the use of such water to supplement drinking water supplies is a potentially appropriate option for some cities. Economic and environmental strengths and weaknesses compared with other options need to be assessed for each particular case, and in all cases community involvement and education is necessary to allay concerns.35

Managed aquifer recharge Managed aquifer recharge (MAR) is an umbrella term for a variety of methods of recharging water to an aquifer for subsequent use or environmental benefit. Aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) refers to recharging specifically to store the water for later recovery from the same aquifer and is the most common type of MAR employed in Australia.48 Aquifers may be recharged by injecting water through wells or bores into the aquifer, or by using artificial basins or ponds from which water infiltrates through permeable soils into the aquifer below. Recycled water or stormwater may be used to recharge an aquifer. The water needs to be sufficiently clean to minimise the likelihood of clogging of

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the bore at its interface with the aquifer, or of the infiltration soil in the case of a basin.49 As the water percolates through the soil and the aquifer it undergoes significant quality improvement through physical, chemical and biological processes. MAR is used successfully in many other countries, including Europe, USA, India, South Africa, China and the Middle East. Potential gains from the use of managed aquifer recharge for environmental benefit include restoring the health of aquifers, protecting ecosystems, improving waterway health, flood alleviation and, in certain circumstances, preventing seawater intrusion.50 Recharging an aquifer to store water for recovery at a later date can include storing treated wastewater or stormwater for later use in irrigation; storing water harvested in winter for summer irrigation; harvesting rainwater for infiltration into an aquifer for recovery by domestic wells; and storing drinking-standard water for recovery and use in urban supply.48 The groundwater replenishment scheme in Perth outlined above is an example of this last possibility, as are the schemes in Orange County and El Paso in the United States. Another Australian MAR scheme is the Water Reuse in the Alice project located in Alice Springs. Here, treated wastewater from the water reclamation plant is piped to basins from where it percolates down to an aquifer where it is stored for later use in irrigating horticultural projects at the Arid Zone Research Institute.51 Managed Aquifer Recharge schemes have been developed in Australia since the 1960s, primarily related to agriculture. The largest of these is a series of infiltration basins in the Burdekin delta in Queensland, used for agriculture. The first successful MAR via wells occurred in the Angas–Bremer irrigation area of South Australia. From the 1990s more diverse schemes were developed, including MAR for stormwater storage and for drinking water. During the decade from 2005, MAR investigations and trials grew significantly in different parts of Australia, facilitated by the National Water Commission. Activity occurred in South Australia, Perth, Alice Springs and Victoria, involving stormwater (mainly), recycled wastewater and, more recently, aquifer storage for potable end use as already described. Most projects were in South Australia because of the dry climate and the consequent demand for water. Other key factors included favourable geology in the Adelaide area; the lead taken by the state government and councils; pioneering research by the CSIRO; and cooperation between government, proponents and researchers. There were about 30 schemes in South Australia by 2013, used mainly for public open space irrigation. Further developments are planned as part of South Australia’s water strategy, with targets of 60 GL per year for Adelaide and 15 GL per year for regional centres by 2050. The mining sector also has increasingly made use of MAR as a means of ameliorating the impacts of mine dewatering and providing future supplies for processing.48,52 During the investigations and trials, the potential benefits of MAR and the main impediments to its uptake have been identified (see box). In its 2012 Waterlines report, the National Water Commission asserted that ‘water professionals have long recognised the valuable role MAR can play in sustainable water resource management’. On the basis of information, advice and studies over several years, the Commission concluded that the potential role for MAR has not been fully realised, and it made several recommendations for future development.54 The Commission has played a crucial role by making strategic investments in MAR – mapping, developing regulations, commissioning feasibility studies and supporting projects. Unfortunately, the National Water Commission was abolished by a new Australian Government in 2014 as part of a cost saving measure (the government’s ‘cutting red tape’ program). This is a setback for future progress in planning for innovative water use and management. Some projects, such as mapping of suitable

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Benefits of and impediments to managed aquifer recharge Benefits of MAR include: •• the potential to reduce the demand on urban water supply systems •• reduced losses due to evaporation •• providing protection for stressed groundwater resources •• flood alleviation (by directing floodwaters to recharge basins) •• reduced management costs for stormwater and storage infrastructure •• reduced land-use requirements compared with dams •• water quality treatment benefits – potentially avoiding the need for additional treatments. Impediments to the uptake of MAR include: •• lack of demonstration sites •• poor understanding of groundwater processes by water utilities and councils •• regulatory barriers •• limited access to skilled practitioners •• high uncertainty of cost estimates and high cost and length of time in evaluating feasibility. The presence of a suitable aquifer is critical for MAR. The aquifer needs to have sufficient storage capacity, be capable of retaining the water for recovery and have an adequate rate of recharge. For stormwater MAR systems there needs to be space for basins, ponds or wetlands that can retain enough water to achieve the necessary recharge.47,53

geological areas for MAR are beyond the capacity of local authorities. Unless this role is taken up by another body, innovation in this area will be stifled.

Stormwater harvesting When rain falls on the land some soaks into the soil and is used by vegetation, some evaporates, and the run-off ends up in streams, rivers, aquifers, wetlands and eventually lakes or the sea. In urban areas where there are large amounts of paved surfaces, less water enters the soil and there is increased run-off. This enters stormwater drainage systems then flows into waterways, or for cities near the coast, the sea. Stormwater capture schemes save some of this water for other purposes and consequently reduce the stress on the drainage systems. Stormwater harvesting and reuse involves the collection, treatment, and use of stormwater run-off from urban areas. It differs from rainwater harvesting as the run-off is collected from drains or creeks rather than roofs. The collected stormwater is usually held in storage temporarily, above ground or below ground in an aquifer, and is treated to reduce pollution and pathogen levels as appropriate to the intended use and before distribution. Local or decentralised stormwater schemes have the advantages of avoiding the cost of developing a network of pipes for distributing the treated water, the cost of pumping over long distances through the network, and the associated maintenance costs. One example is the stormwater harvesting system developed at the Fitzroy Gardens in the City of Melbourne and completed in 2013. These heritage gardens are on the eastern fringe of the central city and cover an area of 26 ha. The space was set aside as a public reserve in 1848

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when Melbourne was only 13 years old and the growing city’s main water supply was still the Yarra River. The system captures stormwater from paved areas, treats it to an appropriate standard, and stores it for reuse in irrigating the gardens. The treatment includes filtering before passing to an underground storage tank from where the water is pumped to the surface and treated by a bio-filter (a garden bed). Here the water is cleaned as it percolates through layers of sand and root systems before draining to a second storage tank. At night water is pumped up to irrigate the gardens, through an ultraviolet filter to ensure there are no bacteria in the water. The system uses ~120 ML of water per year to water plants, trees and grass, and in so doing, cuts the use of drinking water for irrigation by 60 per cent. The system also reduces pollutants entering the Yarra River and Port Phillip Bay, reduces the risk of local flooding and reduces the impacts of climate change.55 Wetlands, natural or constructed, can be an effective method for cleaning and storing water. The Trin Warren Tam-boore (Bellbird waterhole) wetland was created in the early 2000s in Royal Park, a 170-ha park located 4 km from the Melbourne CBD. The wetland takes stormwater from surrounding suburbs, cleans it by passing it through a wetland, and stores it as irrigation water for the park. Royal Park includes remnant native landscapes, indigenous flora and fauna, sports fields and large spaces for recreation. The wetlands provide up to 160 ML of water per year, 89 per cent of the park’s needs. The park is an important space for community enjoyment and recreation, and it includes a variety of habitats and a diversity of flora and fauna.56 In Mildura in north-west Victoria, stormwater run-off from a large industrial part of the city is purified through the Etiwanda Wetlands. The wetlands, developed in 2003, consist of a gross pollutant trap, a sedimentation pond, treatment ponds and a ‘floating rafted reedbed’. Roots from the reedbed penetrate and suspend in the water for a depth of at least 600 mm. It is the root matter of the plants that filter the water, which eventually runs into the Murray River (and is used further downstream for Adelaide’s water supply among other things). The water is periodically tested at the point of entering the river. The wetlands are also an ecotourism site, with a walking trail and bird hide for bird observation (Fig. 16.1).37,57 Stormwater harvesting is a relative newcomer to recycled water in Australia, but schemes can be found in all states. Unlike wastewater, which is steadily available, stormwater depends on rainfall and therefore varies enormously over time. In addition, because most stormwater recycling projects occur in urban areas, there is often a shortage of land that may be used for low cost wetland treatment and for storage. The use of aquifer storage and recovery, as is being applied in Adelaide, overcomes some of this difficulty.37 Stormwater reuse projects almost always contribute to drinking water substitution through supplementing urban irrigation or industrial use, and therefore contribute to water supply security.

Water sensitive urban design Water sensitive urban design (WSUD) is an approach to urban planning and design that integrates water from all sources – rainwater, stormwater, groundwater, mains water and wastewater – into urban development and building processes. It promotes the sustainable use and reuse of water in urban development and buildings, and applies a range of measures that are designed to avoid, or at least minimise, the environmental impacts of urbanisation in terms of the demand for water and the potential for pollution. The most innovative WSUD approaches also incorporate the design of localised water storage, treatment and

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Fig. 16.1.  Treatment pond at Etiwanda Wetlands, Mildura, Victoria.

New water-saving housing development A new housing development south-east of Melbourne, ‘Aquarevo’, launched late in 2016, will have 460 houses fitted with ‘the latest water technology which should lead to a 70 per cent saving in water use’. Houses will be plumbed with three types of water: drinking water, recycled water and rainwater. The infrastructure is funded by South East Water which will supply a 2000-L water tank and monitoring technology to each house. The water utility regards it as a research and development project in water efficiency.58 Houses in the new estate will: •• ‘feature a high-tech rain to hot water system for bathing and showering that includes screening, filtering, treatment and temperature sensing devices’ •• connect to a pressure sewer system that pumps wastewater to a local water recycling plant, treats the water to Class A standard, and sends it back to each home for use in the garden, toilet or washing machine •• feature rainwater tanks with technology that receives weather forecasts – then releases water before heavy rainfall to minimise overflows or flooding in local waterways •• connect to a [smart] device that controls the water technology in each home, remotely monitors the pressure sewer and reads each home’s water and energy use.’59

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reuse technologies. The approach can be applied to residential, commercial and industrial developments, and at the building, neighbourhood or district level. Methods used can include rain gardens, rainwater tanks, green roofs, infiltration systems, permeable pavements, water harvesting and reuse, constructed or natural wetlands, litter traps, swales and basins, buffer strips, sedimentation basins, and roof-water systems. The move towards WSUD practices is part of an international trend towards integrated urban water management and is being encouraged widely across Australia. As with other innovations, it is being more readily accepted in some areas than others.60 Projects can range enormously in size and scope. The following are some recent examples: ●●

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Howard Street raingardens, North Melbourne. In 2011 the Melbourne City Council closed part of the street and turned it into parkland. The new public open space includes three rain gardens that capture and clean stormwater run-off. The result has been a reduced volume of stormwater, reduced levels of nitrogen and phosphorus entering waterways, and a greener and more pleasant environment.61 Bio-retention swale at Oaklands station, Adelaide. The aims of this project were to create an attractive open space for the enjoyment of local residents and train commuters, to attract local wildlife to visit and nest at the site, and to reduce pollution entering waterways. Stormwater from the station carpark is directed into a vegetated swale (open shallow channel) through which the stormwater is filtered and collected. The design of the system enables the stored water to support native grasses, sedges, rushes and several large eucalypts.62 Council House 2 (CH2) This is an office building for Melbourne City Council staff that was designed with sustainability as a central theme. It includes a range of features and technology that conserve energy and water, while also improving the working environment for staff. Water management measures include water efficiency; water recycling by sewer mining; water reuse; and innovative watersaving techniques. Among other features, the building has taps and showerheads with a low water flow rate, water flow to all hand basin taps controlled by electronic sensors, and low volume, dual flush toilets and urinals.63 The Fiona Stanley Hospital The construction of the Fiona Stanley Hospital in Murdoch, a suburb of Perth, incorporated WSUD principles at a precinct scale. The site of 32 ha includes two roof gardens, public open space, and 5 ha of bushland, landscapes and gardens. The existing topography of the site has been maintained so that benefit can be gained from the natural water systems. Stormwater collects in low points and recharges groundwater in a superficial aquifer after natural filtration. Stormwater is also captured for irrigation within the site. The roof gardens filter and help reduce stormwater run-off, help retain rainwater for use by plants, improve air quality, reduce noise pollution and provide habitat for birds and insects. In addition, 10 per cent of mains water is recovered and combined with wastewater cleaned by reverse osmosis for toilet flushing.64

Rainwater tanks Collecting run-off from roofs is an ancient tradition. It is reflected in the use of domestic rainwater tanks in Australia, which is an established and relatively common practice. This is especially the case in the vast areas of Australia with low population density and few

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reticulated supplies, such as exists in many farming areas. Even in areas that receive mains water, many households have tanks to collect rainwater as an alternative and renewable source of water. In these cases, tank water tends to be used for gardens, toilet flushing, car washing and the like. The widespread water restrictions in the early 2000s affected capital cities, major urban centres and many rural areas, and encouraged many people to install rainwater tanks. Some authorities offered cash rebates to support their installation. In 2007, nearly 20 per cent of Australian households used rainwater tanks; 10 per cent used tanks as their main source of drinking water. Not surprisingly, South Australia, the driest state, has the highest rate of usage; 45 per cent of households have a rainwater tank and 22 per cent use them as the main source of drinking water.65

Water trading Water trading in Australia involves the buying and selling of water entitlements and water allocations.66 Although it had its beginnings in the 1980s, most water-trading activity has occurred since 1995, particularly across the Murray–Darling Basin, after water entitlements were separated from land ownership. Under the present system, users can exercise the option to sell or lease all or part of their water entitlement, or to purchase additional water at the market price. The decision to take one of these steps will be dependent on the current market price of water and the marginal value of the water to them. Both permanent entitlements and temporary allocations may be traded. A key requirement for such a market-based system to operate effectively in the interests of the wider community and the environment as well as water users, is a sound government-approved regulatory and governance framework. This must include a cap on sustainable extractions, clearly defined entitlements, effective monitoring and enforcement and periodic reviews. Water markets and trading are central to the National Water Initiative.67 Proponents argue that water trading is important for the farm economy because it allows water to move from lower value to higher value crops as well as providing the opportunity for water to be transferred to areas of shortage or need. It also allows farmers to adjust to variable seasonal conditions, or to realise efficiency gains they have made in their use of water, and allows new and expanding users to gain access to more water. Finally, it enables users to leave the ‘water industry’, and possibly their farms, through the sale of all of their water entitlements, and government to buy entitlements in order to retire them. This last is the ‘buy-back’ method used for gaining water for environmental flows in the Murray–Darling Basin following adoption of the Murray–Darling Basin Plan, as explained in Chapter 14. Critics of the introduction of a water-trading market point to the possibility of private speculators accumulating and trading large volumes of water solely for profit, regardless of the interests of the community and the environment. They argue that this can have the potential to drive up the price artificially, especially in times of drought. They also argue that the concept of ‘low-value use’ versus ‘high-value use’ is flawed, because the value of a farm product is not measured by the farm-gate price alone; there are also important economic and social objectives served by ‘low-value’ irrigated agriculture.68 In addition, the activation of ‘sleeper’ and ‘dozer’ entitlements (those never exercised and not exercised for years, respectively) may lead to a worsening of over-allocation and environmental degradation.69 Given the existence of water trading, it is not difficult to appreciate that there are benefits in an irrigation company acting as a water-trading agency for its own irrigators. However, the introduction into the water market in recent years of large water investment

16 – Living with scarcity

companies, some foreign-owned, has raised questions about the effects on water pricing, timely availability and distribution along a river. Where such companies are focused on investing in water entitlements for the sole reason of maximising returns to shareholders, it is difficult to see how irrigators and their communities would benefit.70 Where foreign entities are involved, international trade agreements add further complexity to the issue.

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17

Facing the future Water supply and management in Australia have undergone dramatic changes in the past two and a quarter centuries – and not always for the better. For tens of thousands of years, the original inhabitants nurtured and protected the water sources they depended on for life and culture in a sometimes-harsh environment. The first European arrivals brought different attitudes, farming methods and expectations – those acquired in a different, wetter climate. They denied the knowledge of the existing residents, which had been accumulated over millennia. In the early concentrations of populations – in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide especially – they defiled and even destroyed their first water supplies through carelessness and over-exploitation. In the countryside, they often sought to draw from the land more than it could give. Over time, as populations of European settlers grew, towns and cities were supplied with water by building dams at higher elevations or by exploiting groundwater sources or by using higher river sources. Water was transported from the sources by aqueducts and pipes. In extensive areas of the country, farming and in some cases mining were made feasible and more reliable through the construction of irrigation schemes supported by a variety of dams, river weirs, and channels. The development of these schemes – many of them remarkable planning and engineering achievements themselves – supplied the essential resource for major food production as well as life-sustaining water to remote communities. The implementation of regulations, including pricing, to protect the quality of the water and to control access, distribution and use were aimed at preventing pollution and to some extent the over-exploitation that had plagued the earlier settlements. Regulation was applied more effectively in cities than in irrigation areas. Universally, rainwater tanks constituted a basic household water source, though to a decreasing extent as city water supplies improved. For towns and cities, these actions are reflective of the steps the Roman and some earlier civilisations had taken two and more millennia earlier. The Romans, especially, made tremendous efforts to overcome many obstacles to provide fresh water for their cities. Clean water carried in aqueducts from outside a city was protected assiduously at its source and along the line of its travel to prevent it from becoming polluted or obstructed. In the city itself, use and distribution were regulated and overseen by high-ranking officials. Groundwater was extracted through wells, and rainwater from roofs and paved areas was collected and stored in cisterns. The near-catastrophic over-allocation in Australia’s most important irrigation area, the Murray–Darling Basin, highlighted the necessity of effective regulation. Reliance for more than a century on cooperative agreements between the Basin states and the Australian Government to determine water allocations from the Basin’s rivers had proved to be disastrously inadequate. Individuals and parties to the agreements had too often acted indepen225

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Restoring flows in the Snowy River As a result of the construction of the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme over the period 1949–1974, the Snowy River was reduced to less than one per cent of its previous average flow. The greatly reduced flow was not sufficient to keep the river channel clear of vegetation or remove sediment from the stream bed, and there were adverse effects on plant and animal habitats, including habitats for fish, frogs, macroinvertebrates and vegetation along the river. In addition, salt water intruded as far as 10 km up the estuary and recreational activities were limited along the lower reaches of the river. By the 1990s, reduced flows had become a major environmental concern. Following a long and hard-fought ‘grass-roots’ political campaign and an enquiry including a scientific review, a series of staged targets was agreed to by the Victorian and New South Wales governments to increase the average river flow to 15 per cent by 2009 and 21 per cent by 2012, dependent on water savings in the Murray and Murrumbidgee catchments. Eventually, the flow is to be restored to 28 per cent, the minimum amount that scientists consider the river needs to return it to good health. Water is now released in pulses to mimic the spring snowmelt (see Plate 17.1). This was a major development, especially as costly capital works at Jindabyne Dam were required to enable the increased flows, and the project involved collecting water that would have otherwise been available for consumptive use in the Murrumbidgee and Murray Rivers.1

dently in their own self-interests leading to depletion of the common resource, contrary to the common good. The result was that the health and the very future of the Basin’s waterways and wetlands, the livelihood of farmer-irrigators, and the nation’s future food supplies became seriously threatened. Since the latter part of the twentieth century, there has been a growing awareness that decision-making relating to water supply and management must involve more than economics and engineering (dams, channels, pipelines). The crucial importance of environmental and social dimensions has increasingly been recognised. A few examples of this are the recognition of adverse as well as beneficial effects of building large dams; the unacceptability of emptying untreated effluent into streams and the ocean; and the awareness of the central importance of healthy rivers, wetlands and ecosystems to our life and culture. A stunning illustration of the trend was the decision by the Victorian and New South Wales governments to restore flows in the iconic Snowy River (see box).

Rainfall diversity across Australia Much attention has been given in this book to finding and managing water in the extensive drier parts of the country; but, Australia is a country of great rainfall variability, and there are very wet regions as well, as summarised in the maps shown in Plates 5.3 and 5.4. Remnant rainforest behind Dorrigo, high above the north coast of New South Wales; the Great Dividing Range in the vicinity of Cairns in Queensland; the south-west coast of Tasmania; and the north-western and south-western tips of Western Australia are some of the very high rainfall parts of Australia. Walking Tasmania’s South Coast Track in seemingly never-ending days of rain and wind or experiencing torrential downpours that suddenly turn quiet creeks into raging torrents in Australia’s tropical north are experiences far

17 – Facing the future

removed from aridity (see Plate 17.2). The men building the rack and pinion railway for carrying copper from the Queenstown mines to the port at Strahan in Tasmania’s west2 in the late 1890s worked in precipitous, heavily forested country where the climate meant they were almost constantly wet – a stark contrast to the conditions endured by the waterstarved miners in Kalgoorlie at the same time on the other side of the country. High rainfall areas boost the figure for the nation’s average annual rainfall to 451 mm,3 but this is not a very helpful statistic in practical terms because there are often vast distances between where water is plentiful and where it is scarce. There are serious problems in transporting water – which is heavy – over large distances, so this is not an easy solution for watering dry regions. Apart from the weight (one tonne for every 1000 L), the problems include losses due to evaporation in open channels; major costs in both dollars and energy in pumping water through pipelines; and the high capital costs of surveying, digging channels, laying pipelines, installing pumps, and constructing storages. Despite this, some bold and ambitious schemes have been successfully concluded in the past. Notable among these are the Goldfields and Agricultural Water Supply Scheme (Chapter 10) and projects associated with the Murray–Darling Basin such as the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme (Chapter 12) and the Mulwala Canal (Chapter 11). There have also been grandiose – many would say foolhardy – schemes proposed for solving water shortages, which have been abandoned after initial investigation. A scheme dating back to the 1880s involved flooding Lake Eyre with water from Spencer Gulf by means of a canal from Port Augusta to Lake Eyre. In the 1930s, J.J.C. Bradfield, an engineer who was a driving force behind the building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, developed a scheme for watering Australia’s dry inland (see box). During World War II, in 1941, prolific author Ion Idriess proposed a scheme for diverting Queensland’s coastal rivers inland. It became known as the Great Boomerang Scheme because of its shape when imposed on a map. More recent proposals have included building a canal from the Fitzroy River in the Kimberley region in the north of Western Australia to augment the water supply of Perth some 2500 km to the south; building a pipeline from the west of Tasmania to boost Melbourne’s supply; and even towing icebergs from Antarctica to enhance city supplies.4 These schemes were considered not practical and the benefits not justified by the extremely high costs. For example, the cost of water transported from the Kimberley was

The Bradfield Scheme J.J.C. Bradfield suggested damming the headwaters of the Tully, Herbert and Burdekin Rivers in north Queensland, linking the reservoirs by a series of tunnels or aqueducts, and then diverting the water stored across the Great Dividing Range. The water would then be directed into the upper reaches of the Thomson River, which becomes Cooper Creek and ultimately flows into Lake Eyre, or into the Flinders River, which flows north into the Gulf of Carpentaria.5 The proposal has been subject to intense criticism by scientists and other experts on the basis that the massive costs would far outweigh the potential benefits, and that evaporation and other technical problems would mean that little water would ultimately reach Lake Eyre. Despite this, the scheme or variations of it have been resurrected several times, mostly during drought periods and with the backing of prominent figures including politicians, business people and some commentators, in the 1940s, the 1980s, the early 2000s and as recently as 2008.6

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estimated to be at least $20/1000 L in Perth, compared with ‘expensive’ desalination water costing a little over $1/1000 L.7 This was apart from the damaging consequences on the local environment of removing large quantities of water from the Fitzroy River. An assumption implicit in the Kimberley scheme and the ‘turn back the Queensland rivers’ proposals is that rivers are only of any value if they can be used to support economically productive activity; they are of little or no value in and of themselves. In this view, the value of vegetation, wildlife, wetlands and human cultural and recreational pursuits is of little or no worth. An Australian Government report in 2010 examined major proposals for moving water long distances and concluded that although the projects might be technically possible, they all had high energy, economic, social and environmental costs, and in some cases were made uncertain because of the effects of climate change. The report also concluded that using the water we have more efficiently and developing new local water supply sources would be better options than transporting water long distances across the country.8

Ongoing issues: ways forward Ensuring water supplies are secure, even in times of water scarcity, will be a continuing challenge into the future, made more pressing by climate change and continuing population growth. There are some contentious ongoing issues that have been troublesome in the past and continue to demand attention. In each case the decisions made will have important implications for our water future.

The Murray–Darling Basin Plan The Murray–Darling Basin Plan is the most significant major reform in water management in Australia and has claimed international attention.9 It aims to restore flows to key environmental features in the Murray–Darling Basin, the nation’s major food bowl, and to achieve a balance between agricultural, industrial, human and environmental needs. For the first time, it treats the Basin as a single system rather than separate state-based systems. Implementation of the Plan is a more than decade-long process. The sustainable diversion limits (SDLs) for all catchments and aquifers in the Basin come into effect in 2019, following the period of adjustment from 2012. The SDL figures represent average diversions over the long-term. For surface water, the Plan originally specified a target reduction of 2750 GL per year on the 2009 baseline diversion level, which would apply from 2019. This water would then be available for the environment. However, this target was reduced to 2075 GL per year following reviews by the MDBA and recommendations to the parliament, as explained in Chapter 14. In addition to this, recovery of an additional 450 GL by 2024 has been agreed between the Australian Government and the Basin states, making a total of 2525 GL (originally 3200) for environmental flows. The Basin states are required to reflect the final SDLs in their own state resource plans by 2019, and to have these in operation by 2024 – 12 years after the Plan was approved by the parliament. The bulk of the reduction (605 of the total 675  GL) in the water recovery target is dependent on the development of water-saving infrastructure projects of various types to achieve equivalent environmental outcomes. These include projects to overcome physical barriers to water delivery, to improve management of the Basin’s rivers in delivering environmental water, or to make delivery of water more effective and efficient. Examples include adjustments to culverts or bridges, the installation of regulators to enable broader

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and more natural floodplain inundation and replacing or upgrading on-farm irrigation. The use of less water would then allow for an increase in SDLs (and therefore a decrease in the volume of water to be recovered from irrigators).10 But problems have been identified with this approach of replacing water recovery with infrastructure projects. These include the difficulty of determining ‘equivalence’ of environmental outcomes, and in converting some projects into equivalent volumes of water.11 Some Basin experts argue that, while the infrastructure projects have benefited irrigators, for many projects, there is no scientific evidence they have actually increased net stream flows. In addition, buying water from willing sellers is 60 per cent cheaper than building these infrastructure works.12 And, as noted in Chapter 14, the environmental water savings take effect immediately, whereas the infrastructure projects don’t have to be implemented until 2024. Implementing the complex and contested Plan was never going to be easy, and it has not been helped by flaws in the Plan itself, which have been identified over time.11 In particular, many authorities – including water and environmental scientists and water economists – argue that the Plan does not take into account the lower average rainfall patterns and more frequent and severe droughts predicted by climate models.13 The effects of adverse climate change could be severe – ‘a 10 per cent reduction in rainfall can result in as much as a 60 or 70 per cent reduction in the amount of water that’s available for use’.14 Key MDBA data from the first five years of the Plan indicated that it was not working as anticipated. In 2015, inflows into the Murray River system were among the lowest on record. In February, the lower Darling River stopped flowing between Pooncarie and Wentworth – the third time the flow had stopped in this part of the river in 11 years15 – and in May 2016, the Barwon–Darling system stopped flowing along its entire length for the second time in recent years (see Plate 17.3).16 In December 2017 the MDBA reported that periods of no- or low-flow in the Barwon–Darling system had increased since 2000 compared with before 2000, and that the risk of algal blooms had also increased, especially since 2010.17 In the lower Darling, the viability of grape and citrus farmers’ enterprises was being threatened by the lack of water, and for the second time in less than two years, in 2018 the community at Wilcannia rallied to express its pain and passion about the health of its river.18 This situation existed at the same time as irrigators higher up the river were taking large quantities of unmetered water from the system and establishing huge private dams, amid allegations of water theft, as explained in Chapter 14. There had been other worrying signs that the Plan might be compromised. These signs included the introduction of a cap of 1500 GL on water buybacks; transfer of the responsibility for water resources to the agriculture ministry where the irrigation institutions can exert more influence; lack of diligence in monitoring water extraction from Basin rivers; and the reductions in the water recovery targets – all discussed in Chapter 14. It is bewildering that five years into the Plan, 30 per cent of water extraction points were still not metered.19 More than five years into the plan, in mid-2018, independent experts considered that the Basin remained in a poor state and pointed out that the federal government’s own State of the Environment Report 2016 gave a ‘poor’ assessment on inland water flows in the Basin. This was despite spending a total of $6 billion on water recovery, of which $4 billion was spent on irrigation infrastructure projects.12 Six months earlier, in what it claimed was the first major independent and comprehensive review of the Basin, the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists concluded that without major changes in implementation, it was almost certain that the Basin Plan would fail.20

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A subsequent inquiry into the effectiveness of the implementation of the Basin Plan and water resource plans was undertaken by the Productivity Commission, the first of regular five-yearly reviews specified in the Water Act 2007. The Draft Report was published in August 2018 and contained a large number of finding and recommendations.21 Amongst these were that water-saving infrastructure projects were not likely to be completed by 2024, with cost implications for state and federal governments; that improvements were needed in monitoring and evaluation plans and mechanisms; that there were major shortcomings in current governance arrangements; and several instances of potential non-compliance with water trading rules were identified. The commission argued that the ways Basin governments dealt with issues ‘lacked transparency and candour’ (p. 14), and that the governments needed to take the lead in implementing the Plan. Due to the publicity surrounding allegations of water theft, concerns that some states had been lax in ensuring compliance with water extraction rules, and allegations of fraud in water recovery programs, coupled with plans to reduce water recovery for the environment and the excessively political nature of the public arguments, by the middle of 2018 public trust and confidence in the Basin Plan were at a low ebb. Australian taxpayers were justified in being concerned at what had been achieved with the billions of dollars spent on the project so far, and what the future would hold. The Productivity Commission’s Draft report also recognised this and the consequent need to restore community confidence in water management in the Basin. This situation added to the case for an independent scientific and economic audit of the costs and outcomes of water recovery projects and planned SDL adjustments, as suggested by the signatories to the Murray–Darling Declaration.12 The audit would focus on the volumes of water delivered, stream flows and environmental outcomes. In the meantime, implementation of further infrastructure projects would be placed on hold. In addition, the establishment of an independent expert scientific advisory body to monitor the health of the Basin and advise governments publicly would give confidence that the Plan was moving in the intended direction and would be likely to spark community interest and discussion. The Final Report of the Productivity Commission’s five-year assessment, which was handed to the government on 19 December 2018, but not scheduled to be tabled in parliament until the first half of 2019, was expected to go part way to meeting this suggestion. In the meantime, and despite the controversy, it was not clear to what extent the problem of illegal extraction of water from the upper Basin rivers had been properly resolved, or whether constraints and compliance with the rules to ensure reasonably equitable water availability along the key Basin rivers, especially the Darling, had been implemented effectively. Further, on the evidence available, doubt remains that the responsible governments – the federal government and the key states – are in fact truly committed to the Basin Plan. Without such a commitment, this once-in-a-century multi-billion-dollar scheme will fail. If this were to happen, we would all be the losers, not only Basin communities including Aboriginal communities, but the wider Australian society. The losses would be felt through reduced agricultural productivity, more uncertain water supplies, and a seriously degraded environment leading to fewer recreational and tourism opportunities and, most significantly, a substantially less amenable environment for human habitation and enjoyment. Whether the Basin Plan achieves the objective of ensuring long-term health and sustainability; whether 2075 GL per year for the environment (with or without the promised extra 450 GL) proves to be sufficient; and whether the modifications such as those outlined above have a lasting effect on the outcome, only time will tell. We will most likely have to wait to see how the Basin fares in the next extended drought for a real test of the changes

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implemented. Even if the Basin Plan were to be implemented in full, it is unlikely to be the ‘final answer’ to the sustainability of the Murray–Darling Basin. Further work will still be needed, but the Basin Plan settings will be the baseline from which the scope and nature of future actions can be determined. Late update as of May 2019

In the first months of 2019, four important inquiries published their findings. Two of these were concerned with the operation of the Murray–Darling Basin Plan as a whole: the final report of Productivity Commission’s five-year assessment,22 and the report of the South Australian Royal Commission into the Murray–Darling Basin.23 The other two inquiries were focused on the causes of three massive fish kills in the lower Darling River near Menindee during December 2018 and January 2019, which attracted wide public interest and concern. These were conducted by two groups of independent scientists: one was under the auspices of the Australian Academy of Science (AAS) (following a request for expert advice from the federal Leader of the Opposition)24 and the other chaired by a specialist from the University of Melbourne (the Vertessy Report, commissioned by the Prime Minister).25 Three of the four reports contained serious criticisms of the implementation of the Murray–Darling Basin Plan. The Vertessy Report was the exception; its narrower terms of reference may have been the reason for this. Some of the royal commission’s criticisms were trenchant, and referred to ‘gross negligence’, maladministration’ and ‘unlawful actions’. Overall, the findings and recommendations for action covered a wide field, with some significant commonalities including shortcomings in governance arrangements. A lack of transparency and public disclosure and the conflicting roles of the MDBA as both implementer and auditor of the MDB Plan were identified as problems in this area. The royal commission noted that the National Water Commission had formed an important part of the governance structure in the Basin’s legislative scheme, and ‘since its abolition in 2014, there has been an erosion of the national oversight of water reform in the Basin’. (p. 68) Other findings with a strong degree of commonality included: the probability that Basin targets will not be met; a lack of commitment from the Australian and state governments; a failure to take the effects of climate change into account; inadequacies in monitoring and evaluation mechanisms; the need for a licensing and metering scheme for floodplain diversions; deleterious effects of the degraded river system on the traditional owners; a lack of environmental water upstream in the Darling River; and the need for increased investment in scientific research to fill high priority knowledge gaps. Specifically, the AAS report argued that a lack of environmental water in the northern Basin was ‘the root cause’ of the massive fish deaths and placed the viability of the Darling at risk. This condition was the result of interaction between severe drought and excess upstream diversion of water for irrigation. Many of these findings and recommendations echo criticisms from Basin experts reported earlier in this chapter and in Chapter 14. The government accepted recommendations from the Vertessy Report and introduced a $70 million package of measures, to be funded from existing Murray–Darling Basin funds. These measures included upgrading meters and buying back certain water licences in the northern Basin, expanding research for improved water and environmental management, and restocking rivers and lakes with native fish species.26 However, the package did nothing to address many of the criticisms identified in the above reports, and all but ignored their recommendations.

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Bickering over the implementation of the Murray–Darling Basin Plan continued in the early months of 2019. This included controversy over the revelation that the then water minister had approved payment of a record $80 million for the purchase, without public tender, of overland floodwater. Experts argued that this water has lower environmental value than water in the river, because there is doubt about when and how it can be used for environmental benefit.27 Images of dry river beds, including that of the Darling River, became more prevalent in the public media, both print and electronic. The government resisted calls for a federal royal commission or other wide-ranging inquiry into the management of the Basin as a whole.27 Following the return of the government at the national election in May, responsibility for water resources was split from Agriculture into a new ministry made up of water resources, drought, rural finance, and natural disaster and emergency management, but still remained within the Agriculture portfolio. Tellingly, it was kept separate from the Environment portfolio. At the time of writing there is no indication as to how these responsibilities will work out in practice, but the government shows no sign of deviating from its present path. In the light of its recent actions and inactions, prospects for achieving the aim of setting water use to a sustainable level in the Murray–Darling Basin, or for taxpayers getting the full value of the $13 billion committed, appear to be grim indeed.

Irrigation In Chapter 11 we saw that major modernisation projects were being undertaken in irrigation areas across the country, with the prime aim of reducing water losses. It will be important to continue to look for opportunities to make irrigation more efficient in the future, possibly with increasing use of technology on farms.28 Because of the huge amounts of water involved, small percentage increases in efficiency can result in saving large quantities of water. Any consideration of water use in agriculture (or manufacturing) needs to take account of the total amount of water used in producing a good or service. This is referred to as virtual water (or embedded water), and might include water used in growing, producing, packing and shipping an agricultural product. When we look at water used in this way, the figures are startling. For example, it has been estimated that it takes ~1300 L of water to produce one kilogram of wheat. Virtual water estimates29 for other agricultural products are shown in Table 17.1. These figures show not only the great amounts of water used in producing various agricultural products but also the vast differences between products. This is a factor that is likely to become more important in the future for choosing which crops to grow and which animals to raise, given our relatively dry country where the quantities of water available are decreasing in many parts and the population increasing. It is possible that the mix of agricultural products a few decades from now will be significantly different from what it is at present – just as there have been many changes in crop and animal diversity in the last fifty years. Who knows, perhaps in the future we might even be including some of the traditional Australian crops, such as yams, and grains like kangaroo grass and native barley, as used so successfully in the past by Aboriginal people. These plants are well adapted to the Australian climate and require little irrigation or chemical supplements; their potential for present-day use has been explored by Bruce Pascoe in his book Dark Emu. Experimental plots of yam have been under management in Eastern Victoria since 2012.30 In some cases, farmers will necessarily make choices according to the water available, as well as in accord with market trends – as they have done in the past. But responsibility

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Table 17.1.  Virtual water estimates for some agricultural products.29 Product

Virtual water estimate

Coffee beans

21 000 L/kg

Sheep

6100 L/kg

Goat

4000 L/kg

Soya beans

1800 L/kg

Wheat

1300 L/kg

Egg

200 L/egg

Beef

15 500 L/kg

Millet

5000 L/kg

Chicken

3900 L/kg

Sugar

1500 L/kg

Maize

900 L/kg

Milk

1000 L/litre of milk

Cotton

11 000 L/kg

Pork

4800 L/kg

Rice

3400 L/kg

Barley

1300 L/kg

Apple

70 L/apple

Bottled water

3 L/L

belongs to us all to be well informed about the source of our food and other human requirements, and to ensure that where governments provide incentives and guidelines, these are in the best interests of the country as a whole. Much of Australia’s food and other agricultural produce is exported, along with its virtual water. Around the turn of the last century, the amount of virtual water exported by Australia was more than 70  000  GL (70  km3), compared with imports of less than 10 000 GL. This translates to more than 3.7 ML (3700 m3) exported from the country for every person in Australia. By comparison, other major food exporting countries in the world had a much lower level of virtual water exported – for example, France exported ~1.3 ML per person and the USA exported ~0.8 ML per person.31 Can we justify this situation for Australia? At the very least it needs to be factored into agricultural decision making and long-term planning about our water future.

Developing northern Australia In 2015 the Australian Government published a White Paper on the Development of Northern Australia.32 This was the latest in a long line of calls to develop the region, stretching back decades, even as far as the 1830s.33 Central to the argument is that this enormous part of the country is sparsely populated and largely undeveloped, and because of relatively high (average) rainfall and the proximity to developing markets in Asia, substantial resources should be applied to the development of irrigated agriculture. The paper identifies several areas in Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia for potential agricultural development, mostly supported by in-stream or offstream dams. As a first step, the paper commits the government to several water resource

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assessments, the establishment of a $200 million water infrastructure fund, and support for the development of a water market in the north. However, there are particular difficulties with irrigation in this region that either don’t exist or are far less evident in other irrigation regions such as the Murray–Darling Basin or Tasmania. These include highly seasonal rainfall and high evaporation rates. Intense tropical rain can severely limit access to paddocks for machinery in the wet season, meaning crops can be left prone to pests and weeds, and planting and harvesting operations are difficult. High evaporation rates have implications for surface water storage. Lake Argyle, with a surface area of 980  km2, loses ~1850  GL – three and a half times the volume of Sydney Harbour – each year to evaporation.34 Unfortunately, the 2015 White Paper does not draw on the comprehensive work done by the Northern Australia Land and Water Taskforce,35 or on the climate change projections for northern Australia produced by the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, as Steve Turton from James Cook University has pointed out.36 The taskforce, which reported in 2009, consulted widely with stakeholders and communities across northern Australia and built on two major research studies in the area coordinated by the CSIRO. Critically, it reported that ‘contrary to popular belief, water resources in the north are neither unlimited, nor wasted. Equally, the potential for northern Australia to become a “food bowl” is not supported by evidence’. (p.iii) It found that there were limited opportunities to capture and store surface water due to climate and topography, and that there were critical gaps in our knowledge and data sources and in our understanding of Indigenous knowledge. On the other hand, it concluded that the development of groundwater resources offered the best prospects for new uses of water and that there were many opportunities for productivity gains through significant improvements in water use efficiency in irrigation areas and improvements in technology and farm management (including new crop varieties). These findings echoed those of an earlier comprehensive study of three northern Australia irrigation schemes in which the Cooperative Research Centre for Irrigation Futures concluded that it was a significant challenge to find crop varieties suited to the tropical environment. Related factors include production costs such as labour and energy for pumping water and transport to interstate and international markets.34 The history of difficulties with the Ord River irrigation scheme that we saw in Chapter 11 illustrates these points. The study also found that water tables were rising in the irrigation areas, along with salinity risks. The large storages on the Ord and Burdekin rivers have also resulted in substantially modified flow regimes which have caused ecological changes downstream. As well as this, several other large irrigation ventures across the north – in Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland – have failed. In any development involving the harnessing of northern Australia’s water resources, it is essential to apply lessons learnt about sustainable water allocation in the south. We need to avoid, in future projects, the situation that arose in the Murray–Darling Basin where massive costs are involved in restoring the ecological health and sustainability of the region due to a past lack of planning, knowledge and foresight.37 Experience shows that to be successful in the long-term, large water infrastructure projects require detailed planning, including time for consultation, environmental assessments and investigation of other possible solutions.38 Barry Hart, Emeritus Professor of Water Science at Monash University, and his colleagues argue that focusing on new dams in the north ‘applies 19thcentury thinking to a 21st-century problem’, and is not consistent with the commitment to sustainability embedded in the National Water Initiative. They argue that new water infrastructure in the north should be part of a long-term water resource plan as well as part of

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an integrated investment program to limit environmental impacts.38 The Northern Australia Land and Water Taskforce recorded that Aboriginal culture and heritage across the north are diverse and strong, and that in 2030, Aboriginal people will make up nearly 50 per cent of the population of northern Australia. They concluded that ‘future development needs to be smart and build on the area’s special attributes’, including using both western and Indigenous knowledge to inform decision making.39 Our understanding of northern ecosystems and the impacts of irrigation has advanced since the development of the Ord and Burdekin irrigation regions, but there is still lot we don’t know about how new irrigation developments might affect these ecosystems.34,36 In addition, changing community values and expectations mean that for any new development to proceed, proper attention must be given to ensuring an appropriate balance between economic, social, cultural and environmental values.

Urban water supplies Indications are that water supplies for urban centres – cities and towns –will continue to come under pressure in the future due to climate change and growing populations, especially in the capital cities. For the five capital cities most under threat, seawater desalination plants have given a degree of medium-term security to cope with extended dry periods, though at significant ongoing cost in dollar terms, energy usage and environmental detriment, as we saw in Chapter 16. The desalination plants are not a once-and-for-all solution. Purposeful planning for the medium and long-term will be critical to secure future supplies, and major cities – and states – have begun to recognise this over the last decade (e.g. South Australia, see Appendix I). In Australia’s variable climate, understanding that planning has to include contingencies for the inevitable drought periods has proved to be essential. Importantly, planning must also involve community participation, so water users gain an understanding of needs, possibilities and options, as well as having a stake in the process. It is arguable that the controversy and high levels of dissatisfaction expressed over the choices of desalination, not to mention the politicisation of the projects, were intensified in each case because the community was not sufficiently involved and well informed during the planning process. An essential component of any long-term plan is effective monitoring, with periodic reviews to assess progress and ensure implementation is occurring as intended, and to make such adjustments as experience and new knowledge indicate are desirable. What principles should guide water supply planning? One is water conservation. Reducing water use in an urban system can forestall the need to develop costly new water sources and can save energy at the same time.40 Using existing water supplies more effectively comes at a lower environmental cost than constructing a new supply. Tremendous gains have been made in this direction in Australian cities over the last two decades, mainly under the pressure of drought or other prolonged dry periods. City residents have shown they can reduce their water use by significant amounts and have responded well to the setting of maximum use targets by water authorities. For example, water restrictions in Sydney reduced consumption in the city by 23 per cent from September 2003 to September 2005.41 Furthermore, as a result of greater awareness of water supply and use issues and the implementation of ‘permanent water-saving rules’ residents have maintained a lower level of water use, even after restrictions have been lifted. In Melbourne, residential water use per person per day was stable at 160 L from 2012–13 to 2014– 15 – 23 per cent lower than in 2005–06 (208 L per person) and 35 per cent lower than in 2000–01.42 These are impressive reductions.

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A second principle to guide planning for the future concerns water reuse. This covers wastewater recycling including indirect potable reuse and stormwater harvesting, both of which may involve storage via managed aquifer recharge in suitable areas. These schemes can often be implemented advantageously in local areas as we saw in Chapter 16. Water reuse methods offer potential for increasing the water available for a variety of purposes without building new centralised supplies. In various forms they are being introduced by some urban water authorities and incorporated into future plans,43 notably in South Australia (see Appendix I). Following the abolition of the National Water Commission (Chapter 16), it is to be hoped that necessary support for initiatives in this area will be taken up by another body, otherwise progress in this important area will be significantly slowed. In urban settings, water-sensitive urban design is an effective way of facilitating better and more efficient water management.

Privatisation During the last three decades, the move to privatise public utilities and services has gathered pace. We have seen privatisation applied to electricity supplies, railways, arterial roads (via tollways), health insurance, government employment services, waste collection and many more, at all levels of government – Australian, state and local. Water supply and management services have not been immune. In the late 1990s, the New South Wales Government passed ownership of two major irrigation areas to two private companies, Murray Irrigation Limited and Murrumbidgee Irrigation Limited, on the basis that the irrigation areas would be run by the irrigators served. In Western Australia, Ord Irrigation Cooperative Ltd was formed in 1996 to manage the provision of water and drainage services to farms within Stage 1 of the Ord River Irrigation area, as part of the transfer of assets and businesses from the state to the growers. Multinational companies (Acciona, Aquasure, Suez, Valoriza Agua, Veolia) were involved in the building and operating of the seawater desalination plants servicing five capital cities. The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) in 1994 approved a new water reform package and in 2004 it agreed on the implementation of the National Water Initiative,44 in which markets played a fundamental role. It was anticipated that a market-driven framework would produce a more robust approach to pricing policy where all the costs of water management – including, somehow, the costs of dealing with a damaged environment – would be included in the price. It was also argued that greater efficiencies would be achieved if working water markets, incorporating water trading, were established.45 These moves towards a market-based system are far removed from Alfred Deakin’s principle that no private individual could own a river or control the use of its water, although even with the market-based approach, ownership of the water ultimately remains with the government. In terms of how effective these changes have been, some data and anecdotal evidence indicate markets have allowed water to move from low-value activities to high-value activities, especially in times of drought, and have increased the productivity of farms by providing farmers with the flexibility to buy and sell water in response to changing markets and seasonal conditions.46 However, the overall picture is complicated by several factors including the difficulty of including all the important costs in the water price.47 Public policy specialist Michael Buxton presents arguments and evidence that the move to a market-based system has been less than successful.48 In a 2008 paper, economists Stephen Bell and John Quiggin challenged the view that the new market-based system could be selfmanaging, with a reduced role for governments. Rather, they argued that the market

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Bottled water The consumption of bottled water in Australia has increased dramatically in the last decade, reaching 726 ML(726 million litres) in 2015, and is predicted to reach 867 ML by 2020.52 Worldwide, consumption rose from about 1 GL (one billion L) per year in the 1970s to more than 200 GL in 2006 with a growth rate of 10 per cent per year.53 ‘Spring water’ is extracted from underground aquifers, while other bottled water is water from a municipal supply that has been subjected to additional treatment. Many residents in country Australia, including farmers, are concerned about the increasing quantities of groundwater being extracted for bottling, and that in some cases, this has an adverse effect on the flow of creeks which are crucial for farm water supplies.54 Consumers pay dearly for water in a bottle – about twice as much as for milk or petrol, and 2000 times as much as for tap water. While a litre of tap water costs a fraction of a cent, the average cost of a litre of bottled water is around $3, but can be much more expensive. Most of the cost is for the bottle, cap, label and marketing. While they are made of recyclable materials, less than half the bottles used are actually recycled. Huge numbers of discarded plastic bottles end up in landfill or become a serious source of pollution in waterways and the sea. Significantly, the water footprint of a litre of bottled water is 3 L; that is, it takes 3 L of water to produce 1 L of bottled water. Despite the cost, there is no evidence that bottled water is of higher quality than tap water. Australians have access to high quality water; municipal supplies are governed by the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines.55 Taste tests have shown that many consumers can’t tell the difference between bottled water and tap water.56

requires a substantial level of monitoring and control (metagovernance) over the system.49 This was illustrated by a later study of water markets in the Murray–Darling Basin published in 2016 which concluded that if markets were embedded within fair and effective overall governance including comprehensive water planning, they had the potential to increase efficiency, promote fairness in terms of initial water allocations and to improve environmental outcomes.50 However, as discussed earlier, water trading as practised is open to monopolisation, manipulation and corruption in the absence of adequate enforcement of regulations.51 Controversies concerning water extractions in the Murray–Darling Basin discussed here and in Chapter 14 are illustrations of this point. Private, for-profit companies are increasingly becoming involved in the water business worldwide. Many of these are large multinational corporations that perceive there is money to be made, especially in a time of growing global water shortage. There are many regions and cities of the world where water services, including supply, have been privatised but have subsequently failed – for example, in England, Bolivia, Atlanta and New Orleans in the US,9 and in Adelaide, Australia.57 The key problem here arises from the fact that the priority of for-profit companies is to maximise the return for their investors, which is likely to lead to higher water prices and greater water usage – both inconsistent with consumers’ needs and conservation priorities. As well, profit-driven private companies will not necessarily always adhere to the water service standards required. Their priorities are at odds with what should be fundamental priorities of water supply and management systems: provision of affordable clean water to all, including the less well off; protection of the environment; and water conservation. Perhaps above all, giant multinational water

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companies are able to bring enormous influence to bear in the direction of their own priorities on water managers, public officials, politicians and other decision makers. The view taken in this book is that water is a public good, essential for life, and that ownership and control must remain in public hands. Where private companies are involved – for example, in operating desalination facilities or as water trading brokers – this involvement needs to be in accordance with strict government-approved guidelines, and subject to close monitoring. This was illustrated by the allegations of water theft and trading water upstream in the Murray–Darling Basin, as explained in Chapter 14. A point to be borne in mind is that governments paid for the irrigation and water supply infrastructure – dams, weirs, pipelines, irrigation channels, modernisation improvements and maintenance – with taxpayers’ money over a long period, and for public rather than private benefit. A final point to be considered here is community opinion – which has not always proved to be in favour of the privatisation of public assets. For example, in May 2006, the New South Wales, Victorian and Australian governments, joint owners of the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme, agreed to privatise the scheme by floating it on the Australian stock exchange. This plan was abandoned in June 2006 following public protest.58 Although a lot has been learned through experience in the operation of water markets and some studies over the last decade or so, there are still uncertainties and unknowns. The role of governments in monitoring and decision making will remain pivotal to Australia’s water future. It is incumbent on governments not to shirk critical and often difficult decisions by handballing them to the private sector.

Addressing the future: opportunities for action Resolving the issues discussed above clearly forms part of our future. There are six areas that go hand in hand with these issues in which we will need to take action if we are to move towards a sustainable water future, in which clean water is available to meet the needs of all members of the community and the economic needs of the country, and in which our environment is enhanced rather than degraded.

Long-term planning The need for comprehensive long-term planning has already been discussed in relation to urban water. Similar arguments apply to rural water – for irrigation, towns, rural industries, recreation and cultural enjoyment. The current water planning in the Murray–Darling Basin is a critical example. Australia’s history since 1788 is one of recurring droughts sparking new action on water supply and management, both in cities and country areas – but only after lengthy debate and argument. Surely, we have learned by now that planning ahead for the inevitable long dry periods is far better than waiting for crises to unfold and only then acting, possibly in haste. It is crucial that water planning is based on the best available knowledge and experience – from both local and international sources – as well as the expertise of individuals and groups including farmers, irrigators and specialist bodies. There is a wealth of information and expertise available in bodies such as the CSIRO, Bureau of Meteorology, Australian Bureau of Statistics, university research centres and data and publications of the former National Water Commission. As well as the two and a quarter centuries of experience gained since 1788, we have still not made the best use of the thousands of years of experience of the Aboriginal peoples in husbanding and maintaining water resources.

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Playing politics with water During a long dry period in 2007, as one of several measures the Victorian State Government introduced a water usage target of 155 L per person per day for Melbourne households. The target was well chosen; indicators were that residents responded positively, and domestic water consumption declined steadily. A new government discarded the target immediately it came to power in 2009 (when rainfall had increased), consistent with an election promise. It had thought that discarding the target would be attractive to electors in the short-term in easing a burden on residents, though it was quite at odds with the need to engender longer term water-saving habits and attitudes. The (state-owned) water corporations were even forbidden from using the target in their customer accounts and other materials. At the following election four years later, the former government was returned to power, and (after a time) reinstated the target.60 This policy ‘flip-flopping’ does nothing to engender confidence or good habits among water consumers.

A coherent framework of overarching policies giving direction and support from governments, especially the Australian Government, is essential to provide guidelines and targets and to minimise the likelihood of conflict between the various jurisdictions that has been so destructive of progress in the past. Policies have to be consistent and enduring, and subject to evidence- and experience-based periodic updates. They also need to be applied in a consistent manner.59 One factor that has bedevilled water decision making in the past is the inappropriate and often damaging intervention of party politics. Many examples could be cited, but one is sufficient to illustrate the point (see box).

Innovation Rather than unthinkingly repeating the past, a search for innovative solutions is more likely to lead to actions that will meet present-day and future needs. We should bear in mind Albert Einstein’s advice that ‘problems cannot be solved with the same mindset that created them’. Innovations such as the Goulburn Weir, ‘condensers’ in Kalgoorlie, the Dethridge Wheel, and the water bag were crucial in enabling the pioneer settlers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to meet the needs for agriculture, industry and for living. In the early twenty-first century, with a vastly expanded and diversified population demanding twenty-first-century services, we have a very different context and with it greatly developed knowledge of and attitudes to the environment in which we live. And there is also the reality of climate change. New and imaginative approaches are needed. The common cry to ‘build more dams’ is not a panacea for future water scarcity or for future development, no matter how prominent the proponents.61 For one thing, as we have seen, suitable locations for new dams are severely limited. For another, constructing large dams involves considerable expense, has damaging consequences for the environment and for downstream activities, and is discouraged by significant international authorities (Chapter 12). We should take heart from innovations of the recent past and the present. These include, among others, computer-operated aluminium flume gates for use in irrigation, solar pumps for extracting groundwater on farms, progress in aquifer storage and reuse, developments in domestic rainwater storage and distribution, salt interception to reduce

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Water footprint The ‘water footprint’ is a practical measure of how much water is used in growing foods or producing consumer goods and services. It can be applied to a single process such as growing wheat, making a product such as a pair of jeans, producing the fuel we put in our car, or to a whole multinational company. The water footprint can also show the total amount of water used by a country, in a river basin, or the average for households in a region. For example, the water footprint of a cup of coffee is 140 L, and of a pair of leather shoes 8000 L. Other examples for some common foods and consumer goods are given in the table earlier in this chapter. The water footprint is also a useful way of comparing water use across countries and regions, and water management efficiency in businesses and industries. A 2007 international study found that the water footprint of Australian households (at 341 000 L per person per year) was the highest in the world. The footprint included both domestic consumption and the water embodied in the food, goods and services consumed by people in their households. A 2016 report found that only 3 per cent of Australians could correctly estimate the amount of water needed to produce an average meat meal for one person – ~700 L.66 Many industries have used their water footprint, including both their in-house operations and their supply chains, as a basis for improving their water efficiency. Global standards and ways of assessing water efficiency are available through the Water Footprint Network.67

salt flows into the River Murray,62 and the establishment of the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder as a policy tool. Improved public access to consolidated summaries of such innovations would surely support further innovation. Current sources are diverse and not always convenient to access. They include the Regional Australia Institute, the former National Water Commission, water corporations in the capital cities and regions, cooperative research centres, university research centres, the CSIRO and the MDBA. Perhaps there are also innovative applications that could be drawn from the evolution of the sharing economy, or from TED talks,63 or from publications focusing on the future64 if we put our minds to these. A recent significant innovation directed at encouraging high standards in water management is the formation of the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS), in 2008. The AWS is a global membership-based collaboration that ‘promotes responsible use of freshwater that is socially and economically beneficial and environmentally sustainable’. It has developed a stewardship standard with the aim of improving water conditions around the world. Certification against the AWS Standard is a mark of having met the global benchmark for good water stewardship. Water Stewardship Australia has played a leading part in the AWS since its inception. Members are drawn from all sectors: leading businesses, nonprofits, public sector agencies and academic institutes.65

Small scale decentralisation Centralised systems of water management and distribution rely on large storage reservoirs, pipeline networks, treatment plants and wastewater removal under central decision making. Many of the innovations in recent times – stormwater harvesting, water-sensitive urban design applications, sewer mining, managed aquifer recharge, rainwater tanks and

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greywater systems for example – involve placing operations at a local level. That is, more decentralisation. There are many advantages of this approach as we have already seen, and it is no coincidence that many respected water policy analysts are advocating these practices.68 It is worth noting that promoting ‘localism’ is also a feature of the Murray–Darling Basin Plan though at the time of writing it has been little implemented.

Water conservation and productivity Conservation and increasing water productivity go hand in hand. When water is saved through avoiding waste or preventing pollution or through increased efficiency, water productivity is increased. This also means that less water has to be supplied through expensive infrastructure or technology. There has been a striking upsurge in water productivity over the last four decades or so in countries like the United States and Australia, largely driven by the combination of growing water shortages and the introduction of environmental regulations governing pollution and water use.69 The effectiveness and benefits of watersaving measures in urban areas and in irrigation in rural areas have already been discussed. The introduction of these measures is intimately bound up with maintaining healthy rivers, floodplains and wetlands, as we saw particularly in the case of the Murray– Darling Basin. The amounts of water it takes to produce various agricultural products and the amounts of virtual water exported are issues to be addressed over the medium and longer term. Water conservation also means maintaining water quality – imperative for healthy living and a healthy environment. Apart from its importance for human consumption, good water quality also affects the productivity and profitability of industries and agricultural activities and the recreational use of waterways. Investing in water conservation to the maximum extent possible will remain an important principle for the future, and an important role of communities is to press for methods that are sustainable for the long-term. Community involvement Most of us give little thought to the source of our everyday water – what’s involved in keeping up the supply of clean fresh water so essential to our lives – and dealing with the voluminous waste. In larger towns and cities we have reduced our contact with the water cycle to turning on a tap. We easily accept our right to a continuing supply of water but know little about what this means in practice. We become engaged only when water supply becomes an important news story due to a looming shortage, a price rise, restrictions on our use, a contamination event (rare), or controversy over new expensive infrastructure such as a seawater desalination plant. A perverse benefit of recent water crises we have experienced – water shortages in urban and rural areas due to drought conditions, and the consequences of water over-allocations in the Murray–Darling Basin – is that they have brought some of the underlying issues to our collective attention. As highlighted in this book, we are in challenging times, headlined by water scarcity and environmental degradation resulting from carelessness and over-use. In the coming years and decades, there will be more crucial decisions to be made, and it is important that as community members we are sufficiently well informed to take part in the decision-making process. Decisions about water quality and supply, infrastructure, dealing with waste, uses for recycled water and stormwater, sources and availability of irrigation water, water pricing, maintaining a healthy environment, ownership and governance – all affect us and should involve us, to a greater or lesser extent, whether we live in the city or the country. We might ask ourselves to what degree we were able to have an

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informed opinion about – or even understand – the recent controversies concerning desalination plants or the proposals for the Murray–Darling Basin. The importance of community members having a sound knowledge and understanding of the broader context as well as the local factors was highlighted in the case of Toowoomba’s decision concerning the use of recycled water (Chapter 16). As more water management activities are decentralised, as expected, more local communities will necessarily be involved. As far back as 2004, a national report on water recycling recommended as essential greater investment in innovative community-scale water recycling projects and ensuring greater public participation in decision-making to gain public confidence and trust.70 Several writers on water policy and management who are well-regarded internationally argue that greater public participation is an important part of the future.71 Daniel Connell points out that the European Union’s Water Framework Directive, which he argues ‘is probably the world’s most ambitious water reform program’, gives public participation and the role of civil society a central place in its approach to implementation.72 The Draft Report of the Productivity Commission’s five-year assessment of the Murray–Darling Basin Plan argues that meaningful community engagement is crucial to the ultimate success of the Plan.21 The AWS water stewardship standard involves purposeful communication and consultation with stakeholders, which include various sections of the community. Governments and water authorities have a responsibility to make relevant information and planning options readily available and to involve the community in future planning to the extent possible. The Bureau of Meteorology has the important role of compiling comprehensive information about water resources across Australia under the Improving Water Information Programme, funded by the Australian Government for 10 years from 2008.73 There is a wealth of important and interesting information gathered by this program, though it is doubtful that anyone but a tiny proportion of Australians is aware of its existence. Unfortunately, because of the transfer of responsibility for Australia’s water policy and management from the Department of Environment to the Department of Agriculture, and the abolition of the National Water Commission, both of which occurred in 2015, much important water information, including information on the Murray–Darling Basin, is now archived. Consequently, it is more difficult to access – the exact opposite of what is needed. The information that is currently available on water authorities’ websites, though quite extensive in many cases, is not always in a form that makes access convenient, and there are significant gaps especially in relation to planning options. In the case of the Murray– Darling Basin Authority, one of its primary roles is ‘engaging and educating the Australian community about the Basin’s water resources’. The MDBA website provides a large range of valuable information and encourages interaction from community members. Time will tell how effective the current format is. Overall, it is especially important for relevant information to be available to citizens in a more accessible form, and its existence promoted.

Aboriginal communities There is a pressing need to improve the involvement of and collaboration with Aboriginal peoples in decision-making about water. There are two parts to this. The first is concerned with ensuring that the needs of Aboriginal communities, including cultural needs, are met. Communities have made their views known through organisations such as the Martuwarra Fitzroy River Council in the Kimberley and the Mary River Statement in northern Australia. Despite this, Aboriginal communities have been struggling to have their claims

17 – Facing the future

for water rights heard, to the extent that it has been argued ‘Aboriginal rights are a blind spot in the country’s water governance arrangements and in its broader relationship with Indigenous peoples’.74 A positive sign is that for the Murray–Darling Basin, the MDBA has formed a partnership with two Traditional Owner-based organisations in the Basin: the Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations and the Northern Basin Aboriginal Nations.75 The decision of the Australian Parliament in June 2018 also promised some progress in this direction (Chapter 14). The second part concerns investigating ways in which traditional Aboriginal approaches to water management can be integrated into formalised western science. Bradley Moggridge, a member of the Kamilaroi people in New South Wales, is an Aboriginal water scientist working on this problem at the time of writing. Hopefully, this is a precursor to further work in the area and will lead to increased Aboriginal participation in the development of water policy and practices.

Where to from here? Specialist in global water issues Peter Gleick advocates a ‘soft path’ for water, as opposed to the ‘hard path’ which relies almost exclusively on the further development of centralised infrastructure, including dams, reservoirs, pipelines, treatment plants and so on. The soft path for sustainable water management and use includes many of the directions supported in this book and therefore forms a useful summary guide to where we might go from here. The soft path focuses on achieving greater efficiencies from existing water supplies through conservation measures and matching supplies more effectively to the water services users need rather than focusing only on supplying water. Focusing on services (drinking, cooking, manufacturing, maintaining gardens, producing food) shows that needs can be met in different ways, often with quite different implications for water supplies and sources. While complementing existing infrastructure components, the preference for future developments using the soft path is for smaller, decentralised technologies and administration, and recognition of the importance of a healthy environment to many human activities including recreation, fishing, tourism and the provision of clean water for downstream users. In this approach, water services planning operates in conjunction with other public planning processes, including land use planning and energy planning, and involves a greater level of public participation and community decision-making.76

0 0 0 In Australia now, we need to change the way we think about water and our relationship to it and the wider environment. This includes all of us gaining a better understanding of where our water comes from, its availability and the implications for the environment and for future generations of our using it. There are signs that this is beginning to happen, with social and environmental factors being prominent in some major water decisions – for example, the rejuvenation of the Snowy River and the plan to move towards sustainability of the Murray–Darling Basin. We also need to have a fresh look at what Aboriginal peoples can teach us about living sustainably in the environment. Decision-making in relation to water futures needs to be based on more than financial criteria: social, cultural and environmental dimensions must also be included. In recent years there has been a growing interest in ensuring that planning and reporting are carried out in a more meaningful way by integrating the work on the four dimensions, rather than

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reporting them separately, which leaves readers to make their own interpretation.77 Agreeing that decisions about water futures have to be made on such a broader base would be an important step in the right direction.

Glossary

Summary of measures and units used in this book ~ approximately L litre ML megalitre (1 megalitre = 1 million litres = 1000 cubic metres) GL gigalitre (1 gigalitre = 1000 megalitres = 1 billion litres = 1 million cubic metres) mm millimetre cm centimetre m metre km kilometre (1 foot = 0.3048 m) ha hectare m² square metre m³ cubic metre km³ cubic kilometre s second h hour d day kg kilogram t tonne (1 ton = 1.016 tonne)

More information on measures used Volume 1  litre (L) is equivalent in volume to a cube 10  cm x 10  cm x 10  cm = 1000  cubic centimetres 1 litre of water weighs 1 kilogram (1 kg) 1 cubic metre (equivalent to a cube 1 m x 1 m x 1 m) = 1000 litres For large volumes of water, such as in dams or river flows, megalitres or gigalitres are the usual units used. Useful concepts for large volumes

1 Olympic-size swimming pool is approximately 2.5 megalitres, or 2500 cubic metres 245

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1 gigalitre is equivalent to about 400 Olympic-size swimming pools, or a rectangular reservoir 1 kilometre long, 200 metres wide and 5 metres deep. Sydney Harbour contains about 500  gigalitres of water, equivalent to approximately 200 000 Olympic-size swimming pools 1 cubic kilometre = 1000 million cubic metres = 1000 gigalitres (about twice the volume of water in Sydney Harbour)

Area 1 hectare (ha) = 100 m x 100 m = 10 000 square metres 1 square kilometre = 1000 m x 1000 m = 100 hectares (1 hectare = 2.47 acres approx.) Costs are in Australian dollars unless otherwise indicated

Meaning of terms Anabranch – A branch of a river that leaves the main stream and then enters it again further downstream. Alluvial aquifer – In an alluvial aquifer the water is stored in the tiny spaces between sediments composed of gravel, sand, silt or clay deposited in river beds or floodplains. Aquifer – A region of rocks or soils that store water and allow movement of water. See also confined aquifer, unconfined aquifer. Arcade (architectural) – A set of arches and their supporting columns. Basin (geological) – A hollow or depression in the earth’s surface, wholly or partly surrounded by higher land, such as in a river basin. Basins may be oval or circular in shape, and range in size from a few kilometres in diameter to very much larger. Barrage – A construction across a watercourse to increase the depth of water to assist navigation or irrigation. Billabong – A waterhole in an anabranch that that is replenished only at flood times. Bioretention system – The key function of a bioretention system is to remove pollutants from stormwater by filtering the stormwater through a densely vegetated and biologically active sand and loam zone. Brackish (water) – Slightly salty; distasteful. Cistern – A tank for the storage of water, above or below ground. Confined aquifer – An aquifer that lies between two layers of relatively impermeable rock or clay. CSIRO – The Commonwealth Scientific Industrial and Research Organisation is an independent Australian Government agency responsible for scientific research, constituted under the provisions of the Science and Industry Research Act 1949. Dam – A barrier built across a river to create a body of water as for domestic water supply.

Glossary

Donga – A makeshift demountable building. Dryland farming – Farming dependent on natural rainfall only, not irrigated. Ephemeral stream – One that flows only intermittently and is dry at times. Coorong – A shallow salt-water lagoon in south-eastern Australia which extends 145 km south-east from the mouth of the Murray River. Evaporation – The process by which liquid water is turned to gas (water vapour). Evapotranspiration – The sum of evaporation and plant transpiration from the earth’s land surface to the atmosphere, including soil (soil evaporation), and vegetation (transpiration). Flume – An artificial channel for carrying water. Flume gate – A combined flow measurement and control gate designed to regulate flow in open channels (in irrigation). GAB – Great Artesian Basin (Australia). Groundwater – Water located in saturated zones below the earth’s surface. IPR – Indirect potable reuse (of water). Lock – A section of a canal or river that may be closed off by gates to control the water level and the raising and lowering of vessels that pass through it. MAR – Managed aquifer recharge. MDBA – Murray–Darling Basin Authority. Osmosis – The tendency of a fluid, usually water, to pass through a semi-permeable membrane into a solution where the concentration of dissolved substance is higher, thus equalising the concentrations on either side of the membrane. In reverse osmosis, pressure forces the water to pass in the opposite direction. Potable – Suitable for drinking. Ramsar-listing – The Convention on Wetlands of International Importance (the Ramsar Convention) was signed in Ramsar, Iran in 1971. The Ramsar Convention aims to halt the worldwide loss of wetlands and to conserve those that remain. Ramsar sites are those listed under the Ramsar Convention. Australia has 65 Ramsar sites. Reservoir – A natural or artificial place where water is stored. Riparian – Inhabiting or situated on the bank of a river. SDL – Sustainable diversion limit. In the Murray–Darling Basin, the amount of water that can be diverted annually from the Basin river(s) in a catchment and from each aquifer, on a sustainable basis. Sluicegate – A gate at the end of a channel for regulating flow. Swale – An open shallow channel planted with long grasses or leafy vegetation. TDS – Total dissolved solids. A measure of water quality for human consumption, drinking water for livestock, and for irrigation.

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Terminal lake – A lake that has no outflow. Transpiration – The process through which water is absorbed by plants through their roots and is ultimately released to the atmosphere through the leaves. Unconfined aquifer – An aquifer covered by permeable rock or soil, that can receive water from the surface. Wadi – A watercourse that is dry except during periods of rainfall. Water table – The upper level of an underground area of soil and rock that is completely saturated with water. Weir – A low dam that is built across a river or stream to raise the water level, divert the water, or control its flow. WSUD – Water sensitive urban design. Yabby (pl. yabbies) – Freshwater crayfish found in many Australian streams and dams.

Appendix I: Case Study: South Australia’s long-term water plan1

As the driest state, South Australia has to work hard to ensure reliable water supplies for its towns and cities. From reliance on built storages and, to some extent, groundwater, it turned to the Murray River for additional supplies in 1940. Following a drying climate in recent years and continued increase in population, the state has explored stormwater and recycled water storage and retrieval, and constructed a seawater desalination plant in 2012. Intent on securing water supplies for the future, the state in 2010 developed a plan to ‘ensure our water future to 2050’. Major focuses of the plan are on diversifying supplies and reducing reliance on the Murray River and other rain-dependent water sources.2 The plan titled Water for Good, was developed against a background of a projected increase in the population to 2.49 million including two million in Greater Adelaide – 60 per cent more than in 2008 (1.56 million) – and a projected decline in rainfall of 15–30 per cent over the planning period. Reduced rainfall means reduced run-off into water storages and reduced recharge of groundwater. Climate change has the potential to affect water availability by causing an increase in temperatures which could lead to an increase in demand; an increase in the frequency and severity of storm events which could lead to an increase in flooding and have an impact on water quality; and a rise in sea levels which could cause an increase in salinity of surface water and groundwater and inundation of coastal wetlands and lowlands (p. 45). One of the overall aims of the plan is for South Australia to be recognised as the ‘Water-sensitive state’ with the expectation that, apart from the permanent savings measures, water restrictions in cities will only be needed every 100 years. The 192-page plan covers a wide range of topics including current usage patterns for country and city, key drivers for demand and supply, targets for 2014, 2025 and 2050, national policies and reforms, interaction with Murray–Darling Basin water, salinity, water allocation planning, fostering innovation and efficiency, water quality, decentralised wastewater systems (p. 99), research and innovation, remote communities, water pricing, and many others. There are specified actions and outcomes for each area of activity. It includes the intention that the assumptions underlying the plan will be reviewed annually, and all water demand and supply plans involved will be ‘comprehensively reviewed and updated every five years’. The major changes planned for the state’s water supply involve an increase in the use of water recovered from stormwater and wastewater recycling, involving managed aquifer recharge (MAR) as appropriate, and water savings measures. This is most markedly shown in the plans for Greater Adelaide where the use of recycled stormwater and wastewater is planned to increase from ~10 per cent of total supply in 2010 to 18 per cent in 2025 and 24 per cent in 2050. In the same period water savings are planned to increase from 3 per cent to 12 per cent. The desalination plant came into service in 2012 with a capacity to deliver 249

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100 GL a year contributing 25 per cent to the water supply and a slightly smaller proportion in 2050 due to the increased overall supply needed. As a result of the ‘new’ sources, the proportion of water supplied by rivers, reservoirs and aquifers is planned to decline from 73 per cent in 2010 to 40 per cent in 2050 – a substantial reduction in the water supplied from the traditional sources. To facilitate this, the plan includes a map showing areas of stormwater harvest potential. It proudly proclaims South Australia as a leader in wastewater recycling, with ~30 per cent of wastewater already being reused, and identifies further opportunities, setting a target of 75 GL for the state for non-drinking purposes by 2050. As part of this objective a target of 12 GL by 2050 has been set for water recovered through rural community wastewater recycling schemes. In keeping with much current expert opinion, it is planned that ‘systems on a neighbourhood scale – where communities capture, manage and use their water sources in an integrated way’ (for example using wastewater recycling, sewer mining or stormwater harvesting schemes) will become more common.

Endnotes

Chapter 1 1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

Clarkson C, Marwick B, Wallis L (2017) Buried tools and pigments tell a new history of humans in Australia for 65,000 years. The Conversation, 20 July, ; Cooper A, Williams AL, Spooner N (2018) When did Aboriginal people first arrive in Australia? The Conversation, 7 August, ; Gammage B (2011) The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia. Allen & Unwin, Sydney. Postel S (1999) Pillar of Sand: Can the Irrigation Miracle Last? Worldwatch Institute, WW Norton & Company, New York. Yannopoulos SI, Lyberatos G, Theodossiou N, Li W, Valipour M, Tamburrino A, Angelakis AN (2015) Evolution of water lifting devices (pumps) over the centuries worldwide. Water 7, 5031–5060. Herodotus (1972) The Histories, tr. Aubrey de Selincourt. Penguin Classics, Harmondsworth, England, p. 134; p. 136; p. 169. Cowen R (1999) Ancient irrigation. Chapter 17 of notes for the Geology 115 course at UC Davis, . Mark JJ (2009) Mesopotamia. Ancient History Encyclopedia, . Herodotus 1972, p. 115. Ur J (2006) State-sponsored irrigation systems in the Assyrian heartland, 702 – 681 BC: Reconstructions using declassified intelligence satellite imagery and aerial photography. Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, MA. May 5. Jacobsen T, Lloyd S (1935) Sennacherib’s aqueduct at Jerwan. The University of Chicago Oriental Institute Publications. XXIV, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois. Ur J (2005) Sennacherib’s Northern Assyrian canals: new insights from satellite imagery and aerial photography. Iraq 67 (1), Spring, 317–345, . Dalley S (2013) The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Allan T (2011) Virtual Water: Tackling the Threat to Our Planet’s Most Precious Resource. I. B. Taurus, London. HARP– Harappa Archaeological Research Project, (Quotation by Jonathan Mark Kenoyer). Szczepanski K (2017) The Yellow River and its role in Chinese history. ThoughtCo, ; Mark JJ (2012) Ancient China. The Ancient History Encyclopedia, . UNESCO World Heritage Convention, . Tomczak M (2004) Science, Civilization and Society. Lecture 15, Science and technology in China, from a course of lectures delivered at Flinders University, Australia, . Johnson I (2013) China’s ancient lifeline. National Geographic Magazine, May. Wilford JN (2006) Evidence found for canals that watered ancient Peru. New York Times, January 3. International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID), . Glikson A (2015) Climate and the rise and fall of civilisations: a lesson from the past. The Conversation, 11 December, ; Diamond JM (2005) Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed. Penguin Books, New York. Until recently it was widely believed that the qanat system originated in Persia (modern day Iran). Discovery of 3000-year-old systems in the United Arab Emirates during the last part of the twentieth century has shown that this was erroneous (see Al Tikriti 2011). 251

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22. Al Tikriti WY (2011) Archaeology of the Falaj: A field study of the ancient irrigation systems of the United Arab Emirates, Department of Historic Environment, Abu Dhabi Culture & Heritage; International Water History Association, Water History.org: Qanats, . 23. An aquifer is a region of rocks or soils that store water and allow movement of water. See Chapter 3. 24. UNESCO World Heritage Convention. Qanats of Gonabad, ; Hodge AT (1992) Roman Aqueducts and Water Supply. London, Duckworth, p. 23. 25. Mahdavi M (1992) An ancient and traditional water supply system in arid and semi-arid regions of Iran. The International Journal of Humanities 3 (3–4), 29–38. 26. Hansen RD (n.d.) WaterHistory.org: Karez (Qanats) of Turpan, China. . 27. Lein H, Shen Y (2006) The Disappearance of the Karez of Turfan. Report from the project Harvest from wasteland. Land, people and water management reforms in the drylands of Xinjiang, Department of Geography, NTNU, Trondheim Norway. 28. Hodge AT (1992) Roman Aqueducts and Water Supply. London, Duckworth. 29. Fahlbusch H (2008) Municipal Water Supply in Antiquity. Deutsches Archaologisches Institut, Fachhochschule Lübeck Fachbereich, Lubeck, Germany, . 30. Herodotus 1972, p. 228. 31. Chanson H (2008) The hydraulics of roman aqueducts: What do we know? Why should we learn? World Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2008 Ahupua’a, ASCE, .

Chapter 2 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

Also known as the River Gard. Norwich JJ (1984) The World Atlas of Architecture. Mitchell Beazley, London, p. 154. An area that includes present-day France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany. Pont du Gard Museum, France 2014, There were some force pumps, made from bronze or wood, in use in the Roman civilisation, but their application was limited. See Lewis M (2013) ‘Pipes and reservoirs’. In ABPL 90085 Culture of Building: Early Services, Presentation, University of Melbourne. Dembsky EJ (2009) ‘The Aqueducts of Ancient Rome’. Master of Arts thesis, University of South Africa. Hodge AT (1992) Roman Aqueducts and Water Supply. London, Duckworth, p. 347. Relatively little evidence of rural irrigation schemes has been uncovered. It appears that most such schemes were gravity-fed conduits from rivers. See Hodge 1992. Lewis 2013 Yegul F (1992) Baths and Bathing in Classical Antiquity. MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Lewis M (2011) Ifriqaya: Notes for a tour of northern Africa in September–October 2011, p. 219, Frontinus, Sextus Julius, De Aquaeductu Urbis Romae, II: 103. Quoted in Hodge 1992, p. 304; Frontinus was appointed curator aquarum under Emperor Trajan (98–117 AD). Hodge 1992, p. 304. Hodge 1992; Dembsky 2009. There were some variations of this method. Hodge 1992, p. 111. Hodge 1992, p. 337. Burri E, Petitta M (2004) Water for agriculture, environment and human needs in the Fucino area (central Italy). In The Basis of Civilization – Water Science? (Eds JC Rodda and L Ubertini) pp. 67–76. International Association of Hydrological Sciences, IAHS Press, Wallingford, Oxfordshire; Hodge 1992, p. 333. Frontinus SJ De Aquaeductu. Quoted in Hodge 1992, p. 48. Hodge 1992, p. 228. Sobin G (1999) Luminous Debris: Reflecting on the Vestige in Provence and Languedoc. University of California Press, Oakland, p. 217. Hodge 1992. Figueiredo MO, Veiga JP, Silva TP (2001) Materials and reconstruction techniques at the aqueduct of Carthage since the Roman period. In Historical Constructions. (Eds PB Lourenço and P Roca) pp. 391–400. University of Minho, Guimarães, Portugal. Chanson H (2008) The hydraulics of roman aqueducts: What do we know? Why should we learn? World Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2008 Ahupua’a, ASCE, .

Endnotes

25. The largest daily volume delivered by a Roman aqueduct was estimated at 189.25 million L (189 250 m3), delivered by the Anio Novus, one of Rome’s 11 aqueducts. 26. The remains of 15 cisterns are visible, but some sources report there were originally 24. There is also some variation in the figures from different sources for the total estimated volume that could be stored; however, the figure given here appears to be the most credible. See also Figueiredo, Veiga & Silva 2001; De Feo G, Mays LW, Angelakis AN (2011) Water and waste water management technologies in the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations. In Treatise on Water Science vol. 4, Water-Quality Engineering. (Ed. PA Wilderer), Elsevier, Amsterdam; Lunsford C. Water Supply in Ancient Carthage. 27. Hodge 1992, p. 280. 28. Lewis 2011, p. 28; Figueiredo, Veiga & Silva 2001. 29. Lewis 2011 p. 37.

Chapter 3 1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

SA Water. The water cycle, . Black M, King J (2009) The Atlas of Water: Mapping the World’s Most Critical Resource. Earthscan, London. Geoscience Australia. Groundwater. Australian Government, Canberra, . Allen RG, Pereira LS, Raes D, Smith M (1998) Meteorological data. In Crop Evapotranspiration. Ch. 3. Natural Resources Management and Environment Department, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome. ; Southampton Weather (n. d.) Evapotranspiration, . BOM (Bureau of Meteorology) Evaporation: Average Monthly & Annual Evaporation. Australian Government, . Adapted from: BOM, What are El Niño and La Niña Events? Australian Government, . Brown J (2014) Explainer: El Niño and La Niña. The Conversation, 20 June, ; Bureau of Meteorology (2016) Annual climate statement 2015, . Gergis J, Garden D, Fenby, (2010) The influence of climate on the first European settlement of Australia: a comparison of weather journals, documentary data and palaeoclimate records, 1788-1793. Environmental History 15 (3), 485–507. Flannery T (2005) The Weather Makers. Text Publishing, Melbourne. Department of Environment and Energy (2017) Outback Australia – the rangelands. Australian Government, . Solomon S (2010) Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power and Civilization. HarperCollins, New York, pp. 128, 134. Khalikiova R (2003) Rabats and Sardoba of Abdullakhan. San’at (Art) Magazine, Issue#1. Academy of Arts of Uzbekistan. . Herodotus (1972) The Histories. tr. Aubrey de Selincourt. Penguin Classics, Harmondsworth, England, p. 478. Herodotus 1972, p. 117. Kapuscinski R (2007) Travels with Herodotus. Penguin, London. Herodotus 1972, pp. 205; 206. Lobley D (1972) Ships Through the Ages. Octopus Books, London, pp. 30–33. These ocean-going sailing ships were tiny by modern-day standards. Sir Francis Drake’s flagship, The Golden Hind, in which he sailed the world in 1577–1580, was only 31 m long with a displacement of ~300 tonnes (see Newby E (1975) The World Atlas of Exploration. Macmillan, South Melbourne, Victoria, p. 91). Chamberlin ER (1973) Everyday Life in Renaissance Times. Carousel Books, London; Newby 1975. Newby E (1972) The Last Grain Race. Pan Books, London, p. 64. Mangan JJ (Ed.) (1994) Robert Whyte’s 1847 Famine Ship Diary. Mercier Press, Cork, Ireland, p. 29. Duyker E (Ed.) (1995) A Woman on the Goldfields: Recollections of Emily Skinner 1854-1878. Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Victoria. Personal communication, crew of MS Oranje, January 1963. Queen Mary 2, ‘Technical information’, . Ibrahim SA, Bari MR, Miles, L (2002) Water resources management in Maldives with an emphasis on desalination. Maldives Water and Sanitation Authority, Malé, Republic of Maldives, . Ibrahim et al. 2002, p. 12.

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Chapter 4 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

Flannery T (Ed.) (2013) The Explorers. Text Publishing, Melbourne, p. 54. Flannery T (Ed.) (2009) Watkin Tench’s 1788. Text Publishing, Melbourne, p. 43. Clarkson C, Marwick B, Wallis L (2017) Buried tools and pigments tell a new history of humans in Australia for 65 000years.TheConversation,20July,. Different sources give slightly varying numbers. Keneally T (2009) Australians: Origins to Eureka, Vol. 1. Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, p. 61. Colwell M (1973) Ships and Seafarers in Australian Waters. Lansdowne Press, Melbourne, p. 14. Planel P (n.d.) Locks and Lavatories: The Architecture of Privacy. English Heritage Gatekeeper Series, English Heritage Publications, London; Hart R (1971) English Life in the Nineteenth Century. GP Putman’s Sons, New York. PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) (2001) The Madding Crowd: 18th Century London. In Sweeny Todd: Part II, PBS, . Solomon S (2010) Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power and Civilization. HarperCollins, New York. Weidenhofer M (1973) The Convict Years: Transportation and the Penal System 1788 –1868. Lansdowne Press, Melbourne, p. 68. Fellowship of First Fleeters (n. d.) The Ships of the First Fleet, . Puncheon: a large cask holding from 72 to 120 imperial gallons (327.6 to 546 L); Hogshead: a large cask, usually about 50 imperial gallons (227.5 L). Gergis J, Garden D, Fenby C (2010) The influence of climate on the first European settlement of Australia: a comparison of weather journals, documentary data and palaeoclimate records, 1788-1793. Environmental History 15 (3), 485–507. Flannery T (Ed.) (1999) The Birth of Sydney. Text Publishing, Melbourne; Hughes-Truman-Ludlow (Consulting Engineers) (1984) Wells and Underground Tanks. Report to the Heritage Council of NSW. A more comprehensive historical account of water in the new colony is provided in The Water Dreamers by Michael Cathcart, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2009. Cathcart 2009; Sydney Water Corporation, The Tank Stream, . Phillips V, Drury S, Latta D, Smith, R (n. d.) New Ways in an Ancient Land. Bay Books, Kensington, NSW, p. 13. Keneally 2009; Phillips et al. Phillips et al.; Hocking G (2005) They Came by Sea: Terra Nullius to Crown Colony. The Five Mile Press, Waverton, NSW. Keneally 2009. Flannery 2009, pp. 65, 70, 72. Information board at Two Tree Point, Adventure Bay. Tasmania Parks & Wildlife Service, Kingborough Council, Friends of Adventure Bay. Flannery 1999, p. 60. Gergis, Garden & Fenby 2010. Flannery 1999, p. 129. Flannery 1999, p. 111. The rainfall in the Sydney region is actually quite high, with a long-term average of 1215 mm per year. But for those accustomed to a consistently wetter and cooler climate, the variability and unpredictability of the rainfall coupled with periods of drought and very high temperatures must have been a trial. Keneally 2009. Flannery 2009, p. 119. Weidenhofer 1973, p. 93. Keneally 2009, p. 191. Weidenhofer 1973, p. 93. Flannery 1999, p. 122. Flannery 1999, pp. 176–78. McDonald J (2008) Art of Australia Vol. 1: Exploration to Federation. Pan Macmillan Australia, Sydney, pp. 43, 41. Cathcart 2009, pp. 30–31. Phillips et al. n. d., p. 12. The Sydney Gazette, 12 February 1810, p. 2, .

Endnotes

38. Cathcart 2009, p. 35. 39. The Australian, Sydney, 9 December 1826, p. 2, National Library of Australia, . 40. Walsh GP (1966) Busby, John (1765–1857). In Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, . 41. There is evidence of public wells being dug from 1828, from where water was transferred to houses by horse and cart – see Flannery 1999. 42. Hughes-Truman-Ludlow 1984, p. 14. 43. Cathcart 2009, p. 40. 44. Sydney Water, The history of Sydney Water. ; Office of Environment & Heritage, Busby’s Bore, New South Wales Government, . 45. Hector D (2011) Sydney’s water sewerage and drainage system. Journal & Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales 144, 3–25; Cathcart 2009. 46. Sydney Water, The history of Sydney Water; WaterNSW, Heritage and History, . 47. Cathcart 2009. 48. Diamond JM (2005) Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed. Penguin Books, New York.

Chapter 5 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

Flannery T (Ed.) (2009) Watkin Tench’s 1788. Text Publishing, Melbourne, pp. 109–110. Nichols M (1995) A Brief History of the Land at Upper Half Moon Reach, Hawkesbury River. . Flannery 2009, p. 111. Flannery 2009, p. 189. Flannery 2009, p. 116. Langton M (2008) They made a solitude and called it peace. In First Australians: An illustrated history. (Eds R Perkins and M Langton) pp. 3–61. The Miegunyah Press, Carlton, Victoria Oxley J (1819) Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales, by Order of The British Government in The Years 1817-18. Project Gutenberg Australia, Part I, 20 May 1817, . These are the Macquarie Marshes, one of the largest semi-permanent freshwater wetlands in south-east Australia, covering about 200 000 hectares. Also see Chapter 13. Oxley Journal Part II, 18 August 1818. Oxley Journal Part II, 3 July 1818. Schuler GFH (1891) Exploration of Australia. Supplement to The Illustrated Australian News, Melbourne, 1 January, p. 2, . Sturt C (1833) Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, 1828, 1829, 1830, 1831, Vols. I and II. vol. I ch. 2, Available in Project Gutenberg Australia, . Sturt 1833, vol. I ch. 4. Sturt 1833, vol. I ch. 1, ch. 4. Sturt 1833, vol. II ch. 4. Sturt 1833, vol. II ch. 7. Sturt C (1848) Narrative of an Expedition into Central Australia, performed under the authority of Her Majesty’s government, during the years 1844, 5 and 6, ch. 11, ebooks@Adelaide, University of Adelaide, . Boyce D (1970) Clarke of the Kindur: Convict, Bushranger, Explorer. Melbourne University Press, Melbourne. Boyce 1970, p. 7. The Australian, Sydney, 11 November 1831, quoted in Boyce 1970, p. 8. Mitchell TL (1838) Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol. 1, 2nd edn, rev. T & W Boone, London. Available in Project Gutenberg, Australia, . Baker DWA (2006–2015) Mitchell, Sir Thomas Livingstone (1792–1855). In Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, Canberra; Boyce 1970, p. 74. Eyre EJ (1845) Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia and Overland from Adelaide to King George’s Sound, Vol 1, ch. ix, November 3. T & W Boone, London. Available in Project Gutenberg, Australia, .

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24. Sturt 1833, vol. I ch. 1. 25. BOM (Bureau of Meteorology) Average annual, seasonal and monthly rainfall. BOM, Australian Government, . 26. Geoscience Australia, ‘Climatic extremes’; The Australian desert, while relatively dry, does not match the extreme aridity of deserts such as the Sahara where vast areas have average annual rainfalls below 25 mm. 27. Averaged over the period 1900–2009. See Australian Bureau of Statistics (2012) Australia’s climate. In 1301.0 Year Book Australia, 2012. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra. 28. BOM Rainfall variability, . To construct this map an index of variability is calculated. This index is defined as the 90th rainfall percentile minus the 10th rainfall percentile divided by the 50th percentile (or median). This index varies from low to extreme. See Bureau of Meteorology, Average Annual, seasonal and monthly rainfall.

Chapter 6 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29.

The doctrine of terra nullius, on which British claims to possession of Australia were based, was overturned by the High Court of Australia in 1992 as part of its decision in the Mabo land rights case. Keneally T (2009) Australians: Origins to Eureka Volume. 1. Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW. Flannery T (Ed.) (2009) Watkin Tench’s 1788. Text Publishing, Melbourne, p. 112. Sturt C (1833) Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, 1828, 1829, 1830, 1831, Vols. I and II. Available in Project Gutenberg Australia, vol. I ch. 2, . Quoted in Boyce D (1970) Clarke of the Kindur: Convict, Bushranger, Explorer. Melbourne University Press, p. 45. Flannery T (Ed.) (2013) The Explorers. Text Publishing, Melbourne, pp. 130–33. Official information plaques near Pederick Lookout (unattributed), Kalbarri cliff line, WA. Flannery 2013, pp. 148–52. Flannery 2013, p. 203. Flannery 2013, pp. 213–26. Moorehead A (1963) Cooper’s Creek. Thomas Nelson, Melbourne, pp. 19–20. Boyce J (2008) What business have you here? In First Australians: An Illustrated History. (Eds R Perkins and M Langton) pp. 65–113. The Miegunyah Press, Carlton, Vic., pp. 67, 70. The AITSIS map of Indigenous Australia represents the language, nation or social groups of Indigenous Australia, based on published resources from 1988–1994. Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (1996) David R Horton (creator), . Flannery 2009, p. 65. Flannery 1999, p. 138. Flannery 2013, p. 73. Oxley J (1819) Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales, by Order of The British Government in The Years 1817-18. Available in Project Gutenberg Australia, Part II, 11 June 1818. . Gammage B (2011) The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia. Allen & Unwin, Sydney. Gammage 2011, p. 211. Boyce 2008, p. 70. Gammage 2011, p. 217. Pascoe B (2014) Dark Emu - Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident? Magabala Books, Broome; Gammage 2011. Sturt C (1848) Narrative of an Expedition into Central Australia, performed under the authority of Her Majesty’s government, during the years 1844, 5 and 6, ch. 11, 3 November. ebooks@Adelaide, University of Adelaide, . McKenna M (2016) From the Edge: Australia’s Lost Histories. p. 22. The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne. McKenna 2016, p. 124. Flannery 2013, p. 215. Gammage 2011, p. 282; Most Aboriginal structures, including dwellings, were destroyed by the first wave of settlers, if not by explorers. Hope J (2004) The Aboriginal People of the Darling River. In The Darling. (Eds R Breckwoldt, R Boden and J Andrew) pp. 8–21. Murray–Darling Basin Commission, Canberra; Green D, Connors L (2004) The European Explorers and Settlers. In The Darling. (Eds R Breckwoldt, R Boden and J Andrew) pp. 24–51. Murray–Darling Basin Commission, Canberra. Maclean K, Bark RH, Moggridge B, Jackson S, Pollino, C (2012) Ngemba Water Values and Interests: Ngemba Old Mission Billabong and Brewarrina Aboriginal Fish Traps (Baiame’s Nguunhu). CSIRO, Australia.

Endnotes

30. McNiven IJ (2017) The detective work behind the Budj Bim eel traps World Heritage bid. The Conversation, 8 February, ; There are also remnants of Aboriginal stone houses. In 2017 the area was proposed to UNESCO for inclusion in the World Heritage list. 31. Information board, Arthur River, Tasmania Parks & Wildlife Service. 32. Gammage 2011, p. 148. 33. Gammage 2011, p. 226. 34. Gammage 2011, p. 230. 35. Gammage 2011, pp. 231–32. 36. Flannery 2013, p. 214. 37. Gammage 2011, p. 146. 38. Bardon G, Bardon J (2004) Papunya: A Place Made After the Story, The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne. 39. Eyre EJ (1845) Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia and Overland from Adelaide to King George’s Sound, Vol 2, ch. 3. T & W Boone, London. Available in Project Gutenberg, Australia, . 40. Pascoe B (2008) How it starts. In First Australians: An Illustrated History. (Eds R Perkins and M Langton) pp. 117–171. The Miegunyah Press, Carlton, Vic; Pascoe B 2014; Green & Connors 2004; Gammage 2011.

Chapter 7 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

Mudd GM (2000) Mound Springs of the Great Artesian Basin in South Australia: a case study from Olympic Dam. Environmental Geology 39 (5), 463–476. Great Artesian Basin Coordinating Committee (2011) Water Down Under: Understanding and managing Australia’s Great Artesian Basin. Australian Government, ; Mudd 2000. The Great Dividing Range runs parallel to the east coast of Australia from Cape York in the north to Victoria in the south, dividing the east coast from the inland. It also separates rivers flowing east to the sea from those flowing westwards (inland). Great Artesian Basin Coordinating Committee 2011. Great Artesian Basin Coordinating Committee, Commonwealth of Australia, . Mudd 2000. Natural Resources Centre SA Arid Lands (n. d.) ‘The Oodnadatta Track – String of Springs’. pp. 1–16, Government of South Australia. Department of the Environment and Energy, National Heritage Places-Witjira-Dalhousie Springs. Australian Government, Canberra, . Powell O (2011) Great Artesian Basin: water from deeper down. Queensland Historical Atlas, . Great Artesian Basin Coordinating Committee 2011; GABPG (The Great Artesian Basin Protection Group Inc.) Management History: More than a century of mismanagement of the GAB, GABPG, NSW, . Paterson AB (‘Banjo’) (1983) Song of the artesian water. In The Singer of the Bush Complete works 1885-1900. (Ed. J Kent) pp. 266-67. Lansdowne Press, Sydney. (First published in The Bulletin, Sydney 1896). The Thargomindah Bore: Laying-on the water to the town, agreement with the Government. The Queenslander, Brisbane, 23 March 1895, p. 570, National Library of Australia, ; The temperature of the water expelled from the bore was, in fact, 84°C. In the tiny township of Birdsville, some 500 km to the north-west, water from the GAB now bursts to the surface at 98°C from a depth of 1292 m. Bulloo Shire Council (n. d.) Information brochure. Great Artesian Basin Coordinating Committee 2011; Gammage B (2011) The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines made Australia. Allen & Unwin, Sydney; Pascoe B (2014) Dark Emu - Black seeds: agriculture or accident? Magabala Books, Broome. Mudd 2000; The Great Artesian Basin Protection Group Inc.; Great Artesian Basin Coordinating Committee 2011. Powell 2011. Department of Agriculture and Water Resources. Great Artesian Basin sustainability initiative. Australian Government, Canberra, . Western Catchment Management Authority (2009) The Barwon-Darling River: The Great Artesian Basin. New South Wales Government, .

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19. Great Artesian Basin Coordinating Committee 2011, p. 18. 20. Department of Agriculture and Water Resources (2017) Interim Great Artesian Basin infrastructure investment program, . 21. Great Artesian Basin Coordinating Committee 2011, p. 3. 22. Frontier Economics (2016) Economic output of groundwater dependent sectors in the Great Artesian Basin. A report commissioned by the Australian Government and Great Artesian Basin jurisdictions based on advice from the Great Artesian Basin Coordinating Committee, August. 23. Kerezsy A (2014) Queensland risks running the well dry by gifting water to coal. The Conversation, 1 December, .

Chapter 8 1. 2.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17. 18.

NCGRT (National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training). What is groundwater? Australian Government, Flinders University, South Australia, Lopez-Gunn E, Llamas MR, Garrido A, Sanz D (2011) Groundwater management. In Treatise on Water Science vol. 1. (Ed. P Wilderer) pp. 97–127. Academic Press, Oxford; IGES (Institute for Global Environmental Strategies) (2007) Sustainable Groundwater Management in Asian Cities. Freshwater Resources Management Project, IGES., Kanagawa, Japan. pp. 93–109. . Black M, King J (2009) The Atlas of Water: Mapping the World’s Most Critical Resource. Earthscan, London; Solomon S (2010) Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power and Civilization. HarperCollins, New York. Solomon 2010. Lopez-Gunn et al. 2011. Little JB (2009) The Ogallala aquifer: Saving a vital US water resource. Scientific American 1 March. ; Solomon 2010. Little 2009. Lopez-Gunn et al. 2011, p. 103. NGCRT (2013) Economic Value of Groundwater in Australia. Report prepared by Deloitte Access Economics for the NGCRT, Flinders University, South Australia. . Harrington N, Cook P (2014) Groundwater in Australia. NCGRT, Flinders University, Adelaide; Department of Land Resource Management. Water Resources Northern Territory: Understanding Groundwater. Northern Territory Government, . In an alluvial aquifer, the water is stored in the tiny spaces between sediments composed of gravel, sand, silt or clay deposited in river beds or floodplains. Alluvial aquifers are generally shallower than sedimentary aquifers, and do not have a layer of impermeable rock above them, i.e. they are unconfined aquifers. Harrington & Cook 2014; Lau JE, Commander DP, Jacobson G (1987) Hydrogeology of Australia. BMR Bulletin No. 227. Bureau of Mineral Resources, Geology and Geophysics, Department of Resources and Energy, AGPS, Canberra. National Health and Medical Research Council (2017) Australian Drinking Water Guidelines (2011) – Updated October 2017. Australian Government, . Harrington & Cook 2014. Department of Natural Resources, Environment and the Arts (2007) Alice Springs Water Resource Strategy 2006-2015. Northern Territory Government, Vol. 1, p. v, . Power and Water Corporation. Mereenie aquifer Alice Springs, Northern Territory Government, ; Department of Natural Resources, Environment and the Arts 2007; Department of Land Resource Management (2016) Alice Springs Water Allocation Plan 2016– 2026. Northern Territory Government, . Stanton J (1992) The Australian Geographic Book of The Canning Stock Route. Australian Geographic Pty Ltd, Terrey Hills, NSW; History of the Canning Stock Route. National Museum of Australia, Canberra. . National Water Commission (2012) Groundwater Essentials. Australian Government, Australian Government Web Archive, ; Water Corporation of WA, ; Lau, Commander & Jacobson 1987; Harrington & Cook 2014; Bennett M, Gardner A (2014) Saving water in a drying climate: Lessons from south-west Australia. The Conversation, 1 July, .

Endnotes

19. Water Corporation of WA. 20. Morgan R (2015) ‘Drought-proofing’ Perth: the long view of Western Australian water. The Conversation, 16 February, . 21. Bennett & Gardner 2014. 22. Water NSW. ‘Botany Sand Beds aquifer’, New South Wales Government, ; University of New South Wales (2015) ‘Managed aquifer recharge in the Botany aquifer’, Connected Waters Initiative, Sydney. 23. National Water Commission 2012. 24. Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and the Environment (2014) Water: Groundwater. Tasmanian Government, . 25. National Water Commission 2012. 26. Harrington & Cook 2014; National Water Commission 2012. 27. Reside A, Mappin B, Watson J, Chapman S, Kearney S (2016) Four environmental reasons why fast-tracking the Carmichael coal mine is a bad idea. The Conversation, 2 November, ; Moon E (2017) Why does the Carmichael mine need to use so much water? The Conversation, 15 April, . 28. Harrington & Cook 2014; Australia Pacific LNG Coal seam gas, . 29. Harrington & Cook 2014; Campbell A, Turton S (2102) Coal seam gas: just another land use in a big country. The Conversation, 13 November, ; Smee B (2018) Plan to dump 15 tonnes of salt waste in Murray–Darling headwaters hits roadblock. The Guardian, Australia edition, 29 December, . 30. Cubby B (2011) Coal seam gas industry on a ‘knife’s edge. The Age, Melbourne, 8 November; Leser D (2011) What lies beneath. Good Weekend, supplement to The Age, Melbourne, 13 August, pp.14-20; Arup T (2015) Coal seam gas effects likely to hit Gippsland water users and ecosystems: The Age, Melbourne, 6 August, p. 15. 31. Evershed N (2018) An unconventional gas boom: the rise of CSG in Australia. The Guardian, 18 June (online). 32. Shoebridge J (presenter) (2012) Clear science or muddy waters? Academic questions CSG research. ABC North Coast NSW, Australian Broadcasting Commission, 8 November. 33. Currell M (2015) Groundwater: the natural wonder that needs protecting from coal seam gas, The Conversation, 20 May, ; Hannam P (2018) ‘Shocked’: Santos CSG project omissions stoke opponents concerns. The Sydney Morning Herald, 12 July (online).

Chapter 9 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

A terminal lake is one that has no outflow. Lake Eyre Basin. Website of the Intergovernmental Lake Eyre Basin Secretariat, Australian, Queensland, South Australian and Northern Territory Governments. ; Lockyer P (2012) Lake Eyre: A journey through the heart of the continent. ABC Books, Harper Collins, Sydney. Peake-Jones K (1952) Farewell to Lake Eyre. Walkabout 1 April, pp. 10–17. Peake-Jones 1952, p. 14. Peake-Jones 1952, pp. 13, 16. Olsen J quoted in Hart D (1975) John Olsen. Craftsman House, rev. edn, Sydney, 2000, p. 133. Lake Eyre Basin. Kingsford R (2012a) The paradox of Lake Eyre. In Lockyer P (2012) Lake Eyre: A Journey through the Heart of the Continent. pp. 37–51. ABC Books, Harper Collins, Sydney. Lake Eyre Basin; FitzSimons T (2010) Channel country. The Queensland Historical Atlas, . Some of Australia’s large desert rivers were named ‘creeks’ by the early European explorers because they thought such shallow watercourses did not deserve to be called rivers. Kingsford 2012a; Lake Eyre Basin; Georgina Diamantina Catchment Committee (n. d.) Information Board, Cawnpore Lookout, Boulia Shire, Queensland. Marree-Innamincka NRM (Natural Resources Management) Group (2013) ‘Birdsville Strzelecki: Legendary tracks of the Marree-Innamincka district. South Australian Arid Lands.’ NRM Board, Government of South Australia; Kingsford 2012a. Marree-Innamincka NRM Group 2013.

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14. Quoted in FitzSimons 2010. 15. Figgis P, Mosley G (1988) Willandra Lakes. In Australia’s Wilderness Heritage, Vol. 1. pp. 65–81, Weldon Publishing, Sydney; FitzSimons 2010. 16. Kingsford R (2012b) The boom and bust. In Lockyer P (2012) Lake Eyre: A Journey through the Heart of the Continent. pp. 107–137. ABC Books, Harper Collins, Sydney. 17. Joyce EB, McCann DA (2011) Burke & Wills: The Scientific Legacy of the Victorian Exploring Expedition. CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne; Kingsford 2012b. 18. Lake Eyre Yacht Club (2013) Stakeholder submission in response to the Lake Eyre National Park Management Plan Discussion Paper, . 19. Lockyer 2012. 20. Quinlan R, Traill B (n. d.) Protecting Queensland’s Channel Country and the Flows to Lake Eyre. Pew Environment Group, Graceville East, Queensland. 21. Rebgetz L, Arthur C, Agius K (2014) Wild Rivers legislation repealed in Queensland as new planning laws introduced to protect rivers. ABC News, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Melbourne, 19 November, . 22. Zonca C (2014) Channel Country farmers fear resource development following repeal of Wild Rivers laws. ABC News, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Melbourne, 6 August, ; Howden S (2013) Battle to let the rivers run wild. Sydney Morning Herald, 2 March. 23. Crothers A (2017) Wild Rivers legislation battle reignites as environmental group tells Qld Government [to] honour election promise. ABC News, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Melbourne, 8 June, . 24. Kingsford R (Ed.) (2017) Lake Eyre Basin Rivers: Environmental, Social and Economic Importance. CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne. 25. Cresswell R et al. (2009) Water resources in Northern Australia. Northern Australia Land and Water Science Review 2009, Northern Australia Land and Water Taskforce, CSIRO, Canberra. 26. Woinarski J, Mackey B, Nix H, Traill B (2007) The Nature of Northern Australia: Its Natural Values, Ecological Processes and Future Prospects. ANU E Press, Australian National University, Canberra. See also 27. North Australia is home to 40 per cent of Australia’s reptile species and 75 per cent of the country’s freshwater fish species (Woinarski et al. 2007).

Chapter 10 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

Eastern Goldfields Historical Society, . Gold had been discovered in the vicinity of Southern Cross in the 1880s, and by 1891, mining at Southern Cross was in full operation. Evans R, West A (2007) Constructing Australia. ABC Books, The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne. BOM (Bureau of Meteorology) Climate statistics for Australian locations. Australian Government, ; Evans & West 2007. The Kalgoorlie Miner, Perth, 16 December 1897, p. 2, . Information plaque, Golden Pipeline Heritage Trail, Mount Charlotte site, National Trust of WA. Evans & West 2007, p. 83. John Aspinall died a year later when he was struck by lightning while prospecting at Hawks Nest, south-east of Laverton. Information plaque, Golden Quest Discovery Trail, Coolgardie. Notes of a site visit to Broad Arrow on 27 April 2015. Notes of a site visit to Norseman on 31 March 2015. Burlong Pool on the Gulgulga Bilya. Wheatbelt: natural resource management, . West Australian Goldfields. The Advertiser, Adelaide, 5 May 1894, p. 5, . The Railway Water Supply. The West Australian, Perth, Thursday 23 December 1897, p. 3, . Western Australia. The Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, 18 December 1901, p. 10, . Crowley FK (1981) Forrest, Sir John (1847–1918). In Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, .

Endnotes

16. The National Trust of Australia (Western Australia) (n. d.) The Politics of the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme. The Golden Pipeline, Information Sheet Number 1, 17. Evans & West 2007; Crowley 1981. 18. Evans & West 2007; The National Trust of Australia (Western Australia) (n. d.) Mundaring Weir. The Golden Pipeline, Information Sheet Number 4, . 19. Notes of a site visit to Mundaring Weir on 23 April 2015. 20. Evans & West 2007, pp. 102, 103. 21. The National Trust of Australia (Western Australia) (n. d.) Mundaring Weir. . 22. Notes of site visit to Mundaring Weir; Evans & West 2007. 23. Evans & West 2007; WA Goldfields: Building a Pipeline. Western Australian Museum, Government of Western Australia, ; The National Trust of Australia (Western Australia) (n. d.) Pipes of the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme. The Golden Pipeline, Information Sheet Number 2 . 24. Cunderdin Museum. 25. The National Trust of Australia (Western Australia) (n. d.) Building the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme. The Golden Pipeline, Information Sheet Number 5 . 26. Information plaque, Golden Pipeline Heritage Trail, Ghooli pump station site, National Trust of WA. 27. Information plaque, Golden Pipeline Heritage Trail, Gilgai pump station site, National Trust of WA. 28. Evans & West 2007, pp. 110–111. 29. Evans & West 2007, p. 112. 30. Cunderdin Museum; Eucalyptus wandoo is a medium-sized tree found widely in southwest Western Australia. 31. Notes of a site visit to Meckering on 24 April 2015. 32. The National Trust of Australia (Western Australia) (n. d.) Building the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme. Water Corporation of WA. The Golden Pipeline, . 33. In two 30-year periods (1900–1930 and 1945–1975) an area of land roughly the size of Britain was stripped of its native vegetation for the production of grain and livestock. However, ancient soils, long dry periods and lack of rivers constituted a singular challenge to farming methods imported from Britain. Perspectives on the development of the Wheatbelt, the loss of natural vegetation and biodiversity, and the environmental consequences are provided in an article by Tony Hughes-D’Aeth (2017) Writing the WA Wheatbelt, a place of radical environmental change, The Conversation, 18 May, . 34. Notes of a site visit to Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines Pty Ltd ‘Super Pit’, Kalgoorlie, on 26 April 2015.

Chapter 11 1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) (2017) 4610.0 – Water Account, Australia, 2015–16, ABS, Canberra, ; The percentage varies with the season; in dry years there is less water available for use in agriculture. ABS (2017) 4618.0 – Water Use on Australian Farms, 2015–16. ABS, Canberra, . ABS (2017) 4610.0.55.008 – Gross value of irrigated agricultural production, 2015–16. ABS, Canberra, . Meyer WS (2005) The Irrigation Industry in the Murray and Murrumbidgee Basins. Cooperative Research Centre for Irrigation Futures, Technical Report 03/05. CSIRO National Research Flagship Initiative; ABS (2017) 4618.0 – Water Use on Australian Farms, 2015-16. Tasmanian Irrigation Pty Ltd ‘Tasmanian Irrigation’., . ABS (2008) Irrigation on Australian Farms. In 1301.0 - Year Book Australia, 2008, ABS, Canberra, .

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7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34.

35.

Black M, King J (2009) The Atlas of Water: Mapping the World’s Most Critical Resource. Earthscan, London; Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (1996) Water and Food Security. World Food Summit, ; Mission 2014: Feeding the World: Modernized Irrigation. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, . Dingle T (1984) The Victorians: Settling. Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, McMahons Point, New South Wales. Dingle 1984, p. 121. Meyer 2005; Dingle 1984; Cathcart M (2009) The Water Dreamers: The Remarkable History of Our Dry Continent. Text Publishing, Melbourne. Green DK (1988/2001) Water and Irrigation. In Technology in Australia 1788-1988, pp. 146–201. Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, . Not to be confused with a later Sugarloaf Reservoir located in the Christmas Hills north-east of Melbourne, completed in 1981 as part of the Melbourne water supply system. Priestly S (1984) The Victorians: Making Their Mark. Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, McMahons Point, New South Wales. McNicoll R (1981) Dethridge, John Stewart (1865–1926). In Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, . McIlvena B (2006) Wartook Water Flows. The Wimmera Mail-Times. Horsham, 9 October, p.18, In A history of our headworks. GWMWater, . Keneally T (2011) Australians: Eureka to the Diggers Vol. 2. Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW. Discover Murray . Keneally 2011; Dingle 1984; Cathcart 2009. Hammer C (2011) The River: A Journey through the Murray-Darling Basin. Updated Edition, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Victoria; PIRSA (Primary Industries and Regions South Australia) (2015) Irrigation development and management in South Australia’s Riverland. PIRSA, Government of South Australia, . Dingle 1984; Meyer 2005. Goulburn-Murray Rural Water Corporation . The River Murray Waters Agreement was signed in 1914, ratified by the governments and came into operation in 2015. Murray–Darling Basin Authority, ; Hammer 2011. Meyer 2005, p. 118. NSW Government. Riverina – regional history. Office of Environment & Heritage, . Murrumbidgee Irrigation Limited, . Meyer 2005. Oxley J (1819) Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales, by Order of The British Government in The Years 1817-18. Project Gutenberg Australia, Part I, 5 June 1817. . The History of Irrigation in the NSW Murray region. Murray Irrigation and others, . Meyer 2005. Lake Argyle, . Economists at Large (2013) Rivers, Rivers, Everywhere: The Ord River Irrigation Area and the economics of developing riparian water resource. Report prepared by Economists at Large Pty Ltd for the Wilderness Society, . Economists at Large 2013; Larsen J, Gibbes B, Quiggin J (2014) Dam hard: water storage is a historic headache for Australia. The Conversation, 27 October, ; Wahlquist A (2008) Thirsty Country. Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW. Petheram C, Tickell S, O’Gara F, Bristow KL, Smith A, Jolly P (2008) Analysis of the Lower Burdekin, Ord and Katherine-Douglas-Daly Irrigation Areas: Implications to future design and management of tropical irrigation. CRC for Irrigation Futures Technical Report O5/08, CSIRO Land and Water Science Report 19/08; SunWater, Scheme: Burdekin Haughton, . Christen EW, Hornbuckle JW, Ayars JE (2005) Irrigation application systems used on farm in the Murray and Murrumbidgee Basins. In The Irrigation Industry in the Murray and Murrumbidgee Basins. (WS Meyer), Coop-

Endnotes

36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

erative Research Centre for Irrigation Futures, Technical Report 03/05, CSIRO National Research Flagship Initiative, Appendix 2. Solomon S (2010) Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power and Civilization. HarperCollins, New York, p. 43. Australian Academy of Science (2015) The Dirt on Our Soils, . Preece K (2009) Modernising Irrigation Systems in Northern Victoria, Australia. Paper presented at the Irrigation and Drainage Conference 2009, Irrigation Australia Ltd, Swan Hill, Vic, Australia, 18–21 October; Connections Project, . National Water Commission (2006) Investing in Irrigation: Achieving Efficiency and Sustainability. Case Studies. Australian Government, Australian Government Web Archive. Connections Project; Long W (2016) New manager for multi-billion dollar irrigation upgrade project as Goulburn-Murray Water removed. ABC Rural. Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 4 March.

Chapter 12 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

Sydney was declared a city in 1842, when the population was around 35 000. Hector D (2011) Sydney’s water sewerage and drainage system. Journal & Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales 144, 3–25; WaterNSW, Water Supply: Heritage and History. . WaterNSW. Department of the Environment and Primary Industries. Dams. Victoria State Government, . Rayner T (2013) Dam it all? River futures in northern Australia. The Conversation, August 16. . A large dam is defined as one with a height of at least 15 m, or at least 10 m if: (a) the capacity of the reservoir is at least 1 GL, or (b) the maximum flood discharge dealt with by the dam is at least 2000 m3/s (2 ML/s), or (c) the dam is of unusual design (Australian National Committee on Large Dams Incorporated (ANCOLD) 2012). Chanson H, James DP (2012) Extreme Reservoir Siltation: A Case Study – Rapid Reservoir Sedimentation in Australia. University of Queensland, . Shire of Central Darling NSW (n.d.) ‘Government Tank’ (Information sheet). Strictly speaking, a (ground) tank is an excavation to store water from an above-ground source. It appears that the term ‘tank’ is/was used in New South Wales for a scooped-earth water storage on a farm. ‘Dam’ was and is used for all such storages in other states. Chanson H, James DP (1999–2000) Railway Dams in Australia: Six Historical Structures. Transactions Newcomen Society 71 (2), 283–303. ANCOLD (Australian National Committee on Large Dams Incorporated) (2012) Dams Information, ; Parramatta City Council (n.d.) Lake Parramatta Reserve, (brochure); Keentok M (2008) Lake Parramatta. In Dictionary of Sydney, . ANCOLD 2012. Murrumbidgee Irrigation Limited, . Larsen J, Gibbes B, Quiggin J (2014) Dam hard: water storage is a historic headache for Australia. The Conversation, 27 October, . The size of dams may be ordered in a number of different ways, e.g. by height, by capacity of the reservoir formed or by hydro-electric power developed (where relevant). In this book size is ordered by capacity of the reservoir. Solomon S (2010) Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power and Civilization. HarperCollins, New York, p. 330. Solomon 2010. Gleick P (2001) Safeguarding our water: Making every drop count. Scientific American, February. Murdoch L (2015) Hell in dam nations. Sunday Age, Melbourne, 28 June, pp. 24–25; Rhiannon L, Brooke C (1997) Dam mania on the mighty Mekong. Habitat Australia. August, pp. 23–25. Meredith P (2011) To dam or not to dam? Australian Geographic, January; Vervoort W (2014) Dams are not the smart way to secure water for agriculture. The Conversation, 21 October, ; International Rivers, . Laurance B (2018) China-backed Sumatran dam threatens the rarest ape in the world. The Conversation, 4 May, . Petheram C, Tickell S, O’Gara F, Bristow KL, Smith A, Jolly P (2008) Analysis of the Lower Burdekin, Ord and Katherine-Douglas-Daly Irrigation Areas: Implications to future design and management of tropical irrigation. CRC for Irrigation Futures Technical Report O5/08, CSIRO Land and Water Science Report 19/08. World Commission on Dams (2000) Dams and Development. The Report of the World Commission on Dams. Earthscan Publications Ltd, London and Sterling, VA; quotation from p. xxxi.

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23. Murdoch 2015. 24. Geoscience Australia. Hydro Energy. Australian Government, ; Clean Energy Council (n.d.) Hydroelectricity Fact Sheet 1, . 25. Geoscience Australia, Hydro Energy; Dargaville R (2017) Snowy Hydro gets a boost, but ‘seawater hydro’ could help South Australia. The Conversation, 17 March 2017, . 26. West O (1882) Living Memory. In The Birth of Sydney. (Ed. T Flannery) pp. 306–316. Text Publishing, Melbourne. 27. Dargaville 2017; Genex Power (2015) 250 MW Kidston Pumped Storage Hydro Project. . 28. Geoscience Australia. Hydro Energy. 29. The Gordon Dam formed Lake Gordon and two smaller dams on the Huon and Serpentine Rivers, flooded the original Lake Pedder and formed a new Lake Pedder 24 times the original size. For the purposes of hydroelectricity generation, the two new lakes – Gordon and Pedder – are connected by a canal (the McPartlan Pass Canal) and operate as a single entity.) 30. Lupton R (2006) Electricity. In The Companion to Tasmanian History. Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies, University of Tasmania; Davies L (2006) Lake Pedder. In The Companion to Tasmanian History. Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies, University of Tasmania. 31. Harries D (2011) Hydroelectricity in Australia: past, present and future. ecogeneration, March/April, . 32. Ephemeral lakes: usually dry, but fill with water for brief periods during or after rain. 33. Geoscience Australia. Australian Government, . 34. Lake Baikal, . 35. SAWater. Blue Lake reservoir, Government of South Australia, .

Chapter 13 1.

Clarkson C, Marwick B, Wallis L (2017) Buried tools and pigments tell a new history of humans in Australia for 65,000 years. The Conversation, 20 July, ; Westaway M, Bowern C, Lambert D, Wright J, Subramanian S (2016) DNA reveals a new history of the First Australians. The Conversation, 22 September, ; Department of the Environment and Energy, World Heritage Places – Willandra Lakes Region. Australian Government, . 2. Atkinson W (2008) The schools of human experience. In First Australians: An Illustrated History. (Eds R Perkins and M Langton) pp. 287–329. The Miegunyah Press, Carlton, Victoria; Hope J (2004) The Aboriginal People of the Darling River. In The Darling. (Eds R Breckwoldt, R Boden and J Andrew) pp. 8–21. Murray–Darling Basin Commission, Canberra. 3. Schuler GFH (1891) Exploration of Australia. In Supplement to The Illustrated Australian News, Melbourne, 1 January, p. 7, . 4. Between 1997 and 2009, south-eastern Australia experienced the most persistent rainfall deficit since the start of the twentieth century. Annual rainfall during the Millennium drought was 73 mm below average (or 12.4 per cent below the twentieth century mean) for the years 1997–2009 inclusive. 5. When the naturally-occurring acid sulphate soils in the beds of the lakes – harmless when covered with water – become exposed to air when the level of water in the lakes is exceptionally low, they can react with oxygen to form sulphuric acid. 6. MDBA (Murray–Darling Basin Authority), Canberra, . 7. MDBA (2010) Guide to the proposed Basin Plan, Volume 2, ch. 2, Murray–Darling Basin Authority, Canberra, . 8. Macroinvertebrates – Animals without a backbone large enough to be seen with the naked eye. 9. Ramsar – The Convention on Wetlands of International Importance (the Ramsar Convention) was signed in Ramsar, Iran in 1971. The Convention aims to halt the worldwide loss of wetlands and to conserve those that remain. Ramsar sites are those listed under the Ramsar Convention; Australia has 65 Ramsar sites. 10. Department of the Environment and Energy, Wetlands. Australian Government, ; Kingsford R (2004) Waterbirds and Wetlands of the Darling River: ‘A wide river with pelicans and other wildfowl’ (Sturt 1829). In The Darling. (Eds R Breckwoldt, R Boden and J Andrew) pp. 234–257. Murray–Darling Basin Commission, Canberra.

Endnotes

11. Sturt C (1848) Narrative of an Expedition into Central Australia, performed under the authority of Her Majesty’s government, during the years 1844, 5 and 6, ch. 1. ebooks@Adelaide, University of Adelaide, < https://ebooks. adelaide.edu.au/s/sturt/charles/s93n/complete.html>. 12. MDBA; The Basin produces $22 billion worth of food and fibre every year. 13. Hirst J (2014) Australian History in 7 Questions. Black Inc., Collingwood, Victoria. 14. Office of Economic and Statistical Research (2009) Transport. In Queensland Past and Present: 100 Years of Statistics, 1896-1996, ch. 6, section 1. Queensland Government. 15. Murray–Darling Basin Commission (2003) Inland Shipping: The Navigation of the Murray-Darling River System. Murray–Darling Basin Commission, Canberra. pp. 1–8, . 16. Central Darling Shire NSW (n.d.) Port of Wilcannia. Information sheet. 17. Explosion of the Steamer Providence (1872) The Argus. Melbourne, 23 November, p.7, . 18. Hammer C (2011) The River: A Journey through the Murray-Darling Basin. Updated Edition, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Victoria, p. 35. 19. Colwell M (1973) Ships and Seafarers in Australian Waters. Lansdowne Press, Melbourne. 20. Central Darling Shire NSW (n.d.) Menindee Lakes Scheme. Information sheet. 21. Central Darling Shire NSW (n.d.) Wilcannia Boat Club. Information sheet. 22. Foster R (2016) Menindee lakes, droughts and record low inflows. Murray–Darling Basin Plan, Submission 334 – supplementary submission 1. 23. Power J (2016) Barnaby Joyce sending Murray River to ‘certain slow death’, says South Australia. Sydney Morning Herald. 19 November, . 24. Hammer 2011, p. 91. 25. Wainwright S, Lowe R (2016) ‘Overwhelming’ support so far among Broken Hill residents for pipeline from Murray River: MP. ABC News, Melbourne, 30 May, ; Wainwright S (2018) Silent supporters of water pipeline in the west NSW speak up as opposition mounts. ABC News, Melbourne, 14 February, . 26. Tomevska S, Gooch D (2019) Drought-stricken Broken Hill’s water supply switched to Murray River as $500m pipeline turned on. ABC News, Melbourne, 26 February, . 27. Lee T (2016) Darling River fails to deliver fresh water, leaving growers’ lives in limbo. ABC News, Melbourne, 6 February, . 28. Davies A (2018) The Menindee Lakes project: who loses and who really wins? The Guardian, 11 April, . 29. Darling Anabranch Adaptive Management Monitoring Program. A project conducted by the Centre for Freshwater Ecosystems, La Trobe University and funded by the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage, New South Wales Government, . 30. Lawson H (1900) The Song of the Darling River. In Verses Popular and Humorous. Angus and Robertson, Sydney. 31. Sturt C (1833) Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, 1828, 1829, 1830, 1831, Vols. I and II. Project Gutenberg Australia, vol. I ch. 2, . 32. Department of the Environment and Energy, Wetlands; Lawler S (2013) Unknown wonders: Barmah-Millewa forest. The Conversation, 14 May, . 33. Cunningham S quoted in Samantha Blair (2009) Last Stands. Monash Magazine, May, pp.14–15. 34. Northern Victoria & Southern Riverina Conservation and Environment Site (2010) Barmah-Millewa Forest. In Bushland Reserves of northern Victoria and the Southern Riverina. ; see Ch. 14 for ‘environmental water entitlements’. 35. Hammer 2011. 36. Moles S, Fletcher B, Hankinson A (2008) Wetlands for our Future: Meeting national and international wetland commitments in the Murray–Darling Basin. Australian Conservation Foundation and Inland Rivers Network, October, . 37. Hammer 2011, p. 66. 38. Lawson H (1900) The Paroo. In Verses Popular and Humorous. Angus and Robertson, Sydney.

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39. Office of Environment & Heritage (2012) Macquarie Marshes Ramsar Site. New South Wales Government, . 40. Department of the Environment and Energy. World Heritage Places – Willandra Lakes Region, . 41. SAWater. Major pipelines. Government of South Australia, . 42. A Modern Water Scheme: Morgan-Whyalla pipeline inspected (1946) Kalgoorlie Miner, April 5, p. 1, . 43. BOM (Bureau of Meteorology). Recent rainfall, drought and southern Australia’s long-term rainfall decline. Australian Government, .

Chapter 14 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

MDBA (Murray–Darling Basin Authority), Canberra . MDBA (2016) The Murray–Darling Basin – at a glance. Murray–Darling Basin Authority, Canberra, . Murray–Darling Basin Commission (2002) The Living Murray: Restoring the health of the River Murray. Murray–Darling Basin Ministerial Council. Department of Agriculture and Water Resources (2004) National Water Initiative. Australian Government, . Connell D (2012) Flailing about in the Murray-Darling Basin. In Environmental Policy Failures: The Australian Story. (Eds K Crowley and KJ Walker) pp. 74–87. Tilde University Press, Prahran, Vic. Ruchel M (2007) PM’s Plan for the Murray–Darling Basin. Habitat Australia 35 (2), 24–25. The goal of environmental watering is to protect and restore the resilience of the Basin’s rivers, wetlands, floodplains, lakes and red gum forests, together with the plants and animals that depend on them. Davies PE, Harris JH, Hillman TJ, Walker KF (2010) The Sustainable Rivers Audit: assessing river ecosystem health in the Murray–Darling Basin, Australia. Marine and Freshwater Research 61 (7), 764–777. Ker P, Arup T (2010a) Minimum return for Murray to sustain health of River. The Age, Melbourne, 9 October, p. 13. Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists (2010) Sustainable Diversions in the Murray–Darling Basin. . Ker P, Arup T (2010b) Victorian farmers facing heavy water cuts. The Age, Melbourne, 9 October, p. 12. Ker P (2010a) Victorian towns threatened by water cuts: report. The Age, Melbourne,15 October, p. 1. Kerr C (2010) Labor could open the floodgates for voters. Murray-Darling blueprint. The Weekend Australian, 9–10 October, p. 6. Mollenkopf T quoted by Lauren Wilson (2010) Regional centres at risk. The Weekend Australian, 9–10 October. ‘The Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists is an independent group of Australian scientists concerned with advancing solutions to secure the long-term health of Australia’s land, water and biodiversity.’ . Arup T (2010) Water inquiry to quell bush fury. The Age, Melbourne, 15 October, p. 21. Ker P (2010b) Murray plan ignored water cut warnings. The Age, Melbourne, 16 October. Ker P (2010c), Economist ticks Murray cuts. The Age, Melbourne, 14 October. Willingham R (2011) Key scientists cast doubt on Murray water return. The Sydney Morning Herald, 21 May. ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) News (2011) Riverina Mayor welcomes Murray-Darling Plan withdrawal. Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Melbourne, 23 May, . Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists (2012) Statement on the 2011 Draft Murray–Darling Basin Plan. January, . Young WJ, Bond N, Brookes J, Gawne B, Jones GJ (2011) ‘Science review of the estimation of an environmentally sustainable level of take for the Murray-Darling Basin.’ Final report to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority from the CSIRO Water for a Healthy Country Flagship, CSIRO, November. Cullen W (2012) Gillard announces Murray–Darling plan changes. ABC News, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Melbourne, 26 October, . Discussions with Jason Alexandra, consultant in natural resource management and sustainability science and former executive of the MDBA, contributed to the preparation of this section.

Endnotes

25. Department of the Environment (2014) Water Recovery Strategy for the Murray–Darling Basin. Australian Government, June, . 26. Experts include water economist Quentin Grafton, environmental scientist Richard Kingsford, natural resource management advisor Terry Hillman, and Gavin McMahon of the National Irrigators’ Council. 27. Current at the time of writing. An amount of $10 billion was allocated with the passing of the Water Act 2007, and an additional $3 billion was added by the new Labor government when it was elected in late 2007. 28. Sturmer J, Harmsen N (2015) Barnaby Joyce looks to revive health audit of Murray–Darling Basin. ABC News, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Melbourne, 12 October, ; McMahon G (2015) Almost three years on, has the Murray-Darling Basin Plan delivered on its promises? Newsletter. Australian Farm Institute, August 2015, . 29. McMahon 2015. 30. Webb A, Ryder D, Dyer F, Stewardson M, Grace M, Bond N, Frazier P, Ye Q, Stoffels R, Watts RJ, Capon S, Wassens S (2018) It will take decades, but the Murray Darling Basin Plan is delivering environmental improvements.TheConversation,1May,. 31. According to the MDBA annual report, 524 728 t of salt were diverted from the Murray River in the financial year 2015–16. 32. Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists (2017a) Five actions to deliver the Murray– Darling Basin Plan ‘in full and on time’. Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, Sydney, p. 11. 33. Horne J (2015) As drought looms, the Murray-Darling is in much healthier shape – just don’t get complacent. The Conversation, 3 November, . 34. Meadows J (2015) Good things take time. Habitat Australia 43 (2), 6–8. 35. Adamson D, Loch A (2014) The latest Murray–Darling plan could leave farmers high and dry. The Conversation, 4 June, ; Crase L (2013) Changes to Murray–Darling plan try to make water run uphill. The Conversation, 11 October; Wittwer G, Dixon J (2012) Smarter ways to save water and jobs in the Murray–Darling. The Conversation, 6 July, . 36. Bettles C (2015) Labor vows to reverse water move. Farm online National, 16 September, . 37. Marshall GR, Alexandra J (2017) Institutional path dependence and environmental water recovery in Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin. Water Alternatives 9 (3), 679–703. 38. Parliament of Australia (2016) Report: Refreshing the plan. Commonwealth of Australia, 17 March, . 39. MDBA (2016) Northern Basin review. Murray–Darling Basin Authority, Canberra. ; Vidot A, Worthington B (2016) Murray– Darling Basin Authority recommends reducing water buybacks in northern communities. ABC News, Rural, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 22 November, . 40. The MDBA Ministerial Council was established under the Water Act 2007 and consists of ministers from each of the Basin states and the Commonwealth who also chairs the council. 41. Power J (2016) Barnaby Joyce sending Murray River to ‘certain slow death’, says South Australia. Sydney Morning Herald. 19 November, . 42. ABC News (2016a) Murray-Darling Basin Plan: Victoria, NSW need to pick up pace, SA Water Minister says. Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Melbourne,18 November, ; Taylor L (2016) Government agenda in doubt as Barnaby Joyce rejects South Australia water deal. The Guardian, Australian edition, 21 November, ; Vidot & Worthington 2016; Power 2016; Environment Victoria (2016). Basin Plan unravelling from both ends. Media release, 22 November, . 43. Power 2016. 44. Besser L (2017) Pumped. Four Corners, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 24 July.

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45. Hannam P (2017a) More claims of excess water extraction by NSW irrigators surface. The Sydney Morning Herald, 6 August. 46. Gartrell A (2017) Turnbull wants national review of Murray Darling Basin water theft. The Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, 30 July. 47. Coorey P (2017) Barnaby Joyce’s board nominee quits after being offered secret water data. Australian Financial Review, 2 August, . 48. MDBA (2017b) The Murray–Darling Basin Water Compliance Review. Murray–Darling Basin Authority, Canberra, . 49. McNally L (2018) Alleged Barwon–Darling water thieves to be prosecuted after ABC investigation. ABC News, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Melbourne, 8 March, . 50. Pittock J (2017) New Royal Commission into water theft may be just the tip of iceberg for the Murray–Darling Basin. The Conversation, 1 December, . 51. MDBA (2017a) Proposed adjustment to Sustainable Diversion Limits in the southern Basin. Murray–Darling Basin Authority, Canberra, . 52. Vidot & Worthington 2016. 53. Crawford School of Public Policy (2017) No meaningful results from $5 billion water reform. Media release. Australian National University, 28 February, . 54. Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists (2017b) Review of water reform in the Murray–Darling Basin. . 55. The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) is the peak intergovernmental forum in Australia. COAG comprises the Prime Minister, state and territory First Ministers and the President of the Australian Local Government Association. 56. Finlayson M, Baumgartner L, Gell P (2017) We need more than just extra water to save the Murray–Darling Basin. The Conversation, 30 June, . 57. Grafton Q, et al. (2018) The Murray Darling Basin Plan is not delivering – there’s no more time to Waste. The Conversation, 5 February, . 58. Keane D, McCarthy M (2018) Declaration urges fundamental changes to Murray–Darling Basin administration. ABC News, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Melbourne, 5 February, . 59. Hasham N (2018b) Rivers in jeopardy: $13b plan in crisis. The Age, Melbourne, 13 February, pp. 1, 6. 60. Davies A (2018) Coalition’s changes to Murray–Darling basin plan expected to fail. The Guardian, . 61. Hannam P (2018a) $1.3b Murray–Darling Basin projects queried. The Age, 6 May, p. 16; Hannam P (2018b) Labor deal means river plan ticked. The Age, 8 May, p. 4; Hannam P (2018c) Murray–Darling Basin plan still not flowing right. The Age, 9 May, p. 16. 62. Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists (2018) Murray-Darling Basin Plan: Requirements for SDL adjustment projects. . 63. Sullivan K (2018) Murray–Darling Basin Plan secured as ministers agree on socio-economic measurement. ABC News, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Melbourne, 14 December, .

Chapter 15 1. 2. 3. 4.

WaterNSW. Water operations: Heritage and History, . Sydney Water. Water network, . Boyce J (2013) 1835: The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia. 3rd edn, Black Inc., Melbourne. Melbourne Water. History of our water supply system, ; Boyce 2013.

Endnotes

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36. 37.

Norcock J, an officer on the HMS Rattlesnake, the vessel that transported the first government officials from Sydney to Port Phillip in 1836. Quoted in Boyce 2013, p. 5. Boyce 2013, p. 93. Flannery T (Ed.) (2002) The Birth of Melbourne. Text Publishing, Melbourne, p. 13 et. seq. Melbourne Water. History of our water supply system. Only Melbourne. 1853 – 2007: Flow of History – Yan Yean Reservoir, . Preston H (1966) Blackburn, James (1803–1854). In Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, ; Parks Victoria. Yan Yean Reservoir Park, . Melbourne Playgrounds. Toorourrong Reservoir Park, (Information sheet), . Melbourne Water. History of our water supply system; Melbourne Playgrounds. ABC News (2016) Victoria to switch desalination plant on next summer, following decline in water storages. Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Melbourne, 6 March, . Department of Water Supply and Sewerage (1970) A Brief Outline of the Brisbane Water Supply System. Brisbane City Council, Brisbane, . South-east Queensland Water. Water supply, . Holmes Justice CE (2012) Queensland Floods Commission of Inquiry, Final Report. Brisbane, Queensland, p. 437, . Holmes 2012, p. 438. T-change, . TasWater, . Boyce J (2008) What business have you here? In First Australians: An Illustrated History. (Eds R Perkins and M Langton) pp. 65–113. The Miegunyah Press, Carlton, Vic; Brodie N (2017) The Vandemonian War. Hardie Grant, Melbourne. T-change; Ritchie G (2013) On the Convict Trail: Hobart’s water supply. (blog post), 5 July, ; Mason-Cox M (2006) Water. In The Companion to Tasmanian History. Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies, University of Tasmania, . Mean rainfall across all years that records have been kept. SAWater. Water sources. Government of South Australia, . Leadbeater MM (2017) Water – South Australia’s early days. Family History South Australia, . Daniels CB (Ed.) (2010) Adelaide: Water of a City. The Wakefield Press, Adelaide. Australian Museum. Indigenous Australian Timeline – 1500 to 1900, . State Library of South Australia. Adelaide – Water Supply. Government of South Australia, ; Port Adelaide water supply. South Australian Register, Adelaide, 15 May 1863, p. 2, . Leadbeater 2006–2017; Wahlquist A (2008) Thirsty Country. Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW. State Library of South Australia, as quoted. SAWater; State Library of South Australia. SAWater. Wills D (2014) Figures reveal more of South Australia’s water is coming from the River Murray despite $2.2 billion spend on desalination plant. The Advertiser, Adelaide, 2 January. Water Corporation of WA, . Engineers Australia Western Australian Division (2012) Nomination of Perth’s First Public Water Supply Scheme for an Engineering Heritage Australia Recognition Award. Perth, WA; Mine Water and Environment Research Centre. ‘History of water use in the Perth–Bunbury region.’ Centre for Ecosystem Management, Edith Cowan University. Engineers Australia Western Australian Division 2012, p. 8. Engineers Australia Western Australian Division 2012. Power and Water Corporation. Northern Territory Government, .

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38. Power and Water Corporation (2013) The Darwin water story 2013. Northern Territory Government, . 39. Icon Water. Water and sewerage network and supply map. ACT Government, . 40. Travelling Australia (n.d.) Longreach, . 41. Goyder’s Line of Rainfall (1927) The Mail, Adelaide, 2 April, p. 1, Accessed 25 February 2016. 42. Dulaney M, Jooste J, Keane D (2015) Goyder’s Line moving south with climate change, SA farmers say, forcing farming changes. ABC News, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Melbourne, 2 December, . 43. Office for Water Security (2010) Water for Good. Government of South Australia, Adelaide, . 44. Information from visits to Coober Pedy in July 2010, August 2017; Johno (2014) Water Supply for the Coober Pedy Opal Field. Johno’s Opals, Coober Pedy, ; District Council of Coober Pedy, . 45. Heath J (2012) The Water Supply in Perth Australia. Viacorp, . 46. Minister for Water (2016) Broome solar trial a first for Water Corporation [Minister]. (media release), Parliament of Western Australia, 10 October, . 47. Sydney Water. ‘Water network’ provides some relevant information. See also Chapter 16. 48. Department of Water and Environmental Regulation (2018) Farm water supply planning scheme. Government of Western Australia, .

Chapter 16 Bennett M, Gardner A (2014) Saving water in a drying climate: lessons from South-West Australia. The Conversation, 1 July, ; McFarlane D (2013) In south-western Australia, water shortages will worsen. The Conversation, 20 February, . 2. Kingwell R (2013) Australia’s farming future: Western Australia. The Conversation, 3 June, . 3. Gray D (2016) Lorne: great waves, not much water. The Age, Melbourne, 27 April, p. 8; Grindlay D (2016) ‘Unprecedented’ water shortages in south west Victoria expected to affect Australian red meat supply. ABC Rural, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 28 January, ; Miller A (2016a) Water Pressure. Stock & Land. 21 April, p. 1; Miller A (2016b) Minions keep the blues at bay for farmer: low allocation compounds dry. Stock & Land, 21 April, p. 12; Stein G (2015) Broken Hill faces another water crisis as drought lingers and Menindee Lakes dry up. ABC News, Melbourne, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 21 March, . 4. Willingham R (2015) Water stores across state sink further. The Age, Melbourne, 21 December. 5. BOM (Bureau of Meteorology) (2018) Australia in September 2018. . 6. Productivity Commission (2008) Towards Urban Water Reform: A discussion paper. Productivity Commission Research Paper, Melbourne, p. xix, . 7. McGee C (2013) Your home: water. Australian Government, . 8. Department of Environment, Water, Land and Planning (2018) Permanent Water Saving Rules. Victorian Government, . 9. BOM (2018) Water restrictions. . 10. Battersby L (2016) Tasmania running on diesel as energy crisis gets worse. The Age, 30 March, p. 11; Bolger (2016) Hydro Tasmania’s dam levels jump 4pc in a week to 20pc after sustained rainfall. ABC News, Melbourne, 16 May, . 11. Normally, Tasmania gets about 60 per cent of its electricity from hydro power and the balance from the national grid via an undersea cable, Basslink. Unfortunately, the (privately-owned) cable broke in December 2015, and its repair was not completed until mid-2016. 1.

Endnotes

12. ACE CRC (Antarctic Climate and Ecosystem Cooperative Research Centre) (2010) ‘Climate Futures for Tasmania water and catchments: the summary.’ ACE CRC, Hobart, Tasmania. 13. Thyer M, Westra S (2015) Adelaide is facing a dry future – it needs to start planning now. The Conversation, 19 February, ; Westra S, Thyer M, Leonard M, Lambert M (2014) Impacts of climate change on run-off. Final Report Volume. 3: Impacts of climate change on surface water in the Onkaparinga catchment. Goyder Institute for Water Research, Technical Report Series no. 14/27. Adelaide, . 14. BOM (2015) Water in Australia 2013-14. . 15. BOM (2018) Water in Australia 2016-17. ; BOM (2018) Climate of the 2017 to 2018 financial year. . 16. Summers D, Van Dijk A (2016) Environmental score card shows Australia is once again in decline. The Conversation, 5 May, . 17. BOM and CSIRO (2018) State of the climate 2018. Australian Government, ; Grose M, Bettio L (2018) State of the climate 2018: Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO. The Conversation, 20 December, . 18. Schewe J (2013) Water supply will struggle to meet demands of a thirstier world. The Conversation, 23 December, . 19. Richter B (2014) Chasing Water: A Guide for Moving from Scarcity to Sustainability. Island Press, Washington, USA. 20. Richter 2014; United Nations Development Programme (2016) Sustainable development goals. . 21. Solomon S (2010) Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power and Civilization. HarperCollins, New York. 22. Dyer D (2010) Climate Wars. Scribe Publications, Melbourne. 23. One example is Bacigalupi P (2015) The Water Knife. Vintage Books, New York. 24. Richter 2104; Sedlak D (2014) Water 4.0: The Past, Present, and Future of the World’s Most Vital Resource. Yale University Press, New Haven; Osmosis is the tendency of a fluid, usually water, to pass through a semi-permeable membrane into a solution where the concentration of dissolved substance is higher, thus equalising the concentrations on either side of the membrane. In reverse osmosis, pressure forces the water to pass in the opposite direction. 25. Sedlak 2014. 26. Marchi A, Dandy G, Maier H (2014) ‘Financial costs, energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions for major supply water sources and demand management options for metropolitan Adelaide.’ Goyder Institute for Water Research Technical Report Series no.14/12, Adelaide, South Australia, p. 13. 27. South-east Queensland Water (2017) Water supply: Desalination, . 28. Clark G, Johnston E (2018) Desal plants might do less damage to marine environments than we thought. The Conversation, 20 September, . 29. Parkinson G (2015) Saudis to build world’s first large scale solar powered desalination plant. Renew Economy. 22 January, ; Laursen L (2018) Saudi Arabia pushes to use solar power for desalination plants. IEEE Spectrum, 20 April, . 30. Straight K (2016) Saltwater vegies. A Taste of Landline. Series 2 episode 4, ABC Current Affairs, Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 31. BOM. Climate resilient water sources 2012–13. Australian Government, . 32. Barlass T (2015) $535m paid to keep desalination plant in state of ‘hibernation’. Sydney Morning Herald, 12 April, . 33. Sedlak 2014; Melbourne Water (2018) Eastern Treatment Plant. Melbourne Water, Victoria, . 34. Department for Environment and Water (2010) Water for Good. Government of South Australia, Adelaide, .

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35. National Water Commission (2007) Using Recycled Water for Drinking: An introduction. Waterlines Occasional Paper No. 2, June. Report prepared by GHD on behalf of the National Water Commission, Australian Government, Canberra. 36. Recycled Water in Australia (2009) Australian guidelines., . 37. Radcliffe JC (2004) Water recycling in Australia. Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, Parkville, Victoria. 38. Marsden Jacob Associates (2012) Progress against the national target of 30% of Australia’s wastewater being recycled by 2015. Report prepared for the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, Commonwealth of Australia. 39. All percentages have been projected from actual 2009/10 figures, taking account of the implementation of known projects (as provided in Marsden Jacob Associates 2012). 40. Sydney Water Rouse Hill water recycling plant. Sydney Water Corporation, . 41. Donnellan A (2017) Recycled wastewater extension in Adelaide’s north to bolster horticulture exports. ABC News, Melbourne, 10 April, . 42. Melbourne Water (2016) Using recycled water. . 43. National Health and Medical Research Council (2017) Australian Drinking Water Guidelines (2011). Updated October 2017. Australian Government, . 44. Toowoomba says no to recycled water (2006) The Sydney Morning Herald. 30 July, . 45. Water Corporation of WA, ; Also see Chapter 8. 46. Seqwater, Purified recycled water. . 47. Hagare P (2012) Recycled drinking water: what Australians need to know. The Conversation, 30 May, . 48. National Water Commission (2012) Progress in Managed Aquifer Recharge in Australia. Waterlines report series No. 73, March. Prepared by SKM and CSIRO on behalf of the National Water Commission, Australian Government, . 49. Martin R (Ed.) (2013) Clogging issues associated with managed aquifer recharge methods. IAH Commission on Managing Aquifer Recharge, Australia, . 50. Recharging the Botany Sands aquifer using stormwater, discussed in Chapter 8, is an example of MAR for environmental benefit. 51. Power and Water Corporation (2008) Water reuse in the Alice. Northern Territory Government, . 52. Mine dewatering involves lowering the water table around the mine. 53. National Water Commission (2009) Managed Aquifer Recharge. Australian Government, February, . 54. National Water Commission 2012, p. 72. 55. City of Melbourne. Urban Water, Fitzroy Gardens Stormwater Harvesting Scheme. City of Melbourne & State Government of Victoria, . 56. City of Melbourne. Urban Water, The Trin Warren Tam-boore wetland. City of Melbourne & State Government of Victoria, . 57. O’Callaghan D (2009) Wetlands wash waste out of your water. ABC Mildura-Swan Hill, 3 December, . 58. Lindsay N (2016) South East Water turns developer. The Age, Melbourne, 16 November, p. 27. 59. South East Water, Aquarevo: A new way of living. . 60. Government of South Australia (2010) Introduction to WSUD – Summary sheet. . 61. City of Melbourne. Urban Water, Howard Street raingardens. City of Melbourne & State Government of Victoria, . 62. Rural Solutions SA, Environmental Design and Management Team (2009) Case Study 1: Bioretention swale at Oaklands station. Water Sensitive Urban Design Greater Adelaide Region, .

Endnotes

63. City of Melbourne, Urban Water, Recycled water in Council House 2. City of Melbourne & State Government of Victoria, . 64. New WAter Ways. Fiona Stanley Hospital. . 65. enHealth (2010) ‘Guidance on use of rainwater tanks.’ Commonwealth of Australia, . 66. Water access entitlements are rights to an ongoing share of the total amount of water available in a system. Water allocations are the actual amounts of water available under water access entitlements in a given season. This amount is decided by the relevant water authority – the MDBA in the case of the Murray–Darling Basin. 67. National Water Commission (2011) Water markets in Australia: A short history. Australian Government, Canberra. Australian Government Web Archive, ; Department of Agriculture and Water Resources (2004) National Water Initiative. Australian Government, ; Murray–Darling Basin Authority (2014) Guidelines for the water trading rules. Australian Government, . 68. Watermark Australia (2007) Our water mark: Australians making a difference in water reform. The Victorian Women’s Trust, Melbourne, pp. 79–86. 69. Barlow M (2007) Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water. Black Inc., Melbourne; Buxton M (2012) Water privatisation: failure of public policy. In Environmental Policy Failures: The Australian Story. (Eds K Crowley and KJ Walker) pp. 102–115. Tilde University Press, Prahran, Vic.; Kiem AS (2013) Drought and water policy in Australia: challenges for the future illustrated by the issues associated with water trading and climate change adaption in the Murray-Darling Basin. Global Environmental Change 23 (6), 1615–1626. 70. 70. Schremmer J, Isa N (2019) Foreign ownership of water entitlements reveals China and US are the biggest investors. ABC Rural, 25 March,; Davies A (2019) Water investment companies score bumper year as farmers hit by drought. The Guardian Australia, 29 May, .

Chapter 17 1.

2.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Australian Government. The Snowy Mountains Scheme, ; Office of Water (2010) Returning environmental flows to the Snowy River: An overview of water recovery, management and delivery of increased flows. NSW Government, February, . The narrow gauge 35-kilometre railway was built by the Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company between 1894 and 1899. The Abt rack and pinion system had to be used so the engines could climb the steep (1 in 16) grades along the King River valley. Annual rainfall in the area was up to 3.5 metres, making working conditions in the dense vegetation extremely demanding. (Information board, Teepookana railway station, from a site visit in February 2017.) ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) (2012) 1301.0 – Australia’s climate. Year Book of Australia, 2012, ABS, Canberra, . Ghassemi F, White I (2007) Inter-basin Water Transfer: Case Studies from Australia, United States, Canada, China, and India, Cambridge University Press; Quiggin J (2006) Urban water supply in Australia: the option of diverting water from irrigation. Public Policy 1, 14–22. Pigram JJ (2007) Australia’s Water Resources: From Use to Management. Rev. edn. CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood, Victoria. Wooding R (2008) Populate, parch and panic: two centuries of dreaming about nation-building in inland Australia. In Australia under Construction: Nation-building Past, Present and Future. (Ed. J Butcher) pp. 57–70. ANU E Press, Australian National University, Canberra. Prosser I (2011) Current water availability and use. In Water. (Ed. I Prosser) pp. 1–16. Science and Solutions for Australia series, CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood, Vic. Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities (2010) ‘Moving water long distances: Grand schemes or pipe dreams?’ Water for the Future program, Australian Government, Canberra. .

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9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30.

Richter B (2014) Chasing Water: A Guide for Moving from Scarcity to Sustainability. Island Press, Washington U.S.A. MDBA (Murray–Darling Basin Authority) Sustainable diversion limits. MDBA, Canberra, . Crase L (2016) Latest Murray-Darling squabble sheds light on the plan’s flaws, The Conversation, 30 November, . Grafton Q, et al. (2018) The Murray Darling Basin Plan is not delivering – there’s no more time to Waste. The Conversation, 5 February, . Alexandra J (2017) Risks, uncertainty and climate confusion in the Murray–Darling Basin reforms. Water Economics and Policy 3 (3), 1–21; Borschmann G, Phillips S (2015) Climate review promised after dispute with top water scientists. RN Breakfast, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 22 June, ; Experts include: Professor Quentin Grafton, director of the Centre for Water Economics and Environment at the ANU; Dr John Williams, former chief land and water scientist at the CSIRO; Mike Young, professor of water and environmental policy at the University of Adelaide; and Richard Davis, former chief science advisor to the recently-disbanded National Water Commission. Professor Mike Young, quoted in Borschmann & Phillips 2015. Vidot A (2015) Water flows into Murray–Darling system now equal to 2002, fifth-driest year on record. ABC News, Melbourne, 23 October, . Department of Primary Industries–Water (2016) Lower Darling & Menindee Lakes management update May 2016. New South Wales Government, . MDBA (2017) Ecological needs of low flows in the Barwon–Darling. Technical report, MDBA, Canberra, . Lee T (2016) Darling River fails to deliver fresh water, leaving growers’ lives in limbo. ABC News, 6 February, ; Wainwright S, Volkofsky A (2018) Drying up of the Darling River angers community, sparks second protest. ABC News, 2 April, . Pittock J (2017) New Royal Commission into water theft may be just the tip of iceberg for the Murray–Darling Basin. The Conversation, 1 December. . Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists (2017b) Review of water reform in the Murray–Darling Basin. . Productivity Commission (2018) Murray–Darling Basin Plan: Five-year assessment. Draft Report, Australian Government, Canberra. Productivity Commission (2019) Murray–Darling Basin Plan: Five–year assessment. Final Report, Australian Government, Canberra, . South Australia (2019) Murray–Darling Basin Royal Commission, Report. . Australian Academy of Science (2019) Investigation of the causes of mass fish kills in the Menindee region NSW over the summer of 2018–2019. . Vertessy R (Chair) (2019) Independent assessment of the 2018–19 fish deaths in the Lower Darling. Final Report, 29 March, . The Nationals for Regional Australia (2019) Federal Government responds to independent report into fish deaths. 10 April, . Wroe D (2019) Taxpayers ‘dudded in water deal’. The Age, 22 April, p. 6; Murphy K, Davies A (2019) Calls mount for royal commission into controversial Murray–Darling water buybacks. The Guardian, Australian edition, 21 April, . Daley P (2016) Transforming the bush: At home on the farm, with robots. Griffith Review: Imagining the Future 52, 269–282. Daley discusses the emergence of a new generation of smart automated machinery, including possibly swarms of small solar-powered ground robots with various sensors. Allan T (2011) Virtual Water: Tackling the Threat to Our Planet’s Most Precious Resource. I. B. Taurus, London. Pascoe B (2014) Dark Emu - Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident? Magabala Books, Broome.

Endnotes

31. Allan 2011, pp. 54–55. 32. Australian Government (2015) White paper on developing northern Australia, 18 June, . 33. McKenna M (2016) From the Edge: Australia’s Lost Histories, ch. 2, p. 69. The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, p. 69. 34. Petheram C, Tickell S, O’Gara F, Bristow KL, Smith A, Jolly P (2008) Analysis of the Lower Burdekin, Ord and Katherine-Douglas-Daly Irrigation Areas: Implications to future design and management of tropical irrigation. CRC for Irrigation Futures Technical Report O5/08, CSIRO Land and Water Science Report 19/08. 35. Northern Australia Land and Water Taskforce (2009) Sustainable development in northern Australia. Commonwealth of Australia, December, . 36. Turton S (2015) Climate: the elephant in the room for developing northern Australia. The Conversation, 22 June, . 37. O’Donnell E, Hart B (2016) Damming northern Australia: we need to learn hard lessons from the south, The Conversation, 10 February, . 38. Hart B, Horne A, O’Donnell E (2016) Rush to dam northern Australia comes at the expense of sustainability. The Conversation, 26 June, . 39. Northern Australia Land and Water Taskforce 2009, p. v. 40. Sedlak D (2014) Water 4.0: The Past, Present, and Future of the World’s Most Vital Resource. Yale University Press, New Haven. 41. Haertsch S (2005) ‘Sydney’s water supply and the press’. paper presented at The State of Australian Cities National Conference, Brisbane, 30 November–2 December. 42. Melbourne Water (2015) Water Outlook for Melbourne 2015. December. 43. Wright I (2018) More of us are drinking recycled sewage water than most people realise. The Conversation, 13 Mar, . 44. Department of Agriculture and Water Resources (2004) National Water Initiative. Australian Government, . 45. MDBA (2014) Guidelines for the water trading rules. Canberra, ; Connell D (2012) Flailing about in the Murray-Darling Basin. In Environmental Policy Failure: The Australian Story. (Eds K Crowley and KJ Walker) pp. 74–87. Tilde University Press, Prahran, Vic; Buxton M (2012) Water privatisation: failure of public policy. In Environmental Policy Failure: The Australian Story, pp. 102–115. 46. Productivity Commission (2016) Regulation of Australian Agriculture. Draft Report, Australian Government, Canberra, p. 17. 47. Connell 2012. 48. Buxton 2012. 49. Bell S, Quiggin J (2008) The limits of markets: the politics of water management in rural Australia. Environmental Politics 17 (5), 712–729. 50. Grafton RQ, Horne J, Wheeler S (2016) On the marketisation of water: evidence from the Murray–Darling Basin, Australia. Water Resources Management 30 (3), 913–926. 51. Alexandra J (2018) Evolving governance and contested water reforms in Australia’s Murray Darling Basin. Water 10 (2), p. 113, . 52. Han E (2016) Bottled water boom: Why Australians are paying more per litre than for milk and petrol. The Sydney Morning Herald, 8 May, . 53. Barlow M (2007) Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water. Black Inc., Melbourne. 54. Somerville E (2017) Residents ramp up fight against bottled water in North-East Victoria. ABC News, Melbourne, 24 November, . 55. National Health and Medical Research Council (2017) Australian Drinking Water Guidelines (2011) – Updated October 2017. Australian Government, . 56. Han 2016; Dalley E (2014) Is bottled water worth the cost? Choice, 8 August, ; Clean Up Australia (2015) Bottled water. May, ; Han E, Smith E (2016) Bottled water producer admits consumers paying for plastic, not ‘pure, safe’ water. The Sydney Morning Herald, 17 July, . Barlow 2007; Buxton 2012. PM ‘pulls rug’ on Snowy sale (2006) The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 June, . These factors are also highlighted in ‘The Australian Water Reform Journey’, a paper prepared for the Australian Water Partnership, August 2016. Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (2018) Target 155. Victorian Government, . The Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources and Deputy Prime Minister at the time reportedly had a ‘burning ambition’ to build dams – see Bettles C (2015) Labor vows to reverse water move. Farm online National, 16 September, . National Heritage Trust 2004, Twelve case studies from across Australia, Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, . TED talks: TED, which began in 1984, is a not-for-profit organisation devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks. . For example, Schultz J, Gleeson B (Eds) (2016) ‘Imagining the future’, Griffith Review, whole no. 52. AWS (Alliance for Water Stewardship) See and . RoboDirect Financial Health Barometer Food and Farming Report (2016) Quoted in Cormack L, Households’ food spending is high – and wastage too. The Age, Melbourne, 2016 23 September, p. 3. Allan 2011; Global Footprint Network ; Watermark Australia (2007) Our water mark: Australians making a difference in water Reform. The Victorian Women’s Trust, Melbourne; Gordon J (2007) Australian households world’s worst at water use. The Age, Melbourne, 21 May, . For example, Richter 2014; Sedlak 2014. Solomon S (2010) Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power and Civilization. HarperCollins, New York. Radcliffe JC (2004) Water recycling in Australia: a review undertaken by the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering. Parkville, Victoria. For example, Connell 2012; Solomon 2010; Richter 2014; Sedlak 2014. Connell 2012, p. 83. Bureau of Meteorology. Improving water information. . Some information topics are: Climate resilient water sources; Groundwater information; Water markets information; Annual report on the performance of water utilities; Seasonal streamflow forecasts. Jackson S (2018) Deal on Murray Darling Basin Plan could make history for Indigenous water Rights. The Conversation, 10 May, ; Jackson S, Laborde S (2018) New river council will give traditional owners in the Kimberley a unified voice. The Conversation, 21 June, . Murray–Darling Basin Authority (2017c) Aboriginal partnerships action plan 2017. . Gleick P (2012) A way forward? A soft path for water. In Last Call at the Oasis. (Ed. K Weber) pp. 85–102. Participant Media, New York. The soft path is also highlighted by Solomon 2010, and elements of it are featured in a series of papers prepared in 2016 and 2017 for the Australian Water Partnership, a funded initiative of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Advocates of this approach have also recommended including ‘intellectual’, ‘human’ and ‘manufactured’ dimensions to this so-called ‘integrated reporting’, and have argued that this approach is more appropriate to the huge issues of the twenty-first century such as water shortages and climate change – see Gleeson–White J (2016) A new mother tongue: turning limits into opportunities. Griffith Review 52, Imagining the Future, pp. 239–246.

Appendix 1 1. 2.

Other states have taken some action to develop long-term water plans, or are in the process of doing so, including Western Australia, Victoria and South-east Queensland. Government of South Australia (2010) Water for good: A plan to ensure our water future to 2050.

Index

Page numbers in bold refer to figures or plates. 75-Miles Dam  131 1788, changes after  39, 42–5, 62, 157 Aboriginal communities  1, 75, 87, 92, 157, 169, 185, 201, 205 and water decision-making  242–3 Aboriginal peoples  35, 40, 50, 57–62,  68, 78, 93, 166, 193 abundant food and water  58–9 crops  59–60, 233 cultural and economic life  97, 157 cultural sites  64 detailed knowledge of country  59 firestick farming  59, 190 fish and eel traps  60–1, 145 managing water resources  60–2, 238 sacred sites  77 shaping the environment  59–60 trade routes  64, 91, 92 Adelaide 172 Adelaide water supply  194–6 challenges 208 Hope Valley reservoir  196 Mount Bold reservoir  196 pipelines  194, 196 Adventure Bay  40, 41 agricultural production  178 agricultural productivity  5, 230 agricultural products  115, 116 future products  232–3 agriculture  4, 5, 6, 9, 14, 115, 204 Alice Springs  64, 65, 76–7 Alice Springs Water Resource Strategy: 2006– 2015 77 Alice Springs water supply  76–7, 205, 217 Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS)  240, 242 Amadeus Basin  76, 77 ambitious schemes  227 anabranch  Great Darling Anabranch  166, 168 Murray River  122

Antonine Baths  14, 21, 22 aquatic plants and animals  91–3 aqueduct of Carthage  21, 22, 107–8, 111 aqueducts  4, 9–14, 27, 191, 194 aqueducts, Roman  11–24 and cisterns  20–3 calcium carbonate encrustations  18–19 design 13 gradient  12, 13, 19 maintenance 19 structure 18 water sources  18 aquifer  7, 25, 63–71, 73–85, 97, 205 confined, unconfined  79 recharge 79 Aquifer Storage and Recovery  79, 196–7, 216– 18, 239 Arabana people  87 Archer River  97 arid zone, Australia  29 Arrernte people  76 artesian bores  66–71, 147, 148 numbers  66, 68–70 rehabilitation  69, 70 uses  66–8, 70–1 artesian springs  63, 64, 65, 69 artesian water, uses  66–8, 70–1 Aspinall, John  100, 102 Assyria  2, 4, 5 audit Murray Rivers waters 1995  176 of Basin water recovery  187, 230 Australia, ancient  1 Australia Felix  53 Australian Academy of Sciences  231 Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering  213 Australian Capital Territory, water supply 200 Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) 183 Australian Drinking Water Guidelines  see drinking water guidelines, Australia Australian Alps  174 277

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Avon River  101 Ayr 123 Babylonian civilisation  4 Balranald 122 Barcaldine  66, 90 Barcoo River  53, 89 Barmah Choke  170 threatened species  170 Barmah–Millewa Forest  169–70 barrages 173 purposes 173–4 Barwon–Darling river system  229 Barwon River  52, 57, 157 Basin Plan  see Murray–Darling Basin Plan Baths of Caracella  14 baths, public  13, 14 Belyando River  53 biodiversity 97 bio-filtration 219 bio-retention swale  221 Birdsville  89, 90, 257 Birdsville Track  92 Blackburn, James  190–1 Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson  39, 47 Blowering Dam  122 Blue Lake, Mount Gambier  82 Blue Mountains  39, 47, 48 Bogan River  50, 53, 157 border check irrigation  124 bore drains  68, 69, 70 bore water  81 bores  65, 79, 82, 124, 199, see also artesian bores Botany Sands  79–80 Botany Wetlands  45 bottled water  237 Bourke  162, 164–5, 167 Bradfield, J.J.C.  227 Bradfield Scheme  227 Brewarrina 162 Brewarrina Aboriginal fish traps  60 Brisbane River  54, 192 Brisbane water supply  192–3 Broad Arrow  101 Broken Hill water supply  167–8 Broome 205 Broughton River  53, 234–5 Burdekin Dam  123, 124 Burdekin Haughton Water Supply  123 Burdekin River  53, 115, 123 Burdekin River Delta  124 Bureau of Meteorology  193, 211, 213, 234, 238, 242 State of the Climate Report  208

Water in Australia report  208 Bureau of Statistics  238 Burke and Wills  89, 91 Burlong Pool  101, 102 Burrinjuck Dam  121, 122, 132, 136, 137 Busby’s Bore  44–5, 80, 143 problems 45 California 116 Cambridge Gulf  97 canals  4, 5, 6 Canning Stock Route  78 Cape York Peninsula  64, 96, 97, 201 Cap on surface water diverted  176 carbon emissions  136 Carthage, Roman  20–3 carting water  101, 116, 195, 196, 199, 207 castellum  12, 15 castellum divisorum  12, 13, 15, 20 secondary castella 16 Castlereagh River  50 Cataract Dam  129 Cataract River  129 cement, waterproof  12, 18 Central Australia  64, 89, 91 Central Australian Railway Line  65 Central Irrigation Trust, SA  127 Chaffey brothers  119–20 monuments 120 Channel Country  89, 90, 91, 95, 96, 148 channels  4, 5 gradient 117 irrigation 117 China, ancient  1, 6, 116 Christies Beach water recycling plant  214 cisterns  13, 14, 27, 29 aqueducts terminating in  20–3 in Roman Tiddis  20, 142 La Malga cisterns  21, 22 supplying houses  22, 23 civilisations, ancient  1–10 Clarke, George (‘Barber’)  52 climate change  1, 26, 79, 83, 136, 174, 231, 239 climate variability  1, 96 Clyde River  116 COAG (Council of Australian Governments) 187 coal seam gas (CSG)  71, 84–5 Cockatoo Sands  123 colonisation 57 colonists, British  35, 36 growth 41 numbers in 1788  35 Colorado River  133

Index

Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder  181, 187, 240 community involvement  241–2 Condamine River  49 condensation 25 condensers  33, 80, 101, 239 capacity 101, 102 conflict, water use  122, 177–80, 209 Connections Project  127 conservation movement  138 controversy Broken Hill water supply  167–8 desalination plants  212 Murray–Darling Basin Plan  179, 184–8, 231–2 convicts 35 numbers 36 Coober Pedy  138, 155, 204, 211 Coolgardie  99, 102, 104, 108, 110–12 Coolgardie safe  198–9 Coongie Lakes  91 Cooperative Research Centre for Irrigation Futures 234 Cooper Creek  52, 54, 57, 89–91, 92, 93, 95, 96, 149 Coorong  159, 173, 178, 183 cost of water  100, 101, 190, 192, 195, 199, 227–8 bottled water  34, 237 desalinated water  34, 210 recycled water  216 costs, environmental and social  228 cotton  115, 123, 167 Council House 2 (CH2)  221 Council of Australian Governments (COAG) 236 Cranbourne, recycled water  214 Crater Lake  140 crops  2, 3, 4 CSIRO  180, 234, 238, 240 State of the Climate Report  208, 217 Cunderdin  103, 105, 109, 112 Cunnamulla 66 Cunningham, Allan  49, 51 Currawinya Lakes  170 cycle of flood and drought  94, 121, 159, 160, 161, 182, 209 Daly River  96, 97, 124 Dalley, Stephanie  5 dams  129–38, 140 adverse effects  134–6 definition 130 features 130 types 130

dams, Australia  130–8, 140, 189, 190–7, 199–201, 204–5 Aboriginal 60–1 and tanks  131, 263 arch dams  130, 131 numbers and distribution  130 purposes 133 dams, hydroelectricity  136–8 dams, large adverse effects  134–6 controversies 134 costs 135–6 definition  130, 263 first large dams in Australia  132 irrigation  116, 121–4 largest in Australia  134 numbers 132 worldwide 132–4 Darling Downs  49 Darling Range  104, 197 Darling River  50, 51, 52, 53, 57, 143, 144, 156, 157–74, 201 profile  161, 165–6 stories 164–5 Dartmouth Dam  121, 134, 136, 137 Darwin River dam  197, 199 Darwin water supply  197, 199 high consumption  199 Manton Dam  199 One-Mile railway dam  199 Deakin, Alfred  116, 119 decentralisation, small scale  240–1 decentralised schemes  212, 213, 218, 219, 243, 250 decision-making, water management  226 and Aboriginal communities  242–3 dimensions 243–4 Deniboota Irrigation Area  122 Deniliquin  122, 169 Derwent River  54, 116, 140, 193–4 desalination  33–4, 79, 81, 82, 112, 204, 209–12 costs  34, 210, 211 energy use  210, 211 desalination plants  210, 235 Adelaide  196, 249–50 Australia-wide 211 Brisbane 193 capacities  210, 211 issues 210–12 Kangaroo Island  201 Melbourne 192 Perth 196 Sydney 190 worldwide  210, 211

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Dethridge, John  118 Dethridge wheel  117, 118, 119, 127, 239 Dholavira 6 Diamantina River  54, 89, 90, 92, 95, 96 discharge areas  63, 66 disease  100, 101, 103, 194, 195, 197 distillation 33 diversions, of river water  161 diversity of plants and animals  160, 170–1 Dorrigo 226 Dove Lake  140 drainage channels  122 drains and sewers Indus Valley  6 Roman civilisation  17–18 drinking water guidelines, Australia  76, 214 standards 79 drip irrigation  125 drought  1, 28, 40, 55, 189, 191, 192, 208, 215, 236 recurring  235, 238 see also Millennium drought Drysdale River  96 dry season (‘the Dry’)  54, 91, 97, 197 Dumaresq River  49 Durack River  54, 96 Eastern Goldfields of WA  67, 80, 104 output 99 East Gippsland  201 East Goulburn Main Channel  117 East Kimberley  205 Echuca  119, 169 economic development  208–9 economic values  115, 123, 161, 230 Edward River  122 Egyptian civilisation, ancient  1, 2, 6, 116, 124 Eildon Reservoir  117, 119, 134 electronic water meters  127 Eliot Creek  97 El Nino  28–9, 209 El Nino–Southern Oscillation (ENSO)  28, 40, 209 England, late 18th century  37 lack of sanitation  37 pollution 37 water for domestic use  37 water supply and distribution  37 Enoggera Dam  132 environmental degradation  45, 68, 70, 241 environmental flows  180 environmental groups  178, 185 environmental impacts  228 of desalination plants  210–11

environmental values  95, 96, 232 environmental water, lack of  231 environmental watering  177, 166 Environmental Watering Plan  181 Eora people  35, 36, 57, 58 erosion 94 Esperance 80 Etiwanda Wetlands  219, 220 Eucla basin  76, 81 Eucumbene Dam  134 European Union’s Framework Directive  136, 242 evaporation  26, 50, 68 rates  27, 76, 87, 96, 99, 104, 119, 124, 135, 159, 166, 234 evapotranspiration 26 Eyre Creek  89 Eyre, Edward John  53, 64, 87 Eyre Peninsula  203 Eyre’s Waterhole  53, see also waterholes, Aboriginal farm dams  135, 263 farming 2 early colonists  39, 41 farms, water sources  205–6 Federation drought  120, 162 Fiona Stanley Hospital  221 First Fleet  35 First Fleeters  40 First Mildura Irrigation Trust  120 fish deaths  231 fish migration  135 Fitzroy Gardens stormwater scheme  218–19 Fitzroy River  96, 227 Flinders River  96 floodplain diversions  231 floodplain harvesting  170 floodplains  54, 89, 96, 159–61, 169–71 habitats 135 floods  1, 3, 4, 6, 28, 55 flow meters, modern  126–7 flume gates  126–7, 153, 239 food shortages  209 food supplies  157, 226 Forrest, Sir John  103–4, 105, 109, 110 fossil water  74 guidelines for use  74–5, 77 fountains, public  13 cities, ancient Roman  15–16 Sydney Cove  45 Franklin River  138 Fremantle  99, 104, 109 Frome River  91

Index

Frontinus, Sextus Julius  15, 18 furrow irrigation  124 future, opportunities and actions  238–44 Georgina River  54, 89, 96 Geraldton 104 Gibb River  97 Gilbert River  96 Gilgai pump station  109 Gleick, Peter  134, 243 global challenges  209 gnamma 99 Golden Mile  99, 113 productivity 112 goldfields  101, 102 Goldfields and Agricultural Water Supply Scheme  111–13, 204, 227 awards  112, 113 earthquake 111 Goldfields pipeline  106–8, 110 construction 106–7 innovations  106–8 joins 107, 108 locking bars  106, 111 water pressure  106–7 wooden pipes  111 Goldfields Water Supply Scheme  102–13 cost 105 criticisms  105, 109 development since 1903  111–13 path of pipeline  104, 105 pump stations  108–9, 151 receiving tanks  108–9 royal commission  109 statistics 111 steam engines  108–9, 111 gold rush  99 Goolwa 162 Gordon below Franklin  138 Gordon Dam  132, 138, 153 Gordon River  138 Goulburn–Murray Irrigation District  126, 127 Goulburn–Murray Water  120 Goulburn River  49, 117, 118 Goulburn Valley  117 Goulburn Weir  117, 132, 239 Goyder Channel  87 Goyder, George Woodroffe  202 Goyder Institute  208 Goyder Lagoon  89, 90, 92, 95 Goyder’s Line  202, 203 Grafton, Quentin  179, 186 Grampians 117

Grand Canal  7, 29 grandiose schemes  227–8 gravity flow  8, 11, 12, 19, 117, 119, 120, 166 Great Artesian Basin  25, 63–71, 73, 83, 87, 136 economic value  70–1 extent 63, 64 legislation 69 Strategic Management Plan  70 structure 63, 65 water pressure  63–8, 70 water temperature  67 water wastage  68–9 Great Artesian Basin Coordinating Committee  64, 65, 70 Great Artesian Basin Sustainability Initiative (GABSI)  69–70, 85 Great Darling Anabranch  166, 168, 183 Great Dividing Range  49, 52, 63, 89, 117, 120, 200, 226 Great Lake, Tasmania  138, 140 greenhouse gases  136 Griffith 119 groundwater, occurrence  13, 18, 25–7 groundwater, Australia  43, 44, 50, 73–85, 87, 97, 101, 112, 116, 124, 168, 197 and mining  83 case studies  76–82 contamination  75, 80, 82 occurrence 75–6 over-extraction 82–3 replenishment  79, 196 resources 234 threats 82–5 uses 75–85 groundwater, worldwide  33–4, 73–4 over-extraction 74–5 uses 73–4 Gulf Country  201 Gulf of Carpentaria  93, 201 Gundagai 50 Gwydir River  49, 52, 57, 157 habitat threats  135 Hamilton River  89 Hammer 170 Hanging Gardens  5 Harappa 6 Harding River Dam  205 Harvey Irrigation Area  204 Harvey Water, WA  127 Hawkesbury River  39, 47 health of waterways, wetlands  159, 176, 179, 181, 226

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Helena River  104 Herodotus  2, 4, 9, 30 Hobart water supply  193–4 Hodge  16, 17 Hoover Dam  132–3 Hope Valley reservoir  132 horticulture 124 Hovell, William  48, 49, 51 Howard Street raingardens  221 Hume Dam  119, 120, 132, 133, 136, 137 Hume, Hamilton  48, 49, 51 Hunt’s Creek  131 Hutt Lagoon  140, 154 Hyde Park  44 Hydroelectric Commission (HEC), Tasmania 138 Hydroelectric dams  208 hydroelectric power  67 benefits 136 worldwide 136 hydroelectric power, Australia  136 early uses, Tasmania  138 extent 136–7 pumped hydro  137 implementation of the Murray–Darling Basin Plan  181–8, 228–32 Basin health  182–3 cap on buy-backs  184 change in water recovery strategy  184 compliance and non-compliance  186, 230 controversy and argument  184–8, 231–2 infrastructure projects  186–8 outcomes after five years  182–8 reduction in water recovery targets  184–8 responsibility moved to Agriculture  184 trenchant criticisms  231 Improving Water Information Programme 242 Indigenous knowledge  234–5 Indirect Potable Reuse  214–16 examples 215 Toowoomba proposal  214 worldwide 216 Indus Valley civilisation  1, 5, 7, 116 infrastructure projects  186–8, 228 problems 229 Ingham 123 inland sea  47, 49, 50, 51, 65 Innamincka 91 innovations 239–40 managed aquifer recharge  217 Sundrop Farms  211 water-saving housing  220

inquiries into Murray–Darling Basin Plan 231 intensive farming  120 irrigation, in ancient civilisations  1–9, 116 basin irrigation  2, 3, 124 Dujiangyan irrigation system  6 sustainable irrigation  3 Irrigation Act of 1886  117, 119 irrigation channels  117, 119 gradient 117 irrigation in Australia  115–27, 232–3 and crop growth  124 early difficulties  119–20 extent 115 modernising  125–7, 232 Murray–Darling Basin  161 negative consequences  125 northern Australia  234–5 produce trials  121–2, 123 products  115, 116, 120, 122 irrigation methods  124–5 irrigation renewal programs  127 irrigation trusts  117, 119 irrigation water  sources 115–16 uses 115 Ivanhoe Plains  123 Ivanhoe, government tank  130 Jagera Aboriginal peoples  192 Jardine River  97, 201 Kalgoorlie  99–104, 110–13, 209, 227 climate 99 water sources  99 Kamilaroi people  52, 243 Kangaroo Island  203 Kangaroo Lake  140 karez  see qanats Katherine River  97 Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre  53, 54, 55, 87–97, 138 extent 87 flooding 91–4 Kaurna Aboriginal nation  194, 195 Keith 172 Kidston pumped hydro project  137 Kimberley  97, 227 Kindur (river)  52 Kingsford, Richard  96 King George Sound  53, 57 Koo Wee Rup swamp  80 Kulin Nation  190 Kununurra  123, 205

Index

Lachlan River  48, 121 Lachlan Swamps  43, 44, 45, 80 Lake Albert  173 Lake Alexandrina  51, 173 Lake Argyle  123 Lake Baikal  138, 140 Lake Cadibarrawirracanna  138 Lake Carnegie  138 Lake Charm  140 Lake Condah eel traps  60 Lake Cowan  101 Lake Dalrymple  123 Lake Dundas  101 Lake Eyre Basin  88–97, 88 burst of growth  91–3 characteristics 89 ecological sustainability  95 economic importance  94 extent 88–9 management 94–6 threats to health  94–5 Lake Eyre Basin Intergovernmental Agreement 95 Lake Lonsdale  117 Lake Mackay  138 Lake Mead  133 Lake Mulwala  122 Lake Nagambie  117 Lake Parramatta  131 Lake Pedder  132, 138 controversy 138 new 138 Lake St Clair  140 lakes, natural  138, 140 coloured 140, 154 Lake Torrens  53, 138 Lake Victoria  173 Lake Wabby  140 Lake Wilks  140 La Nina  28–9, 209 Larrakia people  199 Launceston 201 Lawson, Henry  168, 171 Lawn Hill Creek  97, 150 Lawson Syphons  122 Leichardt, Ludwig  53, 57, 104 Leichardt River  96 Light, Colonel William  104 Lingqu Canal  7 Living Murray program  176 Loddon River  53, 117 Longreach  89, 90, 201 Long-term Intervention Monitoring Project  182, 183

Lower Burdekin Irrigation Area  123 lower Darling River  156, 229 Lower Lakes  173, 183 barrages  173, 174 lower Murray River  172–4 pipelines for South Australia  172 Lower Reservoir, Hobart  132 MacAlister District, Victoria  115 Macintyre River  49 Macquarie Marshes  65, 159, 171 Macquarie River  48, 50, 54 Macumba River  91 Maldives, Republic of  33–4 Mallee districts 117 scrub 119 Managed Aquifer Recharge(MAR)  80, 216– 18, 249 Australian examples  217 benefits and impediments  218 key factors  217 potential roles  217 purposes 216–7 US examples  217 see also groundwater, replenishment Mannum  172, 194, 196 map of rivers explored 1817–1830  51 Maranoa River  53 Margaret Creek  91 Maribyrnong River  116 market-based system  222, 236 market gardens  116 Marree  92, 93, 94, 95 Martuwarra Fitzroy River Council  242 Mary River Statement  242 MDBA  see Murray–Darling Basin Authority Mekong River  134 Melbourne water supply  190–2 Board of Commissioners of Sewers and Water Supply  190 Menindee 53 Menindee Lakes  166–8 characteristics 166–7 development 166 purposes 167 the four lakes  166 Merbein irrigation district  127 Merredin  101, 112, 125 Mereenie aquifer  76–7 Mesopotamia, ancient  1, 3, 6, 116 microhydroelectricity plants  136 Mildura  119–21, 123, 127 Mildura Irrigation Trust  120

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Millennium drought  28, 126, 159, 167, 175, 180, 183, 192, 193 Minister for Agriculture  184 Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources 185 Mitchell, Thomas  52, 53, 57, 157 Mitta Mitta River  49, 121 Mohenjo Daro  6 Molonglo River  54 monitoring and evaluation  180–2, 231 Morgan  172, 194 Moshulu, barque  32 mound springs  63, 87, 146 Mount Charlotte  110 Mt Hopeless  53 Mulwala Canal  122, 227 Mundaring Weir  105, 151, 111,112, 129, 132 capacity 106 construction 105–6 Mungo Lake  171 Mungo Lady, Mungo Man  172 Walls of China Lunette  171–2, 154 Murray Bridge  172, 194 Murray–Darling Basin  54, 75, 76, 84, 89, 115, 157–88, 207, 209, 222 Basin states  175, 228 catchments and groundwater areas  178 characteristics 159 controlled and managed  174 dependent populations  161 economic value  161 extent  158, 159–60 forests 159 irrigation produce  157 major rivers  159 natural resources  157 projects 227 water run-off  159 Murray–Darling Basin Agreement  176 Murray–Darling Basin Authority  175–88, 240, 242 roles 175–6 Murray–Darling Basin Commission  175, 176 Murray–Darling Basin Indigenous Reference Group 170 Murray–Darling Declaration  187, 230 Murray–Darling Ministerial Council  176, 177–8 Murray–Darling Basin Plan  178–88, 228–32 approval 180 controversy and argument  179 cost  175, 178, 182, 186, 229 Draft Plan  178

economic impact  180 flaws 229 Guide to the Plan  178 Implementation Agreement  181 purposes 178 see also implementation of the Murray estuary  173 Murray Irrigation Limited  122, 236 Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations 243 Murray mouth  173, 178, 180, 183 closed 159 Murray River  48, 51, 53, 116, 119–23, 127, 137, 157–74, 194, 196, 201, 203 anabranch 122 threats 159 see also lower Murray River Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area  119, 121, 122 Murrumbidgee Irrigation Limited  122, 132, 236 Murrumbidgee River  48, 49, 50, 121, 132, 137, 157–9, 162, 174, 201 Murrumbidgee Valley  127 Nagambie  117, 118 Namoi River  52, 57, 157 nardoo (Marsilea drummondii)  92, 93 Narrandera  121, 201 National Heritage List  112 National Irrigators Council  179, 182, 187 National Water Commission  213, 216, 217, 231, 238, 240 abolition of  217–18, 236, 242 National Water Initiative  176, 222, 234, 236 Nauo people  54 Neales River  91 Nemausus  see Nimes Nepean River  39, 45, 47, 129 New South Wales Aboriginal Land Councils 170 Nile Valley (River)  2, 7, 124, 125 nilometers 2 Nimes  11, 12 aqueduct  11–13, 19, 44, 117 Nineveh  4, 5 Noongar people  101, 197 noria 2 Norseman  101, 111 Northam 101 Northern Australia Land and Water Taskforce  234, 235 northern Australia, development  233–5 Northern Basin Aboriginal Nations  243

Index

Northern Victorian Irrigation Renewal Project 127 NSW Parks and Wildlife Service  171 Nullarbor Plain  53, 76, 81 O’Connor, CY  67, 104, 105, 106, 108–13, 203 Ogallala aquifer  74 Onkaparinga 172 Onkaparinga River  196 Oodnadatta Track  63, 68 orchards 119 Ord Irrigation Cooperative Ltd  236 Ord Irrigation Expansion Project  123 Ord River  97, 115, 123, 234–5 Ord River Dam  134, 135, 136 Ord River Irrigation Area  123 osmosis  see reverse osmosis over-allocation of river water  177, 207, 225 over-exploitation 225 Ovens River  48 Overland Telegraph line  65, 76, 87 ownership of water  117, 236 Oxley, John  48, 50, 51, 54, 65, 122 Packsaddle Plains  123 paddle steamers  161, 162–5 capacities 163 goods transported  162–3 Paroo River  170–1 Paroo River Wetlands  170 Parramatta (Rose Hill)  39, 42, 57 Parramatta River  39 pasture  2, 3, 119 Peery Lake  154, 170 Pentecost River  54, 150 Perth  78, 99, 104 Perth Basin  76, 79 Perth groundwater replenishment  79, 196 Indirect Potable Reuse  215 Perth water supply  196–7 Sanitation Commission  197 Peterborough  172, 203 Phillip, Captain Arthur  35, 36, 38, 39, 41 pipelines  Goldfields  Water Supply Scheme  105, 106–8, 110, 112 Murray River  172, 201, 203 planning, long-term  238–9, 225 plant and animal life  183 plant nutrition  116 party politics  239 pollution, water  see water quality, contamination

Pompeii  15, 45 Pont du Gard  11, 13, 141 Pooncarie 229 populations, increasing  208 Port Augusta  203, 211, 212 Port Jackson  35, 57, 58 precipitation 96 price of water  see cost of water privatisation  122, 236–8 dangers 237 governance and monitoring  236–8 potential benefits  236 private companies  237–8 Productivity Commission  207 Murray–Darling Basin Plan review  230, 231, 242 Prospect Reservoir  129, 132 P. S. Providence 163, 164 pump station  108–9, 111, 192, 196 pumping water  116, 119, 125, 161, 172, 199, 210 steam  104, 108–9, 119 treadmill 192 qanats 7, 8, 9, 27, 44, 141 Queensland Floods Commission of Inquiry 193 Queenstown 227 rainfall decline  79, 112, 207, 208 distribution  55, 144 Murray–Darling Basin  159 patterns  54–5, 129, 194 records 104 reduced rainfall consequences  208 run-off  130, 194 trends  79, 112, 196, 207–9 variability  40, 55, 76, 130, 145, 197, 208, 226–7, 234 rainfall-independent water supply  212 rainwater tanks  33–4, 113, 197, 205, 206, 221– 2 Ramsar Convention  159, 170, 171, 180, 264 recharge areas  63, 65, 66, 85 recycled water  112, 113, 116, 212–16, 235, 249–50 benefits 213 recycling sites, Australia  213 residential use  213–14 targets 213 treatment stages  212 uses and applications  213–16

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recycled water for drinking  214–16 direct potable reuse  216 potential for  216 Toowoomba proposal  214 see also Indirect Potable Reuse Red Cliffs irrigation district  127 red gum forests  178 Reedy Lakes system  140 Regional Australia Institute  240 Regional Planning Interests Act 2014 96 regulation 225 regulations, environmental  241 Renmark  119–20, 123 Renmark Irrigation Trust  120 reservoirs  129, 130, 197 for railways  131 Murray-Darling Basin  159 reverse osmosis  33–4, 81, 210, 271 rice  115, 122, 123 riparian habitats  135 River Gardon  11, 19 river health  178, 229 river red gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) 54, 169 Riverina District of NSW  116 Riverland 120 River Murray  see Murray River River Murray Waters Agreement  119, 120, 122, 176 River Murray Commission  119, 173, 176 rivers in northern Australia  96, 150 rivers and irrigation  2–4, 6, 115–17, 119–24 characteristics of Australian  54 flow interruption  135 flow regulation and control  157, 161 Lake Eyre Basin  88–91 modification of  157, 161 Murray–Darling Basin  159 natural resources  157 northern Australia  96–7 value 228 working 161 rivers, low flow, no flow  229 rivers, for transport  120, 162–4 Aboriginal canoes  163 hazards 163 wharves 164, 165 rivers, inland  47 and Aboriginal cultural and economic life 157 perennial 130 River Thames  36 River Torrens  194–6

roadhouses, isolated  81 Roman civilisation, ancient  1, 10, 11–24, 112, 212, 225 decline  23–4, 45 North Africa  19–23 Rome, aqueducts  15 Roper River  96 Rouse Hill water recycling plant  213–14 Royal Commission on Water Supply  116 runnel  8, 17 saline water  80, 101, 112, see also water salinity salinity and irrigation  3, 125 management  120, 182 salt accumulation, Murray–Darling Basin 180 salt interception schemes  182, 239–40 salt springs  50 sanitation system  6, 100 Sardoba 29, 30 SDLs  see Sustainable Diversion Limits seawater intrusion  34, 80, 82 Senate select committee on Murray–Darling Basin Plan  184 Sennacherib, King  4, 5 sewage treatment  212 sewerage system  45 sewer mining  212 shaduf 2 Simpson Desert  52, 89 siphons, Roman  19, 122, see also Lawson Syphons Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme  121, 137, 227 award 137 Snowy River  121, 155, 226 soft path/hard path, for water  243 soil salinity  2, 5, 62 causes  3, 28, 125 solar power  137 desalination plant  204, 211 pumps 239 solar-powered flume gates  126, 153 Solomon, Steven  133, 209 Sorrento 190 South Alligator River  54 South Australia water plan  249–50 South Australian Royal Commission into Murray–Darling Basin Plan  231 South Coast Track, Tasmania  226 South East Water  220 Southern Cross  99, 101, 103, 112

Index

Southern Riverina region  122 south-west Tasmania  226–7, 273 Spencer Gulf  172, 203, 211 Spring Gully Reservoir  132 springs  9, 11, 18, 20, 21, 78, 190, 197 see also mound springs; artesian springs sprinkler irrigation  124, 152 State of the Environment report  229 Statements of Assurance  181 State Rivers and Water Supply Commission  118, 120 steam trains  102 stormwater harvesting  218–19, 249–50 benefits 218–19 decentralised schemes  218 examples, Victoria  219, 220 treatment stages  219 wetlands treatment  218–19 Strahan, Tasmania  227 Stuart, John McDouall  64–5 Stuart Murray Canal  152 Stephens Creek Reservoir  132 stream flows, reduction of  159 Strzelecki Desert  52 Sturt, Charles  49, 51, 54, 57, 65, 89, 159 Sturt’s Stony Desert  52, 64, 95 sugar 123 Sugarloaf Reservoir  117, 119 Sumerian civilisation  3, 4 Sunraysia Modernisation Project  127 surface irrigation  124 Sustainable Developments Goals  209 Sustainable Diversion Limits  178–88, 228–32 definition 178 target reductions  178–88, 228–32 Wentworth Group proposal  179 Sustainable Rivers Audit  177 sustainable use and reuse  219 swamplands 48 Swan Hill  120 Swan Reach  172, 194 Swan River  54, 104, 197 Sydney Cove  36, 38, 39, 40, 42, 45, 47, 57 Sydney Harbour  35 Sydney water supply  38–40, 43–5, 129, 189– 90 Warragamba Dam  189 Tailem Bend  172, 194 tanks  3, 102, 103, 131, 263 Tank Stream  36, 38, 39 pollution of  43 protection of  39, 43 TDS (total dissolved solids)  76, 80–2

TED talks  240 Tench, Watkin  35, 40, 42, 57 terracotta pipe  9, 17, 29 terra nullius 57 Thargomindah  67, 91, 136, 147 Thistle Cove, WA  31–2 Thomson River  89, 90 threats, to rivers and wetlands  159 Three Gorges Dam  134 Thuringowa 123 Tigris and Euphrates rivers  3, 5, 7 Tocumwal 169 Todd River  76, 77 toilets, public, Roman civilisation  13, 17–18 Torrens River  54 Torrumbarry Weir  121 Torrumbarry Irrigation water supply scheme 140 Townsville  123, 201 transpiration 26 transporting water  102, 103, 227–8 tropical north of Australia  156, 226–7 Tumut River  122 Tunnel of Eupalinos  9, 44 Turpan 8 Turrbal Aboriginal people  192 Upper Canal  129 Upper Nepean catchment  129 Ur, Jason  4, 5 urban water supply  235–6, 249–50 planning principles  235 water reuse  235 water saving  235 Vertessy Report  231 Victoria Dam  132 Victoria River  96 vineyards 119 virtual water  232–3 wadi 29 Wagga Wagga  122 Waranga Basin  117, 118 Waranga Western Main Channel  117 Warburton River  89, 95 Warrego River  53 Warriner Creek  91 Wartook Reservoir  117, 132 wastewater 85 distribution in early times  212 recycled 212–16 treatment plants  212 Water Act 1905  120

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Water Act 2007  126, 175, 177, 181, 182, 184, 230 Water Act of 1989  120 water bag, Australian  198 waterbirds  91, 93, 97, 160, 170 waterborne diseases  37 water buy-back  180, 184, 222, 229, 232 water carriers  192, 193, 195 water commissioner, Rome  15 water conservation  29, 39, 40, 69 and productivity  241 arid lands  29 Water Conservation and Irrigation Commission (NSW)  121, 122 Water Corporation of WA  197 watercourses  48, 89, 97 water cycle  25, 26 water distribution systems  10 London 1700s  37 Rome and Pompeii  15–16 Sydney 1800s  44–5 water divining  81 water entitlements  79, 175, 222 water extractions, rivers compliance, lack of  186, 230 fraud allegations  230 metering, lack of  229 upstream 167 water footprint  240 waterholes  90, 97, 149, 160 waterholes, Aboriginal  44, 53, 58, 60, 61–2, 190 in Aboriginal art  61–2, 146 protection of  58 water licences  185 waterlogging, of soils  125 water losses in irrigation  125–6, 232 through export  233 water management ancient worlds  1–10, 225 continuous supply vs storage  21–3 Roman civilisation  11–24 Rome and Pompeii  14–16, 142 water markets  183 water pipes iron  191, 197 London 1700s  37 Roman civilisation  13, 16–17, 29 steel  106–7, 111 terracotta  17, 37, 111 wooden  17, 192 water power  67, see also hydroelectric power water quality  31, 63, 76, 77, 241

contamination  31–2, 43, 100, 190, 192, 194 in rivers  135 see also water treatment water restrictions  207, 212, 235 cost 207 Water Reuse in Alice Project  217 water rights  4 water salinity  50, 76, 159 water saving  113, 207, 235 permanent water-saving rules  207 targets 197 water-saving housing development  220 water scarcity  29, 38, 40, 43, 48, 49, 50, 53, 155, 206, 207–23 consequences  100, 208–9 crossing deserts  31–2 crossing oceans  31 desert islands  33–4 Eastern Goldfields WA  99–102 Lower Darling  167 Murray–Darling Basin  159 worldwide 208–9 water sensitive urban design (WSUD)  219– 21, 236 benefits  219, 221 examples, Australia  221 water sources  Aboriginal peoples  53, 58, 60–2 desert islands  33 farms 205–6 Kalgoorlie 99 new sources  209–23 Roman civilisation  13–14, 18 Sydney Cove  35, 44, 53, 58, 60–2, 64 wells  1, 11, 13, 14, 27, 33, 38, 61, 78, 82, 194, 199 see also groundwater; Great Artesian Basin Water Stewardship Australia  240 water storages barrels 31 cisterns  13, 14, 20–3, 39 for railways  103, 131 public wells  6, 14 reservoirs  4, 6, 102 see also dams; reservoirs; tanks water supplies capital cities  189–200 New South Wales  201 Northern Territory  205 North Queensland  210 regional and remote towns  200–205 South Australia  201–4 Tasmania 201

Index

Victoria 200–1 Western Australia  204–5 water supply ancient Rome and Pompeii  15–16 continuous supply model  22–3 First Fleet ships  38 Kalgoorlie 99–113 London 1700s  37 Nimes 11 reticulated 67 Sydney Cove colony  38–9, 43 water table  14, 27, 75, 77 water theft  185, 230 review outcomes  186 water towers  200 water trading  180, 222–3 companies  185, 222–3 for and against  222–3 requirements 222 water treatment  chlorination 31 sand filtration  31 water treatment technology  37, 66, 79, 147, 192, 205, 212, 215, 218–19 water usage  79 sailor’s daily allowance  31, 38 water uses  205–6 low-value, high-value  116, 222, 236 water wastage  45, 68–9, 126 waterwheel  2, 67, 137, 139 wattle and daub  36 weirs Broughton’s Pass  129 Murray–Darling Basin rivers  120–1, 161, 166 purposes 121 Wellington Dam, WA  136 Wenlock River  97 Wentworth 162 Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists  178–80, 182, 186–7, 229

Western Corridor Recycled Water Scheme 215 West Pilbara (WA)  205 wetlands  1, 64, 89, 94, 97, 197, 213 functions 159 Murray–Darling Basin  157, 160–1, 169–71 wet season (‘the Wet’)  54, 91, 96, 97, 197 Wheatbelt  112, 113, 261 White Cliffs  170 White Paper on the Development of Northern Australia 233 water infrastructure fund  233–4 Whyalla  172, 203 Wilcannia  130, 162, 229 floods  167, 170 Wild Rivers Act 2005 96 Willandra Lakes  154, 171–2 characteristics 171 William Creek  68, 93, 138 Wimmera–Mallee 117 windmills 69, 148, 199 Windorah  91, 95 Wiradjuri territory  48 Wirungu people  54 Witjira-Dalhousie Springs  64 Wivenhoe Dam  136, 137, 192–3 World Commission on Dams  135 World Economic Forum  209 World Health Organisation  214 World Heritage listing  171–2 Yan Yean Reservoir  132, 190–1 Yarra flats  116 Yarra River  54, 190 Yarrawonga Weir  121, 122 Yorke Peninsula  201 Yorta Yorta Nation  170 Yulara (Ayers Rock resort)  81–2, 211 Zaghouan spring  20, 108 Zhengguo Canal  6

289