Murray-Darling: testing times expected as extended dry period approaches

Farmers and nature have been at odds in the Murray-Darling Basin ever since the first European settlers, desperate for water, found that river flows were unreliable and out of sync with their needs.

Water bird populations have dropped
two-thirds from 1980s levels. 

"For would-be irrigators the problem with the River Murray was that the bulk of the annual flow occurred at the wrong time of year," Daniel Connell, a research fellow at the Australian National University, notes in his book Water and Politics in the Murray-Darling Basin.

"The time of peak flows under natural conditions in the rivers of southern Australia is winter and spring but the main growing season when agriculture needs water is the late summer and autumn. 

Even draining Australia's three longest rivers – the Darling, Murray and Murrumbidgee – over 1 million square kilometres, flows are also highly variable. The biggest year, 1956, saw volumes 17 times the worst, in 2006.

Read Peter Hannam’s story in the Melbourne Age - “Murray-Darling: testing times expected as extended dry period approaches.”