murray river in death throes, page-16

Yes indeed. Even during 1914-1915 the river stopped flowing.

There were massive floodplains that existed prior to extensive white settlement. Charles Sturt when exploring the Murray-Darling system in the late 1820's reported that he found vast wetlands, close to 100 kilometres across and full of reeds up to 5 metres tall. On the edge of the wetlands the water was too salty for their horses to drink, and on several occasions the horses almost perished before they could find fresh water. However, the salt water and fresh water coexisted in a BALANCED system in the same wetland. Plants, mainly reeds, controlled it all. If the water became too salty, the reeds would die and the excessively salty water, without reeds to block it, would flow out of the marsh into the river system, after which the reeds would grow back again. It was another of those superb, self-adjusting mechanisms that existed through the Australian environment.

source: Back from the Brink - Peter Andrews

The water was not simply flowing from its source to the mouth - it was washing over the landscape and replenishing the earth.

Our failure to appreciate the fine balance of the river and the ecosystem will be our undoing.

I despair that it can ever be 'fixed'.

Remember that this is the slowest moving river in the world. .. or at least it was before we cleared much of the river. The banks are now deeply eroded and have no hope of ever spilling over to form those wetlands, and let's face it - it's probably all farmland now.

Does it matter? Yes, because that farmland was rich because of the river. The river gave it silt and nutrients. Water alone doesn't enrich a soil.


Cheers,
Tangrams