It was 6 years ago when we last went to Queensland, the drought was was only starting to be felt here in South Australia back then , we had no water restrictions and our great River Murray below lock one still had plenty of water, the lakes before it entered the sea were full though dredging of the river mouth had just commenced to save the world heritage Coorong being cut off from the sea.
Barrages separating the sea and lake fresh water have been in place since 1928. Now the lakes are nearly empty as hardly any flow is entering this end of river owing to the drought up north which has caused the Darling river to stop flowing altogether.
Outback Queensland has numerous rivers that enter the Darling from
what is known as the Darling basin and in turn then enters the Murray river. Over the years locks and weirs have been added to hold the water back, then agriculture took over with orange groves , grapevines and fruit trees -vegetables and even rice introduced into mostly arid areas using water pumped out of these rivers.
With still no sign of the drought breaking and 4 states each blaming the other for lack of water and use thereof i decided to go and have a look myself just how bad it is.
Being middle spring it was as I expected, the crops for the first few hundred km looked great, average rainfall will give them a crop worth harvesting and give a return , after that I was in sheep country until I reached the SA border town of Cockburn , what keeps this so called town going is the roadhouse because thats all thats there along with police station and one or 2 houses, no hotel , just as well they have saltbush that sheep can survive on around the place as there was nothing else just flat barren country.
30 km on your in New South Wales at the mining city of Broken Hill , lead and zinc has been mined there since 1886, but only one mine still in operation at present. like most of the old large towns, tourism is becoming more and more important. As Cath and I were there last year we just stayed overnight.
Chap in van alongside us that night asked us where we were heading , when I told him that I intended to stay at Wilcannia about 4 hours drive next night, and then on to Cobar – Nyngan -and Bourke on the Darling river he warned us to not to stop at Wilcannia owing to the local aboriginals behaviour --------- continued