Day twelve - Other uphill battles

Day 12

From Giovanni

We tucked Steve into bed without extracting his pearls of wisdom tonight. Dragging a six metre lump of plastic 36kilometres up hill has taken its toll on him. If he were able to go straight to bed he could recover faster but there are the rigours of filming to deal with and other aspects of the expedition that must be attended to.

Steve remains philosophical about exchanging the uphill battle on the river for the uphill battle on the road by comparing both to the uphill battle to get governments to make sensible long term plans for a sustainable future. “You win these uphill battles by putting one foot in front of the other and never giving up.”

We enjoyed the most extraordinary hospitality again tonight, shown to us by a farming family that was arrested because they dared to challenge the right of Melbourne Water to fence off a portion of their farm without any notice or any paper work.

There are court cases running left right and centre for trespass and obstruction. The Water Act gives the government extraordinary powers over landowners, but even the processes set down in that legislation were not followed. It would appear the Sugarloaf Pipeline Alliance, the consortium laying the pipe, has made some expensive mistakes.

That expense may not be limited to economics, it would appear the political tide is turning. Today, the Greens and the Nationals voted with other non-Labor parties to oppose a bill allowing the government to reassign the bulk allocations of water necessary to supply the pipeline.

“Conservationists and conservatives understand the value of the land and a sustainable approach that resists the temptation to steal from future generations,” Steve told the media today. His media release said that he had paused his one man attack by kayak on Melbourne for long enough to congratulate the politicians on making the right decision. “I should have said for not being so bloody silly,” Steve quipped.

The scale of the pipeline is incredible. You can see that it is just the sort of major work that could win votes in a parched city. The problem is that the pipeline is a straw placed in a glass that is much less than half empty.

The shocking truth is that the inland rivers are dying because the landscape is drying out. We are facing a crisis of unimaginable magnitude. Even those of us who have been writing and thinking on this topic for years cannot actually grapple with the magnitude of the problem without getting out there and looking at it.

The paddlesteamers used to come from the Southern Ocean up to Murchison, now it contains a trickle of water that you can wade across. Echuca, Swan Hill and Shepparton are going the way of Bourke and Wilcannia. There is no simpler way to put it: The inland is dying.

The farmers we spoke to are still coming to terms with it. They are educating their kids on the basis that there is no future on the land. They are making retirement plans that involve selling earlier than they might otherwise have done so, but they are still only just managing to make sense of the fact that the damage may be permanent.

The sad thing is that the handful of farmers who have reestablished permanent water on their land and reversed the encroachment of the desert are like voices in the wilderness.

In the meantime, the energy of the people who care goes to fighting governments who want to impose monstrosities on the people with a monstrously heavy hand.

We just have to face the uphill battle, one step at a time, without stopping. For now, though, it’s time to rest.