Day0 Day zero – Arriving in Echuca

We crossed the Murray mid-morning under grey skies and a stiff, wet breeze.

The four of us are Steve – adventurer and water engineer, Giovanni – journalist just voted expedition leader, Tony – driver, mr logistics and man with the maps and Jim – documentary maker and cameraman. We are all used to lush subtropics of Brisbane or northern NSW, so the rocky landscape between Canberra and the Murray appears harsh and uninviting. Today, however, the lambs graze contentedly on fresh shoots between lichen covered rocks. The grass is greener than it has been for years.

Crossing the Murray and heading along the Murray Valley highway, we are amazed by the sudden change. We scoot across a flat, fertile flood plain – wheat, sheep, stone fruit, olives all woven into a rich tapestry of agricultural bliss.

The dams tell the deeper story, however. Most of them are simply puddles. It has only been raining for a few weeks.

Many paddocks are surrounded by a low levee, perhaps 50cm high. These are flood irrigated. They do not look much different to the neighbouring fields. The fertilized fields are obvious and the difference between imported grasses with their high nitrogen requirements and the tougher native grasses is obvious at a glance.

The notion of “improved pastures” is obvious even to the untrained eye. We pass the occasional dam above ground. Giovanni asks Steve if that is a ring tank. “Similar, but it hardly deserves the name,” he says. If we were on the Darling, that would be at least five metres high and we’d be driving along beside it for more than a kilometre. Regardless, it performs the same function, the next paddock has a 700 metre long mobile sprinkler system that must be worth millions.

We note that it is little wonder these farmers don’t want anyone telling them they can’t have the water they have been told they have.

We pass a graveyard of trees known as Lake Mulwoal. Giovanni YouTube’s Steve discussing it, then just down the road we pass a canal estate with Lake Mulwoal views. An ecological disaster from one century becomes an unsustainable real estate development in another. Shades of Saltam City.

We arrive at Echuca in the early afternoon, held up by multiple stops for filming, then rush to get the supplies we need for the trip proper.

A large established town, with a once active port that has dwindled away to a slightly pathetic tourist attraction. Steve notes that Wilcannia was once a major inland port as well, isolated and depressed by the disappearance of the river. One wonders what future there is for Echuca under climate change and the theft of the last remaining water by the city on the other side of this southern state.