Federal Water Minister Penny Wong [pictured] is to be congratulated for instigating the purchase of the giant outback irrigation property Toorale.
Wong is the recipient of today’s Agmates “Onya” award.
However the Federal government has come under heavy criticism from some quarters and that is to be expected as there are no easy solutions to the Murray Darling River System crisis.
Rural Press Canberra based reporter Lucy Skuthorp takes particular exception with the purchase in her syndicated article in the companies rural papers, The Land, The Country Life, The Stock Journal, The Stock & Land, The Farm Journal and the North QLD Register.
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“Federal Minister for Water, Penny Wong, and her new NSW counterpart, Carmel Tebbutt, might be celebrating their purchase along with the media and conservation organisations which campaigned long and hard for the Government to buy the property.
None of this purchase makes sense, apart from keeping some Greens and city-based journalists happy.
If they’d taken just a day to have lesson 101 in “how the rivers flow” they would have found this property does not achieve what the Government wants it to.
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Skuthorp is wrong. In my working life I have lived on the banks of the Warrego river at Cunnamulla upstream from Toorale and in the city of Broken Hill which draws its drinking water from the Darling river at Menindee down stream from Toorale. I have also lived and worked on the banks of the Bulloo river at Quilpie.
The purchase of Toorale has zero affect on anybody on the Warrego river upstream from Toorale which is at the very end of the river. Downstream the purchase it is a god send for all those between Toorale and where the Darling meets the Murray at Mildura in northern Victoria.
In the summer of 2000-2001there was particularly good rain in Northern NSW which caused the Darling river to flood for a good 5-6 weeks. From memory in late January 2001 the Darling at Menidee receded back into its banks after running a complete banker for that 5-6 week period. I had assumed such a prolonged run of a great volume of water would ‘flush’ the system and return it to great health.
I was wrong. Just a couple of weeks later when I crossed the Darling at Menindee heading to Ivanhoe to see that the water in the river was a putrid green with fish floating dead on the surface.
It was at that point that I realized just how sick the Darling river system was/is.
When I inquired with the Department of Primary Industries at Broken Hill as to what was going on they said that it was a result of the high concentration of nutrients in the water, combined with the summer heat had sapped the river water of oxygen, hence the dying fish. The nutrients I was told came from run off from higly fertilized irrigation properties upstream.
Skuthorp has no concept of how these ancient western river systems work. These rivers do not flow from high Alpine regions as do the rivers of the Southern portion of the Murray Darling.
They are actually the low drainage section of a vast and flat landscape. If you look at any topographic map of these regions particularly the lower ends of the Warrego, Paroo and Bullo rivers they are just a series of water courses not rivers as Urban people like Skuthorp might imagine them.
When excess rain falls over a large area and the soils become saturated the water runs off into the rivers via usually dry gullies and the odd dry creek. That is why when you see pictures of the Darling, Warrego, Paroo or Bulloo rivers the water is an earth brown colour.
In the long dry periods between these exceptional rain periods that is the ‘norm’ in the outback the bottom end of these river systems are just dry water courses.
The Warrego river heads in the Augathella district of QLD which is a 24 inch (600mm) annual rainfall but by the time it travels just 100kms to Charleville is is back to 18 inch rainfall (450mm) and at Toorale a further 350kms south the rainfall is just 14 inches (350mm).
Graziers downstream are happy that the weir that blocks the Warrego from entering the Darling at Toorale will be removed releasing an immediate 14 gigalitres into the Darling.
I spoke to Hamish Halcombe, the Chairman of the Australian Floodplains Association and he said that the association viewed the purchase as a ‘positive’ move.
Speaking to Mog Etheridge from ‘Kalyanka’ Station on the Darling river downstream from Toorale and just above Wilcannia, she also thought it was a positive outcome for the river.
In January this year following good rain at the top end of the Warrego saw substantial amounts of water flowed downstream with minor flooding at Cunnamulla [pitured below].
However graziers downstream from Toorale on the Darling saw virtually no water from the run in the Warrego at a time the Darling desperately needed it (still does). I have been told me that down stream graziers believe up to 80% of the Warrego water was trapped at Toorale weir and never made it into the Darling System
There has been much made of the impact of the closing down on the outback rural community of Bourke. Whilst it is true that there will be some impact, it has been grossely over exaggerated.
Toorale was owned by a British company which owns 18 Rural properties (745,000hectares or 1.86 million acres) across Northern NSW and Southern Queensland, a Cotton Gin at Bourke and has its own Stock and station agency business which looks after 1 client - Clyde Agriculture.
Across that entire conglomerate they employ up to just 120 full time staff.
The rest as with all large scale corporate Agricultural businesses are seasonal contractors, most of whom don’t live anywhere near Bourke.
From Clydes web site:
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Clyde Agriculture Limited is owned 100% by John Swire & Sons Pty Ltd, the Australian holding company for the UK based Swire Group.
Clyde has two subsidiaries: Darling River Cotton Pty Ltd, which operates the cotton gin at Bourke, and Wesbeef Agencies Pty Ltd, a licensed stock and station agent which operates only on behalf of the parent company.
The Company normally employs approximately 120 permanent staff.
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I congratulate Federal Water Minister Penny Wong and the Rudd government on the purchase of Toorale.
For that Minister Wong gets the ‘thumbs up’.
She is added to the list of receipients of the Agmates “Onya” award. Onya Penny.
There has been no under handed ‘taking’ by resumption. A willing seller in the form of Clyde Agriculture has meet a willing buyer in the form of the Australian public through the Federal and State govertnments with $24 million dollars changing hands in a totally transparent transaction.
Outrage and criticism from journalist like Skuthorp who know nothing of the real plight of the Darling River system but yet espouse to do so is pathetic.
Skuthorp should stick to writing pseudo Federal National Party press releases drip fed to her in her Canberra office and not pretend to have any idea of what is actually going on with our treasured outback river systems.
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Have Your say!
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Tags: 'onya', Augathella, Broken Hill, Bulloo, Carmel Tebbutt, Charleville, Clyde Agriculture, Cunnamulla, Darling River, DPI, Flood Plains Association, Greens, Hamish Halcombe, Ivanhoe, Kalyanka, Licy Skuthorp, Mark Etheridge, Menindee, Mildura, Murray Darling, National Party, Paroo, Penny Wong, Quilpie, Rural Press, Swire group, Toorale, Warrego River, Wilcannia
I got the Country Life this morning - made me angry looking at the WWF attack, the AWB criminal scandal and the Skuthorp article on Toorale Station.
What would I expect from a Fairfax paper - they are not on our side.
WE HAVE GOT TO BE STRONG AND DO OUR BEST TO SURVIVE AND BEAT THE BA#TARDS !! IT MIGHT TAKE A BIT LONGER BUT THEY WON’T WIN.
Why the hell didn’t they buy out Cubbie station QLD while they were at it?
None of those big irrigation schemes should be allowed to operate in the western channel country. The channel country should be allowed to flow free and do what it does best, grow bloody good grass/herbage and fatten bloody good beef.
It was the best thing that happened when that cotton grower was stopped from putting a cotton farm on the Cooper Channel Country at Windorah.
No one as the likes of Cubbie station should have the right to hold back so much water and have so much ill effect on land owners down stream.
G’day John,
I think you’ll find that they will end up buying Cubbie in the not to distant future.
You are ‘on the money’ with your comments about the Channel Country. The graziers and people of Windorah and Western QLD fought long and hard to keep the cotton growers off the Cooper.
Hmm, Well I’m not up to speed with outback land prices, but if the locals think it was a fair price I’ll take their word.
I think it is good that the govt has paid for reclaiming something - only hope that they keep a precedent, or when it comes to smaller farms they want to get rid of, do they just let them run to the wall instead of being fair and buying them?
I’ve seen situations where big player are bought out, small players are just closed up. hopefully not too much of that in this situation?
All the better, that it was bought back from a foreign owner! So whatever employment/industry it had, most of the profit went o/s anyway?!!
Interested in ref to Cubbie - driven around that block, it’s a big job. Sure, all ‘by the book’ courtesy of water quota trading etc, but it just doesn’t ring right for me either - economy of scale just taken to the extreme.
And for a crop that is (last I checked) in oversupply on the global market, and in competition with cheaper mid-east farms etc??! and can be v. chemical intensive too.
OK, so laser-levelled flood irrigation on black soils might work really effectively, but when it is at the expense of nearly all the other downstream industries I question the benefits.
On Toorale, I guess one question - was it developed much? If so, a lot of money paid, and more to be invested, to turn it back to NP? or was it still mostly undisturbed, just used for its water quota for a relatively small production area, in which case, I can see some sensibility in rezoning it. But if it’s mostly been developed, it could just turn into a massive weed haven!