A Weir Of Memories
The Age
Monday October 21, 1996
FORTY years ago last Sunday, 1956, Mr Henry Bolte, then Premier of Victoria, opened the Eildon Weir. Reports of the event say "about 1000 people, sitting in windswept marquees, braved rain, floods and icy winds to see the opening of the weir, costing 20-million pounds." Ministers and guests driving from Melbourne were forced by impassible flooding in the Yarra valley to detour through back roads to reach Eildon. At least one official car had to be pushed out of a quagmire.
It is ironic that a dam built to lift the threat of drought should have been opened in such waterlogged conditions. Last Sunday, celebrations to mark the 40th anniversary of the completion of the reservoir marked the opening of Water Week. Water quality and water conservation are vital to the future of Australia and Water Week 1996 should provide an incentive for us all to play our part.
Highlight of the "Back to the Wall," commemoration, will be the symbolic return of 10 litres of water collected from the junction of the Goulburn and Murray Rivers on 9 October, to its source - the dam - by Mrs Marie Tehan, Minister for Conservation and Land Management.
Master of ceremonies, Peter Ross Edwards, chairman of Goulburn Murray Water, will preside over the events that begin at noon, and will include the sod-turning for the start of the museum. There will also be abseiling down the weir wall, a display of water-skiing by the Moomba Masters, markets, helicopter rides, buskers and an exhibition of 1950s cars.
The Water Week camel trek carrying the water from the mouth of the Goulburn to Eildon has created a good deal of excitement during its 11 days on the road.
Serving to raise community awareness of the importance of our water resources, the seven camels have been sponsored by various water authorities, whose banners they wear. Goulburn Valley Water, the Mid-Goulburn Regional Water Board, the Upper Goulburn Waterway Authority, the Broken River Management Board and the Lower Goulburn Waterway Board as well as the Local Catchment and Land Protection Board and Gouburn Murray Water have all put money up to support the trek.
Water watch coordinator in the Goulburn Broken Catchment, David Hodgkins, whose job it is to keep the public aware of water issues, has been travelling with the camels, stopping each day at schools along the route. He talks to students and collects and tests water locally from the Goulburn and its tributaries, as well as running a poster competition to encourage schools to follow the progress of the trip.
His concerns cover a range of land management and water conservation areas. "Along the Goulburn there are a number of towns who use its water in this open catchment area," he says, "and treated waste water is returned to the river to be reused by the town next down the line.' Hodgkins says they would like to stop putting treated waste back into the Goulburn but it is a complex problem and trials of different waste-water disposal methods are regularly undertaken.
He lists a wide range of water conservation threats such as fertisliser run-off, which polutes irrigation channels, streams and rivers, and represents thousands of dollars of wasted agricultural investment by individual farmers. Salinity is another ever-present problem, which can be caused by over clearing the land or over irrigating it, among other things.
To tackle these and other water issues effectively will require understanding and support from a well-informed community and water users, Hodgkins says. Despite the tools science can provide to assist in the task of improving water quality, it is still imperative that individuals "clean-up their act".
The school talks and water testing associated with the camel trek is a good way of beginning the interest and care of students in water conservation matters.
Groups of students at each school are taking photographs and reporting on their water-test findings, using portable computers and modems to send their results directly to the home page of the internet site at Shepparton South Secondary College (www.netc.net.au/stc). As the camel train travels towards Lake Eildon, following the river, these samples will be compared to provide a graphic picture of the current state of the Goulburn's waters.
When the Eildon Weir was opened in 1956, it was full, containing 2,750,000 acre feet, about six times the volume of Sydney Harbor, making it the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere. As the Minister for Water Supply, Mr Mibus, said at the time, "in addition to its great economic value, the reservoir would become a very important tourist centre." Prophetic words, borne out by the role it plays in providing recreational facilities, including a huge fleet of 1600 house-boats, which have the run of the 128-kilometre long lake.
Providing irrigation for some 1500 square kilometres of land in the Goulburn Valley, the fruit bowl of Victoria, which also produces grain, beef and dairy products, the river was known to local Aborigines as Bayunga.
© 1996 The Age
