water for the price of cotton

These images show the amount of water extracted by the notorious Cubby station in south western queeensland. This water is taken from the Darling river to irrigate cotton. As cotton is largely an export industry - the water is effectively sold overseas for the price of the cotton. The water is stolen from the Darling. There has been NO water past Wilcannia for almost 12 months.

Note the amount of water above and below the wier.

Travelling to the Macquarie Marshes

Over Easter I am travelling out to the Macquarie Marshes in central NSW. As there is very little water in the marshlands - we will be walking rather than Kiaking! The Marshes is a vast 200,000 hectare bird breeding and wilderness declared area, and I was speechless to discover that there are cotton plantations on the Macquarie river - upstream from the marshes. There are even cotton plantations extracting water in the centre of the marsh area. This is more surprising as the Marshes are a heritage listed site

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Near the town of Warren the Macquarie River divides into a series of channels, spreading out and creating the marshlands. In the top image you see the dark shapes of the marshes in the distance with the bulldozed areas of cotton in the foreground. The bottom image is south of the town of Warren (shown by the yellow flag)

The Wilderness Society are campaigning to stop the ongoing bulldozing of trees for even more lazer graded cotton 'farms'. I plan to make more images from the air using a kite to launch my reasonably new digi compact. Photos soon!! Charles C Benton the Californian maestro of 'kite aerial photography', (KAP) has a wonderful website which tells all about the follies of launching cameras into the atmosphere.

The image below is one of the Cotton plantations within the RAMSAR listed marsh area.

Water extractions: Mungindi

The town of Mungindi is on the Qld / NSW border, just where the straight line becomes a wiggly bit - the Barwon River. You can probably see Google Earths indication of this border running through the image below. Lucky for us the resolution of GE is pretty clear just NW of the town.

This image shows the water extracted for the Barwon River visible as the blue and whiteish shapes across the landscape. FYI this image is 40 ks across




This next image zooms up a bit. (the image is 26 ks across) The town is flaged (yellow). We're gonna zoom up on two ringtanks - one is the triangular shape and the other is shaped a bit like a hammer, nearer the top of this image.


The point of the triangle is positioned 'conviently' right next to the Barwon river. No prizes for guessing which has the most water? In this image and the closer-up below that you can see the charasteristic wide furrow lines indicative of cotton plantings. These furrows can often be seen from an airliner - if you are the sort of person who looks out the window at the earth below.

These (below) are the hammer shaped ringtanks, again positioned right next to the river and when we zoom out from the images (above and below) you can count on one hand the trees - or any vegetation for that matter - in the areas graded for cotton. You can also see that the non-cotton areas are lightly timbered with native vegetation - mainly river gums. This is just to point out that this landscape is not already a denuded treeless expanse. Cotton has unfortunately made it this way.

Water Extractions: Brewarina / Walget

A couple of cotton plantations between Brewarina and Walget, extracting water from the Barwon River. The ploughed land in this image measures aprox 10 x 4 kilometres and the blue indicates the water from the river pumped into the ringtanks. The image under that is a closer up view of the same area. The white lines are the open channels of water that divide the cotton bays.


This cotton plantation is a bit further to the west on the same river.

Water Extractions: Goondawindi

This image shows cotton plantations south of the town of Goondawindi on the NSW Qld border. The town and river can be seen in the top right hand side of the image. The river is the Macintyre which flows to the Barwon and then to the Darling / Murray. The blue and white squares show the massive amounts of water extracted from the river for cotton. This image is 8.5 klms across and there appear to be very few trees. The white lines are open water channels transporting the water from the river to the 'ring tanks' and cotton fields.

This image (below) is 13.5 klms across and is West of Goondawindi. The Macintyre river - running thru. the centre of the image - divides NSW from Qld.

Were now zoomning out and this image is 60 klms from east to west and shows a landscape literally dotted with water evaporating in the ringtanks . The brown denuded areas are the land lazer graded for cotton plantations. The vast scale of the water extractions explainins the current state of the Darling River in western NSW and the general demise of the Murray Darling Basin. If you double click on the images some of them will expand to screen size.

Professor Ian Lowe

I listened a while ago to terrific lecture by Proffessor Ian Lowe currently head of the Australian Conservation Foundation. He was speaking on Big Ideas, Radio National - on the series of lectures dedicated to the life of the late (and great) Rick Farley. Here is a slice of the transcript:


"Indigenous people recognised ... that if we look after the country, the country will look after us. The converse of course, is that if we don't look after the country, sooner or later it will bite us on the backside, and I'm going to suggest we can see some of the teethmarks at the moment in the settled parts of Australia.
We need to recognise that the relationships between our identity, our culture, our wellbeing and the natural values of this country are crucial to our future. We should never forget that the health of our communities is related to the health of landscapes, and the relationship flows both ways. You can't have a healthy community without a healthy landscape, and you can't have a healthy landscape without a healthy community.

He continues to comment on Australias economic rationalist model which has suceeded in draining our rivers of water to support and industry which in effect exports this water for the price of a bale of cotton!!

"Most of our decision makers still use what I call the pig-headed model, in which they see the economy as the main game, like the face of the pig, and society and environment as two minor protuberances propping up the economy. They genuinely believe that if the economy is strong, problems with society, problems with environment, can always be patched up. That's not just a wrong-headed model, but it's not working.

The unprecedented economic progress of recent decades has come at some social cost and very large environmental cost. I think we need a better model, and I've suggested the three concentric circles or the eco-centric model, as somebody called it 'the view from space model', recognising that if you look at the earth from space, you can't see the economy, what you see is the perilously thin membrane that supports life and the physical boundaries that separate some of our societies, like oceans and rivers and mountain ranges. And if you take that as your starting point, you recognise that the economy is an important part of our society but only a part. There are things we expect from our society, like security, companionship, a sense of identity, love, cultural traditions that are not even in principle part of the economy. The economy is part of our society, and our society is totally enclosed within and totally dependent on the natural systems of the planet.

The economy gives us some things we need, but overwhelmingly it gives us things that we have to be persuaded to want, which is why we have an advertising industry. But the natural world gives us the things we absolutely need: air to breathe, water to drink, the capacity to produce our food, our sense of cultural identity, spiritual sustenance. Economic development needs to be consistent with the aspirations of our society, and those in turn need to be kept within the limits of natural ecological systems. We have no future if we continue to use the old paradigm in which economic criteria are the basis for planning, hoping we can always repair the social and environmental damage."

You can also listen on line with this link.

Enjoy your day. more photos from me soon.....

Water Extractions: Moree

More images from Google Earth, these ones showing the cotton plantations around the town of Moree. The Gwydir River which flows to the Barwon and then the Darling runs thru the town. These lazer graded areas are NW of the town, taking water from a tributary of the Gwydir. As you can see from this first image - some parts of GE have more detail than other sections. The 'ring tanks' are the white and blue square/rectangular areas.

Zooming a little closer and the waterway wiggles diagonally thru the centre. Unlike farming country there are no trees on cotton plantations. The land is lazer graded with a gradual slope for water to reticulate down the rows of cotton bushes. Each bay is divided not by fences but by open chanels of water.

You can gain some sense of scale from the trees to the right of the image - those ring tanks are big! Because animals do not graze the harvested cotton bushes there is no need for trees or fences (to shelter and contain the animals). When I visited Bourke in 2002 the dead cotton bushes were raked into large piles with huge machines and set alight. A very dramatic image but environmentally hazardous.


A close up showing the huge amount of earth moving, chanelling and flattening of the landscape. The banks around the ringtank and alonside the chanels are also roadways for cars and trucks.

The wooded area to the right gives an indication of the trees removed by the cotton operation.

Diesel is required for the pumps which are under the metal structures on the chanels. The trees are the large Red River Gums and give some indication of scale.

In the image below werve zoomed out again, showing the area just looked at - and the area beyond it. Wherever there is a waterway the land is also divided into cotton plantations with the blue area indicating the water storage 'ring tank'. The town of Moree is just above the Google logo.

Water Extractions: Wee Waa

More from Google Earth! These images show that although Cubby station just over the border in Qld takes a lot of water - there are many smaller places taking water across northern NSW. The town of Wee Waa on the Namoi, south of Moree is surrounded by cotton plantations. in this image the town is in bottom right corner. If you double click it jumps to screen size.

Two images below are details of the top image. As the resolution of GE is not as good here the square ringtanks show as blue and fields are either green or brown.

This shows the area North East of Wee Waa. again acres of cotton plantations and ringtanks.

Detail (below) showing open water chanels and ring tanks. For a sense of scale this image is 19.5 klms across - a huge area with no native vegetation, trees or bushes left to stabilise the soil. Welcome to 'the country' in the early 21st century.

Inland Sea at Wagga Wagga

Ive just made a big discovery!! Maybe you know this already ... but, if you double click on the images - they enlarge to screen size. It is particularly effective for the stereo images in previous posts.




These are images from my current exhibition at the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery down on the beautiful Murrumbigee River. Ive been making aerial photographs of the patterns made by native vegetation out on the Darling. So ... Ive been flying large kites with cameras attached. Yes ... its a good excuse to run about in the beautiful landscape out there! Out in this open grazing country - no checkerboard of ploughed fields out here - topography, water and wind create beautiful organic shapes and colours. Cutting through these patterns are the straight lines (yes humans are fairly blunt creatures) of fences and roadways and the electric grid. These two patterns, the organic and the linear, appear to have little relationship to each other.

This work is called Inland Sea and is a map-like pattern of the names of creeks and rivers which flow into the Darling. As i was pouring over maps i noticed that many have Aboriginal names and here, is an Aboriginal and colonialist history written into the landscape. The work suggests the flow of sustaining floodwaters across this vast semi-arid country. Baaka is the Bakindji word for the Darling.

In times when Queeensland rains come down the Cuttaburra channels and the Paroo, Warrego and Culgoa to the Darling a vast, expanse of water covers the country for miles in all directions. The explorer Charles Sturt fantasised about water of this dimension. An ardent ortholigist, he watched waterbirds setting off from Adelaide to the inland. He became obsessed with searching for these vast and unpredictable inland seas and continued to search the deserts of SA into his old age. (the link is to Sturts publication 'two expeditions into the interior of south australia')

Comparisons 1: Less and less

I travelled out to the Darling River for x-mas again this year. The river is in an almost waterless state having stopped running two months earlier this year on 8 September 2006. For those new to the tragedy of the Darling, the river has been a chain of waterholes almost every year in the summer months since 2000. So when the temperatures are up in the 40,s and you would like a swim - there aint much to swim in. This has been compounded by the blue- green algae, a poison which causes skin to itch on contact. Water infested with algae also smells - a combination of dead fish and dead fox - two of the most repugnant odours around!! Most homesteads and the small towns on the Darling have sunk bores next to this iconic and beautiful river, into the sub-riparian water, in order to run a household.

Darling below Wilcannia, December 2006. not even puddles for birds and kangarooos.

Each year since 2001 the dry summer period has become longer. In 2006 after a long, dry summer, the river began to flow again in March over the cooler months. As it stopping flowing again on 8 September there was in effect only six and a half months of a river in the 2006 year.

Darling Below Wilcannia, January 2003

Up-river around the town of Bourke, in southern Qld and northern NSW, cotton is planted in late spring and watered over the summer months. The water in the river system is pumped into huge 'ring tanks', like large paddocks for water storage, ready for the hot growing season required by cotton. Over summer it is also fertililsed and sprayed with insecticides. While the ring tanks are full of water - the river looks like it does in these photos.

Darling River below Wilcannia in October 2002. Still some puddles of water in October.

Two ringtanks on the Barwon River near Mungindi on the Qld NSW border.

This is cotton irrigation courtesy of Google Earth. Notice the wier in the bottom centre of the image. Water is pumped from above the wier and stored in the ringtanks (the two white-ish areas) - leaving the river downstream extremely depleted . Google Earth can reveal lots of whats going on in what you may have thought was farmland with rolling hills and cute furry animals. Welcome to large scale irrigation with lazer graded, treeless plantations. For a sense of scale, the image is 1.7ks across. Large river gums can be seen along the river course.

Underwater fencelines

One of the effects of the river going dry is that there is no longer a boundary fence. Like anyone, sheep love to explore new territory!! You either destock the river paddocks - or have a floating population of neighbours sheep mixing with your own. When the river comes down again - you muster and truck them back again - expensive and time consuming. What my brother has done is to build temporary fences down the middle of the riverbed, filling up the gaps between the waterholes. This is obviously also time consuming. A fence in the bottom of a river bed is a visual conundrum. Here are some images of the process;

The fences are made from blue binder-twine with bamboo, gum and box tree 'posts'.

One of the negative aspects of sharing photos of the waterless Darling is that they could serve to 'normalise' our expectations for a river, and hence our practice of using the water for short term economic gains. With environmental and longer term concepts in mind - it is obviously the river that requires water for the continued survival of the river chanel itself and the billabongs and floodplains beside it.

Here are words from Thomas Mitchell describing the (fairly low) Darling River in 1835. The river he saw, called Baaka by the Bakindji people, was managed entirely with Aboriginal world views and attitudes to water use;

July 2nd: "The river and its vicinity presented much the same appearance here that they did 200 miles higher up. Similar lofty banks ... with marks of great floods traced in parallel lines on the clayey sides; ....transparent water, with acquaticplants - a slow current, with an equal volume of water - fine gum trees and an abundance of luxurious grasses."

August 4th: "We, during a sojourn of more than two months in the Australian wilderness, have been abundantly suplied with the finest water, from that extrordinary river which we had been tracing, and without which those regions would be deserts."