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.