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.