AceNewsDesk – The Balonne River twists around the town of Dirranbandi just like the lives of the Euahlayi people.
Ace Press News From Cutting Room Floor: Published: Nov.14: 2023: TELEGRAM Ace Daily News Link https://t.me/+PuI36tlDsM7GpOJe
Unwelcome, and uncomfortable about living in town, many of the area’s traditional owners, including Tania Thomas’ uncle, used to live on its banks in the old Aboriginal camp.
It’s my getaway time. I go down to the river and just sit … it’s a comforting, quiet space, where you feel connected,” she says.
“[The river] was a lovely, peaceful sort of a place, and it was the heart of our communities,” she says.
Nearly 600 kilometres west of Brisbane, the grazing country around Dirranbandi only began to be turned into farmland about 50 to 60 years ago.
“My mum’s family were here when they were felling all the trees and those sorts of things, clearing the land,” Tania says.
“They knew that probably wasn’t the best thing for the environment back then, but they still did it.”
Tania was born in “Dirran”, but left to go to boarding school, and spent the next 38 years away.
In 2017 she returned and ended up buying the local cafe.
Her journey has given her a unique perspective on the challenge of balancing the health of the river and the economy.
“I’m aware as a business person how many people the farms actually employ,” she says.
“Those are the sorts of things that keep us going as a business, so I’m a little bit torn, and I do struggle with it sometimes.”
There’s less than a year left on the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, but there’s still 450 gigalitres of environmental water missing.
Until now, the states have agreed not to recover it by buying back irrigation licences, because of the socio-economic impact on communities.
Instead, it was hoped that water could be recovered through “efficiency projects,” like helping farmers to modernise their systems and use less water – but that hasn’t worked.
In an effort to revive the plan, federal Water Minister Tanya Plibersek has struck a new deal with the basin states (except Victoria) to reinstate Commonwealth buybacks in return for an extension on the deadline, from 2024 to 2027.
Basin balancing act
The Restoring Our Rivers Bill recently passed the lower house, but now it’s in the Senate, and debate has again reignited about how to balance the needs of the environment and the economy.
Less than a year ago, the Narran River flood plain, near Hebel in south-west Queensland’s northern basin, was in flood.
Hebel is about 650 kilometres west of Brisbane, on the Queensland-New South Wales border.
Since 2020, graziers have rebuilt cattle herds and farmers have harvested some big crops – but this year there has been little rain across the district.
“Basically the tap turned off in the second week October (2022) and we’ve had no running water rain since then,” farmer Frank Deshon says.
Frank has a few irons in the fire — in this country, you’ve got to. He grows both irrigated and non-irrigated crops like grain and legumes, and also runs sheep and cattle, and has a feedlot.
This year it was too dry to plant a wheat crop, so he’s using the water he has left in dams to prepare for the forecast dry weather ahead.
“We’ve decided to utilise some water for irrigated barley, that’ll replenish our barley supplies, and we’ll bale all the straw, so that’ll fill up an empty shed,” Frank says.
Having a water licence can significantly boost the value of a farm and its output.
So, despite missing a crop and facing a possible drought, Frank will still be able to sustain his stock for longer, and possibly grow at least part of a higher-value irrigated crop like cotton.
His is a sparsely populated, marginal farming district, and more water means more people.
“Water down the river is such a valuable resource,” Frank says.
“That keeps our schools operating, it keeps the doctors here and it keeps the hospitals going.”
Around 2017, the Commonwealth bought back water licences for tens of thousands of megalitres from farmers in the northern basin.
But the loss of that water has only further squeezed the already waning population of Hebel.
The COVID border closures soon followed, and Hebel was barely a town anymore.
After the pub and the shop closed, Frank stepped in, bought them and reopened them, along with the caravan park and the butcher shop.
Frank’s not resentful, he just can’t stand the thought of people having no place to gather or get the basics.
“I don’t hold any irrigator accountable for selling their assets,” Frank says.
“Where I think it’s wrong is, the federal government issued these licenses in the first place, businesses were set up to support those licenses in these communities, people were employed.
“I believe the government has a moral responsibility to inject some funds into these communities to offset the economic value that has been taken away.”
Dirranbandi’s dilemma
Back near Dirranbandi, grain and cattle farmer Jacque Hemming is drought-feeding again.
The last drought pushed a lot of farmers out of the district, and as president of the Dirranbandi progress association, Jacque is uneasy at the prospect of more water buybacks.
“Certainly the community groups in town are struggling ever since the last drought and the water buybacks — people have sold up and left,” she says.
“We are finding that a lot of the groups are really struggling to find members to be able to continue.”
Fading facades along the main street of Dirranbandi tell the story of the town.
A second-hand shop now spreads across the floor space of the former hardware and supermarket.
The wool boom has been and gone, and as agriculture is increasingly more mechanised, there are fewer jobs and fewer people.
With a declining and ageing population, for people like the Hemmings, who have no plans of leaving, the goal is to preserve the basic foundations of the community.
“We need to find another industry to keep the town alive, to try and give that infrastructure for that labour to be there,” Jacque says.
“We really need to find a way to sustain this town, it’s worth saving, it’s the hub of this community.”
Getting a seat at the table
Gomeroi elders Ron Waters and Sam Saunders say helping Indigenous people access water has not been prioritised.(ABC News: Nathan Morris)
Another 100 kilometres up the river, near the town of St George, Gomeroi elders Ron Waters and Sam Saunders look over the less than 14 per cent of water still left in Lake Kajarabie, behind the EJ Beardmore Dam.
For the Gomeroi people, this stretch of the Balonne River has long been a special place.
Nearby ceremonial grounds and fish traps made with rocks still stand as modern reminders of their ancient connection.
The dam was built in 1972 and supplies water to irrigators and the nearby town of St George.
Ron remembers the construction — he helped build the causeway.
“That was my first job when we left school, we were on a big cement mixer,” he says.
“Once ring-barking stopped, shearing stopped, and then the cotton industry came in. We were part of that because we all had to provide income for our families.”
Sam Saunders spent his working life as a shearer.
It was a no-nonsense world that colours his view on the irrigation industry.
“They’ve got to make a living, but cut back on the allocations and opening more country up, you can make a good living without all trying to outdo each other,” he says.
That’s supposed to be our environmental water, so the buybacks don’t help us,” Ron says.
“They send [the water] all down at the front end of the flows, this is what we get left with at the back end of the flows.
“This is our life, our bloodline, you know, and it links us all together.”The Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists’ study says the situation has worsened since the $13-billion Murray-Darling basin plan was introduced.
With the air hot and hazy from a distant bushfire, the men can sense dry weather ahead. They worry that not enough water has been kept within the banks of the Balonne.
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