“I recently found a boomerang here, a dinky-di one used
to kill an animal, maybe a duck. It’d been in the river for who
knows how long,” Barb says, as we approach a sweeping bend
in the river where in the late 1800s paddle-steamers would load
up with wool bales.
Gazing up from the bottom of the river channel, 10m deep
in parts, provides an especially unusual perspective of the
ancient river red gums that cling precariously to the banks,
their roots dangling like giant octopus tentacles in search of
water. Sadly, it seems, all they’ve caught recently are dust en-
crusted tumbleweeds. Some of the bigger trees feature historic
European survey marks from the 1800s but others wear much
older cultural scars – bark carved out by Aboriginal people to
make travelling canoes or bowls.
There’s even a tree with a carefully carved letterbox-sized slit at
eye level. “Oh, that’s the postman’s tree,” Barb explains. “Back
in the 1880s, a shearer was receiving illicit mail, so he asked
the riverboat captain if he wouldn’t mind stopping to drop his
mail in the hole in the tree.”
Barb then refl ects more seriously as she turns her attention
to the lack of water in the Menindee Lakes, a chain of shal-
low, ephemeral freshwater lakes connected upstream to the
Darling River to form an artifi cial storage system. “I can get
used to a fl ood or drought in the paddocks, but I can’t get used
to no water coming down the river; it just doesn’t seem right.”
Menindee
A two-hour drive up the dusty track, dodging feral goats, to
Menindee reveals that Barb isn’t the only one unhappy with
management of water fl ows along the Darling. Just about every-
where you look there are not-so-subtle signs criticising the
allocation of water.
Stickers on cars and cash registers in shops scream “Return
Water to the River: SAVE THE DARLING”, referring to
the drought in the upper Darling. Meanwhile, a collection of
large white crosses stand forlornly atop a rise looking over the
town’s weir with slogans demanding “water equality for the
river and the lakes”.
Nowhere is the eff ect of the lack of water more stark than at
Sunset Strip, about 20km out of Menindee where, in the 1960s,
Broken H i l l m iner s bu i lt weekender s w ith water f ront v iews on
the shores of Lake Menindee. When the lake is full it’s a magnet
for powerboaters, waterskiers and fi shers. But during a drought,
the boats, like the dreams of their owners, are left high and dry.Wilcannia
Further upriver at Wilcannia, a bustling river port in the late
1800s, some of the Barkindji, who make up the majority of the
town’s population of 600, have turned to dance in a desperate
attempt to make the Darling fl ow again. As we arrive in town,
the usually unrelentingly blue sky gives way to dark clouds.76 Australian Geographic
Large protest crosses decrying the Murray-Darling
Basin management plan and hammered into dunes
above Lake Menindee have become tourist attractions.
Broken dreams: these weekenders, some with
jetties, most built in the 1960s for Broken Hill miners,
have temporarily lost their waterfront views. Instead,
they look out over a dry Lake Menindee.
The Wilcannia Court House is one of several
restored Victorian-era sandstone buildings
in the town located 200km north-east of
Broken Hill on the Barrier Highway.