A Slow Death

Vivid images of lush forests, vibrant birdlife and sprawling grasslands burst in my imagination. The colours rich, varied and alive. But these memories had their genesis years back. Things are very different now. It’s all slowly dying. I am slowly dying.

I was born in the high country of the Great Dividing Range and am known by First Nations peoples as Dunggula. In the Dreamtime when life was created, Ngurunderi was chasing Ponde the giant cod. Ponde swam and swam to evade Ngurunderi’s spear. As the fish tried to escape, each swish and sweep of his tail created my twists and turns until Ponde reached Lake Alexandrina.

You would know me as the Murray River.

I flow to the east through bushland interspersed with meandering fields past the towns of Echuca, Albury and Khancoban. Westward, I travel through Renmark past towering ochre cliffs, to Swan Reach eventually becoming one with the ocean. Even though I have crossed this land from mountains, through valleys to the coast since time immemorial, every part of me is at risk of vanishing.

Over thousands of years I have ebbed and flowed through times of drought and times of flood. Selfishly, these natural cycles have been disturbed and I can no longer rely on being replenished by nature.

You cut deep channels into me, diverting my course, reducing my flow. Cruel machines dig and prod, tearing my banks, creating channels for streams to flow across vast fields of cotton and canola. I can’t fight back anymore.

Why have you ignored those who have protected me for thousands of years?

I cry out for the wildlife that is also suffering, but no-one is listening.

I’m distracted by an eerie, low-pitched cry, a counterpoint to the background noise of rustling grasses. I slow to watch a bittern carefully pick his way through these tall grasses that line my bank. Head tilted, alert, watchful. He’s a shy bird using the undergrowth for cover, but that growth is becoming thinner. His head dips, beak digging at the soil. He stands tall, exploration unsuccessful. More probing at the dirt, yet no food to be found. A sudden noise, the crack of a nearby eucalypt branch interrupts his search. He stops, frozen in motion, long neck extended, beak pointing skywards. Then slowly he starts to sway in time with the grasses and the wind, brown and white feathers blending in so he is obscured, fading into the distance, foreshadowing the future of his species. I leave him there, stationary on the bank and continue on my way thankful the bitterns are still here. For now.

Not like the golden perch whose mass deaths on my sister river, the Barka or Darling, depleted their numbers. Their dead rotting corpses coated the river surface; heads, tails, fins all sticking out at odd angles competing for space. They were competing for air before they died. Barka had lost her oxygen, her life force. The perch had no chance. If this was a unique occurrence, maybe you could pass it off as an anomaly, but no, it has happened before. The Macquarie perch can attest to that and may not last to mid-century. The ‘experts’ say it is due to the variable water quality, elevated temperatures and continuing mass death events (like it is a show to buy a ticket and be entertained). These make the perch vulnerable to diseases, to parasites. They say they cannot name a single cause of these events.

I can.

It’s not possible for you to keep draining me of my reserves, to favour industry over nature, to never give back, not adjust your ongoing greed and reduce your use. So I can have a small chance to replenish. Now, there is not enough of me to support you all.

I worry that other fish species on the brink, like the plump, speckled Murray cod will also soon disappear. Not only do they suffer from my flow reducing, oxygen levels falling; the weirs and dams block their way. Age old migration paths interrupted by development. Large parts of me can no longer provide the environment they need to reproduce. My heart breaks for their future.

But it’s not only the wildlife.

I long for a glimpse of the bright yellow bliss of the swamp diuris, a delicate orchid perched atop long green stems, assembled in clumps. Its spotlights of colour peeking out from woodlands or flowing through fields, a cheery exclamation point floating above the straw tones of the grasses.

The landscape is fading to sepia. The varied hues of nature disappearing along with the orchids, daisies, nut-heads, bluebush, copperburrs, lignums, silver cassias, sedges, raspworts, gidgees, lilies and wattles. A desert created from neglect. This is on our horizon.

As I turn south-west, ripples roll across my surface, the riverbed starts to descend, and it becomes a little deeper, creating a small oasis where grasslands meet and wildlife can graze. My waves stroke the riverbank, almost sighing as my flow hastens.

I hear laughter and spy a small boy racing towards a tall gum, climbing its trunk, then out along a leaning branch to grab an old, tattered rope. He retreats towards the bank, rope in hand, holding it high.

‘Watch me Dad!’

The boy pushes his long dark fringe out of his eyes, hitches up baggy green shorts while running back towards his father. He then prepares to launch himself over the bank and into the water. Planting his feet into the dry caramel soil, he crouches, ready to run towards me.

‘No, don’t!’ his father yells.

The boy turns quickly, hands on hips, ready to challenge.

‘Break ya neck if you try that. Too shallow now buddy.’

The boy drops the rope, stares at me for a while, then turns, takes his father’s hand, and they walk away. Their muffled conversation of times past fades as I continue my journey.

Suddenly my path is blocked. I’ve hit the locks. A series of large metal barriers force me to hold my course. All the way from Wentworth to Blanchetown; stop and start, ebb and flow. Defeated, I wait until I’m allowed to proceed.

A flash of a scene appears from the recent past. Seasons of unending drought, parched soil stretching into forever, a severe blue sky hosting an angry sun. Bushland crisp. Undergrowth dry, brittle. I was drained to an essence of my former self, water levels lower than my memory could reach. A pungent, almost acidic aroma enveloped the air and far in the distance, a towering green grey line of bulging cloud was approaching. I heard the whispering of wind through the vegetation before I felt it. From a rough burst of air to a breath all in a millisecond. The breeze played with my surface then ripped it skywards as shards. The clouds dominated the sky, the sun obscured, the light, a yellowish grey. A deep rumbling built and crescendoed into a roar, over and over again. A crack, electric. A flash, white hot.

But no rain came.

The storm teased and disappointed.

But before it departed, one last long spearing flash ignited the bushland.

The flames were terrifying. Fierce arms of orange and red, racing through the crowns of trees, beheading each one in turn. A line of corpses adorning its path. The oppressive heat sucked the life out of the air. Searing and burning all it encountered. The screaming torture of possum and koala that could not outrun nor hide from the fingers of the fire. Claws clutching at the air, then stilled. Tiny paws curled inwards in death.

What was left of the landscape was black, ashen, deserted. Bushland tormented, branches snapped, leaves withered. Their shrunken forms scattered, circling the tree trunks - a wreath around tombstones. The drought had reduced me to a trickle, nowhere near enough to quench the thirst of anything that survived. But little did.

Finally, the lock is opened. Brief joy as I’m free again to continue my journey to the ocean. The closer I get to the coast, the narrower I become. Sandbanks appear that push and pull me in paths I had not intended. This toing and froing means I no longer provide for habitats that used to thrive. Streams and wetlands are struggling as now I have less to give them. A small, brown mottled frog may thus be another victim of my scarcity. Sloane’s froglet, to give its proper name, suffers and will most likely be extinct within the decade. No longer will I hear their distinctive sharp call in the evenings, sated from a recent feast. They will fade and die. The silence left behind will be a shattering claxon to the toll this neglect has caused.

Don’t you understand that the river, its floodplains and wetlands are interconnected? It is this interconnectedness that ensures we all live. Not just you. Not just the irrigators. Not just industry. But all species. We need biodiversity to survive. I have to be replenished to survive.

To get to the ocean, I have to wind my way through the landscape, past small communities growing crops, raising livestock, working together to preserve their livelihood  while nurturing the local environment. These people understood the interconnection, each had a place in the jigsaw. Without one of us, there will always be an empty space. The missing piece making the whole picture weaker and unstable. A cart with three wheels.

Can’t we work together to survive?

Slowly, I near the end of my journey, the mouth of the Murray. A place where freshwater joins and coexists with salt water. A series of coastal dunes separate me from the ocean. Channels carve through the sand to allow the water to flow. Seawater replenishes the lagoons, fish can migrate upstream, birdlife can feed. A brief moment of ecstasy is halted by fear.

The natural progression of life depends on water. I worry how long I can continue if the one thing I have to give, the one thing that maintains existence, the one thing that gives me value, is used up, diverted, stolen.

I don’t know how long I have left.

Note: Ngarrindjeri Dreaming sourced from: https://www.murraybridge.sa.gov.au/services/your-community/services-for-the-community/arts-and-culture/ngarrindjeri-heritage used with permission of the Elders and community of Ngarrindjeri Ruwe.