Mildura 885 km
Super moon - Alan - Gol Gol - Tree health - Bottle Bend
The evening had been a bright one. There had been a ‘super moon’, an exceptionally large full moon. I had watched it rise through the trees and it had lit my tent throughout the night. When I awoke the excitement of people and the urgency of conversations from the night before were but memories. I like that about mornings, there is calm. I packed, keen to be out on the water in the crisp morning light and to be in Mildura around midday, I had not taken much into my tent that night, so packing was easy. I was almost done when I saw Alan, from the cottage next door moving around. He offered me a cup of coffee and breakfast which I gladly accepted. Whilst sitting in Alan’s lounge chairs under his open veranda, overlooking the river, Alan told me more about his life, about his life in a small country town in the Mallee and of one of his adventures, a trip across the Simpson Desert, along the French Line between Dalhousie Springs and Birdsville in Little Grey Ferguson Tractors. He was the support mechanic. Steak and eggs was a luxury. Bryan the musician, who had left a copy of a song he had written about the Murray in my boat, turned up and accepted the offer of a coffee. Within the next ten minutes, the whole community seemed to be gathered around Alan’s fireplace. Subs, who owned the house boat they look after came down with a copy of the weekly newspaper. It had an article on blackwater he wanted to share with me. Accepting the offer of a cup of coffee before going off to work, he told me of his plans to take his houseboat up the Darling River next year. He would keep me informed. I was moved by the sense of community, support and care these river people showed each other and how they had taken me into it. Pushing off, I nosed the current into the fast flowing stream and was soon on my way again.
It was not long before I began to come across residential homes of Gol Gol. Stately homes, with landscaped gardens and terraced river frontages: a contrast to my hosts, simple accommodation. Some of the big trees which lined the river bank had been knocked over in the strong winds of the storm the previous week and were still in the process of being cleaned up. You could see the effect the weir pool had on their roots. Red gum roots will not enter permanent water, but form a layer above it. Where water is at a permanent high level, or young saplings grow on beaches their roots form a intertwined plate rather than penetrate deep into the soil. It is this plate that they balance on, but whilst they do not lack for water, they are vulnerable to falling over in high winds. The smooth water reflected the sky giving it a blue colour in my photos. In reality, it was the colour of dark tea from the tannins that had leached into it from organic material picked up from the forest.
Large areas of black box and river red gum were in the poorest condition of any I have seen on my paddle so far. They even seemed worse than after the millennium drought (the fifteen years of below average rainfall that finished in 2011) when I did my last paddle. Why had this section of the river been particularly hard hit and why had it taken so long to recover? I estimated from the branches of the dead trees that at one time 75% of the forest floor would have been shaded by black box; now it was more like 15%. Even if you accept drought as natural and its effect on trees as a natural thinning event, where the fittest and those in the best positions survive, it was still shocking. Along the river’s edge the red gums had also suffered. On some stretches one in three old trees had died and more had lost strength, cut back to a few young sapling-like branches which had grown since the drought broke 5 years ago. The root systems must cut back too. To be healthy, they need to be fed sugars from photosynthesis in the leaves. When I worked as a landscape gardener, we had a rule of thumb. Actually it had to do with replanting bushes and trees from one place to another. It was that the roots of a plant are as extensive as its foliage. What you see above the ground is what there is below the ground. When we dug out a bush we trimmed back its foliage to maintain a healthy balance. The leaf mass on these trees was only enough to support a tiny root system. With fungi attacking the abandoned roots and so little resources for such big trees, it’s no wonder they take so long to re-establish and no wonder that the younger trees show more vigour. All the more respect to those forest giants that manage to rebuild the spreading crowns that river red gum are famous for. If those trees die, it will be a hundred years before the river is lined with majestic gums again. It will not be something we see again in our lifetimes. I prayed for more good years and that we find a way and the will to help them recover.
Right at the beginning of my paddle, I took a detour into Bottle Bend. This billabong is infamous for having become highly acidic in the drought. People often comment on the smell of murray mud. It has its own peculiar smell. Living thing is the Murray get their energy from organic matter. Some is washed down from the mountain catchments, but in a long river like the Murray this is soon consumed. Some is produced by vegetation along the banks, this is one reason why overhanging trees and areas of reeds and rushes are so important - particularly if you like fishing, or observing birdlife. And some is brought into the river from the forests following floods. This organic matter supports a food chain that begins with micro-organisms that break it down, waterbeds and mussels that filter feed on these, shrimps, frogs, platypus, fish, turtles and birds, as well as land animals and insects that depend on the river as a food source. All use oxygen, but deep in the mud where the oxygen cannot penetrate are micro-organisms which use the naturally existing sulphur from the soil. Under drying conditions this can form sulphide gases, which is what gives the mud its strong smell. In some situations, the sulphide produced by these organisms becomes sulphuric acid. This happened at Bottle Bend. The water was so acidic, it would have dissolved a car body. The little water that was in the billabong was pink. It killed everything it came into contact with. There was concern when the river rose in 2011 that it would kill fish in the river downstream. Luckily it was such a high river, that like the blackwater in most cases this year (so far), it was diluted by freshwater, limiting its effect. Paddling into Bottle Bend 5 years later, it now looked like any other billabong. Young trees lined its shores. The water had the same colour as everywhere else. It had recovered.
Approaching Mildura, I paddled alongside the majestic Mallee Cliffs, 20 to 30m high red cliffs where the river has cut into ancient sand hills, exposing the geological story of past climates and landscapes. A fringe of red gum and river coobah (river myall) grew from sediments which had eroded from its face, the fresh green fringe a contrast to the ancient rock behind them. Planes flew into Mildura airport and jet trails from the flight path between Europe and Australia criss-crossed the sky. I could hear the rumble of traffic in the distance. There is something exciting about coming into towns and cities when having been out in the bush for weeks. There is such a contrast between the two environments, but there are also people.
I found a spot in the Buronga Caravan Park on the NSW side of the river. That afternoon I met with three other source to sea paddlers, Tim Williams who completed the journey round 10 years ago, Kia James, one of the few women to do the journey solo and the legendary Mike Bremers who has paddled both the Bidgee and the Murray and had just come back from a stint exploring sections of the Darling River. We talked all afternoon, after which Mike and I moved on to the pub for dinner and a few beers, where we swapped tales long into the night. Finally a pub that was open (and had beer)!
Video: Black box woodland near Mildura still recovering from drought
