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The Great River Run Part 1: Getting to heart of tragic treasure

What is it about the crisis that has engulfed the Darling River in far western NSW that has struck a nerve deep within Australians?

The Great River Run - Wilcannia

What is it about the crisis that has engulfed the Darling River in far western NSW that has struck a nerve deep within Australians?

Even though most of us have never actually seen it, the Darling River possesses a kind of folkloric mystique — in the frenetic pace of city life we’re comforted and reassured in the idea of knowing somewhere out in the never-never is this tranquil, romantic, beautiful river, its sandy banks lined with magnificent drooping red gums.

It’s where, if you looked hard enough, you’d no doubt find Henry Lawson or Banjo Paterson — it’s the place that’s launched a thousand oil paintings of swagmen boiling the billy on the riverbank.

The skies are brass and the plains are bare,
Death and ruin are everywhere —
And all that is left of the last year’s flood
Is a sickly stream on the grey-black mud;
The salt-springs bubble and the quagmires quiver,
And — this is the dirge of the Darling River

— The Song of the Darling River by Henry Lawson (1891)

Then … The busy the river in the early 1900s.
Then … The busy the river in the early 1900s.
Now … The dry river banks of the Darling River at Tilpa. Picture: Toby Zerna
Now … The dry river banks of the Darling River at Tilpa. Picture: Toby Zerna

Certainly the Darling is a symbol of calm, but also of an Australia that perhaps

doesn’t exist any more.

The recent ghastly, confronting sight of up to perhaps a million dead fish smothering the river’s surface like a silvery, rotting carpet has left us stunned — and rightly so.

This massive fish kill has kickstarted a furore of unprecedented finger pointing — everyone from shearers in the corrugated iron pub at Tilpa on the banks of the river to baristas pulling macchiatos in Bronte, they don’t just have an opinion — they bloody-well know what’s gone wrong.

People will tell you it’s the fault of irrigation farms like Cubbie Station in Queensland hiving off precious water, effectively turning off the tap for farms downriver in New South Wales.

Dead perch lay scattered on the banks of the Darling River near Menindee. Picture: Toby Zerna
Dead perch lay scattered on the banks of the Darling River near Menindee. Picture: Toby Zerna

Others will tell you it’s because of the seemingly inexplicable decision by the Murray Darling Basin Authority to drain the Menindee Lakes — twice — that killed the fish.

It was the grim, long, heatwave that caused it. It was the drought.

However what happened to the fish in the Darling is really a lightning rod for a greater discussion — there are bigger issues and problems for the river and its future.

And while we don’t have all the answers, there is no better way to grasp some idea of what’s happened to this natural, national treasure than to head out and see it for ourselves.

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Original URL: https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/the-great-river-run-part-1-getting-to-heart-of-tragic-treasure/news-story/5f2331ee266e048ec51a47deb152d905