Numurkah farmers say water trading is killing their dairy district town
Shops are boarded up, 12,000 dairy cows have been culled and marriages are disintegrating from stress. And furious farmers in a decimated Victorian dairy district say water barons are to blame for their dying town.
VIC News
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Farming communities in the state’s dry north are being killed off by water barons and a federal government that has forgotten Victoria, furious farmers say.
Residents of the decimated dairy district of Numurkah, near Shepparton, say farmers are going broke and the town is dying because poor water management and government policy has allowed water to be sucked up by corporate nut farms and traded like stocks.
Numurkah farmers are gearing up to fight to save their district, with a protest in Canberra and an upcoming legal challenge against water authorities over the environmental damage being caused to the Murray River.
They’re angry at drought minister David Littleproud, claiming he showed little concern when he visited the region recently, talking instead about his own Queensland electorate.
Chair of Northern Victoria Irrigation Communities (NVIC) Dudley Bryant said country people were usually mild-mannered but the time had come for radical action.
Addressing a community meeting at a local pub, Mr Bryant said he held hope the “broken” Murray River irrigation system could be fixed, and Numurkah saved.
“We took on the Murray Darling Basin Plan thinking we’d be looked after … we could never have imagined it was going to turn out like it has, with the area pretty much turned to dust,” he said.
“But while there’s life, there’s hope … there’s a chance we can breathe life back into it but it will take a lot of work and a fair bit of belligerence.”
For farmer Danny Bergamin — who stopped milking three years ago amid water worries, and after losing his wife to a heart attack 18 months earlier — any policy change will come too late.
His is just one of a number of rotary dairies sitting idle and his irrigation channel is at two per cent capacity.
More than 110 dairy farmers in the district have stopped milking in the past year and 12,000 cows have been culled in the last two months alone, Mr Bryant said.
At the high school, numbers had halved in recent years while at the Catholic primary school, St Joseph’s, student numbers had also dropped.
Principal Paul Arnel said there had also been “a marked increase in the number of families needing fees relief”, and students were increasingly anxious about the drought and their parents’ financial problems.
Bridget Goulding from the local CWA said businesses were struggling and families were hurting.
“There’s marriages breaking up because of the stress,” she said.
The Sunday Herald Sun saw shopfronts boarded-up in the Numurkah main street and many businesses in the town reported reduced patronage.
“Over the last two years 28 per cent of our dairy clients have closed,” vet Frank Worsfold said.
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At Northern Dairy Services, the customer base has reduced by 40 per cent each year for the last two years.
“Water policy is killing northern Victoria,” owner Golly Keane said.
“The water flowing through this region that farmers can’t even use is what’s killing the joint.
“When you have the big end of town trading water as a commodity and farmers can’t get their hands on it, and going under, there’s something pretty bloody wrong with the system.”
Minister Littleproud did not respond to the Sunday Herald Sun’s request for comment by deadline.