Outback Spirit Dries Up In Face Of Record Drought

[RestoreGore]

The Darling River in Australia as it looks today.

Unbelievable.

Outback Spirit Dries Up In Face Of Record Drought

By Nick Squires in Bourke
Last Updated: 3:54am GMT 20/11/2006

One of the most celebrated Outback towns has been pushed to the brink of social and economic collapse as a result of the worst drought in Australia's history. Bourke, in the parched west of New South Wales, was enshrined in frontier mythology by 19th-century bush poets such as Henry Lawson, who declared: "If you know Bourke, you know Australia." The expression "back o'Bourke" is understood by all Australians to mean in the middle of nowhere.

But the town's resilience has been pushed to breaking point by six years of drought, the worst "big dry" since the British settled in Australia in 1788.Unless the drought breaks soon, Bourke will become "an economic and social disaster" according to a recent report by economists at Charles Sturt University in New South Wales. The drought is taking its toll on towns across the Outback, but its effect on Bourke, 485 miles north west of Sydney, is particularly acute.

Unlike other towns in the bush, Bourke has no mining to fall back on. Its reliance on irrigation for vast cotton fields and citrus plantations also makes it vulnerable to the lack of rain. The town's lifeblood, the Darling River, is dwindling by the day beneath a blazing blue sky, its sluggish waters an unhealthy pea green.

"This used to be a good fishing spot, but look at it now," said publican Lachlan Ford, surveying a section of the river, reduced to a patchwork of sandbanks, gravel shoals and fetid black pools. "We're coming into summer, when the temperature won't dip much below 40C for three months," he added.There has been no cotton crop for three years because of the lack of water and the orange orchards are dying. Kangaroos lie panting on a lawn in front of an office building on the outskirts of town and a pair of emus barely manage to break into a run when startled by the side of the road.

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"Our dams are depleted and we're running out of water," said Graham Brown, 58, who owns a 430,000-acre farm 190 miles west of Bourke. "We're holding on by the skin of our teeth, but if we don't get any rain this summer, we'll be hitting the panic button."
More at the link
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And while this goes on, PM Howard meets with the coal industry to secure his campaign coffers. Disgraceful.

The Darling River which is the longest river in Australia and has six other rivers as tributaries is at dangerously low levels due to overuse of its waters, pollution from toxic runoff, and the most severe and prolonged drought in over a hundred years due in part to anthropogenic climate change.

Right now what Australia needs is not political posturing, but definitive action to mitigate this crisis and bring hope and sustinence back to the people of Bourke and other areas affected by it. And people NEED TO CHANGE THEIR WAYS as well, because as the Darling River crisis shows, mismanagement and misuse of water resources especially in light of the scientific consensus regarding climate change and its effects are not only irresponsible, but deadly.

In the words of Henry Lawson:

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.

Is that really the legacy PM Howard wants to be remembered for?

Also see:

Darling Dry As A Bone

Threatened Species Of The Darling River

Water Is Life

[opihimoimoi]

1. They reject Global Warming...no connection to Mans works??

Are they insane?

Now they pay a TOO LITTLE TOO LATE PRICE of Drought and Famine...

Ps

They can move to Alice Springs or Perth where they got water....?

[NNadir]

5. When you say "they," I hope you do not mean all Australians.

I live in a country that is also ruled by a climate change denier. I expect to suffer in my country for climate change. But I certainly wouldn't say I reject climate change.

The situation is very much like a war, where people who did not support their government's activities are killed. Many of the Australians suffering here are innocent.

[opihimoimoi]

7. They means those that reject GW as influenced by Mans works

:beer:

[Sequoia]

2. Such a tragedy.

If this keeps up the whole country will be a wasteland.

[zeemike]

3. I feel so sorry for those poor folks

And the animals as well really suffer more than that.
Let's hope for rain soon.

[RestoreGore]

4. I am praying...

Unfortunately, I think it's going to take more than that now. I wonder what PM Howard is going to do when the mass migrations start when the land can no longer sustain the people and other species there?

[Javaman]

6. Get rid of cotton and grow hemp. requires much less water.

Time to adapt to the new blazing hot world we now are living, because it's only going to get worse.

[gulfcoastliberal]

8. Absolutely! Afghan farmers know this;their second largest crops are cannabis...

since it is so hardy it flourishes in conditions lethal to other water intensive crops. It truly is a miraculous plant.