Moulamein Notes
IT is sometimes weird where generosity comes from.
Heather Theodoulou came for her only visit to Moulamein 53 years ago with her new husband David.
They were camping on the Edward River behind our tennis courts and it was stinking hot.
Heather has never been back but David and his mates have been coming up here every year since. (Good move David, 53 years of camping with the fellas.)
Getting back to the story. Even though Heather has only been here once, she felt a connection to our little town as it was a place that David loved to come to.
Heather read how we were isolated so she decided to buy a Christmas present for every kid in our district.
The score got to about 100 and Heather said that there must be more kids than that in our district. I think Heather bought over 140 gifts.
The two major supermarkets got involved and put in a heap of lollies for the kids. There was also a heap of second-hand bikes and toys donated from around the district.
Our Rural Fire Service took a day off their flood duties to distribute all these donated gifts. Our kids could come into our RFS station and pick their second-hand gifts out.
Every kid in the district will be getting a wrapped gift under the tree form our mates Heather and David.
I do not know these people but if ever they want somewhere new to camp. Give me a ring as this is the most generous thing that our town has ever seen. Well done.
River still dropping slowly
THE 2022 flood has finally dropped to levels from 2016, when our town was evacuated for no reason.
I think those in charge have learned a lot since then. I think they bought a laser level with them this time instead of a helicopter.
Most roads are being opened again and we can finally start to get back to normal. I think the only main road with water over it is the Balranald Road. The Tchelary Road is still under and there are a few other minor roads that have very nasty wash outs.
A lot of our roads were stuffed before the floods. Especially the Hay Road.
Unfortunately, I can see a lot of our roads going back to gravel until our council can find the money to fix them.
I do not know what happened with this ethanol plant that our council got involved in but almost a million dollars would have built a lot of roads.
Wakool Water almost broke our Wakool Shire many years ago. Councils cannot run a business. They are too inefficient. They are there for roads, garbage and town maintenance.
I just wonder how many were employed in the Moama office to lose that much money for our ratepayers. Stick to what you know fellas. Leave private enterprise to those that have not got as many employees as a council has.
The irony of it all
WITH half the lawn still under water and maybe half the farm still under water, we had to water the lawn that did not go under, as well as kick the storage pump up for the rice as the water in our Billabong is still too high to put our pumps back into our creek.
We are still on off quota water but we still only have 65 per cent of our allocation. It is a very weird world, our irrigation water world.
Crow-eaters get what they wished for
Be careful what you wish for. Our crow-eating mates down in South Australia have always wanted the Murray River to go back to natural flows to fix their lakes that were sometimes fresh, sometimes salt lakes before we controlled the rivers.
Cop this crow-eaters. This is natural flow. This is what happens when we do not have weirs to control rivers as they got too full keeping your environmental flows in storage. Please accept this extra water with my love.
Even with all this extra flow, I still reckon that we will be hearing about the Coorong as it is probably still in trouble, as it was never fed by the Murray River.
The crow-eaters drained the natural flow that kept it healthy through the limestone cliffs to the sea, then blamed everyone else for their stuff up.
I see they have 576 gates open to let the 180,000 megs a day we are sending them to keep their salt lakes fresh.
If I could find a way to gift wrap 180,000 megs a day, I would. We should get a credit for this extra water we are letting you have in the next drought.
The environment has had its share this year without losing much of their allocation. After the 2016 floods our Murray River mates ended up with a zero allocation in 2017. Let’s hope we do not see that again next year.
