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Closure of the Murray River’s mouth during the Dreamtime, and implications

for sustainable water management in Australia’s Murray Darling Basin

By Dr Jennifer Marohasy, Institute of Public Affairs, Melbourne

For International Conference on Sustainable Water Management, Murdoch University, Perth,

Western Australia, 29 November – 3 December 2015.

Abstract

The Murray is Australia’s longest river, and its often-blocked mouth has become a potent symbol

of the unsustainability of irrigated agriculture. In reality, the Murray’s sea mouth was often

blocked with sand before European settlement, and before a single irrigation ditch was ever dug

in the Murray Darling. Aboriginal legends tell how Ngurunderi walked across Tapawal in the

Dreamtime. It was also closed-over when Matthew Flinders, and the French expedition led by

Nicolas Baudin, meet at Encounter Bay in April 1802. Charles Sturt’s diaries, and scrutiny of the

first maps of the region, indicate the mouth was also filled with sand in February 1830. Yet a

premise of the current Murray-Darling Basin Plan, based on computer simulation modelling, is

that by buying back irrigation licenses to return environmental flow, the Murray’s mouth can be

kept open. In retelling what Ngurunderi and Sturt found at the Murray mouth, and considering

the maps from Flinders and Baudin’s expeditions, this paper questions popular modern notions

of what is natural, and whether the objectives of the recently legislated Basin Plan are realistic.

1. INTRODUCTION

The Murray Darling Basin Plan is a requirement of the Commonwealth Water Act 2007, giving

effect to international agreements, and ostensibly establishing a long-term adaptive management

framework for the Basin’s water resources, with a premium on environmental protection. The

Basin Plan became legislation in November 2012, specifying a maximum quantity of water that

can be used for irrigated agriculture. This was developed from the assumption that historical

levels of water extraction were unsustainable, and that this was causing environmental

degradation (Ferguson et al. 2008; Sheldon et al. 2000; Pittock et al., 2011; Kingsford et al.

2011).

Central to the campaigns to have this legislation drafted and enacted, was the concept that the

Murray River’s sea mouth should be kept open. For example, a key policy document from the

Australian Conservation Foundation (Harriss-Buchan, 2011) states that: “The Basin Plan must

provide adequate end–of‐system flow to keep the mouth of the Murray open without dredging,

an expensive process which has cost more than $36 million since the mouth closed in 2002.”

The Murray River’s sea mouth is a narrow inlet between the sand dunes that face Encounter Bay,

Map 1. The Murray River proper flows into Lake Alexandrina at Wellington, Map 1. For the

purposes of current water resource planning, the waters of Lake Alexandrina are considered part

of the Murray River. Various other constraints are fed into a computer simulation model which

has calculated flow regimes under different scenarios (CSIRO, 2008).

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Map 1. Google map of the Murray mouth region showing Cape Jervis, Wellington, Adelaide and

Encounter Bay. The Murray River enters Lake Alexandrina at Wellington. The Murray River

enters Encounter Bay immediately to the south of the Murray Mouth Lookout.

Historical accounts of river flow, in particular the corresponding state of the Murray’s mouth,

provide an independent method for verifying output from the computer simulation model, in

particular indigenous legend, the first maps, and the diary of the first European explorer to travel

down the Murray River. This historical information indicates that on the first four documented

occasions there was no channel from Lake Alexandrina to the Southern Ocean: that the Murray’s

mouth was closed-over. This does not mean that the Murray’s sea mouth was always filled with

sand, but it does suggest that in its natural state it might not be open most of the time.

This conference paper goes into considerable detail quoting information that the reader may not

immediately realize is relevant, with respect to both the Ngurunderi legend (Berndt et al., 1993)

and also from Sturt’s diary (Sturt, 1833). This is because neither Ngurunderi, nor Sturt, actually

remarked that the Murray’s mouth had closed-over. Indeed for Sturt the Murray River ended at

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Wellington and the outlet between the sand dunes, now considered the River’s mouth, was not

recognized as such by this explorer. It is only through a consideration of the detail of the

observations of these early adventurers that it is possible to conclude that the Murray-Darling

Basin was not in drought, yet the Murray River’s sea mouth had closed over. For example, it is

evident from Sturt’s diary that upstream the Murrumbidgee was flowing strongly because Sturt

wrote they were “jettisoned” into the Murray River. Sturt’s descriptions of the countryside

around Lake Alexandrina included covered in high grasses and with many kangaroos.

2. THE DREAMTIME

The Dreamtime in Australian indigenous culture is essentially the time when the earth was

formed, and creatures came into being. Different indigenous tribes have slightly different

versions of essentially the same Dreamtime story that recounts the journey of a hunter down the

Murray River in search of his two wives. This story is re-told here based on an account by

Albert Karloan, a council-member of the Manangki clan, Yaraldi tribe, to the anthropologists

Ronald Berndt in 1939 (Berndt et al., 1997).

Ngurunderi had left his homeland that was perhaps in the upper reaches of the Lachlan or

Darling Rivers in the upper Murray Darling Basin. There is no suggestion in the story that the

landscape he left, or travelled through, was in drought.

Ngurunderi was poling a canoe down the Murray River when the sound of the pole frightened a

Murray cod. It set off, swished its tail making bends of the river, with the wash forming

swamps. At Polmandang (Point Pomanda) on the shore of Lake Alexandrina the cod swam in to

the lake.

It was not Ngurunderi, but his brother-in-law Nepeli, who eventually speared the fish on the

other side of the lake near Poltuwar (Poltalloch Station) from his own canoe. The fish was

dragged up onto a sand shoal where Ngurunderi cut it into many small pieces. One piece he held

up, and, as he threw it into the lake, he called, “You, boney bream!” As he threw the next piece,

he called, “You, perch!” Then he cut another, “You, callop!” Another, “You, catfish!” Yet

another, “You, mudfish!” So he cut all the pieces, throwing them into the water, making the fish.

The small pieces he threw in to form sprats. Then he threw the last piece, “You, Murray cod!”

When this was complete Ngurunderi poled his canoe away from the sand shoal to the mainland

on the eastern shores of the lake. Some days later, when he smelt the fish his wives were

cooking, he lifted up his canoe into the sky, and set off on foot walking to Kuripang on the

shores of Lake Albert.

At this point in the story Ngurunderi abandoned his canoe. So he did not have it when he

eventually reached the Murray’s mouth, still in pursuit of his wives.

Indeed Karloan, in the telling of the story, goes in to great detail to explain when the hunter in

search of his two wives was walking, when he waded across to the Coorong to the Yulemar (sea

side of the Younghusband Peninsula), and how he then walked west along the coastline.

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Karloan explains when Ngurunderi stopped to dig for water in the sand and how, after a time, he

had given up hope of ever finding his wives. So he went fishing. Then, some days later,

Ngurunderi continued walking along the Younghusband Peninsula, all the way to Tapawal, the

Murray Mouth.

If at Tapawal, Ngurunderi had waded across the mouth of the Murray River, Karloan would have

said as much, because he did explain that Ngurunderi poled across the lake, and waded across the

Coorong. But instead, when Ngurunderi comes to the Murray River’s sea mouth, Ngurunderi did

not reach for his canoe in the sky, or wade into the water, rather he simply walked across into

Wakend territory.

This is the story, as told by Karloan. Karloan was one of the last three youths to undergo full

initiation rites in the Lower Murray region, and he recounted this story to anthropologist Ronald

Berndt. Specifically that Ngurunderi walked across the Murray mouth into Wakend territory and

then on into Ramindjeri country (Berndt et al., 1997). Of course, back in the Dreamtime there

were no irrigators upstream to ‘steal the water’, so perhaps the Murray River’s sea mouth had

closed over naturally and Ngurunderi walked across a sandbar. Perhaps it was just that time of

year, or perhaps too much water had washed into the swamps upstream.

3. FIRST MAPS OF THE COASTLINE

The French were the first to send an expedition with the specific objective of completing the

exploration of the coastline of Australia. Nicolas Baudin departed Le Havre on 19 October

1800. The British Admiralty, at war with France, were suspicious of Baudin’s expedition and

hastily commissioned Matthew Flinders to the same task. He set sail nine months later on 18 July

1801. It was inevitable that their ships would meet. This happened on 8th April 1802 about six

nautical miles south-southeast of the place the Ngurunderi knew as Tapawal. To commemorate

their meeting Flinders named the bay, Encounter Bay.

Flinders had been sailing east and had charted the Spencer Gulf and the Gulf St Vincent on

which Adelaide is now situated. While Baudin was sailing west charting the coast from the

“Promontoire de Wilson” including the inlet of Port Philip, on which the city of Melbourne is

now situated.

While the two countries were at war, the two captains met amicably and exchanged maps and

information, in particular Flinders explained to Baudin where he could find freshwater on

Kangaroo Island. Flinders was apparently unaware that he had just sailed past Lake

Alexandrina at the termination of the longest river in Australia, the Murray.

There is no river mouth on Flinders’ map of the shoreline of Encounter Bay (Flinders, 1802),

rather he wrote “low and sandy topped with hummocks of almost bare sand” and described the

region of Lake Alexandrina as “low land”, Map 2.

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Map 2a,b. Matthew Flinders’ map of Encounter Bay does not show the Murray River’s mouth.

Instead it is written where the mouth is now situated: “low and sandy topped with hummocks of

almost bare sand”. The top map, 2a, shows Encounter Bay relative to Cape Jervis and

Kangaroo Island. The bottom, map, 2b, shows the annotation as written by Flinders.

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Historians have written that Matthew Flinders, an acclaimed navigator and cartographer,

“missed” the Murray’s sea mouth. It is perhaps more likely that the Murray’s mouth was simply

closed-over at that time, as it was when Ngurunderi walked across the mouth into Wakend

territory during the Dreamtime.

The map draw by Baudin’s cartographer Louis Freycinet (1811) claims to be a map of Terre

Napoléon (as opposed to Terra Australis) and St Vincent’s Gulf is labelled Golfe Josephine, Map

3a. A long way to the east, Map 3b, Freycinet clearly marks on his map the entrance to Port

Philip, but there is no entrance to Lake Alexandrina, Map 3c, which covers an area of almost

equivalent size.

Map 3a. Louis Freycinet’s map of the southern coastline showing only the section from Port

Philip Bay to Golfe Josephine, including Encounter Bay. Port Philip Bay and Encounter Bay

are shown in more detail in Maps 3b and 3c, respectively.

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Map 3b. Louis Freycinet’s map of the southern coastline, showing the entrance to Port Philip.

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Map 3c. Louis Freycinet’s map of the southern coastline showing the region now known as

Encounter Bay. The Murray River’s sea mouth is not shown on this map.

4. CHARLES STURT ALSO WALKED ACROSS THE MURRAY’S MOUTH

Sometime after Ngurunderi, Baudin, and Flinders, to be specific on 12th February 1830, British

explorer Charles Sturt walked along the shores of Encounter Bay and across Tapawal. Sturt

entered the bay over a sand hummock in search of an outlet for his nine-metre long whale boat, a

boat that his crew of five had variously sailed and rowed down the Murray River, and then across

Lake Alexandrina.

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British mapmaker John Arrowsmith drew one of the first maps showing Lake Alexandrina

relative to Encounter Bay based on information provided by both Sturt and also Flinders, Map 4.

Arrowsmith’s map of Lake Alexandrina shows the waters of the lake to be roughly a third of salt

water, a third brackish water and a third fresh water. This depiction is consistent with Lake

Alexandrina being the central basin of a barrier estuary with a ‘salt wedge’ moving backwards

and forwards across the central basin depending on the tides and freshwater inflows.

Map 4. Map of Murray’s sea mouth, showing the outlet filled with sand (red), as drawn by John

Arrowsmith in 1839 based on information provided by Sturt and Flinders. Sturt walked along

Encounter Bay, but only as far east as the Murray’s mouth, thus the Coorong is not shown on

this map.

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Sturt’s expedition left Sydney on 3rd November 1829 intending to find and follow the

Murrumbidgee River and determine if it ended in swamps or perhaps in an inland sea. Another

British explorer, John Oxley, had already travelled along the other known western rivers, the

Lachlan and Macquarie, and found them blocked by swamps.

On the day Sturt left Sydney, he claims to have never been "lighter of heart" and more "joyous in

spirit" as he led his horse out of the military barracks, followed by drays probably pulled by both

horses and bullocks, pack animals, dogs, and also some sheep (Sturt, 1833). A convict carpenter

named Clayton, bringing up the rear. Ahead of Sturt, leading the advance, was his servant of 18

years Harris, and two other soldiers Hopkinson and Fraser. Sturt remarked that they had laid

aside their military habits and wore broad brimmed hat and bushman's dress.

Some days later, on the banks of the Murrumbidgee, when it became impossible to continue any

further with the drays, a whale boat was assembled. Two convicts stayed behind with the drays,

while Sturt, with Clayton, Fraser, Hopkins, Harris and a sixth man George Macleay, the son of

the Colonial Secretary who had joined the expedition at Brownlow Hill, piled into the nine-meter

long boat with tents and provisions, including tea and flour and also more than one dog. A week

later, on the afternoon of 14th January, they were “jettisoned” into the Murray River. Sturt

described the river as broad, perhaps three to four hundred feet wide, and with a clear and sandy

bed. He named the river after Sir George Murray, Secretary of State for the Colonies in the

British Government. Of course the river already had a name, an aboriginal name, Millewah.

By the 6th February 1930, Sturt thought they were probably not far from the sea, and placed

sticks in the river when they made camp, to determine if there was any rise and fall of the tide.

There was a rise of about eight inches.

On the 9th February they arrived at what Sturt described as the termination of the Murray (Sturt,

1833). He wrote, "Immediately below me was a beautiful lake, which appeared to be a fitting

reservoir for the noble stream that had led us to it; and which was now ruffled by the breeze that

swept over it."

They were not at the sea, but rather near the place the Dreamtime hunter Ngurunderi referred to

as Polmandang; where the Murray cod swam into the lake. Sturt referred to the place as a

beautiful promontory that extended into the lake. He wrote, the waters of the lake stretched to the

base of the Mount Lofty Ranges: "They had a regular unbroken outline; declining gradually to

the south, but terminating abruptly at a lofty mountain northerly. I had no doubt of this being the

Mount Lofty of Captain Flinders; or that the range was that immediately to the eastward of St

Vincent's Gulf." To the southwest Sturt described a bold headland; beyond which, to the

westward, there was a clear and open sea visible, through a strait formed by this headland and a

point projecting from the opposite shore.

Rather than being happy that he had found the mystery of the western rivers by discovering that

the Murrumbidgee terminated in the Murray. Sturt wrote that he was full of regret. Because, "I

immediately foresaw that, in all probability, we should be disappointed in finding any practicable

communication between the lake and the ocean, as it was evident that the former was not much

influenced by tides."

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Back then, safe harbors with deep water, were essential for transport and thus important for trade

and commerce. Sturt could see that it would be difficult to develop the region for the British

Empire if the Murray essentially ended in a shallow lagoon.

A strong wind was blowing from the south-west when they entered the lake under sail at 2pm. It

forced them to the eastern shore, and they had not travelled eight miles when that evening they

were forced to pitch their tents on what Sturt described as the richest soil, being a black

vegetable deposit, that he suggested had once formed part of the lake bed. He explored the flat

extending he wrote, over about fifty miles to the east, lightly wooded and covered with grass. He

again placed sticks to the water, to determine the rise of the tide, and found it to be the same as

the river, so presumably about 8 inches. In the stillness of the night Sturt thought he heard the

roaring of the sea, but I was, he wrote, "myself uncertain upon the point, as the wind might have

caused the sound."

The next morning at 4am, they set off under a moderate breeze steering the whaleboat to the

southwest, hoping to eventually "hit the outlet" (Sturt, 1833).

They had not gone far when the water became suddenly salty. Sturt wrote that "the transition

from fresh to salt water was almost immediate". The map of Lake Alexandrina drawn by John

Arrowsmith (1838) shows the water at the north-east end of the lake as "fresh", the central part

of the lake as having "brackish" water and the water beyond Point Sturt as "salt", Map 4.

Sturt wrote that he was surprised at "the extreme shallowness of the lake in every part, as we

never had six feet upon the line. Its bottom was one of black mud, and weeds of enormous

length were floating on its surface, detached by the gales, and which, from the shallowness of the

lake, got constantly entangled with our rudder."

That afternoon, they made good time under sail and had dinner on the western shore, which Sturt

described as covered in high grasses and abounded in kangaroos. As soon as the meal was

finished they embarked again. Sturt described the lake as “so shoal” that at every moment he

was apprehensive they would ground. They approach a mud flat as they passed to the south west

of a rocky island. The Rocky Island is clearly shown on Map 4, indicating they were just to the

north of Hindmarsh Island.

Near sunset, they encountered a large group of probably Yaraldi tribesmen. That night they

camped under a full moon probably somewhere near the present township of Goolwa. Sturt

wrote that the stillness of the night was broken by the roar of the ocean, and silvery and

melancholy note of the black swans as they passed over head. He admired the beauty of his

surrounds writing that the country was open, yet "ornamentally wooded, and rocks and trees

hung or drooped over the waters." Sturt calculated they had travelled forty-five miles that day, a

distance that, together with the eight miles from the previous afternoon would give the lake a

length of fifty-three miles. He was sure that "on the morrow they would view the boundless

ocean". There is no indication in Sturt’s description of the countryside that it was experiencing

drought.

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When they set off the next day a fresh breeze was blowing from the northeast which took them

rapidly down what is now known as the Goolwa channel. They were in good spirits as a seal

rose close to the boat. But Sturt wrote, we were shortly stopped by shoals; it was in vain that we

beat across the channel from one side to the other; it was a continuous shoal, and the deepest

water appeared to be under the left bank. They landed the boat, and waited for high tide.

A little before high tide they again embarked, but Sturt wrote, with all our efforts we could not

avoid the shoals. "We walked up to our knees in mud and water to find the least variation in the

depth of water so as to facilitate our exertions, but it was to no purpose. We were ultimately

obliged to drag the boat over the flats; there were some a quarter of a mile in breath, knee-deep

in mud; but at length we got her into deep water again. The turn of the channel was no before us,

and we had a good run for about four or five miles." Sturt wrote that they had completed the

bend, presumable around Hindmarsh Island, and they saw the channel now stretch to the east

southeast with a bright sandhill visible where the channel turned to the south which Sturt was

sure was where it terminated.

Sturt was sure that that would be the outlet to the sea. But they were stuck again amongst sand

shoals. At sunset of that day Sturt described the eery shadows thrown by the swans, pelicans,

ducks and geese that mingle together along the sides of the pools left by the tide. While closer to

their tents, Clayton the carpenter, boiled cockles that he had collected over the sand hills, along

the beach of Encounter Bay.

Sturt conceded that it would be impossible for his men to drag the whaleboat any further over the

sand bars and sand flats. He decided instead that he would walk to the outlet. At 3am the next

morning, under a bright moon, Sturt crossed the sand hills on foot, accompanied by McLeay and

Fraser. They walked below the sandhills of Encounter Bay, to the Murray's sea mouth.

He wrote that after a "hasty and distressing walk" of seven miles, the sand hills terminated and

that a low beach spread before them.

He had arrived at Tapawal, the Murray's River’s sea mouth that for the Yaraldi tribe separated

Ramindjeri territory from Wakend territory.

Sturt (1833) described the beach as less than a quarter of a mile in breath. He wrote, "Under the

sand-hill on the other side, the water is deep and the current strong. No doubt at high tide, a part

of the low beach we had traversed is covered [in water]."

Sturt, like Ngurunderi before him, arrived at Tapawal without a boat, and was able to walk

across the mouth. It is also obvious from the Arrowsmith map that the mouth was closed-over,

that it was full of sand, Map 4.

So, it appears that at about 7am on the morning of 12th February Sturt actually walked across the

Murray's mouth. Then, standing on Ramindjeri land, Sturt wrote that the channel stopped there:

"stopped in its easterly course by some rising ground".

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Sturt proceeded no further claiming tribesmen were posted to block his path. Sturt also seemed

preoccupied with his return journey, with the need to return to the Murrumbigee rowing against

the "united waters of the eastern ranges".

If he had continued to the east he would have seen that the channel bends around the "rising

ground," and continues for more than 100 kilometers along the Coorong. The Coorong,

however, is not marked on Map 4, which is based on Sturt’s diary notes.

Instead, Sturt walked around to Encounter Bay, to the Yulemar, to the seaside, and noted that

"the line of foam is unbroken from one end of Encounter Bay to the other. Thus," he wrote,

"were our fears of the impracticability and inutility of the channel of communication between the

lake and the ocean confirmed."

5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

Various computer simulation models suggest that, if all the water stored in reservoirs built in the

Murray Darling Basin for irrigated agriculture and hydroelectricity generation since European

settlement could be re-allocated as environmental flow, the Murray’s mouth would be

permanently open (Pittock, et al. 2011). There would be no need for sand-dredging (Harriss-

Buchan, 2011). This idea that the Murray River could, and should, run strong and fresh all the

way to the Southern Ocean is based on a romantic impression of how the Australian environment

could be. Like Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s writings, it suggests a concept of nature before

civilization, where everything is replete. In modern Australian folklore, this has come to mean

that the continent’s longest river must run strongly all the way to the Southern Ocean.

In the Dreamtime story, when Ngurunderi dragged the Murray cod onto the sand shoal and cut it

into small pieces, this fish became the ancestor of all boney bream, perch and callop. In the

same way, in the Basin Plan, irrigated agriculture is described as the source of the many forms of

environmental degradation including the closing-over of the Murray River’s sea mouth.

There is no mention in the Basin Plan of the Murray River’s sea mouth closing over before

European settlement, or the Murray River running-dry before the reservoirs were built in the

upper catchment. There are pictures of a dry river Murray River at Koondrook in the Central

Murray Valley, taken at Easter in 1915, Figure 1.

During the recent Millennium drought, because of the reservoirs in the upper catchment, the river

was full of water all the way to Wellington (Marohasy, 2012). Despite exceptionally low rainfall

and snowfall during 2006-2009, it was only Lake Alexandrina which dried-up, and this was

because seawater was prevented from flowing into the lake because of the barrages, built in the

1930s to prevent seawater intrusions during period of low river flow (Marohasy and Abbot,

2015). Indeed, the argument can be made that because of the reservoirs, there is now on

average more water in the Murray River (Marohasy, 2003; Marohasy, 2005).

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Figure 1. The Murray River at Koondrook, Central Murray Valley, Easter 1915.

The popular narrative, however, is very different. This same narrative underpins current water

resource planning across Australia. For example, consider the following quote from a key

technical paper by Sheldon et al. (2000) that provides the rationale for contemporary government

hydrological modeling including the modeling that underpins the Basin Plan: “Not all the

observed ecological impacts can be attributed to hydrological change alone; each catchment has

also undergone extensive agricultural development and vegetation clearance, both of which may

disturb riverine ecology. However, hydrological change is known to have an overriding and long

lasting effect on ecological processes in large rivers. Thus, it would be fair to attribute a large

proportion of the observed ecological change to changes in aspects of hydrology.”

The concept is then demonstrated by way of computer modeling, and the output from the model

is then used as evidence that there is a problem with water infrastructure development that has

caused the hydrological change. So the argument is circular.

Furthermore, ecological response curves are not based on the modeling of empirical data, but as

explained by Sheldon et al. (2000): “Ideas for the shape of the ecological response curves came

from technical advisory panel discussions”.

The concept of over-allocation of water in the Murray Darling Basin is thus a hypothesis, a

popular idea.

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The final Basin Plan identified 10,873 GL as the maximum amount of water that could be

"sustainably" extracted from the Basin on average each year; again a product of computer

modelling. In arriving at a single number of 10,873GL and then extrapolating to suggest that

this means an additional 2,750 GL must be taken from irrigators, the Basin Plan reinforces the

perception that irrigators always take a set volume of water from the system. In reality the

amount of water diverted for irrigation is highly variable with most irrigators receiving only a

small fraction, or none, of their license entitlement during periods of drought.

Schedule 1 of the Basin Plan acknowledges the highly variable nature of inflows, explaining

annual inflows to the Basin in the past 114 years have ranged from a high of 117,907 GL in 1956

to only 6,740 GL in 2006. The Basin Plan also notes this natural variability of flows is important

to Murray Darling Basin ecology. Yet this variability is then ignored in arriving at the

sustainable diversion limit of 10,873 GL based on a calculated average inflow to the entire

Murray Darling Basin of 31,599 GL.

In the book ‘Poor Man River: Memoirs from the River Murray Estuary’, Alistair Wood writes

about how it was before the barrages: that the Murray River would “flog down from September

until maybe Christmas, filling the lagoon, then out the mouth”. By Christmas flow had usually

slowed and water levels dropped right down. The sandbars probably blocked the mouth. After

this, when the south-westerly wind picked up the sea would apparently, “pour in through the

mouth and work its way across the lake”.

A biologist, R.A. Dyott, who explored the region in 1909 wrote, “To say that I was surprised on

first seeing the mouth of the River Murray was to put it very mildly indeed, for I expected to find

the channel broadening out into a wide expanse of water and forming a large open passage into

the sea through which ships of large tonnage might come in or go out,” (Dyott, 1912). One

hundred years later and we are still disappointed. Now there is an attempt to legislate a wide

Murray River’s sea mouth (e.g. Harriss-Buchan, 2011), but this is not realistic. Indeed, history

would suggest that the current Murray Darling Basin Plan is not sustainable and that the natural

state of the Murray River’s sea mouth is neither wide, nor open.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work was funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation. Susan Myers from

LakesNeedWater.org drew my attention to the early maps of the Murray mouth.

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Ends.