Collaboration brings new life to Dry Lake in the Lachlan catchment

The NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water worked with Traditional Owners and landholders on a watering action to heal this parcel of land.

Uncle Ray Budyaan Woods has long spoken from the heart about the needs of Country. Standing on the edge of Dry Lake in the lower Merrimajeel Creek, he longed to see it ‘full again’ – the beautiful old box trees were ‘screaming for water’.

New South Wales Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (the department) environmental water managers met with Uncle Ray and landholder Simon Booth at Dry Lake to see how they could work together to heal this parcel of Wiradjuri Country.

A watering action, delivered through the NSW Government’s Water for the Environment program, was designed to use private pumping infrastructure for the first time in autumn 2022 to enhance arriving natural system flows.

Uncle Ray Woods, Wiradjuri Elder

As the old saying goes, ‘water brings life’, and, for Uncle Ray Budyaan Woods, there is no place where this is more tangible than Dry Lake.

Just 3 years ago, standing on what was once the edge of a vibrant ecosystem, Uncle Ray heard the landscape screaming for help. Today, he looks across a lively wetland.

‘There was a deathly silence the last time I was out here. The only sound I could hear and feel was those beautiful old box trees screaming for water.

‘There was no animal life; there was nothing. Looking at it, I thought, “I can see why nothing survived out here. Why would it survive?”

‘It was stressed beyond what it should have ever been,’ Uncle Ray said.

Water for the environment, on top of natural flows across the Lachlan catchment, has answered Uncle Ray’s call for healing the landscape around Dry Lake.

‘The water has brought everything back; it’s marvellous what it can do. It’s beautiful to see Country come back to life like this.

‘It’s such a contrast to when I visited in 2020 and saw the trees the way they were, the lake dry and the ground so barren. Looking at it now, you’d think you were in a different place.’

Uncle Ray said that widespread flooding in recent years is a good reminder that the landscape around Dry Lake is, in its natural, uninterrupted state, ‘flood–dry Country’.

‘People need to understand it has to have both – it’s got to have a flood, then dry, flood then dry, and that’s how it’s survived for thousands of years.’

However, the past 70 years of development have altered the creek system and Uncle Ray believes it’s time we start asking ourselves, ‘What do we want for the future? Do we want something here?’

‘Back in the day, these creek systems and this lake would be full of native fish; there was better connectivity. We’ve made it so it doesn’t connect anymore.

‘Do we get to that stage where we forget about the environment and just focus on growing things? If we get to that stage, with no environment, we don’t survive. So where do we draw the line?

‘It’s so important that we look after Country and manage it for the future because it’s a part of who we are.

‘It’s Mother Nature. It’s her doing her thing, it’s what it should be.

‘We are only a small part, and sometimes humankind takes out of context how important it thinks it is above everything else, when this is the important thing. What Mother Nature does is look after everything – everything survives off her.

‘Our people believe it’s not what Mother Nature can give to us; it’s what we can give back to her and what we can give back is looking after her.

‘Sometimes it’s not as big an effort as we make it out to be but it makes a big difference. It’s not about taking all the time. She gives us everything we need to survive.

‘It’s not just about sharing water between people; it’s about sharing with everything because everything needs it, everything needs to survive on it.’

Dr Joanne Lenehan, Lachlan Senior Environmental Water Management Officer

When you ask department Lachlan Senior Environmental Water Management Officer Jo Lenehan what inspired the watering action at Dry Lake, she’ll say it was a ‘shared commitment’ to do better.

‘The majority of our watering priorities in the Lachlan are associated with floodplain or off-channel wetland habitats and are located on private land. So, while we may “own” the water we are not the direct custodians of the land over which it flows,’ Jo said.

‘And while I believe we have a unique and important ”bigger picture”’ – or inter- and intra-valley perspective – we, unlike landholders, haven’t spent over 300 days a year for over 50 years covering every inch of one particular area in extreme heat and drenching, mud-slicked rain.

‘But what we do share is a connection to Country or a love for the land, and all of us feel the weight of the next generation being dependent upon the decisions we make today to hold onto what we still have and prevent further declines in wetland extent and condition.

‘One of the greatest challenges we have as water managers is to reconcile data records with what is in people’s minds and memories, manage for what it is now and within the limits of future recovery while still being aspirational.

‘In the case of lower Merrimajeel Creek, we were aware that there had been a significant loss of wetland shrublands (lignum and nitre goosefoot). The remaining black-box woodland that ringed Dry Lake was highly stressed or in poor condition.

‘The flooding frequency and duration has dramatically changed since the 1950s – and one watering action was not going to reverse decades of cumulative degradation or change.’

But, as Jo continued, neither would continually doing nothing.

‘While Uncle Ray Woods had heard the screams of those old black box for water, as environmental water managers, we seek to listen and consider the contribution of local knowledge and cultural perspectives on healing Country.

‘The key factor in the success of this watering action was a shared commitment by the land manager and water managers to ‘do better’.

‘The challenging part now is to add this watering action to our ongoing management. We’ll seek to protect and restore, if possible, more natural flooding regimes by addressing system-scale constraints or potential improvements.

‘And there is always one thing we all have in common – there is still so much to do.’

Simon Booth, owner Humewood Station

When landholder Simon Booth was asked whether he’d support a watering action targeting Dry Lake on his family property Humewood, he thought, why not give it a go?

Like Uncle Ray, Simon was driven by the declining condition of the old black-box trees and his desire to try and hang onto the remaining stands.

As a landholder, committing to a water event such as this takes extra effort – a willingness to travel into town each day or so, check the pump, fill in the meter logbook, and manage water orders.

‘We were happy to do it because of the state of the environment. We wanted to try and keep those old black-box trees – they were really suffering,’ Simon said.

‘You’ve got to try. If you don’t try, you don’t succeed.’

It’s been a long time since Dry Lake was full, but Simon still remembers days on the lake with mates, yabbying, fishing, and swimming.

‘I’ve seen it like this as a kid, twice. When I was 11 and 18, it was full,’ Simon said.

‘It used to be where all the duck shooters and pig hunters camped.’

Changes in the system have impacted flow regimes.

‘It’s been an ongoing issue for 30 years, it’s all down to management of creek flows’.

Widespread flooding on the back of the environmental water saw the flows go further.

‘If we hadn’t got the flood event afterward, who knows, there might just be a puddle out here.

‘It’s all got to help. No-one predicted the amount of water we got down here’.

And the difference is visible.

‘It’s like chalk and cheese,’ Simon said.

‘Look at the trees, they’ve shot back. Hopefully, they do survive.

‘There’s birdlife everywhere and the lake is full of yabby holes. The number of holes on that old bank over there is just unreal there’s a lot of burrowing going on.’

Simon considers these areas of green in the Humewood landscape so important that he uses any excess irrigation water to fill an area of swamp.

‘You can see the lignum and the vegetation is still alive in the swamp because I’ve been putting my own water in,’ Simon said.

‘If I’ve got excess water, I put it there.

‘It’s a bit of feed, a nice area to enjoy. I put the rams in there and there’s a bit of birdlife. When everything else is dead around here, it’s a little oasis.'