Recent discussion on Facebook led us to the idea of asking for real stories from Murray Darling Basin residents, Sally Harding has kindly offered an opinion piece she wrote based on her real experiences with locals who have suffered through this ongoing man-made disaster, remembering for a moment, this story is based on actual events that have been, and are happening right now in the Murray Darling Basin.

A Generation raised on a river of pain, by Sally Harding.

If I had an old-fashioned paper map of Australia, and one of my kids’ marker pens, I would circle a large section to the east.

In this wide brown and green area with blue capillaries criss-crossing several states is a chapter of ecological and humanitarian shame happening right now.

Image Courtesy abc.net.au: The Murray Darling Basin covers 14% of Australia’s land mass

It’s the area known as the Murray Darling Basin and it is a bloody battleground for water.

Go ahead and Google it – but be warned, you’ll be having screen time for quite a while.

Like most people, you’ll probably decide it’s a problem too wicked to understand or attempt to influence – something that is arguably working in favour of those accused of hijacking a national water source for political gain.

Time will pass, as it always does, and the multi-powers that manage the river system will continue to justify who gets what and who goes without.

Fortunately history has a way of being kind to masses that suffer in silence.

There might eventually be a much-wanted Federal Royal Commission and, for good measure, a much-needed national apology to the victims (including a million fish).

That may help right some wrongs and provide a sense of justice, but what will remain is a river system and once-thriving communities that may never recover.

Our primary producers, once the pride of the nation for allowing Australia to ride off the sheep’s back and into the global market, have become a politicised commodity themselves.

The lucky ones are those that fate situated upstream or downstream. Those in the middle – ironically enough, Australia’s premier foodbowl – seem to be without friends in high places.

Pressure to grow crops without the security of water (plus the cruelty of watching it rush out to sea, in the state next door) is like a noose around the necks of once-productive Riverina farmers and irrigators.

Image:Craig Williams, A trip down the MDBA Highway to Hell is not for the faint hearted

It is a dire situation that is creating a generation of children growing up with at least one parent with anxiety or depression, mostly undiagnosed.

The other parent, often a wife and mother, might have a day job in town to make ends meet, barely hanging in there herself but too afraid to admit it.

The necessity to be the breadwinner keeps the household afloat but only adds to the weight of her husband’s crushing burden to provide and sense of failure.

She no longer catches up with friends or attends meetings at night, not because she’s antisocial but because she is too afraid to leave her husband and the gun cabinet alone together.

She has become an actress, pretending to her children, her husband and fellow townsfolk that better times are around the corner, not knowing when that will be and for how long the stretched can be stretched any further.

She smiles a thousand lies because that flash of hope could mean the difference between life and death for those who have been forced to sell their stock, sell the water allocation they desperately need themselves or sell the family farm where they were born and their grandparents died.

This has become the lot of the Riverina farmer’s wife: to somehow protect loved ones as they work themselves into the ground without the one thing they really need – equitable water.

As one farmer said: “In the city people work to live. Here, we live to work.”

Disturbingly, that same farmer estimates that 95% of business owners and primary producers in his town are “nervous wrecks.”
At the base of the Darling River, which is dependent on the generosity of both nature and political powers up north to flow, mothers of infants are also nervous wrecks.

They have no choice but to bathe their children in toxic ‘dead’ water, while other mothers choose to leave the district for the term of their pregnancies, worried about birth defects in their unborn children.

Some communities are crowd funding to pay for bottled water to be trucked in. That’s right, they are begging for access to clean drinking water.

If it takes a village to raise a child, these are not villages fit for any Australian child.

A video of a pair of grown men crying over the death of native fish went global earlier in the year, shocking an expat living in London into holding a rally outside of the Australian embassy with the catchcry ‘Save the Darling River’.

If those on the other side of the world can see why that big ring on my fictitious map is a haunting spectre, why does it not seem to worry those who govern the country and have the power to fix the problem as a matter of urgency?

We’d like to once again thank Sally Harding for this story, we really appreciate your input.

What can you do to help

For those reading this post and wondering what you might do to help the people in the Murray Darling Basin, my advise is to use your powers at the federal election in May this year, Put the National Party last on your ballot paper. Please also feel free to forward this story to your local state or federal member, as well as passing this story onto any of your friends on Facebook or via email, tell all of your friends of the catastrophic situation in the Murray Darling Basin. Oh and don’t believe for one minute that this situation is entirely created by the drought, NSW and Federal Government policies have been major contributors to this national disgrace.