Many growers have already succumbed to the lack of water — in many cases the cost of the water that is available — while those who remain strive to become more efficient in their water use to help them survive.

Cobram orchardist Sam Sorrenti is a microcosm of the life of producers who rely on water from our greatest river.

For starters Mr Sorrenti cannot get all the water he needs.

Then there is the cost of the water and the cost of new systems to enable more efficient use of the water he does buy.

Mr Sorrenti has lived all his life at Cobram and has been growing fruit on his orchard on the edge of town for the past 30 years.

He is a former president — for seven years — of the Cobram Fruitgrowers’ Association.

“We have not got enough water, that’s for sure,” Mr Sorrenti said.

“In an orchard you have no option but to buy water. You cannot dry it off and then restart in a couple of years.”

Last year Mr Sorrenti paid $1000 for each megalitre of water he used.

This season he is paying about $350, and in his words, that is a big difference.

“Last year there was a bit of panic buying, which put the price up.

“It was also the first year where we had to deal with a much lower allocation and we were not sure how it would form up.

“We banked a bit of water from the end of last season and kept it for this year and that has levelled out the price a bit.”

By mid-December he had 24 per cent of his normal allocation and he expected the final allocation to be between 30 and 40 per cent.

Growers bought their allocation at a base rate and then paid market rates for any additional purchases.

“It is affecting the bottom line,” Mr Sorrenti said.

“It is adding to the cost of growing fruit and it is making some blocks unviable.

“A lot of blocks are not that large and the added cost of water has made some blocks, and even whole farms, unviable and putting people out of business.

“For us on the Murray system it has been the past two years when allocations have been so low and it is new to us.

“In a drought you do the best you can; you minimise water losses.

“You keep water on the root zone, you don’t water too deep, you put as little water on as you can without losing yield because when you lose yield, you lose dough.

“We have modernised our water system.

“It is now fully automatic. We have equal run times and we have changed the system to put water on the root zone.

“If this is climate change, farming practices are going to change and they have started to change; they will change forever, whether it is orchards, dairy or wheat.

“If it is just drought, we will cycle out of it.

“Whatever it is, it has made us more water efficient.”

Mr Sorrenti said orchardists could become as efficient as they could, but the price of their products would have to go up to compensate for their increased costs.

He said in a normal year he would use four megalitres of water on each hectare of his orchard, but in a drought year, because more water was needed, the requirement would increase to between six and eight megalitres a hectare.

The amount used would also depend on when the fruit was picked.

Mr Sorrenti said there were probably four to five orchards in the Cobram area that had ceased production because of the water situation.

He said the rest were optimistic about the future “but there is a bit of pessimism getting around”.

Mr Sorrenti said he had a 20ha block planted with fruit trees, which included apples, pears, peaches, plums and nectarines.

Another 20ha block had been converted to open land and the water allocation for that block had been transferred to the orchard block.

“If the situation changes and water becomes plentiful, we will replant it, but it is not going to change overnight,” he said.

“It could take two, three, even five years, before storages are at a level to allow near full allocations.”

Well overdue for a flush-out

OH, for a flood, a flood of any magnitude.

The Murray River, which is essentially on a lifeline of stored water released from the Snowy Mountains scheme, Lake Dartmouth and Lake Hume, has not spilled its banks to any significant degree since 1993.

It desperately needs a flood, better still, floods, to flush it clean from Lake Hume to its choked mouth at Goolwa in South Australia.

It needs to spill across its vast flood plains to fill its myriad of off-stream watercourses and billabongs, the essential breeding grounds of our native fishes, including the Murray cod.

There have been eight major floods down the Murray since records began.

The first recorded flood was in 1867 and this flood still ranks as the fourth biggest in Albury’s history.

In 1870 the entire Murray valley experienced its highest flood in recorded history.

The river again surged with a king flood in 1917 when the flood gauge at Albury reached just 30mm below the 1870 peak.

Major floods again surged down the river in 1931 and 1956, the sixth and fifth highest in history respectively.

It was another 18 years before the upper reaches of the Murray flooded again, in May and October, and these floods were generally ranked between the fourth and sixth largest in recorded history.

A year later another massive flood surged from the Australian Alps through Lake Hume and down river, creating the third highest recorded flood between Albury and Tocumwal, the second highest at Swan Hill and the fifth highest at Euston and Mildura.

The Australian Conservation Foundation says less than 20 per cent of the Murray River’s capacity now flows out of the river mouth at Goolwa.

According to the foundation’s website, the frequency of no flow at the mouth has increased from one-in-20 years to one-in-two years, with median annual flows to the sea being only 27 per cent of the natural flow.

Only 11 per cent of the natural estuary at the Murray mouth remained, most of it having been divided off by five barrages.

The foundation believes a long-term commitment is required to restore the Murray River to health.

It says that commitment must go beyond the 500-gigalitre First Step proposal in The Living Murray Initiative.

It wants governments and authorities to commit to increase annual environmental flows by 1500 gigalitres over a 10-year period.

The major dams constructed on the Murray River system, including Lake Eucumbene, Lake Hume and Lake Dartmouth have the dual roles of mitigating the extent of flooding and storing water for irrigation and domestic use.

But the foundation believes these structures have actually been responsible for widespread degradation and loss of fish and plant species in many rivers.

The foundation’s website says: “We have tamed magnificent rivers like the Murray and Murrumbidgee, treating them as pipelines for irrigation, and drains for our waste.”

“Flood plains and rivers have a symbolic relationship. Flood plains need frequent flooding from rivers to remain healthy.”

Environmental flow releases were crucial for restoring rivers like the Murray.

“Victoria, NSW and South Australia have been dragging the chain for years on co-operatively managing environmental flows along the Murray,” the foundation says.

“Parochial attitudes and poor communication between governments prevent the co-ordination of dam releases, weir manipulations and restrictions on irrigation extractions.

“Weirs must be managed in sympathy with nature — not against it.”

Many a thong written under tree

THERE is a tree beside the Murray River between Yarrawonga and Cobram unlike any other.

It is just one of the millions of river red gums that line the banks of our greatest river.

But this mighty old red gum has been decorated, or perhaps defaced, depending on your point of view, by hundreds of now thongless citizens from parts far and wide.

It is the thong tree.

Someone, as far back as at least 1997, apparently decided to nail his or her thong or thongs to the trunk of this old river warrior.

Since then hundreds have followed suit and now thongs of all shapes, sizes and ages, some hand made from tin, cover the tree’s trunk to a height of 4m.

But some brave, or foolish, thong­atics have somehow managed to climb 8m and fix their creations to upper branches.

Many of the thongs simply record a name and the date.

Others carry initials while some carry full names.

Yet others have taken their contributions to new levels with offerings such as “Thinga Thonga Thixpence” and “what’s thong with you?”.

The earliest date we could find was 1997, but some could have been there long before that given the ravages of time and Mother Nature’s response.

Is it art? Perhaps a form of graffiti? Vandalism?

Or is just Aussies on their way to a favourite spot having a bit of fun?

Whatever, this is one different tree.

THONGNOTE: There is a thong tree, of sorts, at Echuca’s wharf precinct.

Several thongs have been attached to the dry base of a tree severely lopped many years ago.

But it lacks the cheek, temerity and the resourcefulness, not to mention the character, of the real thong tree.