The Rally for the Murray River was worth it!

G'day! I grew up on a tributary of the Murray in Southern New South Wales. It was a very Australian place, with many very Australian people. It had a beautiful big redgum forest, and beaches where the gum trees grow in the sand, and where children laugh and swim and play, all summer long.

I now live in Melbourne (Yarraville, of course!), and do not go to the old hometown much at all. I returned for the first time in eight years or so, about a year ago. Expecting to find a trickling quagmire of a riverbed, instead I rediscovered the true beauty that is the Edwardes River. (Plenty of water in it, that is!)

So, the farmers have taken lots of water, and the drought has taken lots also. Nevertheless, the fact that Australians cared enough about their indepence to rally for the Murray made it worth the effort, as an exercise in democratic rights. (As with everything else, though, it is still shattering when natural beauty and ecosystems are treated so brutally as a side-effect of human behaviour.)