The Murray River The Murray River is our main source of water. This slide was taken at the Red Cliffs Pumping Station, and shows the inlet pipes extending towards the middle of the river. The river provides two types of challenges, the fluxuation of the water level, and of the salt content. The water level is good in this photograph. Our extreme was in the 1956 floods, when many tractors and their drivers struggled to keep the levee bank higher than the level of the water at the nearby Power House. The levels in 1998-9 are expected to be low - growers have been warned that there will be only 85% of our water allocation available, and no surplus water at all. This decision was later relaxed to 90%, due to the floods in the Darling River, which meets the Murray River downstream at Wentworth. Salinity was forecast by local experts such as Jack Edey (who died 16 May 1983) for many years, and has still in 1998 not been solved. These days the water is often salty to taste.

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