TIME has all but run out to save the iconic Gippsland Lakes from ecological ruin. LESLIE WHITE reports
On the Princes Highway near Warragul, Victoria, is a billboard that shows a picture of a smiling old man with his grandson fishing the pristine Gippsland Lakes.
"You are now entering the Gippsland Lakes catchment," the Victorian Government-sponsored billboard says.
"Our lakes are precious. Pass them on."
About 200km downstream at Duck Arm, off Lake Victoria, not a waterbird can be heard.
Sandworm, barnacles and mussels are largely gone; many aquatic plants are dead.
Until recently the water was pink in parts and blue-green in others as two colourful algaes lived together.
The Gippsland Lakes were in the grip of a toxic marine (saltwater) algal bloom for 15 months since flood followed bushfire in 2007.
The flood washed decades of phosphorus, nitrogen, other nutrient, herbicide and pesticide into the lakes - though the system had been degrading for decades.
Boatyard manager Peter Bull said it wiped 30-40 per cent off his maintenance business; retired fisherman Barry McKenzie says the lakes are being "stuffed up through lack of management and forethought", and Barry's Bait Supply owner Barry Barling says the flood put him "right out of business".
"The lakes turned green, there were no crabs, no worms, no seagrass, everything died," Mr Barling said.
The Gippsland Lakes is Australia's largest inland waterway, made up of major Lakes Wellington, Victoria and King - a system 70km long and 10km across at its widest. Fresh water enters from the Latrobe, Thomson, Macalister, Avon, Mitchell, Nicholson and Tambo catchments, which drain a 20,600sq km area.
Major land uses include irrigation dairying, horticulture, and plantation forestry.
The Macalister Irrigation District, Melbourne Water via the Thomson Dam, the four major coal-fired power stations and the Maryvale Paper Mill take more than 400,000 megalitres from the system annually - 45 per cent of Lake Wellington's fresh flows, more in some years.
Salt has invaded the once-fresh lakes since an entrance to the open ocean was created in 1889, and as fresh inflows have decreased with extraction by industry, and by drought.
Salt is killing reeds, freshwater plants and centuries old redgums 2km up the Latrobe River.
Lake Wellington often produces salt readings two-thirds that of seawater; nearby Lake Coleman has recorded readings double that of seawater.
Testing in 2008 showed nine dolphins found dead on the lake's shores died of mercury poisoning - mercury allegedly coming from gold mining and the Maryvale Mill upstream.
A 1997 study by the Marine and Freshwater Resources Institute found all of 300 black bream sampled had elevated levels of pesticides.
A 2006 study found the Latrobe River had one of the highest levels of antibiotics detected on the planet.
The local towns of Bairnsdale, Lakes Entrance, Paynesville, Metung, Sale and Loch Sport are massively dependent on tourism, recreational and commercial fishing, boating and skiing.
Landowners say management practices have hit agriculture also - there is 20,000ha of useless land near Lake Wellington - and the MID also battles irrigation-induced salinity.
Duncan Malcolm, chairman of strategic planning body the Gippsland Coastal Board, said the management structure was working "as well as any management structure ever can".
However, he conceded Lake Wellington would not be restored to its former state.
"It will not be fresh if the current levels of extraction continue," Mr Malcolm said.
"There's power generation, Melbourne Water and irrigation . . . we made a judgement some time ago that the likelihood of those quantities changing (was very small)."
In 2001, the Victorian Government assembled the Gippsland Lakes Taskforce, which brought together 11 groups all partly responsible for the health of the lakes and has overseen the spending of some $20 million.
A spokesman for the Government said it had placed a cap on water consumption in the Gippsland Lakes catchments in 2004 pending research into environmental water requirements, currently being undertaken.
"We are modernising outdated and inefficient infrastructure in MID to help improve the health of the Gippsland Lakes," he said.
Duck Arm resident Ross Scott said he was "crushed".
"We've been here for 48 years and we're just heartbroken," he said. Mr Scott said the lakes should be managed by a single body.
Gippsland Lakes Taskforce chairman Barry Hart did not return calls from The Weekly Times.
