Goolwa South Australian resident, Ken Jury, sees a better way forward for the basin and believes that governments are risking the viability of the whole basin. Ken, an investigative journalist with a passion for marine and aquatic ecology, worked for the Adelaide Advertiser, Channel 7 and later had his own radio program on station 5DN for 23 years. Ken also worked for South Australian Fisheries as a journalist, where he produced the South Australian Fishing Magazine to a national and international audience. When South Australian Fisheries was closed down, Ken was moved to the Primary Industries and Resources of South Australia for 12 years.  

Ken is an expert on the South Australian Lower Lakes and Coorong and has spent the later part of his life teamed up with a retired Department of Environment and Heritage friend in studying, scientifically monitoring the health of the lakes and compiling historical records of the system. 

“It’s sickening to think that politicians can get away with this,” said Ken.

“We’re seeing it live, politicians just marching in and taking water from our growers, they’re outing our food security in peril.

“They’ve done it before, and they will do it again.”

Ken witnessed firsthand the effects of the millennium drought and witnessed the acid sulphate soils and the lack of government action to address the problem. 

“We lost a lot of growers during the millennium drought.

“We had no water down here, not that we can talk about. The Lower Lakes were about a quarter of their size all up. When they’re full, they stretch 840 square kilometres.

“Monosulfidic black ooze, yes, that’s what we’ve got.

“Did you know that the Lower Lakes combined have over 500 million tonnes of it combined?

“We were measuring the acid out there at PH2 to PH2.5.

“We said to them when the acid was flowing to let a bit of the ocean in. They said, ‘oh no, we can’t do that, it’ll make it worse’.”

Ignoring pleas to let sea water into the estuary, government officials called in aircraft to spread thousands of tonnes of lime to try to neutralise the devasting effects. The wind would pick up the acid and blow it across the landscape making people ill and eroding corrugated iron sheets. Pyrites from mineral deposits in the Mount Lofty Ranges have washed down creeks and rivers into Lake Alexandrina for thousands of years and while safe when covered in water, quite dangerous when exposed. 

Historical lower river inflows into the lake system would have been offset by tidal flows from the ocean keeping the acid sulphate soils submerged. The 7.6km of barrages constructed from the 1930s to 1940 to effectively dam the estuary meant that the acid sulphate soils were exposed. 

This environmental disaster was the catalyst for the kneejerk reaction for seeking only freshwater solutions for a historical estuary; ironic when the same government preach of a drying climate and rising sea levels. 

“It’s the biggest lake system in Australia.

“We are facing another massive dilemma with our water and the way it is used.”

Ken sees a way forward for the whole basin but only when we acknowledge the historical and geographical realities of the Lower Lakes and Coorong. 

“Before the barrages were built, the Lower Lakes had a commercial fishery of some 40 odd commercial fishermen.

“Quite a few of them, at least half, only ever fished the big lake, Lake Alexandrina.

“This is before the barrages, and you can imagine the ocean coming in and then, of course, going out again.

“They fished the top end of Lake Alexandrina.

“They would fish for Murray cod and mulloway.

“Freshwater fish and estuarine fish. 

“That water in the lake was stratified.

“It’s coming in from the ocean… and in the meantime, the River Murray is emptying a little bit too.”  

Each fisherman had two people onboard and they would use a weighted bottle on a cord and drop into the water and pull it up to check if they had saltwater or freshwater to choose the appropriate fishing equipment. Within 100 metres, fishermen could go from freshwater to estuarine.

“As a consequence, they’d catch mulloway and Murray cod, they were hugely successful.

“Once the barrages were completed, the mulloway couldn’t get in, it stopped it completely.”

Ken said a Victorian Fisheries tagging exercise demonstrated that mulloway from the east still travel to the Goolwa channel outside the barrages and attempt to enter the lakes, nosing right up to the structures.

“This fishery would have been one of the top ones in Australia, there’s no doubt about it.”

Instead of an estuarine lake system with groundwater feeding the Coorong, a combination of the barrages and southeast drainage scheme now act as a noose around the neck of the broader basin. 

The original MDBA proposal was to fulfil a flow-rate of 2,000 gigalitres per year over the Lower Lakes barrages for 95 per cent of the time with a minimum 650 gigalitres at all times, and holding the Lower Lakes above sea level. 

In a paper published by Ken called ‘A Better Way’, it points out that In pre-barrage times, it was a variable Lower Lakes when low flows meant the remaining fresh water had to compete with regular Southern Ocean intrusions, as the latter pushed fresh water back into the upper end of the Lower Lakes and on occasions, into the river resulting in a mix of ocean and fresh water, becoming estuarine as naturally found upstream in most global estuaries.

Ken points to the work of Professor Peter Gell from Ballarat University, who has said all along the Lower Lakes were always estuarine and has the data to prove it. If that’s not enough, seeing might be believing.

“Anyone can prove it for themselves. If you get a boat and go up river from down here, or maybe a little bit further up like Murray Bridge, where the cliffs are, you’ll find marine animals everywhere!” 

Ken believes there’s a huge waste of the basin freshwater in a failing attempt to keep the lakes fresh with much of this becoming highly saline and wasted. Over 800 gigalitres of freshwater is lost in evaporation from the lakes alone. 

“Throughout the basin and this Goolwa channel down to the barrages, there is a series of poles in the water that have electronics in them that measure ECU levels, that’s salinity levels.

“Over the years, my colleague and I have collected literally hundreds of readings from these poles. We can tell exactly what the salinity levels are down here.

“They’re supposed to be held around about 800, which is drinking water.

“I can tell you most of them down there, or out there, go up into the 50 and 60,000 easy.”

If high rivers and large floods aren’t enough to keep the lakes fresh or maintain the Murray mouth open, will an extra 450 gigalitres?

A plan based on a fallacy and a government prepared to sacrifice our rivers, communities and food security to finish it “On time and in full!”

To see a full interview with Ken, head to www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxXBk8CBj34.

This article appeared in The Koondrook and Barham Bridge Newspaper, 21 December 2023.