A recent fish kill in Gunbower Creek has reignited frustrations over managing the waterways. Jason Lunghusen’s family has been farming on the Gunbower Creek for six generations and says blind Freddy could see the late January fish kill happening. 

“The fish kill in January two weeks ago, that was because of the record January rains, farmers had to drain water into the creek and the creek was stagnant because no irrigation took place,” said Jason.

“No one was irrigating, the creek wasn’t flowing and then it all falls back to North Central CMA to monitor water quality.”

A North Central CMA spokesperson said, “As a result of high unregulated flows from the Goulburn and Murray rivers after the January storms, a slug of low dissolved oxygen water resulted in about 10 Murray cod deaths in and around Thompson’s Weir on Gunbower Creek.

“The North Central CMA worked closely with Goulburn-Murray Water to successfully deliver additional water to flush the creek and improve water quality.”

Jason, a keen fisherman, said that he filmed seven dead cod in a short one-minute video just at his place, and it took his neighbour raising the alarm before the management authority knew.

When asked if fish kills were a natural occurrence in his family’s six generations of living on the creek, Jason said they are only a recent occurrence. 

“No, never.

“There was a blackwater event in, I think it was 2011. My father, who’s 80, has never seen a blackwater event before that and he doesn’t ever remember his father ever mentioning one either.

“I think that 2011 was immediately after environmental flooding of the Barmah Forest and then a natural flood came and washed that blackwater out and that came downstream.

“I believe that was what caused that blackwater fish kill in our view.

“We started seeing some environmental flooding in the forests where it doesn’t come close to a natural flood, the water stays out in the forest and goes black and then gets washed back into the creek.”

Jason said while the January fish kill was different, it has all the marking of a process that has seen him and many others left frustrated and bewildered. 

“There was plenty of good water to put a flow down the creek, but no, Central Catchment didn’t monitor the water; they seem to remotely control things at the moment.

“We read all their things they put on Facebook and their glossy brochures, which is basically equivalent to propaganda,” said Jason.

“They want everyone to know the good things that they do, and they completely ignore the bad things that are happening and don’t want anyone to know about, which is just frustrating and almost makes your blood boil.”

Jason points out that the aquatic weed explosion in the creek is only a recent development and said the impacts to farmers, fish habitats and water flows are dramatic. 

“For years and years, I’ve told them you need to drop the creek to help to control the invasive weed breeding.

“Before they built the environmental weir at Hipwell Road just close to our farm, the creek would have a proper drawdown each year.

“That was controlling the weed. It will never eradicate it, that’s here for good, but it will control it.

“There has to be some compromise between fish breeding and weed eradication.

“It’s become a massive problem, it chokes pumps, you can’t fish.

“If they’re trying to improve fish breeding and putting fish ladders in, which is brilliant, these fish need to find a snag spawn. Well, every snag in this section of the Gunbower Creek is absolutely chock-a-block with invasive weeds. 

Jason would like to see a sensible approach to having a drawdown to allow the frost to kill off the weed burden but said engagement hasn’t changed since the planning fiasco for the Hipwell Regulator. 

Continued next week…

This article appeared in The Koondrook and Barham Bridge Newspaper, 22 February 2024.