Sebastian Calderon, Murray Pioneer

Houseboats traveling along a section of the Murray River are facing challenges, due to low water levels, forcing operators to limit mobility through the Riverland.

Changes in the river’s water flow following environmental conditions have recently seen a group of boats unable to travel between towns like Renmark and Berri.

Volunteer skipper for the PS Industry, Michael Polson, said “these issues have been there for many years in places like Settler’s Bend, where basically the water comes down, runs around and comes back towards itself, forming a cutting, which is not new”.

“They’ve been slowly forming for years, but after the last flood the cuttings got to around 35ft deep, which allowed more water to go through them, but also filled it with dead gum trees and huge amounts of sand, limiting its navigability,” Mr Polson said.

In certain places along the Murray River, pieces of timber were used as underwater fences to divert water flow onto one side and help create a channel, with dredging being done to keep a navigable channel open.

“You can’t pass, either through the cutting because its full of sand and other things, or through the bend because now the water level is too low,” Mr Polson said.

“All the places that are now shallow have been mentioned and highlighted to council for more than 100 years.

“The slow speed of the water is pushing sand onto the other side of the river, slowing other areas and with water levels reduced, this increases the problem.”

Mr Poulson said the last Murray River flood worsened most of these issues, opening new cuttings and pushing huge amounts of sand and debris through the river bed, creating natural dams that pose a threat to houseboats with the increased possibilities of them running aground.

“I just don’t want to get to a stage where we sacrifice navigation on the river,” Mr Polson said.

“When I found out that there’s no boats going from Renmark down to Berri, it wasn’t a nice feeling.”

“They’re pretty much told to get on a boat at Paringa, through the bridge and only go upstream and maybe just above Border Cliffs, but that is blocked off as well.

“We just need someone to go and say yes, it’s worth it to keep that, let’s make an effort.

“Someone that says we’ll either pull those snags out of the cutting so that river traffic can go through there, and there’s plenty of those cuttings that are still navigable.

Mr Poulson said wetlands and some tourist and caravan park areas were in danger of getting cut-off and only accessible by small boats or even cars.”

“As much as I’m extremely in favour of environmental flows down all the backwaters, if we’ve only got four gigalitres a day coming through, you’ve probably got half of that going around Pike Creek through the little regulators and freshening up around that back area,” Mr Poulson said.

“In our lifetime it hasn’t really changed a lot but we’ve got to find some way of adapting to it and helping out navigation for the sake of keeping boats like the Industry moving,” Mr Poulson said.

“We have to keep a really good tourism industry going that provides a lot of jobs, with people from Berri going to Loxton and spending their money there and vice versa.

“We have spoken to (Renmark Paringa Mayor) Peter Hunter and he is getting together with other councils in the area to try and work out a common goal for everyone, and a common goal for the region.”

“(Chaffey MP) Tim Whetstone is so far the only one that’s responded with a possible solution, saying that he is willing to have a look at it and see what they can do and try to approach different departments.”  

This article appeared in the  Murray Pioneer,  4 September 2024.