When South Australians were trying to turn their estuary into a freshwater dam in the 1940’s, the Mulloway natural migration was devastated.

Now, Australia’s only freshwater estuary hangs like a noose around the neck of the Murray Darling Basin, consuming huge volumes of freshwater to raise an artificial lake height for yachting, and an attempt to dilute the Southern Ocean, under the fundamentally flawed Murray Darling Basin Plan.

Goolwa local and marine expert Ken Jury shared the telling photo [above] with me, while I was touring the region. Seven tons of Mulloway stranded as the final touches of South Australia’s freshwater dam dream took shape.

Conveyed to Ken, quotes from Bert Lundstrom a commercial fisherman from Goolwa.

“Three of us used to go for hauling – nearly ten ton we got in one haul,” Bert said.

“When the Goolwa Barrage was being built, the coffer dam on the Hindmarsh Island side was nearly finished, when several ton of Mulloway swam into the coffer dam and they closed them off – accidentally,” Bert said.

“The chaps working the barrage had the time of their lives when the water was pumped out around these big Mulloway,” he said.

“The mulloway would go up into the Lower Lakes and you’d catch them in winter and as they were going out, in summer,” he said.

“There was always salt water in Goolwa in those days,” Bert Lundstrom said.

This article appeared in The Koondrook and Barham Bridge Newspaper, 20 February 2025.