Coorong so wronged

I saw a t-shirt emblazoned with the message STOLEN WATER GENERATION at Goolwa market on the weekend.
I wish I had bought it.
I am a member of the Stolen Water Generation. We all are, here in South Australia.
And there, right by the market was the sign of the stolen water. The swans were walking in the river. Yes, walking. In fact I walked in the river – quite a long way across dry mud to photograph a group of perplexed-looking ducks and pelicans sitting on an island that did not used to be there.

Whole new opportunistic weeds have flourished in that river mud. Dry earth plants which do not belong amid the thirsty reed beds.

We have watched for months as the lower reaches of the River Murray dried up. We try to make light of it – but deep down an anger is brewing. Things would not be so bad if it was not for our neighbours in Victoria. They are holding back the river water. Now paid off by the Federal Government, billions of dollars, to play fair with their neighbours, Victoria intends to keep its claws on the water supply for a full three more years while it puts in place various irrigation projects to give itself a “food bowl’’.
Meanwhile, next door in South Australia, our ecology continues to descend into critical crisis – possibly, at this stage, irreversible.
The Vics don’t care. The Vics have always had an odd “thing” about taking whatever they could from South Australia – be it events like the Grand Prix or ideas like festivals. Water is just another thing they can “steal”.

Not that Premier Steve Bracks and his people are altogether to blame for the river crisis. There are also the rice and cotton farmers of Queensland and NSW – sucking billions of litres of water from the Darling river basin - the upstream catchment. More lousy neighbours.

Australia should not be growing these crops at all. We are not environmentally suited. Here is the proof – the dry end of the river!

Last time I mentioned the profligate misuse of the national water resources by these farmers, I had some indignant letters from farmers’ wives. They see themselves as battlers scratching a living. The hell they are. Theirs is a recent crop in this country – and a disasterous one. Can’t they see that? They need to grow something environmentally sustainable – something suited to the conditions. To add insult to injury, Aussie rice is not even good rice, in my culinary opinion.

Of course, these farmers pay for water. And the lower reaches of the River Murray – the lakes and the once-magnificent Coorong pay dearly for their entitlement.

Time to kick a Vic?

For some reason the Vics have always had a fairly un-neighbourly attitude towards Adelaide. Indeed, one could say they are simply the pits as neighbours. The F1 pits.
They do border raids to steal our ideas, our events, our talent… They don’t want to share water with us.
And now, out of the blue, they throw insults at us.
Again.

We're a "backwater", eh?

Victoria, where are your manners?

Then again, maybe we should forgive them their boorishness because of their convict background. Were they abused when they were young?

Of course, Opposition Leader Martin Hamilton-Smith does not turn out to be much of a local hero in defending our state against this latest insult from the east.
The SAS superhero wants a bigger boy to defend us for him.
Premier Mike Rann should tell Brumby where to go, says Marty.
At the same time, he says it is all Mike Rann’s fault that Victoria's John Brumby has called us a backwater. Huh?
Buck-passing and finger-pointing all at once?
I, for one, expected better of our Marty.

But I guess he is just upset.
We have to get used to it, Marty.

Adelaide has been the brunt of the east’s limp idea of humour for aeons. It is all rather childish and ignorant – and there is a doubtless a lot of jealousy in much of the ribbing and japing we cop.
Whatever we have, they seem to want it – even our history. I have watched with absolute astonishment as so-called historians in the east simply make up the eastern-oriented “truths” just to escape mentioning South Australia. There is barely an arts administrator left here, so keenly do they steal them - not to mention festivals and car events, food and wine events...

And, as they plunder our wealth of ideas and talent, they have gratuitous digs at us.
It is all very irritating and disappointing from one’s fellow countryfolk.

What can we say?
Surely we would never sink to their level?

Well, I suspect we have to, if we are to be understood.

So, perhaps we should say to Victoria, very politely and in our poshest Adelaide accent:

We may be a backwater but at least we are not water hogs.

In support of hemp

Hemp! Hemp! Hemp!
The call by Australian union leader Bill Shorten for the country to replace water-wasteful crops such as rice and cotton with hemp is the sort of common sense I have been waiting to hear from the world of politics - as they bleat and argue about the drought and the pitiful state of the poor, over-used River Murray.

Which complete idiot decided that Australia should be a rice or cotton-growing nation in the first place?

Talk about inappropriate, illogical and completely damned profligate.
The ultimate inanity of it all is that Australia has to export its cotton to India, China and Korea to have it processed. That's only half an industry - with a considerable cost to the environment. The Cotton Australia website admits freely that cotton "ammonium nitrate, radiological sources, harmful biological materials and hazardous chemicals" are associated with cotton-growing. Chemicals such as endosulfan, sodium chlorate, paraquat, aldicarb, disulfoton and phorate are actually national security concerns, for heaven's sake.
What are we doing here?
All it can do is to pollute the landscape and suck up the water supply.

As for the rice. We grow the worst rice in the world, in my expert culinary opinion. I do anything to avoid buying Australian rice - because it always means a disaster in the pot. I love my son very much - but when he brought Australian rice into the house instead of proper Thai Jasmine, I was really piqued with him. I had to cook this crap? Guess at water measurements because it is never consistent with the ancient traditions of rice cooking? Our neighbours in Asia grow wonderful rice in environments suited to the required irrigation. I don't care what the industry proponents say, it seems to me that we are compromising our fragile environment for the sake of an unnecessary and second-rate product.

Australia now has a scandalous 2500 rice farms and brags it lives at the top end of the international rice market.
Australia, always short of water, now is in the throes of drought. But we still divert water for rice crops.
Hemp is the logical answer.

It is no silly hippie solution as the market conservatives try to propagandize. It is a brilliant fibre crop which produces a product stronger than cotton with by-products equivalent to wood pulp plus an excellent seed oil. It endures drought and climate variablility and it does not need a squillion pesticides or supplements.

But of course, gasp, it is "hemp" and attracts the knee-jerk response of the ignorant who seem to think it is a drug. It has negligible THC. The THC thing is the big red herring and the rice/cotton vested interests will drag it around to see if they can make it stink rather than change any of the things they are doing.

It will take a resolute government to tackle water shortage from the cropping point of view. One with a new sort of moral fibre - er, so to speak.