Trees have always been a point of conflict between colonisers and Indigenous people.
At the very beginning of European-Indigenous interactions, skirmishes broke out because colonisers were ignorant of protocols and the desecration of important Indigenous sites and habitats. In the 19th century, as frontiers pushed west into the Country of Wiradjuri, colonists were indifferent to the sanctity of marked trees.
As a news article from the Daily Advertiser in 1941 reported:
The only carved tree […] unfortunately fell victim to the advancing tide of civilisation and was cut up and converted into railway sleepers that now possibly lie somewhere along the line between Yanco and Hay, or Leeton and Griffith.
Murrumbidgee Valley irrigators back with summer crops, full water allocation after years of drought
SunSunday 24
JanJanuary 2021 at 5:40am
Gogeldrie farmers Marg and Garry Knagge are growing rice for the first time in three years.
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There is a spring in the step of irrigators in southern New South Wales who are growing summer crops like rice for the first time in three years.
Key points:
Some farmers are growing rice again for the first time in three years
Increased water allocations have given farmers the confidence to experiment with new crops
Irrigators in the Murrumbidgee Valley were recently given a full water allocation for the first time since 2016.
Environmental water flow reaches wetland triggering big breeding event for rare, endangered bitterns
TueTuesday 12
An Australian little bittern chick sits with an unhatched egg in the Yanga National Park.
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A bittern breeding boom in a New South Wales Riverina wetlands is being heralded as a significant step forward for the secretive water bird species.
Key points:
Environmental water is being heralded as the catalyst for the breeding event
Up to 350 gigalitres of environmental water is likely to be made available for the Murrumbidgee Valley in 2021
Last week, during a research trip to Yanga National Park on the Lowbidgee floodplain near Balranald, wildlife ecologist Matt Herring discovered the nests and live chicks of both the endangered Australasian bittern and the near-threatened Australian little bittern.