I must say, Dahlings, April has passed in a kind of daze. Its been filled with Submissions. Now a gal like me, up to now, hasn’t had to worry her head about such things.
What was it Descartes said? “I think therefore I am”.
In my case it was “I have curves, therefore I am”!
But now that I have become a Complete Woman with Depth, I have to deal with Submissions.
The first, due on April 9th, was the Environmental Impact Statement for the Pomanda Weir, or EIS as everybody calls it. I do get so confused by all these acronyms. We had ten days to read the draft report and produce everything we ever wanted to say to save the world we love. The report was 600 pages. I’m not sure if that included the appendices. Now if I read a book that is 600 pages long, (I think the best I’ve managed is actually about 450) I expect it to be a jolly good yarn! This was anything but! I have to confess, I skipped quite a bit. Until I got to the part buried deep in the appendices about the riverbed near Pomanda Island having a bottom of soft mud over 42 metres deep!
Well!! I could have told them I had a deep soft bottom! Anyone who has caressed my curves would know this straight away!
The people writing this report have no idea about a female’s sensibility. Even personal rights for that matter! They found out about my soft bottom, not by a silky stroke or a playful squeeze, but by drilling holes in it! Dropping bricks and rocks into it! This surely contravenes the United Nations Convention against Torture.
Somebody ought to tell them.
Rory, of course, saved the day. He suggested I put in my submission that building a weir comprising 700,000 tonnes of rock across my soft bottom made about as much sense as a nine-year-old building a wall of Lego blocks across the surface of a bowl of porridge.
No sooner had we got the EIS out of the way than we had to deal with the EPBC Referral. I have no idea any more what the EPBC stands for. I think a “referral” means the description of a plan that the government wants to implement, and their reasons why they need to do it.
The plan - and I couldn’t believe it when I first saw it - was to build metre high walls of rocks across the estuaries of the Finniss and Currency Creek, and to build a much bigger and higher wall across the middle of the main river channel at Clayton. I was flabbergasted! Then I remembered mention of this had been made way back at the Waterkeepers Conference last October. Nobody had believed it then. It was just too ridiculous to even contemplate.
I mean, if they build a wall across the channel at Clayton, that will stop all the nice Finniss water from flowing into Lake Alexandrina. Rory said these flows over the last two winters are all that have kept Lake Alex alive. The tiny little trickle of water coming down the Murray all gets pumped, via those plumes of mud I saw, into Lake Albert.
Not being just a Pretty Face, I then remembered what they said in that meeting where the rude man insulted my proportions. Building a weir across the end of the Murray wasn’t going to make any difference to Lake Alex because water from the Finniss and Currency Creek would replenish evaporation. Rory said this was in the EIS report too. Must have been in one of the bits I skipped. Now, barely a week later, they are planning to block off this last little life-refreshing flow too. It’s enough to drive a woman to a Gin and Tonic at 10 a.m..
Glass in one hand, submission pen in the other, I pondered the situation. No water coming into Lake Alex from the Murray, none coming in from the Finniss and Currency Creek, water evaporating over summer… This means Lake Alex will, before long, just disappear.
There is a rumour they are going to open the barrages and let sea water in. I don’t believe it. All that salt! It will kill off everything! Fish, turtles, plants… That would be just too stupid. But then I didn’t believe any of the other rumours, either.
Rory overheard a Dutchman talking to John on the back lawn the other day. He said it took ten years to get the salt out of the soil after sea water flooded parts of Holland during World War II. And there is a lot more rain in Holland than here.
Rory also said he’d heard from a beacon mate of his who had moved to Port Augusta. There the seawater tide flows inland up a creek to a saltpan swamp. The water keeps evaporating. The only water replacing that evaporation is more seawater. The salt becomes increasingly concentrated. Eventually all you are left with is a crust of white. Rory’s mate says the same thing will happen in Lake Alex if they let the seawater in.
My minder Liz has done a series of paintings:
Lake Alex 2003 - cobalt water, pink terracotta cliffs at Raukkan,
Lake Alex 2006-7- sand bars appearing, dead mussels dotting the shore, Lake Alex 2008-9 - the whole Lake expanse is now filled with a paper collage of government reports and studies, inquiries, submissions…
Finally Lake Alex 2015 - a salt pan glittering white, glassy, metallic, like Lake Eyre.
Sigh… Art can say it all so eloquently. Words are so hard. Especially words in Submission-ese.
I’ve had another Gin and Tonic, but it hasn’t helped much. I feel as if my brain has turned to scrambled egg - you know - just at that point where it begins to curdle.
I’m starting to doubt I’ve got what it takes to be a Sister with Attitude and Commitment, a Complete Woman with Depth. Life was so much simpler when my philosophy of existence could be summed up by “I have curves therefore I am”.
Cheers M’dears
Po’
To be continued…
