Mosaic Map: NRM funded projects
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Diverting bore water
Bull rushes may have saved Moses, but they're no saviour in the waterways of Western Queensland.
They clog the Channel Country creeks and provide excellent habitat for feral pigs.
Great Artesian Basin Consultative Council founding chairman John Seccombe was facing problems on the 65,000 acre family property 'Kenya', where bull rushes were infesting Western Creek.
"Artesian water is highly attractive to bull rushes and you see them growing across the Great Artesian Basin," he said. "They don't grow where water is running quickly, but once it slows down in creek water holes, or in gently sloping bore drains, that's where the bull rushes grow.
There was also a problem with erosion with the land around nearby Dominie Creek, which was increased by water freely discharging from an old bore.
John puts much of the difficulties down to the old drains from bores sunk near his property in 1893 and 1914.
"Until 1956 all the bores were freely discharging water onto the ground, but bores sunk after the mid fifties were no longer allowed to do that," he said.
Funding
He received Australian Government assistance of more than $12,000 to pipe water to tanks and troughs rather than to the waterholes and hopefully deal with both the bull rushes and the erosion.
Activities and achievements
"You can spray the bull rushes, but it's expensive and of course they come back in time," he said. "I'm very reluctant to attack the problem with poisons as some can be very detrimental to the creek environment and affect Coolibah trees for example, which are valuable here.
"So I see the answer as replacing the bore drains with piping systems."
There has however been one unforeseen problem between applying for and receiving funding - the rise in oil prices.
"Our original costing was for polythene pipe to take the water to the tanks and troughs," John said. "Polythene is of course an oil-based product and the price is now way above what we'd anticipated, so we're not running quite to schedule with this project."
John is however working through this problem with the help of Desert Channels Queensland, which he said has provided very useful advice and support to him throughout the project.
More information
- John Seccombe, Great Artesian Basin Consultative Council founding chairman: skgc@bigpond.com
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