For the past five years, water levels in the river have been too low for irrigation purposes. Farmers have either relied on bore water or on expensive purchases of water on the temporary market.

If you’ve never heard that term before in relation to water, it’s probably because you’ve never been a farmer in a drought-stricken area. The temporary water market trades water according to seasonal need, in different quantities, for different purposes. To read more about it, click here.

Last week at a meeting in Rochester conducted by the Northern Victoria Irrigation Renewal Project, 108 of 153 Campaspe River irrigators expressed an interest in accepting an adjustment payment from the government in exchange for their water entitlements.

While it’s good news for the struggling river, and for the Murray-Darling Basin into which it drains, according to an ABC news report the cost to farmers of installing pipes to carry water from further afield will force many out of business.

Among concerned climate scientists and environmentalists, ongoing government support for farmers in marginal areas has long been a bone of contention. The late Professor Peter Cullen blasted the Howard Government for doling out drought assistance packages to farmers in marginal agricultural areas, claiming they were just prolonging the agony in the face of continuing drought.

In the Campaspe River region, some farmers are now deciding that enough’s enough. They’ve chosen to take the money that’s owed to them for the water to which they were entitled but have never used. Some will struggle on, relying on the roulette of seasonal rainfall, others will leave.

Exceptional rain events from monsoon troughs notwithstanding, based on records kept by the Bureau of Meteorology, conditions in southern Australia are projected to become drier over the coming decades.

The use of river water in an attempt to sustain the inevitable spread of marginal farmlands is a debate that still has some way to go.

On our way to the Loddon River the other day, we came across an odd looking structure. The cement surrounding its base seemed barely dry although it could have been there for a while.

We hadn’t visited the river since July when we’d engaged in a spate of over-exertion. Standing next to the muddy track, surrounded by paddocks, the padlocked metal column piqued our curiosity.

The sign showed it to be a Groundwater Observation Bore.

Unlike so many things these days (‘intelligent design’ for instance), groundwater observation is exactly what it says it is: monitoring water that’s stored in the ground.

Groundwater is formed when rain water seeps from the surface of the ground and collects in underground porous spaces between layers of sand, gravel and fractured rock. The water table is the depth at which these porous spaces become fully saturated.

Another definition that might come in handy if you find yourself seated next to a hydrologist at a dinner table: Large areas of spaces holding groundwater are called aquifers.

Because groundwater is rainwater that’s been stored underground, it’s a finite resource and therefore needs to be managed in a sustainable way. Shared usage of groundwater has been known to cause a stoush or two.

Take this district, for instance. Fascinating in so many ways due to its diverse community, it’s no stranger to conflict. Heck no.

I once read that Daylesford – home of relaxed sophistication and calming therapies – once hosted the world’s longest fist fight. That was probably in the days when the town supported no fewer than four pubs whose patrons spent most of their waking hours rummaging around the countryside for gold.

In an effort to resolve some of the latter-day conflicts, chiefly those concerning bores, in 2003 an RMIT University research team, funded by the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment, mailed a survey to 400 residents who live in and around Glenlyon, a township about 10kms from Daylesford.

Glenlyon was chosen because many of its residents rely on groundwater for their water supply. One of the team’s objectives was to find out how much people in these parts knew about that water.The survey questioned residents about their use of groundwater and their concerns about it.

Almost half of those who responded relied on groundwater to some extent, with some relying on it for over 90% of their water usage. Their concerns about their water supply were of special interest to the research team.

Farmers and irrigators were seen as the largest users of groundwater, with some perceived as irresponsible in their water usage. Leaky bores, illegal dams and the poor quality of groundwater were other concerns.

The survey showed that some respondents saw a need to limit the use of groundwater, citing that if a neighbour or farmer extracted water from the aquifer, especially if irrigation was involved, it would interfere with the recharge rate of the bore (replenishment through rainwater) and thus diminish supply.

Ten percent of respondents had been involved in groundwater disputes. The same number had contacted groundwater agencies with few results to show for their efforts.

One of the main findings to emerge from the survey was that most people really didn’t understand groundwater systems. If you rely on groundwater to some extent but know little about it, this is essential reading.

If you’re thinking of sinking a bore on a rural property, there are things you need to know if you don’t want to start a stoush with the neighbours. For instance, how far should a bore be located from a septic tank, a neighbouring bore and other potential sources of contamination or interference. Don’t even think of sinking a bore without going here first.

The  Glenlyon groundwater project team developed an interactive educational website to help residents and farmers better understand groundwater systems. They hoped it would help highlight issues about sustainability and ways of settling disputes.

Of course the website had to be augmented by community workshops because so many residents were without internet access. Or their access was limited by slow internet speeds, the bane of those who live in the country. Don’t get me started on that.

They won’t last long – a month, two at most – but now we can say we’ve seen them: the Loddon Falls in flow.

The river dances to the tune of its country. From high on the divide near Trentham, it lunges to a fern-filled valley. Descending through mossy ravines, it leaps rocks and plunges again from cliffs.

Where headwaters join the dance, around Glenlyon, the river pushes aside snares and jumps stones littering its bed. Granite cliffs, starting low and building, send the waters plummeting. Where the valley floor flattens, the river froths in a pool.

On its travels the Loddon will be met by brimming streams and swollen creeks. Fortified, it will cut through banks, invade billabongs, perhaps take an ox-bow lake or two. It could even collect a bridge, a struggling tree or the inevitable dump of thoughtless trash.

As the day is smothered by cloud, we wish the river rain on its journey to the Murray.

Old habits died hard. Despite recent rain we’re still taking shorter showers and using as little water as possible.

On Sunday I emptied two watering cans onto a strip of dry ground under the eaves, where some geranium cuttings are flourishing. Filled with cooking water and left for a few weeks, the now empty watering cans stink to high heaven. (Note to self: distribute water used to cook broccoli, cabbage and other brassicas as soon as possible.)

While this Winter’s rain has been most welcome, it hasn’t been enough to fill farm dams or to bring rivers and creeks in the district back to full capacity. Nor has it replenished Melbourne’s water catchments to anywhere near the levels they once experienced at this time of year.

This morning I was pondering the need for more rain, when I received an email alert from the Wilderness Society. It advises that the Brumby government ‘allows logging in five of Melbourne’s water catchments which supply more than half of the city’s water, including our largest catchment, the Thomson Dam’.

This is the government which is moving water to the city, by pipeline, from the State’s foodbowl in the north, and which has invested billions in an energy-gobbling, carbon-polluting desalination plant. These measures, they say, will ensure that Melbourne’s residents will have a sufficient supply of clean drinking water into the future. They don’t say that it will also be costly to consumers.

While we don’t rely on water from a catchment – apart from our rainwater tank, that is – we do understand that all those who reside in cities and towns rely on clean points of collection for their water supply. We also understand that cutting down trees anywhere near a catchment is a good way to ensure that water quality declines.

When trees are removed from catchment areas, flows of water produced by rainfall move rapidly, causing erosion and carrying soil and nutrients into the catchment, polluting it. The roots of trees hold the soil, preventing erosion and filtering nutrients. Trees also reduce rates of evaporation.

After all the fuss when bushfires threatened catchments last Summer, you’d think the State Government would know better than to allow logging anywhere near them. But it seems it doesn’t.

Jobs are muddling their thinking. Logging has been the mainstay of some rural communities for generations. Take it away and what’s left… I mean apart from forest maintenance, catchment monitoring, wildlife protection, fire management and native plant nurseries? And if there are any gaps left after positions in those areas have been filled, perhaps those experts in job creation, Messrs Fox, Kelty and Arbib, could offer a few suggestions.

As far as how much water can be saved by the cessation of logging, the Melbourne Water Catchment Network has published the findings of a government-commissioned Water and Wood hydrology study, Potential impacts of forest management on streamflow in Melbourne’s water supply catchments (May 2008), by Russel Mein.

The study reveals that by ending logging near catchments over the next year, water gained in 40 years time would be equivalent to the annual 16 GL water consumption of a city the size of Ballarat (94,000 people). This would increase to 40 GL per year over time.

They compare this with the 16 GL per year from the Tarago Treatment plant on which the government is currently spending $100 million to supplement Melbourne’s supply.

When the climate in the southern regions of the world’s driest continent is becoming even drier, you’d think that our governments would do everything they can to protect precious water reserves without having to sacrifice our capacity to produce food or add to the cause of climate change.

We’re just glad that we don’t rely on town water. If we did, we’d install a rainwater tank.

Streams leap prettily downhill, babbling in their rush to revive dry gullies.

Well-fed mapgies warble rainy-day songs. The garden is sprouting toadstools.

I check the rain gauge. Over 30mm has fallen since…?

I make a mental note: Keep rainfall records… along with planting records and the one for crop rotation. The road to hell is paved with unkept records.

For the time being, we’ve mothballed the buckets for greywater. With no use for it now, we’ve nowhere to store it but as it swirls away down the drain, the feeling of waste is hard to shake.

We ponder the torrent coursing downhill where the pines once grew. Should we divert it, arrest it or leave it to find its own level? Later we’ll track it to find its path.

With our muddy boots squelching, we revel in the pleasures of rain.

The first time we saw the Loddon River, we stood on a hill, upstream from Glenlyon. That was in November 2000.

The river was flowing so swiftly, it had severely cut into the banks, turning them into small cliffs. A local told us its course had changed slightly, as it so often did during flooding.

Earlier this week, we had a stroll near that spot. We came across a puddle, left after recent rain, but mostly we walked along the dry river bed.

‘The Loddon River flows 392km from its headwaters in the Great Dividing Range near Daylesford, through Castlemaine to Swan Hill where it meets the Murray River.’ (Environment Victoria)

These days the river doesn’t flow. Sometimes, after rain, it puddles and on occasion trickles.

The Loddon was – and still is – a victim of the 1850s gold rush when dredging and mining transformed it. Thousands of River Red Gums were removed from its banks.

Our largest freshwater fish the Murray Cod, survives in rivers wherever there are deep holes. The cod likes to be hidden by fallen trees and overhanging native vegetation. However, this type of habitat has been severely compromised over decades as more land has been cleared for pasture.

Cattle that graze along rivers severely degrade the banks in their efforts to drink from the stream. This, too, contributes to loss of habitat of not just the Murray Cod, but also that of the platypus.

To compound the damage, in the late 1950s willows were planted along the Loddon to stablise its banks. Willows, with their fibrous root systems, trap stones and pebbles. They don’t sustain life in our rivers in the same way that other riparian vegetation does.

Willows are greedy consumers. They can suck a small river dry. In Autumn they dump masses of leaves into the river, wiping out aquatic invertebrates that provide food for native fish. The leaf fall from native vegetation, on the other hand, supplies the type of food on which native fish feed.

Poplars, with their rapidly spreading suckers, have also choked the Loddon.

Over the last few years, the hard-working Guildford/Upper Loddon Landcare Group has been working to remove nearly 300 willows and poplars along the river, replacing them with wattles and eucalypts.

The Cairn Curran Reservoir, west of Maldon, was constructed in 1956 ‘to supply water for irrigation and domestic and stock use to customers along the Loddon River’. A visit there in Autumn revealed an expanse of dry, dusty, sterile land where the reservoir used to be.

There’s little we can do about drought. But there’s much we can do to optimise conditions in and along our rivers for when the rain finally does arrive.