Back from the brink

Goulburn’s main water storage Pejar Dam resembled a mudcaked moon crater and the city’s total storage (mainly at Sooley Dam) stood at 24.4 per cent, of which 12pc was unusable.

The city was in the thick of one of its worst droughts on record, and was considering moving to Level 5 Water Restrictions.

But unlike the water, the ideas to get us out of the mud were flowing fast.

Looking through some pages of the Goulburn Post 10 years on, many of these ideas now seem quite strange - but desperate times called for desperate measures.

At the drought’s height, local clubs offered plastic cups to patrons to stop wasting water washing the glasses.

People were not allowed to wash their cars or water their lawns, unless it was using recycled ‘greywater’ from their washing machines. 

Residents carried buckets of this precious (and dirty) greywater out to their lawns to lovingly splash onto their dying lawns and gardens.

Out of desperation, Goulburn Mulwaree Council embarked on some (in hindsight) rather weird ideas including the Kingsdale Borefields and the Copford Reach Pipeline, a $3m pipeline that stretched from a body of water down behind the wastewater treatment plant over to Sooley Dam.

Council even employed a waterdiviner to look for more artesian water and a man featured in a story in the Post claiming he had invented a rain-making device (made mostly of crystals) that he pointed hopefully up at the heavens each night.

Then, and possibly because also it a state election was brewing, federal and state politicians descended from the heavens in golden chariots and gave the city the $40m Highland Source Pipeline - the Bowral hose - and the city was saved!

Or were we? Or did it just start raining again? 

Drought solutions a ‘series of unfortunate events’

FORMER Goulburn Mulwaree Councillor Neil Penning recalls those days as a “series of unfortunate events”.

“I don’t want to be negative about it all, but it really was a ‘series of unfortunate events’ at the time,” Mr Penning said.

“It was not for lack of rain. We had heaps of it.

It was reactionary stuff most of the time - to one big catastrophe - which led to a some unfortunate pieces of infrastructure being built.

“The series of unfortunate events started with the delays in the rebuilding of the Sooley Dam wall, which did eventually happen, but it coincided with long periods of no rain, or short periods of lots of rain, with most of it flowing past the city.

“The basic problem was that work on extending the Sooley Dam wall at the time meant that the water in Sooley Dam had to be kept to a certain level - it was about three-quarters full.

“In January 2005 there was a lot of rain and Sooley and Pejar were filling, but in May of that year (2005) we became famous as the city with no water and that famous photo of the then Opposition Leader Kim Beazley standing in mud at Pejar Dam was taken.”

Mr Penning said a lot of ‘wacky’ ideas came out of the desperate fight to save the city from running dry.

“I remember all sorts of ‘wacky ideas’ were tried that did not solve anything,” Mr Penning said.

“A Monash University Professor approached me who wanted to cloud seed - but you need to be 90 per cent sure of rain before you do it.

“It never happened, like the rain. I would watch storms brew on the outskirts of the city - but they would just bypass us and dump the rain elsewhere. 

The rain just would not come to Goulburn.”

Mr Penning said the Kingsdale Borefields and the Copford Reach Pipeline were among the cannon of ‘wacky ideas’ at the time.

“The Copford Reach Pipeline was the ultimate wacky idea that was done,” he said.

“It only ran for a total of 72 days from August 7 2006, pumping 190 megalitres into Sooley Dam - at a cost of $3 million - that’s expensive water!

“The Kingsdale Borefields were also a failure because they were sucking on a very poor aquifer and have since been decommissioned.

Those with private bores in the area have had to re-drill them deeper as a result.”

Mr Penning had doubts about whether the Highland Source Pipeline (HSP) has ever reached its full potential.

“I tried to stop the HSP at the time because I thought it was a waste of money,” he said.

“An alternative suggestion at the time was the two-way Pejar to Sooley Dam Pipeline - they said it was not a good idea because Pejar was empty at the time but Pejar is much deeper - it is a great tank and all cockys know with water you store it up high and catch it down low - that way you get gravity to feed it as well.

“At the time the HSP was touted as an emergency pipeline - but you don’t spend $50m on a spare tyre - you make sure the other tyres are ok.

“For me, a question mark still hangs over the practicality of the HSP, it despite its obvious enormous political success.”

Mr Penning was philosophical about it all.

“My message to the current administration is - look to your engineering and make the best of what nature provides - work with nature - don’t work against it,” he said.

“If we get in another crisis let’s make sure it doesn’t happen again.

They were exciting times and there was a lot of debate and some great ideas came out it - and the community was really engaged in the debate.”