I have been across the Darling Downs a few times in my life starting about 50 years ago.
It is magnificent country but the last time I was across there in about 2000, I was horrified by the huge turkey nest dams every few kilometres.
Each dam had about 4 of around 400 or 500 mm pipes into them , busily pumping water out of the Condamine, water which would have ultimately flowed into the Darling.
My contempt for the greed of the cotton growers was really cemented when I repeatedly came across furrow irrigation on barley crops, one of the lowest value crops around.
There were no high value crops, just masses of water being used in high temperatures to grow a low value crop.
In the early 1970's I flew gliders out of Waikerie in SA.
Between Waikerie and Loxton there was just mile after mile of dry, desolate looking farmland.
At both of these towns there was, what I thought at the time as quite an area of citrus.
Now when I drive that route, all I can see is bloody grape vines with practically no breaks in the vines in the 75 kms between the two towns.
And that is only one small section of the river.
It is entirely understandable that our rivers and wetlands are in deep strife when I see the greed of both the irrigators and the political class who have benefitted from all the irrigation licence fees flowing into government coffers.
It is interesting that there is almost no support for the irrigators amongst dryland farmers who regard irrigators as amongst the greediest of all rural industries in the manner in which they appear to stop at nothing to get as much water as possible regardless of the interests of all the other groups in the community as well as the environmental destruction factor.

Mankind needs three things to survive;
Water
Food
Shelter
So what does he do?
He pays big, big dollars for shelter as in fancy McMansions, fancy clothes and all sorts of useless adornments.
Food he expects to get real cheap, always to have as much as he wants and if there is the slightest blemish he will complain loud and long.
Water, he expects that to be given to him. It must also run out of a tap when demanded, must be clear and pure and preferably be delivered for no charge.
Somehow, in Australia, we have managed to get this whole situation **** about face and now we and our environment are paying a very heavy price and we will be paying a much heavier financial, industrial and social price far into the future.

ROM I reckon it would be really interesting to comare the percentage of the weekly wage food was in the 50's to what it is today. I reckon that it would have been a lot higher then. You are right on what you have said before. People expect food and all essentials for next to nothing so their pay can be spent on the luxuries in life. A house is a essential but not a McMantion. Clothes are essential but not the high fashion fad clothes worn by most everyone. Food is essential but not the ridiculous "dining experience" that rich people seem to "need". Transport is essential but seems people in cities refuse to use public transport even if it is accessible to them. The list goes on and on. We do seem to have to the wrong way around and I think it is the way that the products we buy are priced at.

It also has somthing to do with the amount of profit that the middle men of the world seem to take for simply shuffling the produce along. How is it that a high fashion pair of jeans that cost $200+ can be made in a chinese factory for maybe $2. Sombody is taking people for a ride. It seems to be widespread through most things that people buy and use. Somehow and someway businesses should not be allowed to take huge profits when the price to produce it is low.

I have an official historical table and graphs of Monthly Murray Darling Dam Inflows for Hume & Dartmouth Dams from 1892 to current 2010(Courtesy MBD Commission), on my new upgraded, updated, modernised web site under articles section for anyone who may be interested at
http://www.holtonweather.com
Also, keeping the Murray River Basin discussion on the agenda for irrigators and farmers, etc,as most pollies seem to be good at forgetting it with this election!

Ok... tad slow on the uptake here, by like five months!

Adon, you might find the graph below answers your question:


Quite a while back I found a very interesting paper on Trends in Australian Agriculture. It was written in 2005 but still resonates with a lot of the feelings out there today. Check it out here. The graph above was sourced from this paper.