Irrigation has spread throughout the entire Murray/Darling river basin. The Murrumbidgee and other significant rivers fall within this area. Rice and cotton growing have been popularly vilified as contributing to the decline in health of the river systems, particularly to the Murray at its lower end in SA.

In March 2004, a small group from our Murray/Darling Study Group set off to the Riverina area in NSW to learn at first hand the facts about growing rice by irrigation. Their detailed report is presented below in five parts for easy online viewing (HTML format).

Printing from these HTML pages may result in some of the illustrations being truncated or even lost. At the end of each part there is a link for a PDF version to be sent by email.

Roger Williams, U3A Adelaide Web Master. Email contact - willrj@hotmail.com