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YIN were invited to an exclusive tour with Casella Wines on Friday, 24 September, 2004. The aim of the tour was to find out what local business are doing in the Griffith area. Casella Wines are Australia's largest family owned business and are the 3rd largest winery in Australia.
The tour was sold out within the first few weeks. About 20 enthusiastic YIN members joined the tour where we saw Green Tip Propogation at Australia's largest grape vine nursery, the fastest and most automated bottling plant in the Riverina and, to top it all off, free wine tasting!
The tour started with Cameron who looks after the Green Tip propogation plant in Yenda. We saw how the vines are grafted, packed and stored and the different methods of propogating grape vines.
Then we split up into two groups and were given a personalised tour of the winery and bottling plant. Now, let me just tell you EVERYTHING at Casella is done on an enormous scale. We're talking about storing millions and millions of litres of wine, the fastest bottling plant in NSW, rooms and rooms of storage, 2 b-doubles a day delivering wine bottles for filling - the list goes on.
We even got to try some of Casella's best selling international wine - the [yellow tail] range.
Casella Wines has continued to make an impact both in the Australian and International markets.
They recently won the Top 2 Awards in the Domestic Wine Industry – The Jimmy Watson Trophy and the Stodart Trophy – for their premium wines.
The [yellow tail] range is still gathering momentum as it becomes available in more countries. The Shiraz and Merlot are firmly placed as the number 1 and 2 best selling 750ml red wines in the USA!
Due to popular demand, YIN will be holding another Casella Winery & Nursery tour very soon. Call YIN's office for more information.
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Understanding the issues of sharing the Murray - Lower Murray Tour
In January, 2004, members of the Young Irrigation Network took a trip down to the mouth of the Murray. The main focus of the tour was to see first hand the Lower Murray River, check out the actual mouth of the Murray and speak to some of the water users along the way. Following is a run down of the more insightful educational stops we made.
The first official stop of the day was at Goolwa. The Signal Point River Murray Interpretive Centre at Goolwa has many interactive displays showing the use and movement of water throughout the whole Murray Darling Basin. From the centre we crossed the infamous Hindmarsh Bridge to Hindmarsh Island (sorry we can’t tell you what we did there, it’s a secret!), then took a cruise past Lake Alexandrina and the barrages, to the beach of the Younghusband Peninsula. We strolled across the peninsula to the river mouth checking on the progress of the dredging operations along the way.
The Murray mouth
Large amounts of sand are carried into the mouth of the Murray by tidal flows from the Southern Ocean. Usually river flows over the barrages prevent the deposit of sand from tidal flows. However, over the past four years the river flows over the barrages have been very low to negligible at times, so that more and more sand has been deposited inside the mouth, ultimately leading to the closure of the river.
Two dredgers now work 24 hours a day, seven days a week digging two channels, 3 m deep and 80 m wide. The aim of dredging is to keep the channel open from the barrages to the Murray mouth so that “fresh” sea water can flow into the hyper-saline (more saline than sea water) Coorong area. The Coorong is a RAMSAR listed area, which is home to around 85 different bird species travelling from Siberia and Japan to live and feed in the Coorong from October to February, each year.
The five barrages at the Murray mouth were completed in 1940. Their main purpose is to maintain the freshness of the water at the lower end of the Murray River and maintain a level of water suitable for gravity irrigation of Lower Murray farming land.
Grape growing and ecology
From the river mouth we travelled to Banrock Station, near Waikerie for some lively discussion on the management of the river and its weirs, and to learn more about the management of the RAMSAR listed wetlands.
Since 1994, when Banrock Station was purchased and converted from a grazing property to a grape growing property, improvements in land and water management have been continually sought. Besides the use of drip irrigation, soil moisture monitoring and management practices such as canopy management, PRD (partial root-zone drying) and RDI (regulated deficit irrigation), the managers at Banrock have been exploring the ecological side of their property. They have been actively involved with LandCare (they have the LandCare logo on the Banrock wine label), developed an EMS (Environment Management System), become ISO 14001 accredited, sponsored wetland restoration projects worldwide and improved management of the wetlands along their boundaries with the Murray River. They would like to see the level in the weir-pool (created by Lock 3), lowered even further so that all of the wetlands can be dried out for six months of the year, every year. Since 1992 part of the floodplain wetland has been returned to a near-natural wetting and drying cycle which has increased the biodiversity of the wetlands. They now support several threatened species, including Regent Parrot, Southern Bell Frog, and River Snail, and provides seasonal habitat for at least eight species of migratory waterbirds listed under Australia's international agreements. This more natural wet and dry cycle has not only improved the health of the wetlands but also reduces the build up of salt in the flood plain of the property and reduce evaporative losses.
After Banrock we stoped off at Chowilla Station, Lake Victoria and Moorna Station. Chowilla Satation floodplain is one of the six ‘icon’ sites of the Murray River system as listed in the MDBC Living Murray Initiative. Lake Victoria which is located just inside the NSW border, holds 680,000 ML and is the last major storage on the Murray. Lake Victoria has evaporative losses in the order of 1000 ML/day and is causing salinity problems for landholders in the area. Lake Victoria not only causes salinity through hydraulic pressure but it and Frenchman’s Creek (used to divert water from the Murray into Lake Victoria) also prevents the natural flow of salt to the river.
Moorna Station is a large property located south east of Lake Victoria and has a long and glorious history in the area. While the owners of Moorna Station recognise the importance of Lake Victoria (this last season they caught $20 million worth of off-allocation water which would otherwise have flowed over the border), but they also want solutions to the salinity and water table problems caused by the lake and Frenchman’s creek. They would like the management of Lake Victoria and Frenchman’s creek to be altered, with water levels being lower so that the hydraulic pressure will not be as great or for as long a periods.
The complexity of it all
The trip to the river mouth helped us to begin to understand that the issues and problems of the Murray River are as broad and complex as the Murray Darling River System itself. Solutions are possible but must involve understanding, discussion and compromise by all the water users along the Murray River system.
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