It’s been a sad year for long-term residents and visitors to Peterborough, where the River Curdies empties into an estuary under the Great Ocean Road, a place often teeming with vibrant birds and aquatic life.
Warning: The following story contains details and images that some readers may find distressing.
In April, stretches of the river turned green and smelled putrid, then became dangerously toxic, filled with dead fish and bloated, dead floating livestock.
To address community alarm over the health and future of the Curdies, the Corangamite Watershed Management Authority formed an advisory committee, which held its inaugural meeting in August.
It has offered some hope, bringing together numerous water and land management agencies with two relevant councils, dairy and farming groups, community representatives and Landcare.
The Curdies River Estuary in April 2022. (ABC South West Victoria: Emily Bissland)
Fish kill and cows die
The Curdies River runs through the Heytsebury region, one of Australia’s largest milk producing regions.
Earlier this year, dead cows were found in the Curdies River. (Provided by Chris Earle)
The lush green hillsides were originally covered in eucalyptus forests, but clearing began in the 1950s in the government-sponsored Soldier Settlement Scheme: 50,000 hectares of Heytesbury Forest were cleared.
The amount of vegetation on the banks of the river can affect the quality of the water.
But despite deforestation in the Curdies River catchment, VR Fish, the state’s peak recreational fishing body, considers the river “one of Victoria’s premier recreational bream and estuary fisheries”.
But in April, local fisherman Chris Earle was wading up the river when he came across a large number of dead fish, mostly goldfish.
He recorded the scene, and once the video began circulating on social media, speculation grew that the aquatic life had been suffocated by a lack of oxygen due to severe blue-green algae blooms. greenish
Two weeks after the first fish kill, more dead fish were found in the river along with 20 young cows.
Barb Mullen, interim president of the Curdies River Catchment Alliance, a community group formed during this crisis, believes that if not for the impact of these images, little would have been done.
“That was the horror of the shock because people think, ‘The blue-green algae have killed the cows. How terrible is that?'”
The Peterborough community has come together to discuss concerns about blue-green algae.
The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) issued a statement saying the cause of the cattle deaths was suspected to be the consumption of toxic blue-green algae, but inspections of the canals were not conclusive
Whether the cows drank and were killed by the river water or not, these images became a call to action that led to several public meetings, a petition to parliament and a public suit by VR Fish .
More than 20 young cows were found dead in the Curdies River during the blue-green algae outbreak earlier this year. (Provided by Chris Earle)
In April, VR Fish chairman Rob Loats described the Curdies River fish kill event as an “unmitigated disaster that was predicted decades ago”.
“We’re seeing thousands of native fish go belly up and now dead cattle floating down the river,” he said.
“This is not a small and limited fish kill as indicated by DELWP, nor a natural event as indicated by the Corangamite CMA.
“The current handing of blame between state government agencies, including the EPA, will not solve this problem, nor will it put its head in the sand.”
EPA investigates dairy farms
On August 4, the Victorian Environment Protection Authority (EPA) released a statement announcing that 25 dairy farms in the Curdies River catchment had been inspected without notice to check effluent management.
EPA Southwest Regional Director Carolyn Francis said they were reassured by the high levels of compliance they saw.
In August 2021, this tributary of the Curdies River was documented to contain cow effluent. (Supplied: Geoff Rollinson, Landcare)
“Most farmers are doing the right thing and have good effluent management practices,” Francis said.
“Two of the 25 dairy farms did not adequately control their effluent and allowed it to discharge in a way that could harm waterways.
“We will therefore place more explicit requirements on these farms through legally enforceable notices.”
Ms Francis said more inspections would follow in the region, but the EPA recently confirmed none had taken place.
Bird life in the Curdies Estuary in Peterborough in February 2018. (Credit: Kerry Vickers)
Light of hope after a sad year
Mrs Mullen lives on the water’s edge where the Curdies River widens into a beautiful expansive inlet and then flows into the Southern Ocean.
His vision takes into account the arrivals and departures of migratory birds flying the East Asian-Australasia flyway between Peterborough and Japan or great egrets and crested terns feasting on fish.
Barb Mullen at Curdies River Estuary. (South West Victoria: Emily Bissland)
“It’s been a sad year,” he said.
“You have no idea what it’s like to live with blue-green algae, watching the lake in front of you die for months and months and months.”
He said while photographs and videos of dead fish spurred many locals into action, they were frustrated by the response from relevant authorities.
“I’m tired of hearing from the authorities that blue-green algae is a natural phenomenon,” she said.
“These photos Chris shared helped get us excited and motivated to move, but we felt powerless.
“It seemed that they [the agencies] he didn’t care about the Curdies, and they needed the media to move it.”
A Great Egret in Curdies Estuary, 2021. (Supplied: Kerry Vickers)
Sarah Holland Clift is the general manager of catchment and community services for the Corangamite Catchment Management Authority and chair of the new advisory committee.
He said there was a genuine desire from the advisory group to explore short-, medium- and long-term actions that would help reduce blue-green algae outbreaks.
“Let’s start to see [them] too often, and it’s definitely not the problem that agencies don’t care about,” said Holland Clift.
“It’s just that we don’t have the solutions at the moment.”
A Crested Tern catching fish in the Curdies River Estuary, 2019. (Supplied: Kerry Vickers, Peterborough Bird News)
The advisory commission meets
The first round table of the Curdies River Advisory Committee had representatives from Agriculture Victoria, WestVic Dairy, Wannon Water, Parks Victoria, Corangamite Shire, Moyne Shire, Environment Protection Authority, Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, a team of Deakin research. University, six community representatives and Heytesbury District Landcare Network.
Ms Holland Clift said the strength of the committee was in its breadth.
“The key message today is that we’re in it for the long game,” he said.
“The only way to manage a river is for everyone who lives, works and plays within a waterway to be part of the solution.”
Sarah Holland Clift says there is a genuine desire to solve the problem. (Supplied: Corrangamite Catchment Management Authority)
Ms Holland Clift said the first meeting was dedicated to informing the committee about key factors contributing to blue-green algae blooms in the Curdies River, which can be triggered by nutrient levels, low flows, volumes of lower storage and warmer weather conditions.
“There are a lot of problems in the river itself that will take time to solve, and unfortunately there are no short fixes for these things,” he said.
A section of the Curdies River where the riverside vegetation has long since been removed. (ABC South West Victoria: Emily Bissland)
Ms Holland Clift said 93 per cent of riverbanks in the catchment were thought to be stripped of native vegetation.
“We know that about 30 percent of what we call named waterways have been closed and revegetated. However, there are about 1,300 kilometers of what we call unnamed waterways,” he said.
“If you add up all the waterways under any definition, we’re probably only about 6 or 7 percent of the way there.
“The reality, unfortunately, is that if you just plug that hole and let the nutrients come out of the land, you still have historic sediment that contains nutrients in the waterway.
“So it’s going to take a long time to clean up, basically.”
A deforested section of the Curdies River. (Supplied: Geoff Rollinson, Landcare)
Press more actions after conversations
A public community forum, organized by the Corangamite Management Authority, is planned for October 8, where Deakin University ecologists will present new research focusing on nutrient enrichment in the river.
Ms Mullen said she hoped the ongoing process would result in action, not just another report to be shelved.
“We’ve had numerous reports where the recommendations have never been implemented,” he said.
“In one sense, it’s more of the same, and in another sense, there is hope.
“Nobody has an action plan based on science, on what needs to be done, that’s what’s missing.”
The River Curdies five years after revegetation by Landcare. (Supplied: Geoff Rollinson, Landcare)