10 Irrigation Farming in Australia. 



Waranga Basin is the main storage, and holds ten times the 

 amount of water contained behind the Goulburn Weir. Formerly 

 it was a natural depression, the site of many early settlers' homes. 

 But these homes had to go. The depression was wanted for water 

 storage for the new farming, so they scraped the basin a little 

 deeper, and built a heavy stone embankment around its weak north 

 end, and flooded the Goulburn water into it. To-day it is a lake of 

 over 19 square miles. From the storage westwards the Waranga 

 main channel runs out for 100 miles through the new areas, crosses 

 the Campaspe through three great stone syphons at Rochester, and 

 so to Bamawm and finally to the Serpentine Creek, through which 

 some of it drains into the Murray. Ultimately this canal may be 

 carried even further west to the Loddon River.. Near Waranga 

 is a large channel branching out from the main Goulburn canal. 

 It waters the Rodney districts lying immediately to the north. The 

 Goulburn-Waranga storage channels supply eight irrigation dis- 

 tricts Shepparton, Rodney, Deakin, Tongala, Koyuga, Rochester, 

 Dingee, and Tragowel Plains. There is 96,800 acres here actually 

 irrigated under irrigation, or more than treble the area of three 

 years ago. At present the chief use to which the ground is put is 

 the growing of cereal and fodder crops for dairying and sheep and 

 pig raising. This procedure is generally necessary with the new 

 settlers, because returns are thus quicker. While the orchards are 

 being planted and the trees are growing to bearing size, the ground 



AMERICAN LANDSEBKBRS INSPECTING WARANGA (VICTORIA) CHANNEL 



will also grow lucerne and sorghum for the milking herd. For 

 lucerne there is a fine market, apart from the local consumption in 

 dairying. Creameries and butter factories are already established, 

 and, in the near future, canneries for fruit and vegetables will follow. 



