3b ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 



proposed to make provision to fill Lake Urana every year while 

 the Murrumbidgee is in flood, and a branch canal capable of 

 filling the Lake in three months is included in the project. 

 Lake Urana when filled will contain a supply of water seventeen 

 thousand acres in extent, and with an average depth of about 

 sixteen feet. 



The other western rivers are much more uncertain in their 

 flow, and their conditions will require a different class of work. 

 The numerous effluent channels from the Darling, the Lachlan, 

 and the Macquarie, afford ready means of distributing the surplus 

 waters of these rivers, while in the cases of the first two there 

 are lakes and other natural depressions which can be converted 

 into storage reservoirs. The works which have been carried out 

 in Victoria in connection with the Wimmera River, which ia 

 smaller than and quite as uncertain as the Macquarie, show how 

 much can be done under such circumstances to provide permanent 

 water to a whole district. They also show that by the construc- 

 tion of a system of weirs, which hold up a constant supply in 

 the river channel, the loss by percolation and absorption is greatly 

 diminished, and the available supply proportionately increased. 



The Water Conservation and Irrigation Branch only came into 

 existence last year, so that even if there had been proper legislation 

 in force, there has not been sufficient time to prepare the designs for 

 any large schemes. The most important work under construction 

 is a weir in the River Lachlan to divert a supply of flood water into 

 the Willandra Billabong. This billabong, or creek, which carries 

 off a portion of the waters of the Lachlan during high flood, has 

 been traced to within about forty miles of the River Darling where 

 it turns southward towards the Murray. Under existing circum- 

 stances, only the highest floods affect the Willandra Billabong, but 

 after the river is complete, a portion of every moderate flood will 

 be diverted. The construction of this work will directly affect 

 the value of over eighty thousand acres of Crown land, and its 

 importance to existing holdings may be imagined from the fact 

 that one pastoralist alone offered to guarantee interest on the 



