A Time of Crisis (1976–1982)

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the effects of spreading salinization in the Goulburn–Murray Irrigation District’s rural communities in the Kerang and Shepparton areas. It examines how people in the affected areas perceived the problem and how their livelihoods changed during decades of living with a growing environmental hazard. These manifold views illustrate how complex the problem of salinization was throughout the district and how differently it impacted the environment and the lives of rural people. However, it also became clear that people were not united against a threat that, ultimately, affected them all. Rather, people in the Kerang region felt disadvantaged compared to the Shepparton region because they did not enjoy the same priority as their highly productive and economically important neighbors. Vocal people in both regions, though, affirmed the established promise of irrigation as a benevolent force that brought prosperity to the formerly marginal country. At the same time, environmental awareness had obviously spread into Victorian regional areas. Salinization had become a catalyst which showed that the Murray and its environment were not limitless resources. They required stewardship. However, the irrigation communities still depended on them for their livelihoods.