And now to a wetland with a real story. For some 40 years Canberrans motoring down the Hume Highway near Glenrowan will have seen to their west an intriguing expanse of water dotted with the skeletons of dead eucs. This was Lake Mokoan, the story of which I offer graphically below. The first sign, still there, proclaims the existence of a reservoir, in bronze and faux-granite. The second sign, fading and forlorn, records the fleeting existence of the Lake Mokoan Yacht Club, now uncommodored, apparently. The third sign (part-shown) tells the story of the ‘decommissioning’. It has been calculated that the water added to the Murray-Darling was the equivalent of the entire population of Belconnen emptying swimming pools, flushing toilets (large flush option) and taking a long shower all on the one afternoon. A closer, as-yet unconsummated, parallel might be the release of the waters of Lake Burley Griffin, a possibility faintly suggested by the references in the sign to “under-utilisation”, “loss through evaporation”, and “blue-green algae”. As to the present, one imagines that several Ph Ds could be skimmed effortlessly from documenting the changing faunal scene as the lake returns to its ‘natural state’, whatever that might be . One possibility is a vast sea of cumbungi. In a further message I shall give an impression of the present wetland, based on a night spent by its shores.
