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Despite various Royal Commissions set up by the colonial governments of South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales to deal with the use of the Murray-Darling rivers for navigation and irrigation, it was not until 1902 after seven years of severe drought that all three state goverments plus the Commonwealth goverernment realised the need for cooperation on the issue. In this year the Premiers of these states plus the new Commonwealth Prime Minister met at Corowa and as a result an Interstate Royal Commission was set up to enquire and report on the conservation and distribution of the waters of the Murray River and its tributaries for the purposes of irrigation, navigation and water supply. However it was not until 1915 that all four Parliaments ratified the River Murray Waters Agreement, and eventually in 1917 the River Murray Commission which had representatives of the three states and a chairman appointed by the Commonwealth was constituted. The main provisions of this first agreement were:

• the construction of a storage on the Upper Murray

  

  Hume Reservoir: commenced 1919-completed 1936

  

• the constuction of a storage on the Lower Murray

  

  Lake Victoria (between Mildura and Renmark)

  

• the construction of 26 locks and weirs on the Murray from Blanchetown in SA to Echuca in Victoria

  

  Torrumbarry Weir showing fish ladder to assist movement of fish

  

• the construction of 9 weirs and locks on the lower part of either the Darling or the Murrumbidgee

Major amendments were made to the original agreement in 1934 to reduce the number of weirs and locks. This was partly due to the effects of the Great Depression but also because railways had made riverboats commercially unviable for the transportation of freight and passengers and hence there was no longer any need to make the rivers permanently navigable to large vessels.

Paddle steamer and barge on the Murray c1890

Instead of the original sixteen locks and weirs planned for construction above the Darling Junction, only three were built. Only two weirs were built on the Murrumbidgee, the major storage being Burrunjuck Dam which was built between 1907 and 1912 for an irrigation scheme of 451,000 acres in the Leeton-Griffith area.

Yarrawonga irrigation diversion weir was built between 1934 and 1940 to replace the weirs deleted from the original agreement.

Five barrages were also built across the channels near the mouth of the Murray.

The capacity of the Hume Reservoir was increased to accept water diverted from the Snowy Mountains Scheme in 1954 (completed in 1961). In 1963 an agreement was reached with NSW to use water from the Menindee Lakes to supplement the Murray.

Satellite view of Menindee Lakes

In 1979 Dartmouth Reservoir on the Mitta Mitta River in north- east Victoria was completed.

In 1988 the River Murray Waters Agreement was replaced by the Murray-Darling Basin Agreement and the River Murray Commission was replaced by the Murray-Darling Basin Commission and its role was expanded to include responsibility for advising governments on land and environmental issues in the Basin as well as its traditional water management role.

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