Dubbo Photo News January 23-29, 2020
THE SOUND OF MUSIC: A TEACHER’S MUSICAL CAREER
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PhotoNews DUBBO
JANUARY 23-29, 2020
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THE STORY OF AUSTRALIA
This Sunday, January 26, is Australia Day. Our region will be celebrating the story of this nation in many different ways. Paul Featherstone, a recipient of the Ambulance Service’s highest award for bravery, will be Wellington’s Australia Day Ambassador, while the founder of the Indigenous Police Recruitment Our Way Program (IPROWD), Peter Gibbs, has been named the Australia Day Ambassador for Dubbo. See page 8 for more details on local ceremonies and activities. For this week’s Aussie cover photo, we invited Anthea Patteson (holding the lamington), Alix Rowe (with Kelpie puppy Fuse), Darryl Lidgard (with Aussie can and cap), Black Labrador Ovo and Brown Boxer Draco to dress up for the occasion. Fair dinkum, they look great! PHOTO: DUBBO PHOTO NEWS/EMY LOU
FISH DEATHS ‘FRIGHTENING’
By JOHN RYAN
HUNDREDS of dead native fish, including some Murray Cod as long as one metre, were found on a 50 metre stretch of the Macquarie River just south of Dubbo last Saturday. They’d been starved of oxygen in the water after localised rain events saw dirty brown flows – run-off from degraded country – create strong flows in the Bell and Little Rivers and flood into the Macquarie, overwhelming the clearer water. Inland Waterways president Matt Hansen
said when you multiply that number of dead fish along the length of affected water, and take into account that many more fish would have died but not ended up on the bank, the number of dead natives is “frightening”. “Some of the dissolved oxygen levels for the Macquarie River at Dubbo on Saturday were as low as 0.6 mgL at Butler’s Falls, and fish need levels of 4 to 15 mgL to be happy and healthy,” Mr Hansen said. “Thousands of fish are already dead or on the ropes. It’s not good at all. “Shrimp, catfish, Murray cod and yellow bellies are floating and/or gasping for air.”
As Dubbo Photo News walked along the riverbank with Mr Hansen, we filmed dozens of catfish that were pushing up against the riverbank, swimming sideways with their gills in the open air trying to ingest some desperately needed oxygen. Innumerable numbers of freshwater shrimp were lying dead on the banks, and this is just what we could see above the water line after the river flush had receded. “I’ve never seen anything like it”, Mr Hansen said. Continued on page 2
A man’s boot helps show the size of this dead fish on the banks of the Macquarie River.
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