During our recent visit to South Australia, we took the opportunity to gather information from various stakeholders and visit some wetlands.

Crossing the border between Victoria and South Australia showed a welcome change from recent years and significant water in the surrounding paddocks, with pairs of birds spread all over the countryside – occupying gutters, depressions in paddocks and of course farm dams.

Recent trips have revealed that the south-east of SA is less inhabited by water currently, but there’s more to come and who knows where it will fall; conditions are surely better than we’ve seen during the past year or two.

The Riverina, however, is full and water is still rising – with many areas predicted to meet 1956 levels or more between now and Christmas.

Field & Game Australia has plans to visit Barmera Moorook in December and hopefully film some of the amazing conditions and breeding that will inevitably be occurring in and around Loveday Wetlands.

Riverland branch members believe that most of the property’s landmarks will be hidden under the water’s surface by that stage, so who knows where we will launch from! Local knowledge will be required to navigate the waters safely and we can’t wait to bring our members all the action.

A quick visit to Laratinga Wetlands in Mt Barker was a beautiful place to break the trip; then, next on the list was Tolderol State Game Reserve and this led to a run past parts of Lake Alexandrina before heading back to Victoria to take in some other wetlands on the return trip – with Burrumbeet and Learmonth holding incredible levels of water as the sun set on another weekend drive.