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2.2.4 Permanent water and groundwater flow
The flooded landscape and very high water flows of the wet season are counterbalanced by
the long dry season, where temporary water sources dry out. A poor wet season and long
dry season can make the presence of permanent water sources vital to life in the area. Big
lagoons such as Oriners and Mosquito are very important at such times, and the following
conversations are about how their levels are maintained.
Marcus Barber: Those big lagoons, like the one next to Oriners and Mosquito and
Horseshoe. How come they stay there? Is it really deep or is there still water coming up
from underneath? 19
Robert Burns: Must be. They don‟t go down much at all.
Fred Coleman: Must be
Michael Ross: That‟s all story places. Horseshoe [Lagoon] he‟s story place. Horseshoe.
Oriners is Moon story, [and] around the corner, Crocodile story. They all story places. Big
[important] water.
Marcus Barber: So is there water under the ground coming up to keep them going?
Robert Burns: Yeah.
Michael Ross: Because if it was just rain water, it would dry up like a dam, go away. Even
last year the water was still the same, it was full.
Fred Coleman: Even in my time working, I‟ve never seen it go dry. It always had water.
Even if you go down to the junction, I‟ve never seen that go dry. And you get big fish there.
Robert Burns: Big water and big fish too.
Fred Coleman: Yeah, jewfish.
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Oriners Lagoon, I don‟t think it would ever go dry, because it makes water. It makes water.
Soaks. And Horseshoe Lagoon and Crocodile, and that other one over near Goose
Swamp, that actually makes water there. You can see the bluey film in them, that‟s where
that water comes in. You have a look on the edges of the water, you know when you see a
spring and you can see that bluey tinge through it? Cloudy I suppose you could call it. I
believe that is [water] coming in from the sides. Jewfish Lagoon I‟ve seen low. I reckon
Jewfish would go dry. I don‟t know about Mosquito, it‟s a bit more protected from
evaporation. Emu Lagoon, that‟s one of the biggest lagoons. It nearly went dry, back in the
sixties. George Murray told me that. He said it got so low the fish were dying. In Emu, and
that‟s a big hole. You need a continuation of not much water flow [to dry out big holes]. You
can get wet seasons with a fair bit of rain, but no big water flowing rain, like heavy stuff.
Emu [Lagoon] is an overflow out of the Alice, that‟s what fills Emu up, and if the Alice does
not run high enough [it does not fill]. And what can happen with those rivers too is that if
they don‟t get a good high flow, they‟ll actually build up sand along the anabranches. And
the next year will run high, but because of the [increased] sand bank up there, it won‟t go
in. So you need another big flush to take it out again.
David Hughes
Cecil Hughes commented that the creeks in the area stopped every year, but that he had
never seen Oriners waterhole dried out. He did not believe they were fed by groundwater,
but rather were deep enough and held water well through the dry period. He had seen
19 This conversation (and others on the same topic) may have benefitted from greater precision about
water flowing from deeper underground via springs and rock fissures, and water seeping into the sides
of permanent holes from the surrounding water table.
Working Knowledge at Oriners Station, Cape York
64