Other areas in northern Victoria, where streams are not available and artesian water is unfit for household and stock use, are irrigated by what is called the Wimmera-Mallee system. The state government has built storage basins in the mountains of the Wimmera River region from which small surface ditches are run down the slopes, sometimes for a distance of two hundred miles. By excavating basins and throwing dams across natural depressions, three reservoirs have been built holding fifty billion cubic yards of water. These tanks are filled once or twice a year. In some cases the government permits a limited use of this water for irrigation, but generally most of it goes to supply live stock and households. Victoria rents water at an unusually low price, the rate being from one dollar and twenty cents to one dollar and forty-four cents an acre foot.
Three fourths of the irrigated lands of Australia lie along the Murray and its tributaries, and the most important of the irrigation projects is a scheme for impounding the waters of this river. Backed by the Commonwealth treasury, the state governments of New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia share the expense. Just below Albury on the boundary between New South Wales and Victoria they are building a dam to store one million acre feet of water, and another of half a million acre feet. In South Australia another reservoir will hold five hundred thousand acre feet. It is estimated that when completed these reservoirs will irrigate twelve million acres of land, or an area more than twice the size of the whole state of New Jersey.
Mildura is the centre of a fine fruit district, which a generation ago was a wilderness given over to rabbits. The success of this irrigation project started Australia on her policy of reclaiming arid lands.
Victoria is fast clearing the scrub once infesting more than one fourth of the state. After the growth is levelled and dried, it is burned off, cultivated with stump-jump ploughs, and sown in wheat.
Cattle are often saved by driving them from a drought area to a region where pasturage is available. The government maintains stock routes so laid out as to take in all possible water holes and streams.
In parts of Australia much of the rainfall of a year may come in one violent downpour. The rainwater is caught in basins, or “tanks,” dug in depressions and lined with cement.