Lake Victoria, New South Wales, in South Australia's care from 1915 agreement to share Murray's flow

Lake Victoria in New South Wales near Wentworth was the storage created to guarantee South Australia's share of the River Murray flow.
Images courtesy Murray Darling Basin Authority

Lake Victoria in New South Wales, maintained by South Australia’s SA Water, is the legacy of the breakthrough 1915 agreement between the federal, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australian governments that created the River Murray Commission.

This followed a lack of action from the 1902 interstate royal commission into “conservation and distribution of the waters of the Murray and its tributaries for the purpose of irrigation, navigation, and water supply”. But the states’ different interests blocked any agreement on harnessing the river and diverting its waters. A 1914 report from an interstate conference of engineers finally ended deadlock.

The 1915 River Murray agreement provided for building to two large storages, one on the upper River Murray above Albury, and the other at Lake Victoria in New South Wales near the South Australian boundary, to be created with 26 weirs and locks in the Murray between its mouth and Echuca, and nine weirs and locks on the Murrumbidgee.

The River Murray Commission’s to arrange for the work to be done by existing state authorities: the public works department, New South Wales; the state rivers and water supply commission, Victoria; and the Engineering & Water Supply Department, South Australia (later SA Water). These authorities designed and built of the works and continued to maintain them. South Australia's work at Lake Victoia was to bult embankments around the natural lake.

Distributing water between the three states, the agreement provided that the minimum amount water be allowed to pass to supply South Australia each year should enough to fill Lake Victoria storage once, and, with water from Lake Victoria, to maintain flows (and salinity) in South Australia’s part of the river, varying from 47,000 acre feet per month in winter months, to 134,000 acre feet per month in the four summer months of maximum demand— a total of 1,254,000 acre feet over 12 months.

These flows were to meet the domestic and stock needs of South Australia, losses of water in the locks and evaporation losses other than in the lakes at the Murray mouth, together with 603,000 acre feet per annum for diverting the Murray for South Australian irrigators.

The River Murray flow from Albury was shared equally by New-South Wales and Victoria, with each state having full control of its tributaries below Albury, subject to meeting the South Australian allocation. The agreement allowed the River Murray Commission to reduce allocations during severe drought.