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Eastern Australia is in the worst and longest drought experienced since European colonisation began 217 years ago, so far lasting 3 years. Ninety-six percent of the state of New South Wales was officially declared in drought or considered marginal in June 2005. NSW has an area of 809,444 square kilometres, which is close to 20% bigger in area than the state of Texas. Only days before this panorama was taken, there was some significant rainfall, however the storage of the dam pictured is still down to only 7% of its full capacity. This is a frightening development when you consider that its catchment area – 8,290 square kilometres – is only slightly smaller than Puerto Rico. If you zoom in, you will see two separate dam walls. Work on the first dam (the right hand low wall) commenced in 1928, and its 60-metre high wall was completed in 1935. This wall is normally completely submerged when the lake is full, and can not be seen. A second 82-metre high dam wall (the left-hand wall with gates and spillways that is behind and wraps around the old wall, on the right when the panorama opens) was proposed after the original dam was unable to withstand the flood of 1952. Work commenced in 1961 and was completed in 1971. When full, Wyangala Dam has two and a half times the surface area of Sydney Harbour, and the full capacity of the dam is 1,218,000 megalitres. To provide some context to the panorama, the length of the modern earth-rock fill dam wall is 1,510 metres, and at its highest point the structure is as tall as a 25-storey building. This means that the water is now about 25 metres (about 80 feet) lower than the lowest point of the spillway structure. To give some scale to the image, zoom in on the opening screen and look for a 6 metre long boat on the far bank. The panorama was taken from a dry land highpoint that has emerged from the dry bed of the lake that is normally completely submerged under at least 15 metres of water when the dam is full. This point has been dry long enough to allow wind-blown weeds to take root and grow to over 1 metre in height – you can see these near the roof of my 4WD. With such low water storage, farmers with general-security irrigation licenses have had no water for more than two years. Now even high-security irrigation license holders - who usually get 100 per cent of their water allocation - will only get 15 per cent. Times are tough in this global-warming affected area of the driest inhabited continent on earth. Wyangala Dam is situated 35 kilometres east by road of the township of Cowra. Behind the scenes : how this panorama was made
Shortcut to this page: http://worldwidepanorama.org/wwp_rss/go/n972
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