Reeds

In the summer of 1944, one of Australia’s great environmental reformers toured the Macquarie Marshes on horseback. William McKell would have breathed the hot and humid air between tall stands of cumbungi, while reeds rustled and cracked against the weight of the horse. He would have sloshed through watercouch and felt the gentle splash of shallow, slow moving streams; he would have emerged from rushes to find open-water lagoons teeming with herons, spoonbills, pelicans and ducks, all feasting on thirty different species of fish. He would have camped under a sky that, by day, was blackened with the outstretched wings of tens of thousands of ibis. McKell was the Premier of New South Wales. He was so impressed with the marshes he declared the Crown Land area of it a National Fauna Reserve. He said the marshes were of interest to scientists of world renown, and that they were a vital sanctuary for Australian and northern hemisphere birdlife. The marshes, he said, were to be preserved for the Australian people, for posterity, for all time.1