I am on holidays down at Victor Harbor. It's a budget holiday, given the money I've recently spent on an Apple Macbook and on a Rollei 6006 (still on layby). This image of the River Murray is near the mouth of the river and south of the barrages. The barriers were constructed seven decades ago to pool freshwater behind them, providing drinking and irrigation supplies to farms and towns. So the water is sea water, not fresh water.

Mundoo Channel, originally uploaded by poodly. River Murray,

I plan to do some photography of the River Murray around the lower Lakes as mentioned earlier.

Topping up the stricken Lake Alexandrina and Lake Albert with saltwater would compromise existing freshwater ecologies, but it had to be considered when doing nothing would hasten their total destruction. Before the 8km of barriers were built (between 1932 and 1940) the lower lakes were part of the Murray River estuary.

Just how saline, or fresh, the estuary was depended on how strong the flows were down the river. In very low flows, they would have been estuarine: that is, salinities halfway between the sea and fresh water perhaps as far as the middle of Lake Alexandrina and beyond.