A Kyabram Free Press article about the first advisory boards from 1926.
Goulburn-Murray Water’s water services committees are getting a makeover, which has prompted a retired water bailiff to dig around the old newspaper archives.
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Laurie Gemmill, who now lives in Kyabram, has discovered that the water services committees had their genesis in 1926 when they were known as advisory boards.
G-MW is planning to rationalise the 12 committees into seven, with the Goulburn Murray Irrigation District committees combining into three.
The changes were approved by an October G-MW board meeting.
Mr Gemmill, who confesses to gathering lots of historical records, has been sifting through old newspaper reports about the advisory bodies.
The development of the advisory boards was attributed to chairman of the Victorian Water Commission, William Cattanach, who originally suggested bodies of three to seven irrigators who would be elected annually.
The board would meet monthly during the irrigation season and send a representative to an annual convention of advisory boards across the state.
A report in the September 1926 Kyabram Free Press noted ‘a remarkably small’ attendance at a Tongala meeting to form the district’s first advisory board. Only 35 people arrived at first, but the number swelled to 100.
Several “prominent settlers” expressed the fear that the board might be used as a scapegoat by the commission “in the event of any trouble arising in the future”.
One irrigator at the Tongala meeting raised an uncomfortable assertion: “One of the most fruitful sources of complaint was that neighbours took each others’ water and interfered with the drop bars.”
The meeting concluded with a successful motion to appoint three “dairy-men”, two fruit growers and two graziers to the advisory board.
The newspaper report suggested that irrigator Harold Hanslow had originally come up the the idea of the advisory boards, which was then put to Mr Cattanach, who had “given settlers more than they asked for, in as much as he had provided for a conference of representatives of advisory boards each year.”
Mr Gemmill worked as a water bailiff for 40 years.
The roles of the first advisory boards were:
determining dates and periods of irrigations.
arranging number of rotations.
regulating irrigation supplies along the channels.
advising as to the appointment, selection and oversight of casual labour on maintenance and repair works.
any other matter concerning water distribution.
A Water Commission construction village set up for works being carried out in Northern Victoria in 1925. Source: Tatura Museum.
An old order box used before irrigation automation. Water bailiffs checked these boxes, scattered around the irrigation districts, daily for new orders. Source: G-MW.
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