Pumping water from the Murray River

From its source in the Snowy Mountains in New South Wales, the Murray River flows 2530 km west, then south to meet the Southern Ocean in South Australia. It is part of one of the longest river systems in the world.

The history of the Murray River dates back to 1824 when Hamilton Hume and William Hovell became the first men to travel its bank, but it was a Captain Charles Sturt who named the "broad and noble" waterway the "Murray River".

The Murray River soon became a crucial communication and transport link for Australia. River ports sprung up to service the trade and passenger traffic that travelled its length. At the height of the river trade in the 1880s, several hundred paddle-steamers and many barges were operating on the river. Slowly the railway took away the business, the river never quite made it as a highway of trade.

Irrigation was first introduced in 1887 by the early settlers. They transformed the northern section of the Murray into a lush paradise. Soon the Riverland became South Australia's orchard. It remains so today.

Brown Brothers Engineers in Melbourne, in conjunction with Irrigation 21, Mildura, recently supplied and oversaw the installation and commissioning of two units Goulds Pumps model 20GHX - 2 stage, 350 kW lineshaft turbines and two units Goulds Pumps model GSC250-65 350 kW horizontal split case centrifugal pumpsets in stage one of the Sunraysia Estates Irrigation System near Mildura, North West Victoria.

The project also comprised over 10 km of 1 m diameter pipe to supply water from the nearby Murray River to more than 10,000 newly planted walnut and almond trees. There are several other stages of similar size to be completed over the next five to seven years with the second stage pumps due to be placed on order.