[On-screen text: Catchment Stories Cann River]

[On-screen sound: bird sounds]

[On-screen image: Daryl Cameron talking to camera]

Daryl Cameron: Hello, I'm Daryl Cameron and I live and farm on the Cann River floodplain.

It's very important to have a healthy river because it's the lifeblood of our valley. It's really the reason the valley is there is because of the river. We farm and live on a floodplain, and it's important to have that river in as pristine as condition as can be.

The '71 flood was the biggest flood we've had in the Cann Valley in virtually in white settlement of the valley and it dramatically changed our river. It took it away from being that narrow, sinewy little stream to a much wider, heavily-eroded banks and it had quite a catastrophic effect on the farming community.

Certainly one just took virtually every fence on the floodplain. It was that the velocity of water was that great. It's been an important partnership between the farmers and the East Gippsland CMA in establishing a very healthy riparian zone.

[On-screen image: an image of the Cann River before restoration]

So with Landholder Agreement then they started to then encourage everybody to fence the river off, keep the stock off the banks so they could get re-veg going in the riparian zone. And for that next 20 years, we did make quite good progress in trying to stabilise the river.

[On-screen image: image of the Cann River after restoration]

[On-screen image: image of the Cann River before restoration]

[On-screen image: image of the Cann River after restoration]

[On-screen image: Daryl Cameron talking to camera]

I think the river is getting. I can see it getting back to something like it was when I was a child, which means that it will get back to being a very healthy river. We're already seeing signs of little fish in the river and there's reports of platypus up at the top of the river, which both are key indicators of a very healthy river. Yeah.

[On-screen sound: bird sounds]

[On-screen text: East Gippsland Catchment Management Authority logo and Victoria State Government logo. Flagship Waterways is a Victorian Government initiative]

Page last updated: 22/11/23