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What is a catchment?
You live in the Goulburn Broken Catchment. This catchment starts at the mountains near Mansfield and ends at the Murray River between Cobram to just before Echuca. The Goulburn Broken Catchment is a large catchment that is made up of many sub-catchments. These sub-catchments are bordered by low hills and ridges and are drained by small creeks.
The land use in the upper catchment varies greatly to that of the lower catchment. In the upper catchment there are forests, national parks, fisheries, small farms and towns. In the lower catchment there are bigger towns and cities, industry, dairy farms, orchards, irrigation systems and sewerage systems. What happens in one part of a catchment is likely to affect the health of the rest of the catchment.
Goulburn Broken Catchment Facts
Did you know the Goulburn Broken Catchment:
| » | has a population of approximately 200,000 people; |
| » | covers a region of 24,300 square kilometres, representing about 10.5% of Victoria's total area; |
| » | is 1/3 irrigation area for things like cattle and orchards; |
| » | stretches from the outskirts of Melbourne in the south up to the Murray River in the north; |
| » | is 2% of the Murray Darling Basin; |
| » | has Victoria's largest water storage, Lake Eildon, which feeds the Goulburn and Broken Rivers; |
| » | supports a large part of Australia's food processing industry, with factories such as SPC Ardmona and Campbell's Soups in the middle of the catchment, plus plenty more (Kraft, Bonlac, Nestle...); |
| » | produces $4.5 billion worth of food, wool and timber every year; |
| » | has only 1/3 of the original native trees and vegetation left, the rest has been cleared to make room for farms and towns; |
| » | has a wide variety of native flora (plants) - more than 2105 species. Imagine how many different types there were before the land was cleared! |
| » | has 217 varieties of plants that are threatened with extinction |
Click here to see a map of the Goulburn Broken Catchment and find out more information about your area.
