It also clarified a decision made in London in 1850 which, by little more than a wave of a royal mitten, granted the Murray River’s murky waters to NSW. This had led to the belief that once the waters touched or – worst still for Victoria – flooded land on the Victorian side, then it came under NSW jurisdiction. More recently, the High Court ruled that the border should be at the top of the riverbank because the river’s “whole watercourse”, according to legislation of 1850 and 1855, was within the territory of NSW. But that let the problems of identifying the bank during floods after soil erosion. The Echuca-Moama Bridge serves rail and road transport. Credit:Brendan Read The new guidelines say state borders do not follow any particular water level, which means flooding of the creation of billabongs will not change jurisdictions between councils along the river.

The waters of the Murray shall remain part of NSW, but only in the shape and form that the river’s main channel had in 1850. The surveyors-general, Mr. John Parker, of Victoria, and Mr. Don Grant of NSW, decided to take action after a legal dispute over where a murder trial should be held. The suspect was on the Victorian bank and the deceased nearby in the river, which is NSW territory. Locals say there have also been cases of drowning victims who were considered to be in Victoria when standing on the riverbank, but were in NSW “as soon as they got wet”. They also tell of the tree on the Victorian side that NSW would not allow to be chopped because the roots extended into the river, putting it under the Moama council’s jurisdiction. Welcome to Echuca sign in Victoria. Credit:Brendan Read

“There are stories from the past of Victorian police throwing bodies into the river so their colleagues across the river would have to do the work,” said the 80-year-old local historian Mr. Geoff Waters. “That’s the kind of story that has sprung up around here.” But the Mayor of Echuca, Councillor Peter Scott, said one of the more serious problems was that a local developer had to deal with 18 Government departments – nine in each state – because the water in a wet dock on the Victoria side came from the Murray and was considered, until yesterday, to be in NSW. The new guidelines are designed to help surveyors determine the land boundaries to bring some consistency to determinations made in individual cases, but are wide open to legal interpretation. “Someone will eventually challenge it in the High Court,” said Mr. Ron Kernebone, who helped draw up the rules. But there are those who believe that border justice has yet to be done. They believe that pegging the border has not resolved a potentially more burning issue – possibly the most costly land grab in the history of the Victorian-NSW rivalry. A road sign for Moama, NSW. Credit:Brendan Read

Victoria’s state historian, Dr. Bernard Barrett, recalled that in 1850, Victoria had wanted the border to be 200 kilometres to the north. NSW “grabbed not only the river but the whole Riverina, the rice bowl of Australia,” Dr. Barrett said.