This was was organised by the Lachlan Floodplains and Wetlands Association and other parties interested in the health of the river and the issue of whether to raise the Wyangala dam wall.

We heard talks on every aspect of the river. Scientists talked about the hydrology, geology and soils of the catchment, as well as the engineering challenges raised by the dam-raising proposal.

Economics and sociologists pointed out the poor net economic and social outcomes of this $2 billion project.

Ecologists spoke of the serious impacts on wetlands reduced flooding would have, especially on wetland birds, who rely on major floods to effect breeding events.

There was the Aboriginal viewpoint, including the significance of good flows to continue cultural traditions. Concerns also were raised about the loss of productive land to flood-plain graziers due to fewer floods and to upstream farmers due to permanent inundation.

It's not just farmland that would be inundated. My talk centred on the drowning of threatened box gum and iconic river red gum woodland, with serious consequences for rare plants and animals, but also a huge loss to the local people.

In January, local farmers, the Websters, kindly gave me a tour of the areas to be flooded, and the sense of place provided to the local people by these gallery forests, was clear to me.

These ancient red gums forests provided both material (eg food, shade, wood etc) and non-material (eg artistic inspiration, spiritual connections) to Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people alike.

The major message that I got out of the conference was that raising of the dam wall would have serious environment consequences in an already stressed riverine system.

There might be some benefits for irrigation or flood mitigation (although not both at the same time as for the former, you need the dam full, and for the latter, you need it empty). But that, overall, the environmental damage far outweighs the small public benefit, which could be obtained using many other (much cheaper) alternative strategies such as infrastructure upgrades to reduce transmission losses; avoidance of building on floodplains; better management of aquifer recharge and groundwater, pipelines and recycling schemes.

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