WOAKWINE CUTTING

If you've ever dug yourself into a hole you thought you couldn't get out of, then spare a thought for the bloke who dug this. It's the Woakwine Cutting, a marvel of engineering and sheer persistence near Beachport on the State's Limestone Coast. Nowadays environmentalists would be up in arms over such a project, but back in the early 1960's, this was simply part of a land management strategy, which had seen many wetlands drained since the arrival of European settlers to the area.

Back then much of the southeast was under water, and so began a massive drainage scheme aimed at emptying the swamps and marshes so that the cattle could move in. Southeast grazier and horticulturalist Murray McCourt wanted to drain this swamp but first he had to overcome a major barrier. It's called the Woakwine Range.

"I suppose the more that people said it was impossible, probably the more I was determined to carry it out. We first had to get permission from the southeastern drainage board who controlled all drainage in the southeast and that wasn't easy because they believed it wasn't to do the job but after a few years after persuasive argument they decided that they would allow me to drain into Lake George".

Murray's home movies show just what lay ahead. This ex-army engineer borrowed money to buy a new D-seven Caterpillar tractor and a scrapper used to build aircraft runways in World War II. And then began the job of a lifetime as he and his offsider Dick MacIntyre set about moving a mountain.

"Murray McCourt was obviously the sort of bloke who wouldn't take no for an answer. This is at about the halfway point in a one kilometre cutting in the Woakwine range. A job which kept Murray and his team busy for five days a week for three years".

Murray and Dick must have wondered whether they'd ever see light at the end of the tunnel, buried, as they were at times, 93 feet below the surface.

"I certainly at times got a bit dispirited and thought that the job wasn't going along as it should and I got no doubt, Dick you know, felt that way quite often, but we never ever talked about that".

They had little time to, as the endless scrapping and cutting from the Woakwine Swamp to Lake George continued. At the top of Murray McCourt's mini Panama Canal, the machinery is still on show. Murray died in 1988 but his transformation of what was once a snake infested swamp into prime grazing and horticultural land helped with the expansion of the Woakwine Group a major player in the southeast now run by Murray's wife Rosemary and their son Michael. Rosemary remembers well that day in May 1963 when the dream became a reality, and the water began to flow.

"Once we got here and saw what was going to happen we thought this was an historic moment".

"And I understand that you were standing on a culvert at the other end and Murray said get off the culvert. I don't know what's going to happen".

"What's going to happen, that was after the water was let through and the speed of the water he didn't quite know".

"It did begin slowly but then it took off with a rush, by the time I drove down there and it went past the car on the road on the culvert. He came rushing down and I had the kids in the car and you come down and get off there because I don't known and of course it did and then it just rushed down, it came up to the top of the culvert".

Now the cattle graze on the dry flats and potato fields have produced another bumper crop and sight-seers come to marvel at how it was done at the Woakwine Cutting, just off the Southern Ports Highway between Beachport and Robe. Just look for the sign. For more information email info@postcards.sa.com.au