Studog. A river changes its face everytime it floods - this is due to it's character. Some rivers don't flood very often and some rivers/creeks just get a healthy flow. This is dependent obviously on water flow, which is determined by it's catchment...which is reliant on the local isohyet.
An Isohyet is a line drawn on a weather map showing the predictability of rain within that area. Goulburn cops on an average 640mm while Crookwell, 50 K's away gets nearly 900mm (870 to be precise).
The soil around there is sodolic underneath the basalt flows, indicating that it has an excess of sodium (salt) - sodium ions don't floculate (clump), they do the opposite - they reject, causing sediment in water to stay suspended. The only answer is lime which will change the pH.
Have you ever wondered why in certain areas the water in a creek/river is cloudy, yet over the mountain it's clear as a bell? Sodolic mate.
Change is its own reward but excess change, like 'constant improvement' that the government talks about is not productive. My point isn't that change is bad - far from it, change is growth, like when a river erodes the far bank, it builds up river flats on the inside of the bend at the same time.
What I'm talking about is like the photo's above - that isn't healthy. that just suspends sediment in the creek, covering microphytes (small plants)which die, which causes small insects to die, which means the cod fingerlings don't eat so they die...and in the meantime, the inside bend where it's been dug out has lost it's stability (angle of repose) which guarantees more suspension of sediment etc. etc. etc.
So look at a creek anyway you want to Studog, but realise that if you learnt something about soil management, or stream dynamics, there's a good chance your prospecting results would improve. Eh.
