Bucking the drying trend — The Stage 2 area at Mt Burr Swamp is one of few inland wetlands in the Limestone Coast at full capacity this year

As we explored earlier this year, the south-eastern corner of the Australian mainland west of Melbourne was experiencing a prolonged dry spell that in many areas had become the worst on record. This past few months, the recovery was slow to start after a very dry autumn, and – despite the appearance of widespread winter falls (as shown below) – the impact of this rainfall has not been uniform across the landscape.

For instance, at NGT’s southern Grampians region Restoration Reserves in western Victoria, there has been no significant landscape runoff outside of the steep range country in the National Park, resulting in both Walker Swamp and Green Swamp remaining almost completely dry.

This trend – of winter rainfall not readily translating into the type of surface runoff, catchment flows or inundation of wetlands that we’re used to seeing – is something that our friends in Western Australia are already very familiar with. This recent ABC News story clearly highlighted how the climate in Perth has shifted over recent decades and what this has meant for soil saturation, groundwater storage, runoff and the effectiveness of rainfall in the landscape.

So despite Perth having its wettest winter since 1996, one of the city’s key water storages, Mundaring Weir, is (at the time of writing) sitting at 56%, which is in stark contrast to the weir being 100% full and spilling over in 1996.

If we shift back across to NGT’s heartland in the south-eastern corner of the continent, we can see that a similar drying trend is being observed in the groundwater resources of the Limestone Coast region, in the South East of South Australia, and it is expressing itself in a number of ways – as outlined in this recent ABC News article, and previously in this NGT blog.

The net-effect of the trends we are witnessing mean that the community and government in South Australia are going to have some difficult decisions to make in the near future. Indeed, to see just how serious things can get when water resource management is not coordinated or tackled strategically, the unfolding water security disaster in Iran is now looming large, as a cautionary tale.

Against this backdrop as valuable context, I am really pleased to be able to share the news that the recent winter rainfall has resulted in a couple of NGT’s Restoration Reserves in the Limestone Coast bucking the general trend – shining a light on the immense strategic value of wetland restoration and how it can positively influence the water balance.

Firstly, at the Middle Point Wetland, which is partly situated within NGT’s Hutt Bay Wetland Restoration Reserve, the wetland is now overflowing to the sea at its current sill level. Although still well below the original natural water level that the swamp could reach historically, this wetland – even it its current, partly restored condition – is providing incredibly valuable seasonal, coastal refuge wetland habitat.

Outside of the near-coastal zone in the Limestone Coast, where wetlands remain more responsive to rainfall, examples of inland sites doing well this year are a little harder to find. Although I haven’t visited the site recently, I have been told that there has been enough of a flow down Mosquito Creek to have resulted in some good inundation in Hacks Lagoon, but not enough to result in much water reaching neighbouring Bool Lagoon.

If anyone reading has any recent photos or observations to share of Bool or Hacks Lagoons, please feel free to email them to me (), and we might be able to share them in the NGT Newsletter next month.

At NGT’s long-term restoration project site at Mt Burr Swamp, the original wetland we restored in the centre of the property in 2016 has been slow to fill this year. However, over recent weeks a sheet of water across the wetland has reappeared, which is very exciting news, given that the prolonged dry spell had resulted in this wetland drying out completely in the autumn this year (2025) for the very first time in 8.5 years (i.e. since the restoration project commenced – back in spring 2016).

Interestingly however, although Mt Burr Swamp proper (which has a modest catchment) has been slow to refill this year, I got a pleasant surprise the other day when I discovered that the nearby Stage 2 Restoration area – which was reinstated only 2 years ago – is now full and has a small trickle of water flowing out over the outlet spillway.

As shown below from two different angles, this is absolutely fantastic news, and means this site will be teeming with birds, fish, frogs and other wildlife over the months ahead!

Our reserve manager and local Senior Ecologist, Bryan Haywood, has also been kind enough to share a few observations of what has been happening out there over recent weeks, as water levels have been rising. He says:

“The Brolga have been very vocal and regular out there the last month, along with Latham’s snipe in the open grassy edges covered in shallow water. Two have been flushed several times (late Aug to early Sep). Our autumn burn area looks amass of pale vanilla-lily leaves, so should be a sea of colour later in spring.

We’ve also had two southern brown bandicoot sightings along Kilsby Lane (east of our main gates) since May. We’ve been undertaking some weed control, with blackberry and blue gum seedlings being treated recently in the Stage II area.

The growling grass frogs (aka southern bell frogs) began calling earlier than normal in the main swamp a week or so back too, and the swans are covering the whole swamp with nests again.”

As Bryan has described here, the biodiversity response this year is well and truly already underway – and I was particularly interested in the southern brown bandicoot sightings, as this nationally endangered small mammal species occurs in the neighbouring Marshes Native Forest Reserve, but is rarely sighted far from dense cover (and hence protection from predators) in this region. We hope to permanently expand their area of occupancy in the local area as we eventually restore the cleared areas that once surrounded the wetlands of the Stage 2 area (shown in the image above), with heathlands and heathy woodlands.

Back to the water story across the reserve at Mt Burr Swamp, it is worth mentioning that all the wetlands interact with (and rely upon) the expression of a shallow groundwater table, which – fortuitously for us – is perched above the regional watertable. This ‘perched aquifer’ gives the area a hydrological advantage over many other inland areas within the Limestone Coast region, where the regional watertable has typically experienced declines, in some cases now sitting several metres (or more) below natural surface. For wetlands that rely on the expression of shallow groundwater to underpin their hydrology at the surface, this change is one of the main reasons for the broadscale loss of functional wetlands across the landscape over the past three decades.

However, by reversing the impact of artificial drainage over the past decade, via restoring the wetlands at NGT’s Reserve at Mt Burr Swamp and retaining more water in the landscape, we are not only helping to recharge this shallow perched aquifer, but we are also helping to buffer these wetlands between seasons – increasing their resilience. Restored wetlands retain more subsurface moisture, even after drying out at the surface, and take less rainfall in subsequent years to wet up again when compared to areas that have been artificially drained. This is the process that we’ve seen play out this year at Mt Burr Swamp, and the results speak for themselves!

If you or someone you know is interested in restoring the wetlands on their property, please get in with Ayesha Burdett, one of our Senior Wetland Ecologists, who is coordinating our latest wetland restoration program on private land. You can contact her by email: , or phone – 0429 021 500.

The wetland restoration projects completed at Mt Burr Swamp in 2023 and the Hutt Bay Wetlands in 2022 were supported by the Limestone Coast Landscape Board, through funding from the South Australian Government’s Landscape Priorities Fund and the Australian Government’s National Water Grid Connections Funding Pathway.