12/06/2025 ✶ We just posted The River of Change: Navigating Climate Change Impacts on the River Murray

15/05/2025 ✶ As the project continues, through to 2026, we will post different papers and summaries. Check back soon!

20/02/2026 ✶ It has been an exciting week! We hosted two events related to the project for our various community monitoring sub-projects. One event focused on seasonal calendars with our research partner DDAC, and the other focused on three ideas for community monitoring. Please find the slides at our Wangaratta  Performing Arts Centre event on the Workshop Presentation page. 

Attendance at both events was excellent and we want to extend a big thank you to everyone who came along and contributed so openly. Many of the event participants had taken part in the project interviews, alongside other local community members with a strong interest in stewardship and their rivers.

At our event in Wangaratta, we shared an overview of the River Communities project and a snapshot of key findings, before introducing some possible community monitoring ideas to explore and co-design together. These included the Climate Change Community Observatory, Responsive Monitoring, and Riverbank Monitoring. The session was very interactive, with people up on their feet and moving around the room, and throughout the workshop participants worked through a series of tasks to review the community monitoring ideas and reflect on what success would look like in practice. The energy in the room and the willingness to engage made for a very productive afternoon!

Towards the end, MDBA staff provided an update on the Basin Plan Review process and how to make a submission. 

We are now looking forward to analysing the workshop feedback on the proposed community monitoring projects and will keep everyone updated by email as the final report and next steps are released later this year.

11/02/2026 ✶ We have created an online repository for local community members to upload their images and files relating to the topics of this project (the geographic area, climate change, rivers etc) - please find our repository here.

28/01/2026 ✶ We have organised our public event in Wangaratta on Wednesday 18th February in the Performing Arts Centre. Invitations have been sent to all participants and surrounding Landcare groups.

12/01/2026 ✶ We have sent riverfront landholders and catchment community participants an email update about our upcoming events. We will hold events in Wangaratta and Albury in February. If you are interested in attending and have not received an invitation yet, please Contact Us!

13/11/2025 ✶ We have analysed our interviews, which was quite a hefty task! We had so many useful, rich discussions with our participants which left us with a lot of data to organise.

We are drafting monitoring sub-projects stemming from what communities told us they wanted, and also work we have put into understanding ways of knowing and citizen science programs.

Our plans to run community events have shifted back due to timelines and resourcing, and those events will likely take place early next year. Watch this space.

If you have participated in our study, expect an email update from us when those arrangements have been made.

Thank you for your support!

02/09/2025 ✶ We are discussing and scoping the range of monitoring sub-projects this study has identified - based mainly on interviewing people around the rivers. 

Next steps will including holding workshops for and with community members to discuss these monitoring sub-projects. We need to finalise the details before contacting people and organising those sessions - watch this space!

15/08/2025 ✶ This week we returned from a trip to Albury-Wodonga. We attended the Mann lecture at La Trobe University on how a values-based approach can help us navigate key issues of water, health, and social connection.

We also had the opportunity to speak to some farmers along with Kiewa River as well as water management authorities.

Thank you to all our participants so far!

16/07/2025 ✶ Today, Ana returned from a trip to Albury-Wodonga discussing a partnership with Traditional Owners.

This week, the team has been discussing making the best use of this website, and how we can present media from our visits alongside project information in a way that is informative and engaging - watch this space!

11/07/2025 ✶ This week Brendan was in the region conducting interviews with Riverfront Landholders as well as those in the Catchment Communities group who have been involved in river monitoring and citizen science.

26/06/2025 ✶ We have just returned from another successful trip to the region. By now, we have interviewed with various people in different water management-related organisations. 

We have also interviewed many riverfront landholders (farmers) and heard about their experiences on their land, with their rivers, and more often than not the research team was privileged to get a tour of those farms!

We have heard a lot about what is important to landholders and how the river affects their lives, farms,  and different types of businesses. We've also discussed how they've interacted with water management authorities and government bodies and what they would like to see in the future, and how community involvement could potentially play a role.

We are continuing to recruit, particularly landholders along the Kiewa river, and also anyone involved in monitoring or community science along the Murray-Ovens-Kiewa rivers. Please contact us if you think you coul get involved!

12/06/2025 ✶ We are deep in the recruitment phase of the project! If you believe you or your organisation could be involved in this project please contact us. 

15/04/2025 ✶ The project has received ethical approval to proceed with human participants. We are currently designing research instruments, such as interview topic guides, and we are starting the recruitment stage of our project.

09/04/2025 ✶ We visited the Hume Dam, the Kiewa, and the Ovens as well as surrounding floodplains. We also spoke to some local people about our project.

08/04/2025 ✶ Our project team travelled from the Bundoora campus to the Albury-Wodonga campus