Slime in the stream

It's not rocket science,

We have a creek close to Darwin which has a catchment of a fairly limited and measurable size. The majority of the creek catchment is contained within land under the management of the Darwin Airport.

Dragonfly larvae are dependent on a healthy aquatic environment

The origin of inputs to the system can be easily tracked to fairly specific locations and water quality tests can tell us at each point in the creek certain contaminants exist or at which point they are likely to have been introduced into the system... I don't possess the water quality testing equipment necessary to identify exactly what the composition of contaminants might be, however logic tells me that a creek which flows through predominantly undisturbed land should have quite clean water...

This morning I went for a ride down to the rock pool at the weir to get some film of the native fish swimming in the creek. There is nothing unusual about rainbow fish in Darwin Creeks today, but given the disgraceful mismanagement of our waterways it's only a matter of time before this habitat is completely ruined.

Rapid Creek appears to be quite clean until it reaches the site of the Mecure Darwin Airport Resort! Then you see something slightly different!

Drain from Mecure flowing into the clear water of Rapid Creek

Filth meets pure

Sludge flowing through nicely formed drain