When Murray- darling kayaker Steve Posselt announced his intention last week, to be outside a breakfast meeting to be addressed by Elizabeth Nosworthy, head of the Queensland Water Commission, he could scarcely have anticipated the reaction.

Organisers of the meeting, the Australian Water Association (AWA), of which Steve is actually a Past President, were quick to deem his proposed action, being outside with a bright yellow kayak festooned with no dam stickers, to be “inappropriate”. Further they advised that when the Water Commission had found out about it, they had threatened to call off Ms Nosworthy’s presentation.

So what is it about a lone kayaker and his sticker-festooned kayak that evokes such a response?

Steve is no ordinary kayaker, if indeed such a thing exists. Having worked in the water industry as an engineer for over three decades, he knows his stuff. To top this broad knowledge base, add a sense of adventure and a keen desire to “make a difference”. Last year, when most water engineers his age were contemplating retirement plans, Steve announced his intention to kayak and walk from Brisbane to Adelaide via rivers of the Murray/Darling system.

Four months and 3250 kilometres later, he reached Adelaide and his images of this beleaguered river system had reached into every corner of the nation.

Just over a year before Steve set out on his trip, the Queensland Government had announced plans for a big dam on the Mary River at Traveston Crossing. It was a site that had been rejected repeatedly for a dam but the announcement came out of a sense of desperation; dams across the nation were at record lows, something that came to be dubbed the water “crisis”.

As Steve left Brisbane, a Senate Enquiry was investigating the dam proposal and Steve felt sure that it would “fall over”. The Courier Mail reported that, of more than 200 submissions to the Enquiry, only one was in favour and the Enquiry eventually recommended that the dam should not proceed.

The government refused to blink. Warning bells should have gone off when Peter Beattie declared that the dam would be built “whether it was feasible or not”. Not even the baton change to Anna Bligh or the fact that federal approval could not automatically be relied upon, dinted their resolve. The dam must go on.

Steve’s announcement of his “Don’t Murray the Mary”“ trip, that includes paddling the entire length of the Mary, has the potential to add images of the Mary’s “before” to the Murray/ Darling’s “after”.

Steve Posselt is like the small child in the tale of The Emperors’s New Clothes, the only one to point so eloquently to the folly of continuing the deception. “If someone is going to vandalize a valley,” he writes on his website, “ then they should be prepared to accept some criticism.”

“Too many people just accept the status quo these days. Too many people are frightened of speaking out lest it cause them a financial penalty. I am not afraid of anyone at the QWC. I think the Water Commissioners should resign. The strategy is very badly flawed and someone needs to say so.”

That is why they fear him. And that is why the eyes of south-east Queensland should be on him as he ventures through a river that the State Government and Queensland Water Commission would dam rather than look properly at better alternatives.

Steve’s “Getting ready” report can be found at www.kayak4earth.com/MaryRiver/MaryDayReports/gettingready1.htm