LAKE MOKOAN was an artificial lake, roughly 7km north-east of Benalla. It was created by diverting water from the Broken River and Hollands Creek into Winton and Green swamps. Construction began in the late 1960s and was completed in 1971.
Hundreds of thousands of trees within the swamp soon died across the lake and surrounding plains, killed by the flooding of the former swampland. The large, shallow lake had a very high surface area to volume ratio, resulting in extreme water loss through evaporation, and there were frequent toxic algal blooms requiring regular closures for recreation activities and causing livestock to become ill.
Although a locally popular water sports destination, the Victorian government decided to decommission the canals and lake to restore the landscape to a more natural wetland and woodland ecosystem. The restoration effort, the largest of its kind in the southern hemisphere, is expected to take at least 100 years. In 2010 Lake Mokoan site was officially reformed into the Winton Wetlands Reserve.
Currently, the reserve is at its highest water level recorded since 2016. In addition, inspections are showing the Wetlands have been highly effective in ‘cleaning up’ and delaying the flow-on of flood waters into the Broken River north of Benalla. While Benalla was faced with flooding six weeks ago, it is only recently that the outflow channel from Winton Wetlands has finally spilled water outside the reserve. Floodwaters upstream of Winton Wetlands were effectively held back long enough for natural drainage to occur more broadly across the region.
