Stories of the Oldfield River There have been some changes to the Oldfield and Munglinup Rivers and surroundings over the years since settlement but generally the vegetation in the river corridors themselves seem not to have changed much.

"Since they put the road in there's been a lot more traffic going into the area [Munglinup Beach and Oldfield Estuary]. Coupled with that there's been a lot more erosion coming in, you know indiscriminate camping and what have you. There's a lot of rubbish just been indiscriminately thrown around. We were pretty conscious of that, we always used to go and bury our rubbish.

The fishing stock, you know, I go out there now and you're lucky to see a fish let alone try and catch one. There's fish there but I mean not like it used to be, you could just walk over and grab a feed of fish and be back home within an hour with a bucket full of fish. You can't do that these days."
Ron (Doc) Reynolds

"No [changes], not in the river. Its never been burnt in the time I've been here. The bush seems to get bigger and thicker and looks pretty healthy. I would say that's [water quality] stayed much the same as well. It's been pretty good. I guess because there's not a huge amount of farming land flowing into it and of course the land's only been opened up in the last forty years. It's forty years since the first clearing on this part of the Oldfield. So I guess that's not long in river terms really."
Tom Walker

"There's very little changes in the river itself. We've had since we've been here four real floods, when the river has been exceptionally high, but in flooding it stays in the river. There's no areas where it actually floods out onto any developed areas, so the floods actually do no damage. Well they haven't done over the period that we've been here. And no, very little change in the river, it still appears to be in similar condition to what it was then. The fish and bird life and everything is the same. There's no areas on the rivers itself that's affected by salt or anything like that that is visible."
Ron Gibson

"I don't think the bush has altered that much over the years. At this stage my daughter and myself pick wildflowers and we've got picking licenses to pick. There are certain areas that we can't go, but any of the ones that we can go we pick wildflowers, particularly tetragona [Eucalyptus tetragona], nuts and banksia, that is what we pick to sell. [We started] in 1991 when we were financially strapped and we had to look for a second industry for the farm. And I do pick towards the back of our property here on the Munglinup [River], down there in the blue mallee or tetragona."
Avril Lawrance

"Some years when there's less water coming down it gets too salty to drink. We have done tests of water quality to see whether or not it was suitable for sheep water. At that stage it was really only suitable for wethers, so it was never cost effective as far as pumping water up to water our sheep on it. One of the things I've noticed in the last couple of years is for a long time it didn't ever cross the road. I think probably it's crossed the road five times in the time that I've lived there (Rockhole Road). It's been twice in the last two years. So I don't know whether or not the clearing further up has made a difference or it's just a change in the weather patterns that we've been having."
Jenne Walker

"The water level doesn't change a lot, which is surprising, I think they must be fed by underground water. It doesn't change a lot, maybe half a metre between summer and winter. Except when there is a flood of course. It was always slightly salty and brackish to my understanding. That was just a first impression, it was not like a fresh water stream. We have also used the river pools to mix with some of our dam water, because we were very low one year on water and we pumped some water out of a pool, which was still suitable for stock drinking, so that was the quality.

[I have seen changes] in parts where the Munglinup River crosses the Doyle Road. We bought the farm across the road called Doyle's place and we've still got old aerial photographs where there is still a little bit of salinity and deterioration. It has expanded and got bigger despite the fact that we've planted more trees and fenced out further up in the catchment. The water table must continue to rise there. This is also partly due to the fact that the road is blocking off the natural flow. Behind the road it is silted up so the water has got really nowhere to go. So that's getting worse, so far it's only slightly affecting the main corridor of the Munglinup River. But it probably will in time if we can't do anything, if we can't deal with that problem. At the moment it's affecting our trees on our place."
Brigitte Wallefeld

"[In the Munglinup River] mainly the chittick [Lambertia inermis] has died out. I think that's with dieback, quite a lot of the chittick has died out. Otherwise I wouldn't say a great deal [has changed] because surprisingly about 1969 was the last time it burnt, it hasn't burnt since then. Only up near Munglinup, it burnt a bit there. From Munglinup up it burnt near the golf course, but all the rest of it has never been burnt since right back in 1969. Really it's in a bad state, it needs cleaning and reseeding you might say. Probably it's hard to do it carefully without doing too much damage."
Don MacKenzie