Twenty years ago, Brad Wedlock despaired over the state of Queensland's Mary River at Kenilworth, where every flood cut away thousands of cubic metres of farmland, releasing sediment to smother the southernmost section of the Great Barrier Reef.
Tree clearing, sand and gravel mining and the misguided practices of the past had turned what was once a shady, meandering river into a denuded waterway ravaged by erosion.
