River Murray floodwater is seeping into plains, wetlands and lakes that have been parched for half a century, prompting birdlife and vegetation to rebound in drought-stricken land.
Ecologist Caitlin Polack has excitedly been monitoring the changes to the ecosystem daily from the land and ground at Calperum Station, just north of Renmark.
It is an event she said she never thought she would see: as wildflowers bloom and the health of trees rebounds, the Australian Ibis is nesting in Lake Woolpolool for the first time in years.
"It's allowed nature to absolutely flourish," she said.
"This is the first time since 1974 that a lot of this landscape has seen water like this … we've got trees we thought were nearly dead slowly springing back to life.
"These events are something we can't artificially create, we can't manipulate — it's just nature being the wonder of nature and us standing back seeing how much can we get out of this in future knowledge.
"We have this opportunity to collect that data in relation to vegetation data, species data, how things are reacting to this water and that will influence management practices in the future."
Water is also edging closer to Rotten Lake, now a gypsum mine, that has not had water in it since the 1956 flood.
Darren Willis, who is the wetlands team leader for the Riverland and Murraylands Landscape Board, said much of the environmental benefits were not yet visible — and may not be for up to four years.
"It's understandable that an event like this is very, very confronting to communities up and down the river but those communities are going to see a massive revitalisation of the environment they live in," he said.
"We all know how devastating the last big drought was and we know that the system hasn't really recovered.
"This opportunity is part of that big reset opportunity and hopefully once people have come through the worries of the current flow, they'll be excited about it as I am."
'Really good supply of nutrients'
Mr Willis said the environment was likely to thrive for years after the floodwaters receded.
"These trees will just go through the roof, the canopy will be lush, thick and green, the understorey will grow back," he said.
"There are a lot of seeds that have been floating down through the system so this is a big distribution event … so the next cycle of the ecosystem starts to occur.
"There's a unique, once-in-many-decades opportunity to develop knowledge about how we manage wetlands between this and the next flood."
Mr Willis said numbers of aquatic species, including fish, frogs and turtles, would also increase and spread into larger areas.
But the flood was also creating a lot of stress on some species which could see some species decrease in numbers while invasive species like the carp are likely to increase.
Then there was the threat of a blackwater event in South Australia.
"We might see some modest-scale fish kills here; people might notice fish at the surface trying to get oxygen," Mr Willis said.
"Even a fish kill is not all a bad thing because dead fish in the water body create a really good supply of nutrients for the ecosystem — turtles love them."
The State Emergency Service has urged property owners along the river to clean up with debris, rubbish, furniture and pollutants regularly seen moving downstream with the flow.
"We've had notice of gas bottles coming down, the wheelie bins, a number of things coming down which block up the system and go back into nature when the water recedes," SES incident controller Craig Brassington said.
"It will get caught around the locks, but it will be in the nature areas, so when native fauna comes back it may impact on how they actually survive as well.
"Tidy up your properties, anything outside that might float away, please put it in your rubbish bins or take it to the local dump and remove it."
Ms Polack said it was unclear where a lot of the rubbish flowing downstream would end up, but she said the positives of the flood to the environment still "outweighed the negatives".
She said there would be many permanent changes to the river as a result of the flood.
"If you look at a map of the Murray, it's not a straight line, it's this curling snake," she said.
"There will be sections of channel or the back creek that are going to change where they are, slightly or majorly.
"It's going to be different when people come up next season and chuck in their boats.
"It will be interesting to see where things end up, where things settle and where things are removed from — and there's no way of predicting it."
