About halfway along the road from Berrigan to Barooga is ‘The Drop’, where the Mulwala Canal crosses the road, and is the location of Australia's first hydroelectric power station on an irrigation canal. There is a parking area to the right. This is part of a water-flow control system which allows the water to divert from the Mulwala Canal into the Berrigan Channel. The canal was constructed between 1935 and 1942. The Mulwala Canal is an irrigation channel in the southern Riverina region of New South Wales, Australia. It is the largest irrigation canal in the Southern Hemisphere. As well as water for agriculture, the canal also provides water for the southern Riverina towns of Berrigan, Finley, Bunnaloo, and Wakool. The canal, starting at Lake Mulwala, diverts water from the Murray River across the southern Riverina plain to the Edward River at Deniliquin. The channel has an offtake capacity of 10,000 Megalitres (ML) per day and annually supplies over 1,000,000 ML to 700,000 hectares (1,700,000 acres) in the Murray Irrigation Area. Pacific Hydro operate The Drop Hydro Electric Power Station on the Mulwala Canal. The power station, with a generating capacity of 2.5 Megawatts of electricity, is Australia's first hydroelectric power station on an irrigation canal. On this years annual Easter getaway with my local church group from Kyabram.SIX FWDs packed full of enthusiastic adults convoyed from geocache to geocache, led by tour guide and geocaching expert Needle In A… We left our caravan park and set off on a mystery adventure. With 7 caches under their belts before morning tea time on the Tocumwal Town Beach, plus a few more before the picnic lunch hour was past at the Blow Hole Tocumwal taking the score up to 12 caches for the day. It was after our mystery picnic that we headed off to the next surprise location to place a cache of our own.
All six 4WDs created names for their vehicle teams and each signed the log book placed in this cache. Green Gallahs, Murray River Kookaburras, Champions, Escapades, 2 Wrongs and 2 Wrights, and Robbo’s.
The cache: If you take a walk across the bridge and view ‘The Drop’ from the western-most point, then you can walk back towards the bridge and an old information sign, turn left down a dirt vehicle track and there is a large tree on your left, with plenty of bark litter and a few pine posts. The cache is vial shaped and would fit in a narrow hole.