The Shire of Wyndham-East Kimberley, North West Australia, covers an area
of 121,000 square kilometres (about 2 ½ times the size of Tasmania and half
the area of Victoria).
Lake Argyle is capable of holding some 10,500 million megalitres of water, up to 35 times the volume of water in Sydney Harbour.
Before damming, the Ord River was measured at flowing at a rate of about 1 million cubic feet per minute during peak flow in the "wet" season. This flow equates, for example, to the daily water consumption of metropolitan Sydney passing down stream in about 26 seconds.
Ord River Irrigation Area (ORIA), is the irrigation industry area formed by the damming of the Ord River by the construction of the Diversion Dam in 1959-1963 to hold back the waters of Lake Kununurra (90 million megalitres storage) and the Main Ord Dam in 1969-1972 to form Lake Argyle
The irrigation project covers 14,500 hectares and crops from the area include, sugar, sorghum, maize, sunflower, sandalwood, bananas, mangoes, as well as the whole family of cucurbits (melons, squash, pumpkins, zucchini etc). Future expansion envisaged would see development of a further 32000-40000 hectares for irrigation.
