The Barwon-Darling is one of Australia’s most hydrologically variable dryland river systems, with periods of low flow and small flow pulses, or freshes, punctuated by large overbank flows that fuel large scale riverine productivity. The Barwon-Darling River and its associated tributaries is also a highly developed river system with more than 50% of the in-channel flows extracted for agriculture. 2019 has not been a good year for the Barwon-Darling river system. The northern Murray-Darling Basin has been in severe drought with very little inflows into the tributaries during 2018 and 2019 – this made national and international headlines with the large fish kills at Menindee in December 2019 and January 2019. The river is now almost dry between Bourke and Menindee with potentially catastrophic consequences for both fauna and flora and there is no water for irrigation. Since the DRAFT Interim Unregulated Flow Management Plan for the Barwon-Darling River was published in 1992 there have been a number of attempts to have the low flows in the Barwon-Darling protected from extraction. Have we left it too late? Is the Barwon-Darling be Australia’s Aral Sea or Colorado River?