While not on the list, presumably Cubbie Station, the Balonne’s and Australia’s largest single irrigation enterprise, is also a high-priority target for the buyback program.

Covering 80,000 hectares, Cubbie has the capacity to hold 462,000 megalitres in its capacious storages.

“I couldn’t put a dollar value on Cubbie,” Ms Stewart said. “Everything that we go to in this shire is supported by Cubbie.”

Even if Condamine-Balonne irrigators stampede to sell their licences when the buyback program opens in Queensland in September—an unlikely scenario, according to Ms Stewart— the water will do little to immediately help the stricken lower Murray.

A CSIRO report released last month, observed that the Condamine-Balonne catchment has a very high rate of diversion for irrigation—more than 50 per cent of flows—but that in total, it contributes only 8.5 per cent of total inflows to the MDB system.

The MDB Commission estimates that only 20 per cent of the water that crosses the Queensland border makes it into the lower Murray.

“In the long run, the (Queensland buyback) might help,” said chairman of the Lower Murray Irrigation Association, Richard Reedy.

“But to be of any use right now, you would have to bring it all here in plastic bottles.”

Mr Reedy noted that 90 per cent of South Australians rely in some way on Murray River water.

Amy Hankinson of the Inland Rivers Network, which has urged the government purchase of irrigation properties, said any inflows are better than none to the dying Ramsar-listed wetlands in the lower Murray.

"The water has a long way to travel, but it can’t be thought of as lost water,” Ms Hankinson said.

“That water is going to the environment all the way down, and all the wetlands in the system are in crisis.”

“This looks to be one of the best ways to get fresh water to the lower Murray. We have to give it a go.”

The question for those with irrigation properties on the market is whether the Commonwealth is prepared to buy land as well as water entitlements.

The Buster family’s 14,500 Bourke property, Darling Farms, has been on the market since 2006, and is one of the properties that conservationists want the Commonwealth to buy.

Darling Farms general manager Ian Cole said selling the irrigation rights alone would immediately drop the highly developed land back to dryland grazing values—an impossible proposition.

Mr Cole talked with advisors to Water Minister Penny Wong about a potential wholesale purchase, but was met with “a blank wall”.

John McKillop, managing director of the Swire Group’s Clyde Agriculture, which is selling Toorale Station, another Bourke property identified for purchase by conservation groups, said despite interest from the NSW and Federal governments, both had said they wouldn’t be bidding at the September 11 auction. Neither government has offered a reason.

Mr McKillop said the slashing of irrigation allocations—one allocation had been cut from 570 ML to 173 ML—meant the company was “long on land, short on water”, and it was looking to balance the equation.