Satellite images have revealed a dam wall collapse on one of Australia's largest cotton-growing properties, flooding surrounding country with an estimated 30,000 megalitres of irrigation water.
The images show a breach of a storage dam on Cubbie Station, near Dirranbandi in south-west Queensland's St George region.
Rural water consultant and Dirranbandi resident Tom Crothers has been working in natural resource management for 35 years.
"What it says here on the [satellite] pictures is more than 30,000 megalitres [of water lost]," Mr Crothers said.
"That's a lot of swimming pools worth."
His concerns, however, are around the potential the event could coincide with a breached flow in the local river system, which is currently in major flood.
"If there's a flow on and there's floodwater coming down the Balonne River, if that floodwater gets out of the Balonne River and goes across there, this [dam] water will probably meet up with that," Mr Crothers said.
"It'll just add to that floodwater."
Comprising over 80,000 hectares of farmland, Cubbie Station's proximity to the watercourses and rivers that offshoot from the Balonne means the farm is used to regular small flood events and a one-in-10-year major flood inundation.
Cubbie station has been wholly owned by Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets since the Australian-based global financial services group bought the remaining 51 per cent stake of the farm from Chinese textile giant Shandong Ruyi earlier this year.
The foreign investor had previously owned an 80 per cent share in the farm, which it purchased in 2012, before initially reducing its ownership to 51 per cent at the instigation of Foreign Investment Review Board.
Shandong Ruyi no longer has any ownership stake in the farm.
Macquarie Asset Management Fund, has declined to comment.
Cotton Australia has also declined to comment.
