Sports fields, parks, and domestic gardens are under threat as soil salinity moves from the bush into towns and cities across Australia.

According to CSIRO's Dr Evan Christen, salt is starting to affect large areas of towns in parts of the Murray-Darling Basin.

"Dryland salinity is a well-known rural management problem," said Dr Christen. "Now the people of country towns are seeing backyard lawns dying, houses and their foundations cracking, and parks and sports fields under threat."

Dr Christen lists towns such as Boorowa, Young, West Wyalong, Forbes, Parkes, Cowra and Dubbo. The same problem is beginning to occur in West Australian wheat belt centres such as Merredin.

But help is at hand.

Dr Christen has adapted some very old technology to deal with the modern problem.

"We're using an eighteenth-century style of mole plough, patented a decade before the First Fleet landed in Sydney.

"The plough creates 'mole drainage' which drains off the saline water; and we're already clearing up the problem of salinity at the sports oval in Wagga Wagga," said Dr Christen.

Dr Christen said that the 'mole holes' have led to good crops of tomatoes, onions and winter cereals coming from saline waterlogged soil near Griffith (NSW), and mole drainage is an important part of new vineyards being established in the area.

More information from: Dr Evan Christen 069-601586 (bus)., 069-630439 (a.h.).