THERE would be no lynch mob, the mayor had promised, yet it wasn't long before the first noose was sighted.
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As more than 650 people crammed into the Goulburn Valley Hotel in Shepparton shortly after 10am, the piece of rope around Alison Couston's neck was an alarming sight.
It was not meant as a threat to the visiting officials from the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, who chose Shepparton as the first stop on their tour to explain the controversial plan for the river. But it was a statement, Ms Couston said, about her plight as an irrigator in northern Victoria.
''I have got a noose around my neck - I really have,'' she said.
''This is where we are heading. It's like someone's holding a gun to your head.''
Locals spent several hours venting their anger at the same officials who just days ago forecast water extraction cuts of up to 45 per cent in regions around Shepparton and Benalla.
''How dare you buggers sit up there and tamper with our livelihoods,'' Colin Low, an irrigator from Nathalia, said.
Kevin Sutton of Stanhope was just as angry, blasting what he saw as the divide between those making decisions and those affected by them. ''We cannot have this region close down because of some 'smart' decisions made by a group who have not been given any authority by the people of this region,'' he said.
Overwhelmingly, the criticisms aired at yesterday's feisty public meeting focused on the authority's prediction that job losses could be kept to 800, and losses in agricultural production to $1.1 billion.
Officials conceded on Friday they might have underestimated the impact of the plan. More research is under way, and authority chiefs admit the real figures could be much higher.
Farmer Peter Schwartz expressed dismay that the report had been published without adequate research.
''The socio-economic impacts are more important than everything else in this debate,'' he said.
''With the millions of dollars you guys had at your fingertips, you should have gone out and done a lot more work, interviewed people and found out from businesses what the impacts of this are going to be.''
After several hours of sustained criticism, another placard-carrying mob arrived for the afternoon session. The national consultation tour continues today in Deniliquin and tomorrow in Griffith.
