An Olympic dream

Back in Queensland, an extra canal will be built for a short distance from the Gilbert River Aquifer to the Porcupine River and, further south, another small canal will link it to Landsborough Creek which flows into the Thomson near Longreach, opening up the new food bowl. The same water will flow all the way from there down Cooper Creek to a new cotton growing area in the channel country and on to Lake Eyre.

In future years, when a larger volume of water is needed to meet the requirements of all the envisioned projects, it will be easy to extend the canal north from the Gilbert River to tap into the strong flowing Norman River. Similarly, another canal can be built from the Tully River, down to the Burdekin.

The initial construction cost will be around four billion dollars, the same cost as envisaged for the desalinisation plant currently planned for the Olympic Dam - but this expenditure has the extra benefit of opening up northern and central Australia for significant economic development.

BHP would pay for the 300 kilometre canal running down the Birdsville track, plus their share of the cost of the northern canals - about two billion dollars all up, I reckon. The Galilee mines and rural users in the north and centre will pay their share as well, while operating and maintenance costs would be similarly allocated.

Storage facilities will be required progressively, but there are some real possibilities such as the Goonaghooheeny Billabong near Cooper Creek; it is 200 kilometres long - some billabong. Large storage areas will be needed in the Galilee Basin and the Longreach Food Bowl, but there are potential sites that can be investigated. Similarly, a large storage will be created near Tambo from which some water will go south to the Murray and some south-west to Olympic Dam.

All of this can be made part of a national flood mitigation program which is long overdue. Indeed, the whole project has genuine tourism potential as well.

This is an Olympic dream for Australia embracing far more than a water solution for Olympic Dam, the Galilee mines and Inland Australia generally.

When Bradfield drew-up his grand water plan three quarters of a century ago, it was rejected as being uneconomic by the usual ‘negative nellies’ who abound in every generation.

At that point, Australia had half the population that it has now, and Bradfield envisaged only a growth in agriculture, not mining. Nor did Australia have food security issues or a starving world crying out for regular food supplies. We didn’t have much technology either.

More importantly, we now have the environmental science that will ensure that the good earth of our continent in enhanced, not destroyed. It simply needs the constructive and responsible ingenuity of humankind to recreate the old continent. A few thousand years ago, our inland rivers ran mightily. We can get them to run again in the way that nature always intended, while taking into account the environmental impact of twenty million people who were not around in ancient times, and turning this factor into an asset. A clear possibility is that these waterways can become the permanent scene of thousands of trees and an abundance of wildlife.

A dream of such Olympic proportions really can become a reality - and quickly. It will fire the imagination of a nation which is currently depressed by the inane debates on trivia that flow from our parliaments, and are magnified by a headline hungry media.