A northern food bowl? Katter’s heard that one before
A new National Food Plan released yesterday by the federal government — backing the case to farm more of Australia’s north — would have been met with scepticism from long-time advocate Bob Katter. He’s heard the arguments before about Australia’s role as a “food bowl” for Asia; Julia Gillard pledged in May the country was poised as a global food superpower.
“That is the most farcical piece of rubbish I have ever heard,” the maverick Queensland independent told Crikey in his Canberra parliamentary office. “They’ve been saying that for 10 years. And still, there is not a single proposal for a weir or a dam in the whole of northern Australia.”
Katter, who has consistently fought to irrigate and farm the north for more than 38 years, says it’s never been a priority for any government. “It’s given second consideration all of the time, so it is given first consideration none of the time,” he said.
The government’s stated plan is more modest than it claims, according to Katter. It will initially invest $6.8 million in a CSIRO study to explore surface storage options in the Flinders and Gilbert River catchments, and will look at a smaller, mosaic irrigation approach rather than large, centralised dams.
Frustrated by the lack of actual development, the local council that incorporates the Flinders River catchment in north-west Queensland has pulled out of the federal government’s plans. Katter, too, is frustrated by yet another study and wants to see projects implemented to prove that it can be done.
“The northern third of Australia — if it was a separate country — would be one of the wettest countries on Earth,” he said. A landscape that is bone-dry for seven to eight months of the year receives around 1 million gigalitres of rain during the wet — more than eight times the run-off in the Murray-Darling Basin.
One of the more ambitious schemes to harness the seasonal rains was proposed by Dr John Bradfield, the designer of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, in 1938. His plan was to divert rivers from north Queensland all the way to Lake Eyre, irrigating over a million hectares and hopefully inducing more rainfall inland. Katter has tried to keep Bradfield’s dream alive and has worked hard to win support for a revised Bradfield scheme, which would dam the upper-Herbet and Burdekin rivers (but would not divert water to Lake Eyre).
Not that he believes it will get up.
The main difficulty in utilising the monsoonal rains of the north is the rapid rate of evaporation — about 65% is lost. To capture and store enough water would require large, deep dams, for which northern Australian has few suitable sites. And the most recent study by the Northern Australia Land and Water Taskforce found that the “potential for northern Australia to become a ‘food bowl’ is not supported by evidence”.
“That is just plain rubbish,” according to Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce. “There is definitely the capacity for vast development of our agricultural asset in northern Australia.”
Joyce is part of the Coalition’s own taskforce that has proposed a network of four to five dams across northern Australia that they hope will double Australia’s agricultural production by 2050.
But Joyce admits that dams are seen to be destructive and is critical of those who use the environment as an excuse to halt all development, claiming the word itself has acquired an omnipotent quality that has stifled all other factors.
“The environment is absolutely intricate in considerations,” he said. “But it has to be seen in balance with the social and economic requirements of the people of the area.”
And many of the people in northern Australia are indigenous Australians, who have very few options for sustainable employment. “The only way you can assist any person in any area to get ahead is with an economic base,” he said.
Joyce also talks of Australia’s responsibility as an agricultural nation to meet the demands of a growing global population, especially to our neighbours in Asia.
But dams don’t come cheap. The chair of the NALW taskforce Joe Ross has questioned the viability of the Coalition’s plan, citing the Ord — which is still being paid off by taxes — as an example of the high public costs of such projects. And with much of the irrigated water expected to be used for pasture and cotton, there are also concerns that food production will not increase.
“The role of government is not try to pick the crop, but it is to build the infrastructure,” Joyce countered in an interview with Crikey. “Or it just needs to create the tax incentive and licensing provisions for other people to build the infrastructure.”
And you need to attract enough businesses to have economies of scale. “One cotton farm by itself will go broke. There has to be enough so that you can build a gin to process the cotton,” Joyce said.
The Queensland Senator wants incentives for local investors, and is critical of the government, which has started a joint study with China to explore how the two countries can develop agriculture in the north.
Katter isn’t a fan of foreign investment, but sees no other option with local agricultural businesses and the money markets reluctant to invest. “You simply cannot make money out of agriculture in Australia,” he said. “Every single agricultural industry is in decline, and in rapid decline.”
Abandoning any hope of receiving government or local funding, Katter has turned to private foreign investors for a solar power and bio-fuels (ethanol) project near Pentland in north Queensland.
“That is the only model I can work with,” he said. The man who vowed to help farmers plough “the great inland plain” in his opening address to Queensland’s parliament 38 years ago admits he — and the country — are running out of options.
“It is a very sad day when the only way you can get development is when you let foreigners buy up all your land. What country does that? Well, Australia does that.”
To be honest if we’re going to have government largesse i’d rather it go towards the creation of this food bowl, no matter how flawed.
You can’t feed the masses of Asia with Ford Falcons
Because, Bob, the parties whom you continue to support in parliament have seen fit to burden Australians with world’s highest mortgage debt.
An extra $750,000,000,000 spent uselessly propping up bank shareholders, with Costello, care of his GST, carving 10% of the top while lounging in (as Keating pointed out) his hammock.
And that pathetic DLP Stooge Barnaby Joyce, driectly complicit in this economic catastrophe is granted enough credit to be interviewed by Crikey?
There’s some crapped on credibility here!
I’ll pay the Ford Falcons feeding Asia but I can’t accept Barnaby Joyce’s:
“The environment is absolutely intricate in considerations,” he said. “But it has to be seen in balance with the social and economic requirements of the people of the area.”
Is Senator Joyce proposing that if “the environment” is not seen to be meeting the economic requirements of the locals then the environment should be brought into line? Dam some of its rivers, fill in some swamp or other with the overburden from some hole-in-the-ground, blast and flatten it, turn on the sprinklers and generally knock a bit of shape into it? All watered from an east-of-the-divide river. Pumped over the range by what? The golden calf ‘Copperstring’ solar-powered aerial cable from Townsville to Mt Isa. Mt Isa - gateway to a golden land. Deja vu?
There is the usual confusion here about the Bradfield scheme which concerned the northern but east-coast rivers such as Burdekin. So this area is thousands of kilometers from the area discussed by Katter and the current Northern schemes. Also it has since become fairly clear that diverting all that water to the channel country would not induce any extra rainfall in central Australia (or anywhere) because — simply put — you need mountains for that.
On the other hand, forgetting eco issues, it is physically/geographically possible to build a version of the Bradfield scheme that would divert some of those east coast rivers down to the Darling and its northern tributaries that could provide flow all year round and thru drought periods (because the rain occurs on the eastern side of the coastal range but can be captured high-enough to still use gravity to divert it back to the western side).
Still, the point is that Bradfield should not be mentioned in the context of the true Northern schemes.
So let me guess, we’ll socialise the infrastructure charges and any losses and privatise the profits, with the vague threat of ‘foreign investment ’ looming like storm clouds.
When Rupert does it, it’s funny.
@Michael, perhaps you know but the hyrologic feasibility study was done in the laye 1970’s by the NSW Water Conservation and Irrigation Commission on a tributary of the Clarence river.
Environmentalists obviously cannot consider sacrificing one ecosystem to a dam in order to save another ecosystem from natural drought conditions.
Professor James,
“…because the rain occurs on the eastern side of the coastal range but can be captured high-enough to still use gravity to divert it back to the western side.”
Do you have shares in a tunneling company or should I go back to geography school? Where is this gravity defying dam site?
As an Australian I have to worry when I (again) read that China is being considered to co develop farming land in the north. The last I heard was that ex PM Bob Hawke was flogging freehold land to the Chinese, for a commission of course. The Tax Office was consulted and stated that a Chinese owned enterprise would “NOT PAY $1 IN TAX” once the land was Chinese owned. So what is in it for the Australian people? And why is the media not up in arms for what amounts to treason?
Katter and Joyce need to politicise this issue and bring it to the public’s attention so that ordinary Australians understand what is going down here before it is too late.
Hugh McColl,
I don’t know why you are so snarky. The original Bradfield scheme explicitly relied upon gravity flow because at that time nothing else was technologically feasible. It is in fact exactly how the Snowy scheme operates — taking a lot of the water normally feeding the coastal Snowy river and diverting it westwards.
In fact the existing Burdekin dam is already at sufficient elevation to support such a westward flow. Of course it needs large tunnels but that is a once-off capital expense that is relatively trivial. It may be that another higher-elevation dam would be more efficient (though obviously lower ones capture more water). Gravity is absolutely key because it is nuts to use energy the way they do in the Calfornia norther water diversion scheme — at one point it is pumped up 1800 m at fantastic cost (and only a small recovery on the other side as the water flows back down to the San Fernando valley).
Or even further “upstream” in the crazy California scheme where much of the water originates: the San Francisco Bay Delta (junction of the Sacramento and San Joaqin rivers) where a couple of thousand kms of earthen levees coral the waters into channels and then humungous pumps divert about one third of all the water that normally flows in SF Bay into the North-South pipeline. These pumps can move so much water that the river flows can be reversed!
So giant water capture and diversion schemes can engineered but as any Californian engineer or ecologist or energy expert would say, at insane cost. Only done because they have allowed huge cities like LA and San Diego to be built in one of the driest parts of the continent.
By comparison the Bradfield scheme is genius because it uses GRAVITY. Incidentally Hamis, that is the problem with the Clarence river scheme: yes, masses of “wasted” water but it can’t be captured and diverted like the Burdekin.
Understand Charlie?
Jesus wept…these schemes to create a tropical bonanza go back to the 19th century.
Read Bruce Davidson’s “The Northern Myth” (1965). He was right about the Ord. It failed repeatedly.
The Katter mentality will never change: use the state (aka the taxpayer) as a milch cow to promote these endless fantasies.
It’s not that agricultural development of the north can’t or won’t happen- but the road to the mirage is paved with billions of wasted dollars. And plenty of private capital has vanished into the sand too. In the past 50 years alone we’ve seen a moronic procession of sucker investments…from aloe-vera to ostriches…from rice to melons…from tea to coffee…and a great variety of nuts. Katter is the latter.
Let them eat studies
HUGH (CHARLIE) MCCOLL
Sh!t, my response to you is in moderation. Meantime:
Take a look at a map of the Burdekin and you can grasp the special geographical feature that enables the Bradfield scheme. It is that a lot of the Burdekin is in an elevated valley formed by a wedge between a coastal range and the main continental range. This means that a lot of rainfall is picked up inside this valley — by contrast to many other east coast rivers where they make short runs from the range to the sea (eg Clarence river though its special feature that allows it to grow into a large river is that it has a long north-south run on the low foothills where it picks up the outflow of innumerable smaller creeks but there is the geography does not support a practical dam). Thus you can see the huge Lake Dalrymple (80 km north to south) formed by the Burdekin Falls Dam is in this elevated valley. The southern and western arms of the lake come tantalizingly close to the western edge of the main range — -meaning that relatively modest tunnels would be enough to convey water to the other side.
There are various ideas about what to do with this water. Diversion (again by gravity using existing riverbeds) to the channel country is NOT sensible, one of Bradfields few mistakes. But it is only 370 km south to the Warrego river, the northern-most part of the Darling river headwaters.
Thus, the scheme is eminently feasible and would be eco-friendly in the sense of not requiring massive energy, perhaps even no additional dams to what exists (ie. Lake Dalrymple). The outflow of the Burdekin is astonishing — ie. nothing on the east coast would be sacrificed despite what the NIMBYs might say about “their” water. It could indeed be a solution to the Darling river problem. The main reason to hesitate in supporting it is that one would want to see the irrigation lobby brought under control before doing it, or they would just use it as an excuse to practice even worse habits that hithertofore. More destructive cotton and rice farming etc. etc.
Here’s a suggestion for poor old Barnaby and Bob K. You’ve had millions upon millions upon hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers money for dams and irrigation infrastructure for places like Kunnunnurra. Have you seen the dam? Its kind of big…in fact its friggin enormous…and I don’t recall it being slowed down ever by any ‘green tape’. And yet after all that free money (I’d like to know how many road trains it filled) they aren’t growing any food in Kunnunnurra. That’s right. Nada. They are growing sandalwood. And boys, no matter how many dams you build you can’t eat sandalwood. You can’t eat it here, you can’t eat it in Asia, you can’t even eat it in Queensland. Those farmers in Kunnunnurra are the most molly coddled, feather bedded, gravy trained mob that exist in this country. Possibly in the world, given the ratio of taxpayer handouts they have glommed onto for the mega dams and irrigation infrastructure. So I say, lets wait until Kunnunnurra turns a profit, that it makes itself, and lets wait to see if they can grow anything other than sandalwood. Before we use taxpayers money to stuff up another good river system for no return.
Any agronomists cooling their heels in the shadows of the forum, qualified to comment on the capacity of the northern soils?
Holden Ford: problem isn’t “the capacity of the northern soils”
And Davidson was an agronomist
Third attempt (apologies for legibility):
MICHAEL R JAMES Posted Wednesday, 18 July 2012 at 3:25 pm | Permalink
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Hugh McColl,
I don’t know why you are so snarky. The ori gi nal Bradfield scheme expli citly reli ed upon gravity flow because at that time nothing else was technologically feasible. It is in fact exactly how the Snowy scheme operates — taking a lot of the water normally feeding the coastal Snowy river and diverting it westwards.
In fact the existing Burdekin dam is already at sufficient elevation to support such a westward flow. Of course it needs large tunnels but that is a once-off capital expense that is relatively trivi al. It may be that another higher-elevati on dam would be more effi cient (though obviously lower ones capture more water). Gravity is absolutely key because it is nuts to use energy the way they do in the Calfornia northern water di version scheme — at one point it is pumped up 1800 m at fantasti c cost (and only a small recovery on the other side as the water flows back down to the San Fernando valley).
Or even further “upstream” in the crazy Californ ia scheme where much of the water originates: the San Francisco Bay Delta (junction of the Sacramento and San Joaq in rivers) where a couple of thousand kms of earthen levees coral the waters into channels and then humungous pumps divert about one third of all the water, that normally flows in SF Bay, into the North-South pipeline. These pumps can move so much water that the downstream river flows can be reversed!
So, giant water capture and diversion schemes can engineered but as any Californ ian engineer or ecologist or energy expert would say, at I nsane cost. Only done because they have allowed huge cities like LA and San Diego to be built in one of the driest parts of the conti nent.
By comparison the Bradfield scheme is genius because it uses GRAVITY. Incidentally Hamis, that is the problem with the Clarence river scheme: yes, masses of “wasted” water but it can’t be captured and diverted like the Burdekin.
Understand Charlie?
@ Huge Charlie, Yes from memory there was a tunnel, and the catchment was, necessarilly far up the range. Apparently the professionals involved had to study for four years and have have at least two full years of direct experience before being allowed to make the study but any single-issue conservationist extremist with a bug up their arse trumps all their possible efforts.
Sorry to be so otherworldly.
Saw in that other world a documentary about “building a planet”. At one stage small sea creatures evolved which captured solar energy, created skeltons that also captured carbon di-oxide and were fed partly by silica fed into streams from newly evolved plants called grasses.
When these creatures eventually die, according to a New Scientist article, they form “Marine Snow”
which falls to the bottom of the ocean and sequesters said Carbon.
Anyone trying to use a mineral feeding techniques to grow such creaures in the open ocean deserts and gain carbon credits (and save the planet) can forget it because single-issue conservation extremists who think that everything that humanity touches turns to shit, destroyed the feasibilty studies te years ago by threatening those involved with negative publicity.
Now they wouldn’t do that now would they Hugh (Charlie) McColl. Not being extreme, arrrogant and totalitarian eh? Congrats on using your real name.
Re Asian food-bowl have any of these people ever flown across the heart of Thailand and seen one of the Asian food-bowls? The Thais are not only self sufficient in their basic supplies but are also major exporters.
There is no shortage of food in Asia. Historically, food shortages are directly associated with disruption causes by wars or ‘reorganization’ stemming from grand schemes.
Gracious and informative as ever, Frank Campbell.
OK, Frank. I’m looking at the map. I can see the Burdekin Falls Dam - I’ve been there, it’s in my regional locale. That dam is somewhere below 200m elevation. By my casual rough measurement the distance from the dam to the nearest high point of the Great Dividing Range - just short of Lake Buchanan - is at least 150kms. I don’t know the elevation there but it is above 200m - so uphill from the Burdekin dam.
So, back to you. You illustrate on a map how gravity can carry water from east of the Divide (at some point where a dam can capture adequate water to make a system viable) to some point in the west or south that is not hundreds of kilometres away. I think you’re just guessing. Even the Belyando River, in the Burdekin catchment above the dam (Lake Dalrymple), would require enormous lengths of tunnel - but maybe you are saying that the length of tunnel is irrelevant.
Sorry Frank, I meant Michael James. Ho hum.
Gillard is a firm believer in indefinite population and economic growth on an Australia with infinite resources. But why didn’t she say that honestly in 2010?
The Israelis did it and so can we. Bob Katter is sensible on many things. Barnaby is a dill.
HUGH (CHARLIE) MCCOLL
I suppose as a scientist I should embrace your scepticism but somehow I think you too are just clutching at arbitrary and shaky facts and being unfathomably negative. I cannot confirm the precise elevation on any map I have access to: Lake Dalrymple appears to be in the 200 to 500 m bracket (it strikes me that it absolutely has to be at least 100m above the immediately surrounding area (downstream of dam and Suttor/Bleyando rivers) marked as <200m.
In any case, as I mentioned in my post, I did not rule out whether a dam at higher level than existing Burdekin Falls Dam (which I presume did not exist in Bradfield's day) might be required. Of course his scheme involved successive transfers from the Tully river into the Herbert river, into the Burdekin. Not sure if that is really required if one was primarily interested in augmenting (drought proofing) the Darling. (He was interested in transferring as much water as possible into Lake Eyre.)
I think your "150 kms" of pipe is ridiculous. I recall that the strength of his plan was that it relied upon gravity but you appear to be directly disbelieving Bradfield an engineer who obviously knew his physical science (as I said, what he did get wrong, because it was outside his or anyone-at-that-time expertise, was the incorrect assumption that all this water would create precipitation; it is now thought highly unlikely). Further, I would point out that the California Aqueduct megaproject has diversions, tunnels and pumped water that make the Bradfield project look like a walk in the park. The biggest tunnel is 80 km and as I descibed earlier at one point they pump water to 1800 m! (and you are quibbling over a (dubious) 100 m or so). His scheme also had provision for generating 400MW of hydro power (which would be additional to the existing Burdekin Falls station) so some green power could be produced locally for any pump-priming if required (there seems no reason why a siphon system could not be employed; not that was not practical for the Calif Aqueduct or they would have done it).
………….
OK, I am not unreservedly advocating the Bradfield scheme — though I do in principle believe it feasible. I am hesitant mostly because of unintended consequences on the use of the Darling river agricultural dependencies; ie. I am not confident they wouldn't abuse the additional water. Spray and flood irrigation is not sustainable practice in most of Australia and especially in most of the Darling basin — whatever happens we need to be using water in the most clever and conservative manner (Israeli style). However, looking at the political difficulty of getting any extra enviro-water for the dying river system, I would say it is worth reconsideration.
I would also point out that history shows some pretty amazing pre-technological water projects that transformed dry areas. Perhaps the most notable is the Karez channels that water the Turpan are in China/Xinjiang. They are interconnecting underground channels that bring snow meltwater from the mountains across the desert (these melt waters otherwise just evaporate away). There are over 4,000 km of them and were the basis of Turpan agriculture (mostly famous for raisins and figs; paradoxically the extreme dry winds in this area facilitate natural drying of these fruits) and of course made the northern Silk Route possible (no other water here). It was of course entirely gravity dependent and was built over 2,200 years ago; kind of hard to conceive of the social resources marshalled to do such a project and the confidence that it would work!
And here we are, in a technological age, and we are just a bunch of complacent nay-sayers who wreck our environment. Hugh, please blow your negativity cloud away from your head.
Burdekin Dam surface elevation is about 150m asl. That’s lower than places in the Lake Eyre catchment like Winton or Longreach. That’s lower than places in the Warrego/Balonne catchment like Cunnamulla and St George. It’s a couple of hundred kilometers straight to the Lake Eyre catchment,and at least 400-500 km to the watershed of the Murray Darling system from Lake Burdekin. A gravity tunnel into either of those catchments would be 600km long in the first case and over 1000km in the second
Ain’t no gravity sending water from Lake Burdekin to those catchments. Pumps,covered contour canals and pipes would be needed for these fabulously costly boondoggles. Money would be far better spent on in-catchment projects using ground water….to produce crops with expensive transport needs.
As for Katter and Joyce,they are just repeating the same speech that every ‘visionary’ country populist ever delivered on the north,water,food and ‘progress’. No matter how thorough a rebuttal of their northern food bowl dream they will return to their populist babbling at every opportunity. The rules are different for those lads.
In the meantime,the Northern Territory got on with doing what was possible with ground water, tree crops,melons and drip irrigation.
HUGH (CHARLIE) MCCOLL
My response (longish) has been moderated again. I don’t want to do that trick that makes it almost illegible. Come back later and read.
Oh, let me make another point with respect to my comparisons with the California Aqueduct megaproject: it is only halfway economically viable because it provides water to the big connurbations, about 18 million people in Southern California. Urban dwellers pay vastly more than farmers can for their water so such projects are not feasible for purely agricultural development (perhaps a lesson learned in the Ord?).
OK, considering that moderation is unlikely tonight, I will try breaking up my long comment:
Part 1:
I suppose as a scientist I should embrace your scepticism but somehow I think you too are just clutching at arbitrary and shaky facts and being unfathomably negative. I cannot confirm the precise elevation on any map I have access to: Lake Dalrymple appears to be in the 200 to 500 m bracket (it strikes me that it absolutely has to be at least 100m above the immediately surrounding area (downstream of dam and Suttor/Bleyando rivers) marked as <200m.
In any case, as I mentioned in my post, I did not rule out whether a dam at higher level than existing Burdekin Falls Dam (which I presume did not exist in Bradfield's day) might be required. Of course his scheme involved successive transfers from the Tully river into the Herbert river, into the Burdekin. Not sure if that is really required if one was primarily interested in augmenting (drought proofing) the Darling. (He was interested in transferring as much water as possible into Lake Eyre.)
Part 2:
I think your “150 kms” of pipe is ridiculous. I recall that the strength of his plan was that it relied upon gravity but you appear to be directly disbelieving Bradfield an engineer who obviously knew his physical science (as I said, what he did get wrong, because it was outside his or anyone-at-that-time expertise, was the incorrect assumption that all this water would create precipitation; it is now thought highly unlikely). Further, I would point out that the California Aqueduct megaproject has diversions, tunnels and pumped water that make the Bradfield project look like a walk in the park. The biggest tunnel is 80 km and as I descibed earlier at one point they pump water to 1800 m! (and you are quibbling over a (dubious) 100 m or so). His scheme also had provision for generating 400MW of hydro power (which would be additional to the existing Burdekin Falls station) so some green power could be produced locally for any pump-priming if required (there seems no reason why a siphon system could not be employed; not that was not practical for the Calif Aqueduct or they would have done it).
………….
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Part 2: (attempt #2)
I think your “150 kms” of pipe is ridiculous. I recall that the strength of his plan was that it reli ed upon gravity but you appear to be directly disbeli eving Bradfield an engineer who obviously knew his physical science (as I said, what he did get wrong, because it was outside his or anyone-at-that-time expertise, was the incorrect assumption that all this water would create precipitation; it is now thought highly unli kely). Further, I would point out that the California Aqueduct megaproject has di versions, tunnels and pumped water that make the Bradfield project look like a walk in the park. The biggest tunnel is 80 km and as I descibed earlier at one point they pump water to 1800 m! (and you are quibbling over a (dubi ous) 100 m or so). His scheme also had provision for generating 400MW of hydro power (which would be additional to the existing Burdekin Falls station) so some green power could be produced locally for any pump-priming if required (there seems no reason why a siphon system could not be employed; not that was not practical for the Calif Aqueduct or they would have done it).
Part 3.
………….
OK, I am not unreservedly advocating the Bradfield scheme — though I do in principle believe it feasible. I am hesitant mostly because of unintended consequences on the use of the Darling river agricultural dependencies; ie. I am not confident they wouldn’t abuse the additional water. Spray and flood irrigation is not sustainable practice in most of Australia and especially in most of the Darling basin — whatever happens we need to be using water in the most clever and conservative manner (Israeli style). However, looking at the political difficulty of getting any extra enviro-water for the dying river system, I would say it is worth reconsideration.
I would also point out that history shows some pretty amazing pre-technological water projects that transformed dry areas. Perhaps the most notable is the Karez channels that water the Turpan are in China/Xinjiang. They are interconnecting underground channels that bring snow meltwater from the mountains across the desert (these melt waters otherwise just evaporate away). There are over 4,000 km of them and were the basis of Turpan agriculture (mostly famous for raisins and figs; paradoxically the extreme dry winds in this area facilitate natural drying of these fruits) and of course made the northern Silk Route possible (no other water here). It was of course entirely gravity dependent and was built over 2,200 years ago; kind of hard to conceive of the social resources marshalled to do such a project and the confidence that it would work!
And here we are, in a technological age, and we are just a bunch of complacent nay-sayers who wreck our environment. Hugh, please blow your negativity cloud away from your head.
Incidentally, the reason why Queensland’s northern coastal rivers get water-obsessives in parched Australia so excited from time to time is the sheer un-Australian scale involved.
The Burdekin has a median annual outflow of 7,500 GL (GigaLitres; remember a Sydharb is taken as 500GL though modern calcs show Sydney harbour to hold about 562 GL). The Burdekin is of special note because it is very long as it runs mostly parallel to the coast, 700 km, and has the large storage of Lake Dalrymple (and feasibly further possibility of dams/storage upstream), its source is at 1200m elevation.
The Fitzroy is 8,000 GL. The total of these rivers is 73,000 GL, an unimaginable quantity of clean fresh water, most of which is barely touched before it flows to the sea.
For comparison the proposed environmental flow in the latest MDB scheme to “save” the river, is about 3,000 GL, approximately 4% of those Qld rivers.
I hold considerable doubts about those fantasy Top End schemes (storage, pumped distribution, poor soils perhaps made worse by irrigation over time, other local reason for crop failures including pests etc) but a version of the Bradfield scheme sensibly built and managed looks like a good piece of nation building to me.
Sorry Professor, you haven’t answered the first question. As I stated, the Burdekin Falls Dam is just below the 200m contour line, about 120 kms inland (SW) of Bowen. The top of the Great Dividing Range is a further 150 kms inland and the land in that area is more or less all above the 200m contour. So get out your map and calculate how long the tunnel will have to be before the outlet is below 200m or alternatively locate the place in the upper Burdekin catchment where a dam would be sufficiently large and sufficiently high elevation to gravity feed to the west and south. When you have located the position, let me know the length of the tunnel. You are the expert, I just can’t see the solution without pumps. I’m pretty sure Bradfield (and Katter) had pumps in mind but you have a different view. OK, serve it up.
According to Wikipedia the surface elevation of the Burdekin Dam is 154m. None of central western Queensland out to Longreach is below 200m. Gravity?
Next week the Government is set to announce plans for a nuclear aeroplane
Leaving aside the village idiot (Barnyard) and the mad (Katter)…
1) What the hell are the mandarins in DAFF on (and where can I get some)? What do these clowns think “monsoonal” means? Have these pillocks never heard of ENSO? Someone needs to drag these tools to a spot north of the Flinders Hwy and leave them there for a decade, then see what “adjustments” to their barking “plan” they come up with. Idiots.
2) Memo to the Dept of Ar$ehats Flummery and F — -wits: ring the receptionist at CSIRO (they’re in the phone book… they’re even in Canberra) and ask her if she’s ever heard of something called “climate change”.
WTF does the Village Idiot mean by:
“The environment is absolutely intricate in considerations,”??
Has he finally cottoned on how “intricate” the effects on local and regional ecology of large dams and irrigation systems are (less likely than the Lotto ticket I haven’t bought this week winning), or is he simply illiterate?
I think Mr Malaprop meant “intrinsic”,Fractious….but who can be certain?
Professor James,
Amongst your endless raving (back about 8.13pm) was another guess about the potential for your perpetual motion water transfer scheme to generate hydro electricity…… “which would be additional to the existing Burdekin Falls station”. Not sure if you are reading Bradfield or Katter but the Burdekin Falls Dam does not have a “station” and does not produce electricity. And none of its water runs uphill, believe it or not. Remember, Queensland is not only a state it is a condition. Do you actually have a map or are you reading a prescription?
Maybe Bob Katters dreaming, but I think he has his heart in the right place. He wants Australia to be developed by locals. That’s good policy.
Who knows how much of Australia is already in foreign hands? Yes a government commitee is trying to work this out. Maybe the media will not want to expose the truth.
How many people are aware of what John Howard did during his first term?
To ‘water down’ the Native Title Act John Howards’ Liberal/National government came up with a sneaky approach.
They converted vast amounts of Leasehold land into Freehold land.
This, in my opinion, was done so that Aboriginals could not make a claim, as land rights claims can only be made on Crown land and unused Leasehold land, but never Freehold land.
They sold this Leasehold land off at ridiculously low value. And the biggest benificiaries were the Japanese, American and English cattle station owners, who had large Leasehold land agreements.
A royal commision needs to look into this traitor.
Andrew, you definitely are a real one. John Howard cannot have converted “…vast amounts of Leasehold land into Freehold land…”, because the federal government does not control land title, the states do. So ‘THEY’ (presumably Howard and his lackeys) cannot possibly have “… sold this Leasehold land off at ridiculously low value.”
Hugh- I do remember reading an article in one of the broadsheet newspapers (SMH or Age probably) by a respected journalist many years ago about this topic. It was passed through just before the last sitting of parliament before the Cristmas break. Must be 20 years ago. Maybe another poster can shed some light on this as I would like to locate the story.
Well, Hugh Charlie, I guess we know we are in Queensland. So I totally cede to your wisdom — against engineer Bradfield who happened to build the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Story bridge, quite a few dams and most of the Sydney Metro system (barely touched since his day, and of course they didn’t implement most of his plan which would have given our premier city a world-class PT system). And yes the current Burdekin Falls dam is only 157m which of course just makes it utterly impossible to conceive of overcoming the veritable Himalayan barrier of perhaps as much as another 50m (though the Suttor and Bilyando rivers appear to be in valleys below the 200m isoline). Oh, and actually the planners allowed for the potential to increase its height for increased storage/flood control. Forget that the Californian Aqueduct manages barriers of thousands of metres and traverses almost a 1000 km north to south, and has a 80 km tunnel and much longer aqueducts etc etc. No, it is just beyond us hillbillies.
I agree it was just a bloody miracle (and on your terms a ghastly mistake of biblical proportions) the Snowy scheme was ever built, what with its 140 km of tunnels and pipes and 80 km of aqueducts such that even the Americans (you know, who built the first modern concrete dam in 1931, Hoover Dam a mere 6 times the height of Burdekin) judged it one of the seven engineering marvels of the world. I know we left it very late (1970s) to properly finish sewering our main cities and obviously that was a ridiculous mistake; what was wrong with outside dunnies I ask you?
Charlie have you ever got out of your banana plantation (or even its mindset) and seen the world? (Or of course, done it with open eyes/mind.) Most of the developed world actually make plans for their futures which goes a bit beyond football stadia and roads for their SUVs. I have no idea what people like you want of our country. You apparently believe that status quo ante is the safest bet. Let’s just keep taking more and more of the Darling river water for flood irrigation of cotton and rice in the driest country in the world — oops, forgot, we’ve already taken more than the (dying) river can provide and we are still arguing about taking “more” or giving the environment even less.
You must have voted for Newman which is exactly what you Queenslanders deserve.
Andrew, 20 years ago (1992) would have been the Hawke Labor government. Not even then was the federal government able to “sell leasehold land” - since the federal government doesn’t own any leasehold land. John Howard didn’t come along until 1996. If you want someone else to help you locate the story you’ll have to actually work out what the story is. This story here is about the potential for a northern “food bowl” watered by diverting coastal rivers inland and disciplining the vast semi-arid landscape with some good old man-muscle and bulldozer power. It’s called LaLa Land and apparently there’s golden acres of crops and trees and pretty sheeps and gay Marlboro Men in tight shorts and big hats. The only person who has been there and come back alive is Bob Katter. His written account is still being translated.
Hugh, OK it must have been around 15 years ago, and I will email the SMH and they may be able to direct me to the article. I am not making this up. Although this is a bit off topic I was responding to MickJ’s earlier post.
On the topic you never know it might be possible to reclaim land. It almost certainly will happen in the future if the population keeps increasing.
Hugh, you may wish to do a fact check or two there. Who does own land that is leased (thus becoming leasehold). Do the states own all the leased crown land in Australia? Which state owns the leases in the NT and the ACT and what does all that mean for Commonwealth crown land? As for conversion from lease to free hold, tell me again why that can’t be done. All that aside I think Bob Gosford has the last word on out oft proposed northern food bowl.
SBH, do your own fact check.
well you’re the one saying the states own ALL the land - so that’s wrong init Hugh.
And the commonwealth owns substantial tracts of land that is leased (therefore ‘leasehold’) like all the ACT and Jervis bay so that’s wrong init?
And you may recall the buhaha by people who leased land when they thought that the land would be seized by the commonwealth and hand to traditional owners? That fear was completely without foundation but the commonwealth can quite legally take leases away should it wish.
Shall we just keep fact checking or do you want to calm down and have a reasonable discussion?
SBH, the story is about a “food bowl” in northern Australia. A specific referred to in the article is a federal government plan to “….. initially invest $6.8 million in a CSIRO study to explore surface storage options in the Flinders and Gilbert River catchments, and will look at a smaller, mosaic irrigation approach rather than large, centralised dams.” These rivers are in north Queensland - you know, a state in north eastern Australia. Apart from a couple of parcels of Commonwealth owned land (military establishments for example) the rest of Queensland is controlled exclusively by the Government of Queensland. Much of the state is freehold land but a large portion of rural Queensland is actually Unallocated State Land (formerly known as Vacant Crown Land) and much of that land is leased to various landholders - graziers, farmers (including irrigators), miners, tourist operators, port operators etc. Some of those landholders are corporations (local and foreign) which means they could have shareholders from anywhere in the world including state-owned corporations from, say, the Middle East or China.
The Commonwealth cannot sell land in Queensland because (apart from a couple of trivial exceptions) it does not own land (leasehold or otherwise) in Queensland.
If you think the ACT or Jervis Bay may be an exception then go ahead and investigate the facts - I think it’s irrelevant in this discussion. The Northern Territory is a different question but if you think the Commonwealth can sell NT land to foreigners then take a look at Muckatee Station and go from there. You are wasting your own valuable time.
So that’s a big no to the calm down and have a reasonable discussion then Hugh?
I note that when you move from broad absolutist statements like “Not even then was the federal government able to “sell leasehold land” - since the federal government doesn’t own any leasehold land.” to add qualifications absent from your original assertion that you meant to refer to Queensland you make more sense.
Muckaty station (you’ll no doubt object to my spelling so let’s just call it ‘Warlmanpa’ by which name it’s been known for a lot longer) is not being sold to foreigners, nor is it under the ownership or control of the Commonwealth as its Aboriginal Freehold Land under the Aboriginal Land Rights (NT) Act and it’s status has change several times in the last 200 years but what’s relevance or detail or fact got to do with it eh?
Actually, SBH, I’m interested in the discussion of irrigated agriculture development in western Queensland - exactly where this conceptual project (of Katter et al) is located. Michael R. James wanted to examine the source of the diverted water and seemed to get stuck with some geographical and engineering matters he hadn’t properly considered. A real Andrew came along with a problem he saw as a conspiracy of the (Howard federal) government converting “…vast amounts of Leasehold land into Freehold land.” He couldn’t actually point to a single example of such an occurrence, in fact he wasn’t sure if he’d even read about it properly. I can’t find any Commonwealth owned leasehold land in Australia’s north that the Commonwealth is in a position to “freehold” let alone flog off to foreigners. And just because land is ‘leased’ doesn’t mean it is leasehold land. You’ve heard of Torrens Title? That land (in the ACT for example) is not strictly speaking ‘leasehold’ land and I don’t think it can be freeholded in the way that Andrew is thinking. In any case, this discussion is not about the ACT or Jervis Bay. In fact it isn’t about leased land vs freehold land.