Dr Bradfield was a Qld engineer well known in Sydney with the Harbour bridge being one of his projects.

Shorten will let the UN scam us out of $500 million for the bloated fat cats in the UN pushing their climate change religion, we would be better off spending this money on this Bradfield project.


Quote:

Beat the drought: build Bradfield THERE are renewed calls for the Bradfield Scheme to be developed as a way for Australia to mitigate future droughts and to help meet its future obligations as a food supplier to the world. The massive agricultural scheme first proposed in 1938 aims to irrigate a staggering 1000 million hectares of land across Queensland and South Australia. The calls follow the Queensland Government's announcement that it would develop a memorandum of understanding (MOU) as "a transparent and comprehensive assessment pathway" for the proposed $1.98 billion Etheridge Integrated Agriculture Project in the Gilbert River catchment near Georgetown. The Integrated Food and Energy Development (IFED) project is expected to include the development of sugar and guar industries in addition to cattle, meat processing and aquaculture over 50,000 hectares. The much larger Bradfield scheme was envisaged by Dr John Bradfield, a Queensland-born civil engineer, who also designed the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Brisbane's Story Bridge. The scheme would divert water from the Tully, the Herbert and the Burdekin Rivers, across the Great Dividing Range into the Flinders and then the Thomson River. The water would flow to eventually fill Lake Eyre. Townsville based industry identity Tim McHugh, from livestock and property agency Hogan and McHugh, said Australia should revisit the long planned Bradfield Scheme as a way of positioning Australia as a major, and more importantly, reliable food supplier regardless of seasonal extremes. "We are now in the worst drought I think that Australia has ever experienced, certainly in the lifetimes of the people who would directly benefit from Bradfield being developed," Mr McHugh said. "Bradfield remains the greatest agricultural project Australia could ever hope for and would impact across all of agriculture and the economies of the regions. "The economic activity for all of Australia would be fantastic. It would allow the use and further development of existing infrastructure and result in new infrastructure and we really would be far better placed to be a food supplier to the world." Although officially abandoned in 1947 because of discrepancies in both claimed water flows and topography, the still popular Bradfield Scheme is regularly promoted. Advocates include Member for Kennedy, Bob Katter, and former Queensland Premier Peter Beattie, who proposed a reduced scale version of the scheme. Under the Etheridge Integrated Agriculture Project water would be diverted from the Einasleigh and Etheridge rivers into two artificial off-stream lakes and channelled to pumping stations which supply irrigation. The project is expected to create more than 1700 jobs during construction and more than 1000 jobs during operation. Substantial numbers of those jobs are expected to be made available to local Indigenous people. https://www.queenslandcountrylife.com.au/story/3295673/beat-the-drought-build-bradfield/?fbclid=IwAR1KUQWnDnzbNoW32gCRfDfRjmfO-gmJUlcgZf1zp7o8sEOKUTLgEFtRsLM

Quote:

Although officially abandoned in 1947 because of discrepancies in both claimed water flows and topography,

"Quite frankly it is the latest version of a pretty mad cap plan to divert water, build dams and a project that is destined to never happen, because the costs and environmental impacts are astronomical," he said.

"The science is pretty clear that northern Australia is really not suited to irrigated agriculture on the scale proponents talk about.

"Evaporation rates in dams are much higher in the north and the rivers do not flow all year round like they do in southern Australia."

Queensland's Environment Minister, Stephen Miles, said farmers would not be able to afford the cost of water under the Bradfield Scheme.

"What we suspect with a scheme of this scale is that the water would end up being too expensive for farmers and other land users would miss out on water that would otherwise flow to them," he said.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2016-12-19/qld-conservationists-criticise-one-nations-bradfield-plan/8132284

We already have the ord river / lake argyle scheme in northern WA and that has turned into a huge white elephant

Yes - but its a start!
It's better than nothing - which is what we've seen for decades.

Sure, many ideas might not cut it, but at least the 'Brainstorming' kick starts a higher possibility of better answers coming along.

The people of Wilcannia, on the news last night - asking why their 'drought' stricken region can't have all that flood waters transferred down to them?

Why Australia can't develop a 'Green Heart'?
I mean - all the Scientists and intellectual people all know how to destroy this planet via Pollution, Warfare, Over-Population and Over-Indulgence.
Surely making it a better world, isn't too hard - no?  ::)

Oh - the cost of money!  ::)  :P
I saw just a few Excavators dig a 25 wide (top), 18m wide (bottom), 10m deep and 1km section of CANAL out in the Colleambally region in just 3 weeks.
Gee - going by Australia's standards, I'm sure that cost MILLIONS OF DOLLARS  ::) ::) ::) <sarcasm>

...and if it did. Then something is severely wrong with this country!  :o

Other Nations can do it - but Australia can't do anything for itself. But hey, it can buy 2nd rate jet fighters as hand-me-downs from other nations for mega-millions!! :P

We need to get the massive lost water in the tropics down South.

We're not short of water - just short of brains.

Bobby. wrote on Feb 7^th, 2019 at 9:44pm:

We need to get the massive lost water in the tropics down South. We're not short of water - just short of brains.

Very well said Bobby.
You're right - it floods a lot in some parts, while droughts a lot in MOST PARTS.
It's no different to transferring rain from roof, down pipes and into tanks.
It's no different to what has been done in the Riverina (which they estimate to replicate as $10billion).
But 'major' waterways (like Super-Highways) would be more beneficial like 'trunks' - with the branch 'canals/pipes' coming later, to spread out from them.

Maybe they  want people to carry 'buckets' from Townsville to Wilcannia?  :-?

USA wants to build a WALL.

And yet here we are and we can't even build one 'Canal' from North (Monsoon floods) to South (droughts).  ::)

The water could be as cheap or expensive as you want it to be.

It would give us food security for 200 years so if the repayments we're spread over a long time the water would be cheap.

It would also open up population growth (now sustainable) in the inland areas and alleviate the over-load of everyone on the Coast (cover coastlines with high-rises).

They already have just 'one pipeline' of freshwater from Port Pirie to Port Augusta to Port Lincoln and it seems to 'support' the entire Eyre Peninsula.

I'd like to paddle my SUP down it, or maybe hitch a ride on a riverboat queen.

Gordon wrote on Feb 7^th, 2019 at 10:29pm:

I'd like to paddle my SUP down it, or maybe hitch a ride on a riverboat queen.

Imagine: An entire continent much like Venice  ;)