I've heard some people make comments on Australia and this is easily one of the worst. The Ord River Scheme has been an extraordinary success. Yeah it had failures with cotton but then cotton has failed in so many places that its almost considered an economic suicide crop. Go ask the Russians about the Aral Sea on that one. Its staggering just how badly some people put out crap on RU-vid. You need to do more than just look up Wikipedia and take what's there without any further research. There's an idiotic claim there about only 260 jobs, which is total BS because it only includes jobs on the farms. It doesn't include the sorting, packaging and export related jobs. I know how big that business is because my brother used to work for VISY one of the main suppliers into the packaging. Also your claims on particular crops which is just plain wrong doesn't include the huge cash crops of melons, tomatoes and other vegetables that are exported to Asia. I know about those because one of my previous neighbors was a seed merchant whose main business was in the Ord River Scheme. He once showed me a bag of tomato seed that cost more per kilogram than cocaine. If you actually knew anything about Australia its our other major water scheme "The Murray-Darling" which is one of the worst cases of government water resource mismanagement anywhere on the planet. Its a national embarrassment ad disgrace.
The Japanese did actually invade the northern Territory during WW2. There was one boat who sent a landing party thay found it inhospitable and there was nothing to wage war on so they left after a week or so.
I served as U.S. Vice-consul in Perth in the early 1960s. The Ord River Scheme was a constant topic of conversation. As I recall, the Liberal state government professed, at least for public consumption, to be keen on the project, and Bruce Davidson was a dirty word with them. On the other hand, persons that I knew who were well acquainted with conditions in the Kimberleys scoffed: poor soils, birds that would feast on rice and other projected crops, bugs, labor scarcity, remoteness, high production costs and on and on would doom Ord River. Unkind souls called it a boondoggle. High flown Boosterism was a recurrent theme in Western Australia, and the state had already seen developments like the ill fated Group Settlement dairying scheme in the state's southwest and the ongoing Chase project near Esperance not pan out. I could well understand the skepticism. I'm surprised that it's still being pushed.
The topic of "northern agricultural development" still comes up every few years, as some politician, government or opposition floats the idea like it just occurred to them. It's basically just a way of trying to win votes in Western Australia, Queensland, and the Northern Territory, by throwing around numbers in the billions, and playing up the "strategic importance" angle to garner the favour of armchair geo-political enthusiasts.
I tend to think that the government is going about it completely the wrong way. They have this concept that development equates to the growing of rice and sugarcane. Theres nothing stopping them from putting roads through the desert, and then putting factories and houses, and a pipeline with water fed from floodwaters from the eastern states. We already grow enough food to feed 95 million people now, why are we so worried about growing more?
I don't know why they built schools there. They can't even get the aborigines to stop sleeping in the road or sniffing gas. With an average eye cue (to avoid autodelete) of 68, they simply will not benefit from formal schooling and are really only suitable for menial labor.
You do realise that subs are useless in modern warfare. They wouldn't even get in missle range of a Chinese warship before being found and destroyed by depth charge helicopter. Seriously, research subs.
@@teagueman100 subs aren't useless. They're stealth platforms more than for anti-ship. For example, nuclear weapons that are fast and can't be hit in an early strike.
@@joshuacheung6518 Yeah so not good for defense at all. Subs wouldn't be able to stop the Chinese fleet if it came to Australia. The subs could only launch a retaliatory nuke strike back at China after China has nuked all our cities and its navy is sailing here. Our subs would have to sail all the way to China because sub nuke missiles are short range. Even If the subs were already around China they don't carry enough nukes to defeat China. So basically the subs are good at spite. They cant be a nuclear deterrent because you require the same nuber of nukes as the enemy to create a stalemate. Coldwar style. Australia could not win a nuke war against china with subs either. Shouldnt we be focusing on defending our waters from naval attack with ships rather than trying to enter into a nuclear arms race we couldnt win. Nuclear warfare is dead nobody wants to enter it. Traditional warfare is back. We need aircraft carriers and destroyers we need to defend our waters.
Yup. It really sounds like they needed to lay out the rail network first, then build the dams. The rail network should have been short to keep costs down, concentrating on land nearest the ports, which would subsequently be irrigated.
I was thinking the same. Trucking things in and out is one thing but a rail is definitely the way to go. It is more cost effective. Guess the Australian politicians hasn't figure that out yet. With all the money sank into this project. They could have a build a rail line already. 😁
@@indyrock8148 China itself uses foreign direct investment (From America) to build up its massive new Navy (targeting America). Australia does the the exact same with Chinese Investment. Go figure. Its how the world really works, both sides hedge and balance.
An accurate analysis and, once again, I am reminded of a quote from a text book edited, I think, by Davidson that I read at university in the 1970s … “the landscape of Australia is littered with white elephants: monuments to governments past and present.”
Actually its bullshit. Ord river's early days were a bust because they went for cotton, which is easily one of the most damaging crops on the planet. Ask the Russians about the Aral Sea. But this is all based on old information. In recent decades they switched towards vegetables and melons to supply demand in Asia and that stuff has been incredibly profitable. I know that because one of my previous neighbors was a seed merchant who did business in the Ord. Seedless water melons and tomatoes make huge money out of the ord. Also my brother used to work for VISY ad they have a huge division in Darwin selling packaging into that market.
@@tonywilson4713 I agree that the Ord River Coop has done pretty well and that a few seed companies have done well producing their maize, sorghum and other hybrid seed there out of season. And, yes, rock melons, seedless water melons and a few vegetable crops have also done well BUT the areas producing those crops and the water consumption are a fraction of the total developed irrigation capacity and will never repay the money ploughed into its development over the last 65 years. In my 40 year career in agriculture I have seen too much boom/bust cropping in the Ord - cotton, rice in the 70s and early 80s and sugarcane from the mid 1990s to 2007 - each with significant investments in infrastructure ultimately abandoned. As recently as 2016 AgricWA was talking up sugarcane yet again. I have discussed its future with too many respected agricultural economists to have any faith that Australia will ever see a return on investment. And that is without considering the most recent exotic pest incursion in the discovery of fall armyworm in the Ord last autumn ....
@@geoffmesser5091 fair comments. The crop I have concern about is cotton. There's the new cotton which is one of the greatest achievements in ag science ever. It would have been great if they could have reduced the water needed, or the chemicals needed or improved the fiber quality. Doing 1 of those would have been great *but they did all 3.* The problem is that its now incredibly profitable which is what has driven the madness in the Murray-Darling. I'm an engineer and this is part of my argument about our long term planning. We don't think long term in our engineering which includes our infrastructure (like Ord). Everything is about the next quarter or next season. As a nation we need to start being a lot smarter in every industry we have. I actually started in aerospace and after the new Space Agency started their 1st road map had as its first item - advanced space based water management *but delivered in the mid 2030s.* So I put forward a proposal to move on it now and try and deliver that in 3-5 years. You should have seen the panic I created. I said to the ASA - "these are your words lets not wait until somebody else hands it too us lets just get on with it." And they freaked out. Feedback form the Farmers Fed was positive but the ASA stomped on me. My mothers family are farmers so I have been around farming and ag since I was born. From the day it started Landline was compulsory viewing in my family. Before that Big Country.
I mean, overall 1bn usd is not a lot to make a region farmable. and as a bonus the mangoes are not coming from recently cleared rainforest. But that externality doesn't get factored into the price.
@@redhammer92 1B US is about 750 Million AUD. Still a lot of money, but chicken feed for a major project. The dam is still useful for drinking water for the region, and feeding cattle which is the biggest earner. Australia just spent 60 Billion on fibre internet. They spent 3.5B on a desalination plant in Victoria, and Adelaide is building one for 2 B. So 1 Billion for a dam and infrastructure in the middle of nowhere sounds pretty cheap to me.
You say sandalwood is really long term but in terms of forestry it isn't really. The turn around on pine can be about 80 years and for oak it's 200.. ;)
Once pine plantations have been harvested or burnt down by fires , the remnants of the soil is poor quality left remaining with millions of tree stumps . This is such a *. 1 -. Ditch , no thought consideration that the soil must first be re vitalized for anything else to grow . Tell us what they have rejuvenated down South Australia - old Kypo- Forest ?
@@pennyoflaherty1345 Sorry Penny, but your wrong. In Western Australia and in particular our South West pine plantation shave been vigorously growing now for many years. The plantations have a life span of around 30 years, then get cut down, cleared, burn the rubbish and immediately afterwards, a new crop is planted. Pending on the rain fall, they grow very quickly. The pine trees are the Pinus Radiata.
I'm guessing the presenter is young and has yet to understand the concept of time. I'm fifteen years into a twenty year project and it feels like no time has passed at all.
Good analysis. From a farming perspective and I have run cattle in Victoria and NSW the Ord is like stepping on Mars or perhaps Mercury. Sure the lake is vast. But the poverty of that rocky land that borders on the desert is hard to appreciate without going there. The next elephant of course is the Dry. Basically there are two seasons. The wet and the dry. The Dry however as you progress through winter into a non existent spring is a period when temperatures just get hotter and hotter. And then eventually you get the wet when it floods. Accept up there the wet may strong, weak or barely happen at all. Cattle farming is more resilient because if the season is bad you can always move the Mob. Kidman knew this. But you can't move plants. And plants need humidity. Lake Argyll despite its vast size is basically a huge warm puddle. And you would think by now the forshores would be growing forests... But it's still largely this hard rocky country. It's very hard country. It is truely astonishing what has been achieved.
I love your matter-of-fact presentation with not an ounce of party politics mixed in. You describe the situation. Now what to do, that's somebody else's job. Describing the process, it will be you again. Good journalism, thank you.
There are “no large towns in Australia north of the Tropic of Capricorn except for Darwin well” - true if you ignore Rockhampton (+80,000), Townsville (195,000) , Cairns (156,000).
@@macrick you’re the joke, there’s smaller cities in Europe and the US and they’re still called cities. A city is generally a town with more than 100,00 people so yes, Adelaide having 10x that many people, makes it a city 💀
I have lived in Western Australia before. I think a few things were missing here. Kununurra Is pronounced with the start being more like cunt without a t (really) and mot like koohn… For the economic analysis note that the North of Western Australia basically caught the Dutch disease (as in the economics term, not a literal disease) and the wage levels in the area are bordering on unbelievable. People mostly don’t want to live there as it is remote, few facilities, expensive and uncomfortable. This makes the wage costs even worse.
Having lived and worked in Kununurra the presenters pronunciation of Kununurra makes me doubt he’s actually been there; lots more going on there than Agriculture, mining and tourism being two.
Rail buffs have always argued that the Ord simply needs a rail network from port to the far corners of the major areas and a few medium manufacturing systems in the town and port. I.E. use the bagasse etc. Bill Mollison pointed out that his permaculture practitioners in the area have no pest problems. They made extensive use of pest predator support systems and crop plantings that maximized soil nutrient retention. The governments trying of paddy rice has not been successful. They seem to always be trying to do it in a new experimental way (aerial seeding)and are not growing the rice strains that grow in Indonesia. Indonesia and New Guinea have the same pests yet not the same problems. In some cases the pest birds fly in from Indonesian farms.
Indian sandalwood is in huge demand . Even a small log measuring 3 to 4 inches runs into several hundred dollars. It is important for religious usage . It has application in Ayurvedic medicines. Indian sandalwood forest area is shrinking rapidly but the people who want to use sandalwood is rising exponentially. Australia will benefit from their sandalwood project.
I remembered reading somewhere (i think its IRRI journal) that the high mineral content (Fe,Na,K) in the NT led to an increase in soil salinity, which hinder rice cultivation. So, even if the region is supplied with water, continuous agricultural activity in the area will only make the soil worse over time.
@@antipropo461 Absolutely spot on, the farmers at the time said the birds would blacken the skies strip the crop and then could not fly off. The gas guns and shotguns were laughed at by the departing geese and ducks when they could finally taxii and take off.
At least in Australia they have something to show for the money, even if it is less than expected. Here in South Africa money goes into projects and way to often there is nothing to show for it and those accountable get away with it, scot-free!
Utopia: P1: "So why can't we have high speed rail?" P2: "Because the feasibility studies say it's unfeasible" P1: "Exactly! If we just got rid of these studies we could just do it"
HSR wasnt feasible either for china when avg chinese couldnt afford it so they added subsidies and agve discounts a decade ago Now those HSR make profit Feasibility is copium for being lazy arse
@@metagde6402 No doubt ignoring feasibility studies pays off in some cases but results in huge losses in other cases. How could you tell the difference? Have another feasibility study of course!
14/10/2121 Thank you, I have had the privilege at wandering through this region, since the late 1960's. As a tourist, employee of Govt and Army Reservist where I worked with Indigenous soldiers from communities across the top of Australia. There are enormous potentials across the top end of Australia and I deplore the idea that such development can be sold/leased to foreign entities; particularly CCP based ones. Basically, I think that we tend to be over governed by too many Govts and believe that it is way past time to restructure our governance and have one Federal idea providing the law of Australia, developing regions and infrastructure, with services delivered by local Governments; (EG: why do we have 7 sets of road rules in this country?) As well, it would save heaps, with so many less bureaucrats!
The Commonwealth of Australia a.k.a. the Federal Government was set up by the State Governments. It only exists because the states wanted it. I doubt the states would agree to just disappear, and anyway Queenslanders would never let go of their state based identity i.e. the chip on their shoulder directed at everyone south of Coolangatta.
Dear @@Pushing_Pixels , not quite correct, the Commonwealth Government exists initially because London wanted one Colony, not six Colonies, and made that quite clear to the existing Colonial States. It was also the result of some British Australians seeing the need to Federate to ward of other European powers, and to better provide for the common defence of the continent.
Very interesting - something that as an Aussie, I wasn't even aware of! What a huge and Audacious concept. I'm guessing that solar will have an impact in the long term...
@@SomeGuysg What's not good about solar? Northern Australia would seem the ideal location, with ready markets in Asia for the juice. Replaces the coal.
Actually its bullshit. Ord river's early days were a bust because they went for cotton, which is easily one of the most damaging crops on the planet. Ask the Russians about the Aral Sea. But this is all based on old information. In recent decades they switched towards vegetables and melons to supply demand in Asia and that stuff has been incredibly profitable. I know that because one of my previous neighbors was a seed merchant who did business in the Ord. Seedless water melons and tomatoes make huge money out of the ord. Also my brother used to work for VISY ad they have a huge division in Darwin selling packaging into that market.
@@DavidOfWhitehills Another one of those people suffering from geographic dyslexia who think the Australia is "close to East Asia". Transporting electricity over large distances is not very economical. There is a single project to connect Singapore to Australia. Incredibly ambitious and expensive. Its main reason is strategical.
@@michaelrenper796 Transporting electricity over large distances IS very economical. Australia to Singapore 3200 kilometres. Transmission loss 10%. Cost? Extrapolating from the cost of the new North Sea Link, about $9 billion US dollars, or 2.6% of Singapore's GDP.
@@donniebunkerboi9975 given how he's already done a video of a failed semiconductor plant in the UK, I'd think its same to assume that could make a video around california's fertile valley
The contrast is in a huge local market and mass cheap labour. The Ord really is a long way from anywhere, 800km to the nearest city, 3000km to the nearest capital. getting workers in and food out is a massive task.
@@mabamabam The problem is the area is not large enough to develop a port to ship the produce to market, let alone build a railroad as there is not enough WATER. Soil is not a problem, all that is required are grazing cows, moved daily, or twice daily in a mob. If you can build soil in Deserts of Mexico, S. Africa at same lattitude with less than 300mm rain a year, you can do it in N. Australia.
I grew up in Katherine - a few hundred klicks to the east of Kunnunura, we pronounced it with an 'uh' sound - like the 'u' in 'but'. The insect swarms, particularly sandflies in the mangrove estuaries, could be pretty ruthless. We often slept under netting when they were thick, and I couldn't imagine camping near a river up there with out having access to multiple types of insect repellent,particularly in the wet season. Growing concentrated amounts of bug food in that area must've been hair tearingly frustrating in the early days.
Maybe ranching is a better use of the land up there. Here in California they basically forced agriculture into the central valley, including stupid sh*t like rice farming, as if the place was a tropical rainforest. What we have now is water shortages and salt water incursion issues. Making the whole world into verdant farmland is a 1800's fantasy.
Farming in a Mediterranean climate (like California) is absolutely possible - but it has to be done at the terms of that climate. It's sheer insanity however to brute-force all the farming done across the entire world by liberally applying the Monsanto-provided mix of planet-killer fertilisers and pesticides onto endless tracts of mono-culture fields.
Similar to the Submarine project with France. After signing for 5 years and millions spent, not a single bolt was fastened and now they want to spend billions more for nuclear subs. Where has all the money gone to???
Part of the problem with the French Submarine contract was the usual series of requested additions and alterations to the initial design proposal, plus the inevitable other amendments that any new design creates. All of this, however, was finally resolved, and the Project was meeting the agreed revised delivery target, as evidence before Senate Estimates Committee. The DoD even sent a letter to France to that effect a day before Morrison cancelled the contract by a public statement without prior reference to France. Morrison topped this off by publicly humiliating France. No wonder the French were angry. And as the contract was cancelled, despite the contractor complying wth the revised agreement, as the DoD letter above indicated. Compensation ( approx $835million) therefore had to be paid, no submarine was delivered, no new submarine will be delivered prior to 2040, and our current submarines will life expire around 2030-2035. Oh, and guess what, nuclear submarines are VERY expensive, and all current nuclear submarine users globally have a domestic nuclear power industry, which is subsidised, and which are used to give submarine nuclear power plant operators access to suitable live nuclear training. Countries with nuclear power plants have the option of acquiring nuclear weapons if they want to, and a number of countries , Pakistan and India come to mind, have already done so. Other countries maintain the nuclear power industry to sustain their nuclear weapons programmes. the Big 5 Permanent UN Security Council members come to mind The British Royal Navy's HMS Dreadnought was commissioned in 1960, and ever since, the British Defence Budget has been beholden to the huge expense that nuclear submarines generate. You have been warned.
It is a brutal place to work with temperatures between 35 and 45 Celsius plus the humidity. Throw in sun, insects, dust and rock hard ground, a day’s work in the open is nearly unbearable. There’s a reason miners get paid big money.
Hi, to say money was wasted is a bit short sighted. We plowed $100billion (?) on nbn connections on houses in Australia, only to create a monopoly based on a technology with a limited lifespan, and is already being superseded. The money spent was well spent and the lessons learned will be put to good use for future developments.
@@justicedemocrat9357 The original ~2008 Kevin Rudd government NBN was to build Fibre To The Premises (FTTP, maximum initial speed 1000mbps) to 93% of residences. The 2013 LNP government switched to a "Multi Technology Mix" which used the inferior "FTTN" (fiber to the node, limited to ~60mbps depending on the cable quality), "FTTC" (fiber to the curb, max 80mbps right now depending on cable quality) and "HFC" (Hybrid Fiber Coaxial, max ~100mbps depending on cable quality). For HFC they bought Telstra's Foxtel cable TV network and Optus's HFC network (for $30 billion if I recall correctly). The limits of FTTN means they have started building out FTTP for certain suburbs after first installing FTTN. Because the FTTN existing network turned out to be too slow. By the way, it's possible to get a free quote from the NBN "Technology Choice Program" website and pay out of pocket to upgrade to FTTP. Fiber optic cabling to the premises is the best internet technology around, and will continue to be for many decades.
@@justicedemocrat9357 150+ down, 50+ up, ping is under 50 ms usually closer to 25 and these numbers should get better as they introduce the direct laser link versions of the satellites
Declaring the efforts to be a failure when compared to the profitability to more profitable land areas seems a bit harsh. In the future fresh water is the problem. It looks like Australia has created a large amount of fresh water as a resource. I would commend those that enriched the value of Australian land.
I don't know much about Australia. According to Economics Explained, Australia is mainly a mining and farming country. That's their main export. It doesn't seem like that region has a high education level either. If not this, what would have been the best way to move forward there? Water is the prerequisite to all sorts of plans. Creating a fresh water supply and hydro dam could be used for manufacturing etc. Aside from relocating these people, it doesn't seem like the government has any more option than to continue building public infrastructure like ports, hospitals, internet and rail etc and hope that private sector follow suit.
Australia is an advanced industrial country and society. It follows that its economy is based on services. If somebody wants to say "Yes, but that's on a base of mining and farming," that would be incorrect. Australia was a service-based economy from the start: penal services.
I agree, a billion and a half Aussie dollars seems like a small investment for foundational infrastructure that could last for a very long time and be used for purposes that aren’t limited to agriculture. The video also ignores the electricity production from argyle lake, about 220 GWh annually, which offsets diesel generators. And although it’s a minor contribution to the economy, there’s some recreational activities/businesses that use the lake. Dams often offer flood control as a benefit as well. That value is often more difficult to calculate, and I’m not sure if flood control is a major benefit of lake argyle specifically. But it seems like it would be worth examining in a video critical of the project, whether the benefit is there, or even if it isn’t.
@@bradk1295 if anything, we seem to like these kinds of investment better. At the very least, it's far better than "disaster relief" not actually relieving anything, or "great barrier Reef" funding when we can do that by simply pivoting away from coal. There's still talk about terraforming northern territory in academic circles today, so chances are, we'll continue with it, one way or another.
Another clever idea that wasn't very smart. The security lays in the the fact that it is desert. Bright sparks in Melbourne team up with not so bright sparks from Perth.
7th largest country and only one million population? Here is it's the biggest problem there but no worries we can fix this problem with AUEUTR agreement in a heartbeat😉😉
7:40. Somebody’s overcharging. 1,000 hectares is only a parcel of land roughly 3KM by 3KM. I struggle to imagine how you could possibly spend $220,000,000 on water and road infrastructure in such a small space. You could criss cross that space with a canal, 2 motorways and three railways and still not spend that much.
Don't they erode the soil though because of their hooves and overgrazing of vegetation which holds the soil together, and also compress the soil so it is harder for plants to grow?
Sounds like there is a need for further infrastructure development if the region is to achieve its potential. At minimum, there needs to be a railroad line to the nearest ports. However, as you said, it's questionable if whatever success the region can achieve is worth the opportunity costs.
Its far more difficult than just simply a road or rail project. I actually spent 9 months up that way on a mine site during the mining boom. It amazed me how little I actually knew about Australia's far north and how the place works and what the conditions are like. Most Australians have no idea what its actually like. The distances and conditions are so radically different to the southern states. You can't just simply build roads and rail up there because of the wet season. I was there through a wet season and its just so different to anything else I'd ever experienced and it included a cyclone. At one point everything was under 30-50cm of water which made the entire place lethally dangerous because of the snakes and crocs. Then there are the current issues with the over use of ground water in other parts of that region. People have been putting in mango plantations and mangoes need water 365 days a year. That can be difficult in a place where it rains for 6 months and then doesn't rain for another 6 months.
HI ASIANOMETRY here's a good one do a search on the weather patterns in the AREA before the dam was filled and after it's a bloody eye opener on climatic change MAN MADE keep the posts coming CHEERS
I lived in Darwin for roughly 6 months and one of the biggest issues with being there was the cost of living due to a lot of mining money in the state. A house in one state would cost double in Darwin. Darwin was originally a military base.
I've been to Kununurra once which is more than you can say. You've pointed out that the originators of the Ord River scheme had little knowledge of what they were doing but nothing seems to have changed with people still putting their two bob's worth in. In case you hadn't noticed we've been tearing out infrastructure in rural Australia like railways over the last 50 years and populations and towns have been in decline. Good luck with whatever pipe dream you have for the region.
I not too long ago worked out there. I saw that they were bulldozing more land, I also saw some decent size property growing cotton. The soil was pretty productive for growing pastures to bale up. But again, this looked like a very hard business to profit from, due to remoteness of the area. The previous seasons were very productive for mango and banana crops. Sadly, labor shortage saw a lot wasted, mostly due to covid and having no cross border seasonal workers. All in all, it's a very beautiful landscape. worth the visit, recommended during the dry season as during the buildup to the wet season temperatures are scorching hot and very very humid. The big river lizards see no body go for a nice cool off in the river that's for sure. ;)
This sounds like where I grew up-the Columbia Basin Project. Starting in the 1930’s to date dams provided irrigation,electrical power production and transportation. This allowed agriculture production to explode. This project will take time but water+land+transportation will equate to agricultural growth beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Forward Australia
Tropical soil is typically not good for agriculture...... Cotton and tropical fruits in direct competition with Asean produces... Arid area, good for solar industry
Tropical soil not good for agriculture? You have obviously never been there to see how well crops grow. Have a look at crops in Brazil, Zimbabwe where world records are set for maize, sugar, cotton grown in the tropics
Australian politicians seem to be incapable of thinking in terms of our long term benefit. Creating a lower tax zone around these northern developmental areas seems the most realistic. I really love the north its so vast and so incredibly ancient. I enjoyed your presentation it was well balanced and informative.
Bottomless money pit (your clickbait descriptors included) is what I call a fisherman's exaggeration. The one accurate statement you made in regard to the money is you totalled it from 1950. For Australia to garner a fresh water supply 45 times the size of Sydney Harbour on the driest continent on earth is a good result even if we didn't grow a single thing for a lousy 1.5 B over 50 years. As for the soil being poor, go and research the early drip irrigation CSIRO scientist did with the Israelis and see what has been done in desert sands over there. The early results ( rice being an example) and failures (if you further research) were all about pests eating the crops and here I mean the winged feathered variety arriving from the near north countries and getting so fat they couldn't fly off the fields. At last count I think there were over 75 different crops growing there - so much for the poor soils. A very myopic review that clearly gives a lop sided view of the past and scant inclusion of future opportunities for an overcrowded planet imo.
It's a mistake saying that the phase 3 hydroelectric part of the project never happened. There is a 30MW 4 turbine hydroelectric powerplant currently running (see ord river hydroelectric powerplant)
Yeah, a good place to retire in with no place to spend it and no place to go the cost of living would be fantastic......maybe they could create a las Vegas and make more money than they dreamed of.
It is an amazing sight to fully comprehend. It is enormous, more clean water in one area than some countries have in decades. The area will work, propaganda like this dribble is not helpful. There are many many other crops other than cotton that will give returns.
how about planting crops that improve the soil and / or can be used as cattle feed? Hemp will grow almost anywhere and is very useful in several industries.
Especially given political uncertainties and climate change, is there value in the Ord river water project for agricultural security and self-sufficiency for Australia? Australia is mainly desert, and being able to use what limited water resources that are available may be an important safeguard against interruptions in the global supply of food and building materials.
What people who criticise northern Australian development fail to realise is that it has strategic value not just economic value and that strategic value (infrastructure, presence, population) outweighs economic value.
Yeah they seriously tried and failed at establishing a Northern settlement like 13 or 14 times before Darwin. Sometimes they would drop settlers off and come back to a ghost town.
@@indyrock8148 the Darwin and Alice springs settlements were critical to the war effort in ww2 with freight transiting up from SA. Loads of air bases in the far north need refueling and restocking by land.
$114 million overrun, 20% went to project management and administration and 52% to actual construction. I'll put money on one of the bigger consulting firms burning through it on time and materials. Something amiss when only half your budget goes to actual construction.
Kununurra (prounounced Kun-a-nurra) You forgot the Durack Family (cattle &n beef). They initially pushed the WA Govt in that direction. Very prosperous atm :-)
irrigation+rainfall = evaporation + transpiration + runoff + leaching Which one of these processes do Farmers really have control over during the growing season? If you have the ability to irrigate your sandy soils and water is cheap and plentiful, then you are fortunate and have some control on the left side of the equation. If you do not have irrigation, you must look at the factors on the right side of the equation to see what can be controlled or minimized to benefit your crop. Evaporation from the soil surface can be reduced with mulch or leaving crop residue on the soil surface. Transpiration is a function of the plant leaf surface area and the weather. Runoff is or should be minimal in sandy textured soils with high percolation rates. This leaves the leaching of water out of the root zone as the #1 controllable loss of moisture to your crop. Interrupting the downward movement of moisture in your soil by installing a "smart" barrier can greatly reduce the leaching of water and nutrients. SWRT subsurface membranes detain/retain up to 90% of irrigation or rainfall in the root zone for crop use by disrupting the gravitational movement of water in the soil while still allowing excess water to percolate and do not create anaerobic soil conditions.
The Kimberley is an area (400,000km2) in size, it is larger than Germany with a population of just 35,000. Kununurra has around 10,000 pop.and is 3,000km from the state capital Perth (2 million pop.) Outside of Perth there is only 600,000 people in all of Western Australia. Over 800km Kununurra to Darwin (pop.130,000). Building a rail line from Perth to Kununurra is the equivalent of building one from London to Instanbul with hardly any one in between or at the destination. To Port Hedland (pop.15,000) where all the iron ore is shipped from is 1,500km away. Wyndham (pop. 800) is the nearest deep water port and is just 80km away but it has a tidal range of 8 metres! (26 feet) Broome is 1,000km and also has huge tides. Poor soils, climate, distance, lack of people, lack of regular rainfall in such a vast area.
If you think the Ord project was a failure you are nuts ! Saving / storage of water in this country could never be called a failure You are just showing how short sighted you really are !
7:23 this is "really long term"?! We in Poland grow oaks for profit, they need 80-120 years before they are ready to harvest. This is the long term. They can be harvested after 40 years and before 250 years, but optimized profit is for ~80yo trees (120 on poor soil).
10 years is really long time when it needs constant irrigation and pest control. however I wish more places had the foresight to make those 100+ year investments
@@jk-xm7fi indeed it requires very little of labour, except of every 25 young trees planted only 1 reaches full value, rest is being cut much, much earlier
Well you kind of brought it up yourself, but I guess they fulfilled some of the strategic goals with it in the end? And even if it isn't very profitable, it apparently is at least some what self sustaining? So over all, I guess they managed to make the North a bit less desolate.
It has always puzzled me a bit how underdeveloped the vast majority of the australian continent is. It could no doubt house a population of a hundred million at least, but it doesn't even reach 30 million people. Maybe it is its distance to the Brittish isles or the aformentioned poorer soil that brought colonists to largely ignore it as a destination to settle in, but one only needs to look at the vast spaces of North America to see that even places like southern california or the Intermountain West can be developed, and that is completely ignoring the modern desert cities found on the Arabian Peninsula.
Well, you have opened a large can of worms there. You must note that the U S has large mountains east and middle giving watershed on both. The continents are different markedly; Aust is the oldest, with worn out soils whilst U S is young with active geo features (like Yellowstone) and much younger soils. The U S continent is watered in the middle by vast, navigable river catchments from their big mountains, Australia's highest 'mountain' is only 7000feet(2100M); hardly a foothill in some countries. The Murry/Darling system is a shadow of its probable former size, only fit for little paddle steamers at best. The story goes on, but you get the idea.......
@@linmal2242 Yes... you're right. The geographical/geological situations are vastly different. As the smallest continent, Australia has so very few rivers and true mountains. Population and agriculture have developed in those parts of Australia where conditions are suitable. The best places have been taken. It's a case of diminishing returns. Farming up north cannot compete economically with farming down south and never will. You would have to keep pushing more dollars up north to maintain some type of farming, but you'd lose money with each push. Northern Australia just isn't suitable for "bread basket" farming. It's barren for a reason, just as the south is green for a reason.
@@linmal2242You are right about that, navigable river systems and good soils are really important. But what I was referring to is that with modern technology like the railroad, fertilizer and even desalination it is perfectly posible to sustain an economically strong and diversified entity in those regions. Like we have seen in the south Western States of America, the Arabian Peninsula and also in places ridden by disease and poorer soil cuality like the deep south or South and South East Asia. But again, as people point out, if there already is a better suited environment development will thrive there and if there is no population pressure there is no need to expand to less suitable places. I imagine if the US just had 50 million people, places like the arid south west, the upper mid west or the mosquito ridden and swelteringly hot south wouldn't be so developed.
Simple answer to why Australia is so underpopulated: there is more water in the Mississippi River at any given moment than there is in every river, lake, pond and dam in the whole of Australia. Our second-biggest river system - the Darling River - stopped flowing a couple of years ago. It has a catchment area bigger than France. Here you can see when the water started flowing again: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-S9PPiRake7A.html
Northern Queensland is rich with plentiful potential soon unlocked. It will be growing heaps in the coming decade with the railway completing soon and the dams that'll undoubtedly get approved in the coming 8 years. You'll want to be holding on to and buying property up there and down here around Brizzy.
The mistake is in thinking government should do more than just provide the water infrastructure. If the water is available, private business will find ways to use it. It might take longer, but the growth will be organic and more robust and sustainable.
Developing a rail infrastructure would have made sense. No point to increase capacity if it costs too much to get in and out. I took a flight around that are once, Rockingham and Cairns. It was so barren out there. Ill always remember because I looke out the window and one of our wings was leaking fuel half the flight, and looking down nothing but dirt and rocks, nowhere for an emergency landing until the airfield, 😆 🤣
You got the money? And where would it go; the Great Sandy Desert, the Tanami Desert? Great Victoria Desert (348,750sq.km) Great Sandy Desert (267,250sq.km) Tanami Desert (184,500sq.km) Simpson Desert (176,500sq.km) Gibson Desert (156,000sq.km) Little Sandy Desert (111,500sq.km) Strzelecki Desert (80,250sq.km)
It seems like many irrigation projects in arid or semi arid areas fail or have catastrophic environmental consequences cross the world. They often involve cotton. The irrigation in the former USSR dried up the Aral sea, there are also problems with some irrigation projects in the US. In Australia, the Murry darling irrigation scheme can done catastrophic damage to the river system and they are always drought prone as well. I should hope they learn from those mistakes. They should use the Kimberly region for what it does best instead of trying to conform it to something that is it isn't. At least cattle grazing in open savanna lands in gentle on the environment compared to trying to grow crops like cotton. if they want to grow crops of some sort, stick to tropical fruit that is suitable for the region. Besides, the remoteness and ruggedness is what makes the Kimberly a popular tourist destination. We don't need to develop every corner of the planet, but rather it is a good things that some places remain remote to give the environment some breathing space and so we can go on holiday to get away from civilization occasionally.
