Chapter 2 : Pump Cities Not Just Port Cities.

Research groups and universities need to be funded. Corporations and semi-government organizations need to be grouped together in conferences with Government leadership. Those corporations may eventually group together to be massive joint ventures. Their task eventually will be to suck vast amounts of seawater from the ocean, desalinate the water at a massive scale and pump the clean water to our vast interiors whilst making a profit doing this.

Imagine factories that grow into gigafactories for making and transporting clean water. Just like when new towns sprang up and grew and grew during our gold rush era, clean water and clean electricity will, I believe, be the new gold of the 21st century. It can and will open and develop our vast interior. We also need to fund entrepreneurial farmers trying new things. The first few farms proving that a profit can be made using the latest technology and desalinated water for irrigation will open new massive markets.  

Massive pipes with ratchet systems so the water can only flow inland need to be designed and built.  These pipes are the size of rivers and built to last hundreds of years. Or they could be smaller but numerous and side by side. They will provide a guaranteed fresh water supply to all parts of our interior. We will, in effect, be making rivers that flow inland from the sea to the interior. Just as arteries and veins give life to our bodies, these pipes will give life to the land they touch. These pipes will stretch far beyond Goyder's Line. That climactic limitation will no longer exist in South Australia or anywhere else in Australia. 

If the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme, which delivers potable water from Mundaring Weir in Perth to communities in Western Australia's Eastern Goldfields, particularly Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie, was such a bad idea, then why is it still operating more than 100 years later? At the time it was being built, so much pressure was put on Premier Forrest and the chief engineer not to build it. It was a massive investment relative to its time, but the investment proved to be worth it many times over. The water wasn’t for agriculture; it was to support miners during a gold rush. That pipeline is 566 kilometers long and was built in 1903. 

I am not asking politicians to put themselves out on a limb the way Forrest did in WA. I accept that research needs to occur to build a business case with a far-reaching timeline. Initially, several test projects need to be run to gather more data. The best place to start is where the coast and desert are close, possibly on the border of South Australia and Western Australia. You don’t need to build a pipeline hundreds of kilometers long to create a case study. The desert and the shoreline are relatively close at this point. From this initial small-scale case study, unforeseen benefits and difficulties must surely exist. Are we overestimating the difficulty of this program or underestimating the difficulties? Will the soil need improvement? Will farmers need to plant crops that improve the soil before planting more profitable crops? What pests would be attracted if the environment were changed? Will the project gain momentum as creative Australian juices are galvanized? An approximate example of this already exists in South Australia. Sundrop Farms produces 15% of Australia’s tomato crop. It’s in the desert and uses desalinated seawater to irrigate crops.

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