I don’t think so. Just for drinking when the beer runs out. I guess the mining industry would use some too.
Yeah, built specifically for the gold mines at a cost that would make your toes curl up. I’d hate to think what it would cost to build today.
Then why is the area I live in which is a large scale irrigation area for all kinds of produce not stuffed.
Its fed by a dam that had it not been in place many of the folk around here that managed to hold on til this years rain would’ve gone under. I tend to base my views on what I see with my own eyes. 
For the Ross river in Townsville, which is the only one I can really speak too. You have the dam right on the edge of town, then a series of weirs then the sea, all in a very short distance. The river there is already over regulated but in the wet season the usually have to release that much water that it floods low lying parts of town.
Even if just the excess water from there was moved in land it would really help I reckon.
I believe the burdekin river would be the same, they release metric sh÷t tins of water out of there.
If the just sent water inland when it was in excess instead of constantly like they do with the murray I can’t see how it could hurt
We could just cull the farmers like we do with the roos and stuff in hard years
That all depends on your metric of what is good and what is stuffed
Im not sure what area you are talking about, but if the dam wasn’t there, the farmers probably wouldn’t be there at all?
I’ve seen first hand the heartache that farmers suffer during the droughts in the Darling, Lachlan and Murray system. If you think creating a false sense of water security by building bigger dams and longer pipelines is the solution then your ignoring history. Whats more, you clearly have a different view of a what comprises a healthy river system and what constitutes responsible use of natural resources. Building new dams and pipelines is not the solution that will help us adapt and cope with climate change.
Cheers
I guess we just see things different .
Enough hijacking the thread apologies to the op
I ve given this its own topic 
Good call. Thanks and yes, sorry to the OP
Beat me to it by minutes…
Putting aside all the complex issues of existing properties, livelihoods, etc; isn’t it a better idea to move agriculture to more suitable areas than try to turn inhospitable land arable?
Or, what about systems used overseas, where they use large scale desal to irrigate and gigantic greenhouses to retain humidity?
Beats ruining our precious river systems!!!
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That’s just it…we don’t need to ruin our rivers. As I said it’s been done up here and the Barron is not stuffed.
There’s also many places (my own block included) where dams have been built miles from a waterway and used rainfall and runoff to fill them.
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Yeah but look at the poor old Murray Darling System. Completely screwed by cotton farming interests and their dams as big a Belgium!!!
I understand where ya’s are coming from with Murray system but there’s a lot of difference in rainfall each year between southern NSW/Vic and fnq.
Even in our average wets we measure rain by the meter.
I just don’t believe that we can’t capture some of that in the good years and pipe it to places out west that are doing it bloody hard.
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The late Richard Pratt had it all worked out, took the plans to Canberra only to have it shitcanned by Little Johnny. Wonder who Howard was protecting? Pratt was going to run pipes from FNQ and the NT to the upper reaches of the Murray-Darling system and take off only during the wet. So what happened to the plans after he died? Cheers.
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for mining Gold.
theres gold in them hills.
interestingly WA dams hit 50% for the first time in maybe 30years?
but nobody wants to talk about it.
Globally, river regulation and interbasin transfers (diverting water from one river catchment to another) ruins rivers. The evidence is there for anyone that wants to see it. Perversely (plenty of you will jump up and down on this one) in this time of great drought, the biggest problem that has hit the Murray-Darling system is NOT lack of rain, it’s too much demand (extraction for consumptive use). Even during the millennium drought, when in SA we were struggling to maintain water for critical human needs, the modelling indicates that with no catchment development, we would have seen moderate overbank flooding in the Lower Murray.
The Basin Plan, the federal attempt to fix some of the problems in the Murray-Darling system is a $13 billion dollar project. That doesn’t include the various programs each of the Basin states are running to fix things in their patch. Do you really think that if the solution was as simple as building a couple of pipelines to pump water inland, that it wouldn’t be happening?
Sorry to be blunt, but the reality is that unless you actively work in the field of river ecology, river management, water system engineering, socio-economics, or have really read widely across these topics, you don’t really know what your talking about, and your opinion is just that. Asking average Joe without the type of background listed above if they think we should build a bigger dam and send water inland to alleviate drought, is akin to asking someone on the street who has never shot a firearm and doesn’t understand what our current firearm laws actually contain if we should have stricter gun laws in Australia to prevent school shootings.
As I said I base my views on what I see with my own eyes and I see dams and irrigation keeping families afloat that would otherwise have lost every thing years back. I see people coming from all over the world to see our water ways up here many of which have had dams and irrigation on them for more than thirty years with f@#kall environmental damage and I base that on the fact that I work taking people bush up here to educate them on the area .
But I guess people that have never lived here know more than those that have spent their life up here.
Fair enough mate. I respect your view point… Your right, I don’t know your catchment, but I absolutely do know what I’m talking about when it comes to the impacts of long term (30 years isn’t long term) river regulation on lowland river systems… But, from now on I’ll just keep my head down below the parapet because clearly it’s not worth calling a spade a spade.
Mate ya have every right to call it as ya see it we just happen to disagree on this subject and that’s no worries we all cook a curry different
Interesting story on the ABC news site about a CSIRO study into the Mitchell river catchment for anyone interested.(sorry I still have no f@#kin idea how to copy links 
) 
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