Burdiken Falls dam in full flight

Wow!

Geez. Thats some water.

If only a couple of tankfulls of that could come our way :-)

4mm of rain since New Year. As dry as.

Nature holds the upper hand in th scheme of things.

Thanks for posting the pics


Cheers

20' over the wall!! Amounts to 10,200,000 litres per sec.

Now how about a 2.5m pipline south.

Utilise the out of work mining equipment and people.

Utilise our Iron ore.

Revitalise our steel industry.

Open up other areas along the way.

Drought proof a big section of Australia.

Just imagine if this amount of water was taken to the top of the Darling system. Might even stop the stupidity of suggesting that a cotton farm is stealing the water. Look where it gets held up at Minindee.

Not my idea. A Mr Bradfield suggested this a century ago.

Kevin J

This is what it looked like last June when we were there. Amazing to see it in your pics, as we drove across the bottom of the wall.
Thanks,
Heather G
Image Could Not Be Found

It seems that plans have been drawn to raise the existing wall by 6m but friends in the north seem to think that it will only be raised 3m and only when there is money available. You must remember that this dam is in Nth Queensland and not the Sth East corner. We are told that water is money in the bank and yet we do nothing to save what we are given.

A couple of interesting things which were not around when Bradfield made his proposal are:
1. The number of very big holes being dug in central Queensland. The miners are required to back fill and restore the areas which is a bit of a problem when you have removed millions of tonnes of the coal and even after backfill the area remains somewhat degraded anyway. Why not insist that some of the mines be left as dams with the mining Coys responsible for building the walls etc.
2. The miners have draglines which can shift 200 tonne ?? in a bite
Digging a trench would be childs play.

Even if the scheme was only taken part way in the immediate period it could always be a work in progress.

Next I will sit and contemplate my navel and count my toes..

Kevin J

Some quick info;

Burdekin Dam (or Burdekin Falls Dam) is located on the Burdekin River in Queensland, Australia south west of Ayr, and Home Hill. It was completed by Leighton Holdings [2] in 1987 and is the largest dam in the state, with a capacity four times that of Sydney Harbour.

The Dam wall is 876 metres long and has a 504 metre spill way, and a drop of 37 metres. The body of water held by the dam is also known as Lake Dalrymple. It holds 1,860,000 megalitres at full capacity.


504m spillway gives an appreciation of how big this is. We went down there a few weekends ago when there was about 3.5m above the spillway and it was an awesome, and deafening, sight. 6m, well that's unreal.

there is enough water going over the wall to fill ALL of SE Qld dams in less than Four Days!

CJ

Local paper yesterday realy nicked me off. They actually printed some one saying it would cost too much money and was sick of the debate. I shut the paper and didn't read the rest. How dare they print it. A while ago I watched on TV. Over 100 years ago they built a pipeline from Perth to Coolgardie in which 60% still remains. They didn't have drag lines at their dispense. They didn't have dump trucks either just plain damn hard work. There are mining giants laying off experienced folk cant the Gov and mines work together on this. Toowoomba on 9% have not been able to use the garden hose for 5 years. I know down south have had less rain and need the water desperately. If they can send money over seas pay Gov officials life long pensions oh ah they recond they earn it, a truck driver and stockmen work harder than them.

Just a note about the Burdekin River.

In the mid 1600's it was dry for 13 yrs, we tend to believe we can drought proof Aussie, all I will say, is that in the late 1800's there was a proposal to irrigate the Murray/Darling system, the consensus was if you do that ,you will increase the salinity in the river systems, to a point that the land will be useless.

Off course the decision was made to go ahead with the scheme some years later.

We can all see the result of what happened.

It is the way we use the water we have to get the smarts on

Have a good one all!!!!!! and if you can't I can recommend an excellent product to change that, Bundy Rum, as long as you don't want to take on Australia/The World or anyother big place.

G'day Rockape and Heather G

Both sets of images are brilliant, it brings back memories of toiling away on the construction phase of the " DAM " dam, in the mid 1980's. With Walter Wright International, who had a couple of 200ton crawler cranes on site.

Thanks for the memories.

here's a couple more pics to help put it in perspective.

I have (in an email sent to me a couple of weeks ago) some pics taken at Home Hill on Feb 6

I have no idea how to put 'em up here, so if someone would like to put 'em up, MM me with your email addy, and I'll forward 'em to ya... TIA

Regards, Ed C