Recent television news items have changed the perception of inland Australia. Many thought the Australian centre was useless, arid desert - incapable of any form of production.
Flood rains in the north of the country months ago charged parts of the inland river system and this is now starting to fill Lake Eyre in South Australia. Along the way, the water flow caused the supposed " desert " to green and spring to life, attracting a vast array of bird life from Whistler ducks to Pelicans.
The centre of Australia is a valuable piece of real estate in what is becoming an over populated world with global warming about to reduce the existing land mass. Rising sea levels will inundate parts of many countries and some island nations will disappear.
Equally importantly, we will soon face the problem of providing sufficient agricultural space to feed the extra teeming billions that will call this planet home !
Our desert is sending us a signal. It is ready to become productive - if only we supply it with it's need for water !
We are a dry continent as far as natural rainfall is concerned, but there is no shortage of water. We are surrounded by vast oceans of the stuff - and the technology exists to make that desert bloom into the world's food basket.
Australia has about a third of the world's uranium and this could fuel nuclear power generators to run desalination plants to supply the water to transform the desert to farmland. That water would need to be piped inland to decrease evaporation and used sparingly along the lines of drip feed irrigation - as used by the Israeli's to farm their desert.
Many will scoff and declare such a project beyond the recourse's of this country - with a small population of just twenty-two million. Australia would be justified in putting it's hand out to the world and requiring the United Nations to levy it's members to supply the necessary funds. It is worthy of being a world project !
There are already food shortages in many parts of the world and a project to bring an immense continent into food production could be a matter of life or death for future generations.
Mother Nature is sending us a message ! We would be wise to give it thought !
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