Unlike most other maritime nations, Australia failed to embrace coastal shipping and we are myopically focused on road transport. Government negligence in addressing safe ocean access through the mouth of the Murray River, meant ongoing tragic losses of vessels and human lives by illogically economically, and environmentally irrationally forcing the cargo onto an emerging road system, despite waterborne transport emissions being 95 per cent lower per tonne/km than road emissions.Īt that time, why do you think that the South Australians never engineered a safe outflow location of the Murray, as the Victorians did at Lakes Entrance fifteen years earlier in 1910? Lakes Entrance and the Gold Coast, with engineered ocean accesses, both continue to be used safely by commercial and recreational vessels up to 100 metres, employing thousands of people. With the Murray being navigable for 970 kilometres and to a height of 36 metres above sea level, the settlements along south-eastern Australia’s Murray River system have exported and imported cargo to and from Adelaide for 70 years until 1925. To a simple Scottish migrant like me, this doesn’t make much sense financially or environmentally. Today, to transport 2,000 bales of wool, requires 20 semi-trailers, each with 400 hp turbocharged diesel engines. From 1851, paddle steamers could transport up to 2,000 bales of wool along the Murray River, with engines that were predominantly 20hp steam engines with side paddles fueled by local logs, with no price cap!
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