THE BRADFIELD SCHEME

INTRODUCTION

In March 1938, J. J. C. Bradfield & Son Consulting Engineers from Sydney, submitted to the Queensland Government a report entitled “Queensland: The Conservation and Utilization of Her Water Resources”. The report described the rainfall pattern, the water resources of the State, and estimates of the damage caused by drought. It described also a proposal for the transfer of water from the coastal catchments of northern Queensland across the Great Dividing Range to inland rivers to increase the amount of water available for agriculture in central Queensland. The coastal rivers included in the proposal are located in a high annual rainfall area of Queensland. Their average annual flows at their mouths are listed in Table 6.1. Bradfield proposed to divert water from the Tully River to the Herbert River, and then across to the Burdekin River. Water stored on the Upper Burdekin River would flow by gravity south-westerly to the upper reaches of the Flinders River, and then to the Thomson River, where it would flow to Cooper Creek (Figure 6.1).

The elevation measurements required for the development of the Scheme were taken with a barometer (Raxworthy, 1989, pp. 135–137). This led to inaccuracies in land elevations and some mistakes in the development of the proposal. The following sections describe some details of the Bradfield Scheme, based on the Bradfield (1938) report.