JFAus: Water can be harvested in high country before reaching rivers.

Arh... Wouldn't the Greenies love that. ;-)

JFAus: Rivers flowing inland, to Lake Eyre for example, must not be touched.

The could be utilized to bring some water down benefiting the people along the way.

Jayb,

Yes, the greenies.
The greenies seem to ignore ocean ecosystems.
Whales and seabirds and fish are experiencing lack of adequate nutrition and are dying due to starvation.
Greenies seem oblivious to the actual state of the marine environment generally, especially the ecosystems. Many key rivers and lakes are being used as sewers, especially in Europe.
Genuine greenies might encourage sensible water harvesting to manage life-saving water supply.

Management of water is needed to rehabilitate entire ocean and waterway ecosystems.
Comparison of the need can be likened to dire need for a heart blockage bypass or even an artificial heart to sustain life.

Experience on Gulf of Carpentaria catchment indicates major excesses of wet season water fall and flow down gulf country rivers to the sea, causing massive catchment soil erosion. Some erosion is natural, some is also not natural due to feral animals and more severe weather.

Remote controlled quantities of wet season rainfall could be harvested off the top of the catchment to reduce the excess before erosion and waste occurs.
Rivers would still run because of rainfall on downstream catchment.

Water must not be harvested from catchment of rivers flowing inland, such as water from slopes of the Great Dividing Range that flows to Lake Eyre.

But yes, a water harvesting and aqueduct system could include added infrastructure to allow flood-type flows into rivers running inland. A slow dribble-like flow leads to soakage and evaporation.

Greenies and the UN would do well to realize whole oceans and whole of water ecosystems need management. There cannot be peace between nations suffering food and productive land shortages.
The UN has mandate to unite nations. There is need for more than just words.

I think the UN and WB and IMF must provide interest free resources to nations willing to participate in developing productive viable infrastructure to sustain water quality and life on this planet.
New monetary stimulus is needed, including to operate the UN.

I think high or low speed rail coupled with water infrastructure could be very viable.

Chinese scientists are reportedly experimenting with a VLT, that might nudge 3,000 KLMPH, and there is talk such a system could use evacuated tunnels to launch low orbit satellites. Something I've always thought of as a possibility if it included railguns as launch assisting catapults? Electric railguns have a top speed of just under the speed of light!

In my concept, we'd build a VLT that serves us for several centuries, and be built along dead straight lines inside tunnels or shallow covered trenches, invisible from the air or surrounding topography.

Moreover, the fact we'd use tunnels or trenches, would enable some of the whisper quiet magnetic resistance to be deployed horizontally along the sides, to increase stability.

An underground system could be sealed and evacuated to eliminate the only speed limiting resistance as occurs now when bullet trains and planes push through air that becomes increasingly solid with ever greater speed.

Each train would in essence, orbit around a central dividing separation barrier, and every train using that airlocked elliptical loop, would either be following another train at matching speed or parked on a service or maitenance or load line area. And parked there until loaded then inserted via an airlock into the anti clockwise orbit at a safe distance from all other preceding or following traffic and at matched speeds. Matched before entering the main line and as you exit from it?

Moreover, given the absence of air almost any speed or deceleration you like that could be safely tolerated by the passengers?

This evacuated system would be mostly interstate passenger specific, while freight, concession card holders and old fogies, would use other lines and conventional double decker trains, more or less?

The business case for that, implicit on the amount of freight now lumbering up clogged interstate highways, and the fact that bulk freight is without question the most profitable business model in the world!

Mine would Travel along the Great Dividing range and then use just gravity to deliver sections to a final predetermined destination. Eliminating most of the time consuming shunting of conventional train freight?

JFAus: Water must not be harvested from catchment of rivers flowing inland, such as water from slopes of the Great Dividing Range that flows to Lake Eyre.

Nope! The Rail line from Townsville to Mt Isa Is built on the Northern side of the High ground. It was built on the High Ground but got washed 3 Km to the North by a sudden downpour in about 1978.

All rivers north of the line flow North to the Gulf. The Burdekin Catchment extends from West of the Divide behind Ingham West to just West of Charters Towers to behind the Divide behind Rockhampton. (Sutter, Bogie & Boyne.) All Rivers South West of Rockhampton behind the Divide flow to the Murray. The Rivers from Charters Towers West flow to Lake Eyre. The Furthest North of these Creeks is Torrens Creek. Mapped by the Chinese in 1345, According to the Map in the Taiwanese Historical Museum.

And so endeth the Geography Lesson for today.

Rhosty,

I think it wise to add some evidence of what you are talking about because many people could consider you a dreamer, when you are not.

http://www.gizmag.com/1800mph-maglev/32213/

JB,

Thank you for a good Geography lesson. I now see there may be more water available than I envisaged.
But those longer inland rivers running to the Gulf may require all the upper catchment water they can get in order to supply the upper river country.

The river or catchment I was referring to as an example is the Thomson Creek catchment that runs into the Diamantina River and to Lake Eyre.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamantina_River