The overcrowding of our major cities is resulting in the failure of their infrastructure. This problem stems from the fact that the large cities and their accompanying suburbs are being developed as urban sprawl with little consideration being given to future infrastructure developments such as roads, transport, sewerage, water, power and socal services. The cities just continue to expand unchecked and the cracks are begining to show.

We need self sustaining developments that will entice people to leave the big cities and hence alleviate the ever increasing strain on their infrastructure.

The main enticements to leave the cities would be jobs not based around unsustainable farming practices, abundant power and fresh water and cheap one acre water front house/land packages. With the baby boomers coming, this will be an ideal retirement alternative to the east coast.

If a salt water supply pipe from Spencer Gulf to Lake Eyre was constructed, Lake Eyre, which is a dry 9500 square kilometer salt lake, 100's of salt water lakes could be created using gravity, as it lies 11 meters below sea level. The salt water could be also used to create many lakes at Lake Torrens and the overall result would be the development of many thousands of kilometers of water front real estate.

New eco house manufacturing plants could be built at both at Lake Torrens and Lake Eyre, which would build relocatable houses that would strive to be energy independence. These houses would be of guaranteed quality and mounted on poles to avoid possible flooding. Cheap land/house packages would ensure a lot of people would sell up in say Sydney and relocate to a one acre lake side block.

Energy and fresh water generation will come from solar thermal and/or solar hot ponds technology. Liquid salt now enables this technology to operate 24 hour a day. The plants would be connected back to the national power grid at Port Augusta via a new Lake Torrens/Lake Eyre electrical grid.

And the increasing salt concentration of the lakes as they evaporate and are replenished with more salt water would go where exactly?

Hi Bugsy, these man made lakes would be filled via pressurised salt water thru' pipes that have valves on them. Periodically, the salt water supply would be turned off, the lake would dry up and the salt removed. The salt could be used to construct roads and then covered with melted rubber from old car tires. Building panels made this way maybe another option. Also salt is used to store energy in solar thermal plants although this maybe the wrong type. We need to start to recycle as many discarded thing as possible so we can move away from disposable societies. Desal of the worlds oceans would also begin.

Bugsy,
I just commented on Willie's other post without knowing that he wrote about the same thing I did.
anyhow, you ask where the excess salt would go. Well, just think what happens from a large body of water. Evaporation ! Now with a lot of evaporation you'll find that the consequence will be a substantial increase of precipitation. That in turn would in not such a very long time flush out much of the salt. That is a natural phenomenon that could be taken advantage of & have less environmental impact than big Desal Plants roaring away 24/7 with all their emission. Yes it would be a significant change in that area's fauna but does it necessarily have to be bad ? I mean, Lake Eyre floods periodically & an awesome amount of wildlife perishes after the water has gone.

“We need self sustaining developments that will entice people to leave the big cities and hence alleviate the ever increasing strain on their infrastructure.”

I thought “infrastructure” was supposed to be designed to support the population.

I did not think the population were there simply to utilize the available infrastructure.

Imho… the “problem” of inadequate infrastructure is a direct result of inadequate construction on the part of state governments, regardless of what they planned (there seems to be a plentitude of plans - plans for all occassions - but no actual construction happening especially when we look at state governments (and particularly the labor ones).

This is simple, people will follow the availability of earning an income.

If you want fewer people in capital cities, devolve the work opportunities to regional / suburban centers – starting with all the pointless public service jobs (the ATO already does some of this… hence my BAS returns go to Albury).

As for pipelines from Spencer Gulf to Lake Eyre and “The salt water could be also used to create many lakes at Lake Torrens and the overall result would be the development of many thousands of kilometers of water front real estate.”

Like I said before - And what are all these people, who are going to buy these waterfront palaces, going to do for work?

WILLIE, you're talking about sustainable societies without even mentioning our very rapid rate of population growth, which has no end in sight.

Sorry, but that is completely non-sensical. All you are doing is facilitating this populationg growth.

For as long as you do this and don't address population stabilisation directly, you won't be taking us towards a sustainable society at all. You'll be doing precisely the opposite.

I'd think that an influx of more people would inevitably cause an increased demand for goods & services i.e. creation of jobs. As I said earlier, the challenge is to keep the developers at bay. To begin with a retirement village comes to mind. This would be a once in a lifetime opportunity to create a community of balanced supply & demand. Sounds idealistic ? A plain & simple society of living within their means & without the idiotic forced upon over- supply of unnecessary goods & services. Crickey, I'd move there !
Over population ? Well, short of literally shooting people or sterilizing them controlling overpopulation is a challenge only realised by a handful at this stage. It won't be long though & the subject will become vogue as did climate change. I think an overpopulation tax would be more sensible than that carbon circus.

its hard to takke the concept seriously[mainly knowing..the inevitable eugenics adgenda's..behind every population/sustainability issue

as others have pointed out saltifying such a huge aquafa...with saltier than sea water [on top of the great artesian basin...is insane

addin the employment issue even normal aquaculture begomes impossable[too salty]..noting the infastructure and roads between one acre estates..essentially 11 meters below sea level...with the delusional sea rises a remote possability

not to mention jobs...and fresh water needs[likely via desalinating the extra saLTY WATERS...BUT NEEDING NO DOUDT HUGELY EXPENSIVE PLANT/INFASTRUCTURES...damm cap loc

better to use high rises to grow hydroponiclly...to have highrise feedlots...right in the city[or in the suburbs...near egsisting services...using egsisting lighting systems...in egsisting and largly empty high rises...

one building could feed a town...unfinished high rises[scattered throughout the earth...many without even windows are ready made to ''fence' in and begin growing food...or fattening up meat..there is no need for eugenics

no need to deplete the gene chain..with the eugenisysts adgenda's...we can grow hydroponiclly...even allow co habitation with the beasts..collect methane..genersate gass..to make electicity..or clean its own waters...

we have to stopp thinking in only 3 dimentions..the 4 th opens 25 dec 2012...time we made some fast changes...just transporting all them people to nthe salt lakes is no remedy...we have changed nature enough..now let do some high level change...change we can believe in

This is something i have looked into and discovered how unfeasible it really is.
Sorry I didnt keep any links but you can find them yourselves if you really want.
The size of any channel to take water to lake Eyre would need to be around 2kms wide and up to 500m deep. (through mountains) It would need to be this big to have a constant flow into the lake to balance evaporation and seepage. This would apparently take about 5 years to dig using every bulldozer on earth.

One of the main reasonings for advocating this scheme is to increase rainfall in central Australia. The problem is it wont. If there was any effect on rainfall then it would be easy to find and measure at times when the lake has been full in the past. There have been numerous studies done when the lake was full and no increase in rain was found. The heat of central australia is not conducive to rain bearing clouds no matter how much water there is on the ground.

The high evaporation rates would fill the lake with salt within 2 years and the amount to be removed would be billions of tons every few years. There is nothing that can be done with this much salt except pile it into giant mountains or dump it back into the sea. Both extremely expensive and environmentally dubious ideas.

There is no justification for such environmental vandalism and I wish people could be more realistic and stop all this wishful thinking that Australia can be some sort of paradise and just accept it is an ancient, worn down place that will torment you with its harshness but also its beauty. Its never going to be the green and pleasant land of our ancestors nor the rich and productive new lands that got the septics as far as it has but a bushfire, flood and disaster ridden land that will rip your heart out and make you scream, but I wouldnt have it any other way. I love this country.

Willie,
I give you an 'A' for effort however you fail on several practical scientific grounds.
Your knowledge of the areas, particularly the amount of salt in the ground near and surface is diabolically large. It simply isn't a case of just add water and instant liveable land.
Think about how large areas of farming etc. land has become salted out due to playing with the water table.

Inundating this area with salt water would, if I recall the details, create a sea several times more saline than the Dead Sea. The effect would be to salt up, render the area even more toxic than it is. To desalinate that much water is currently beyond practical engineering.

The temperature would still be extreme all this would mean energy needs beyond what is capable to be generated by current non polluting methods. Then there's evaporation on gigantic proportions that would require continual replenishment.

You should look at what has and continues to happen to the yellow river since the 3 gorges dam. This is smaller than the size of development you are proposing and they don't have to worry about salt.
Problems of pollution,waste disposal, sewerage would be legendary.

NB the water at the top end of Spencer Gulf already has pollution problems. pumping the water would also spread the problem.

Even if this solution was possible it would be a temporary one at best. Simply put your plan addresses some of the symptoms not the problem.

Nice try but in the current capitalist system the plan would be practically speaking not possible

A much more sensible and I presume more practical project would be to
divert a proportion of the rivers emptying into the Gulf of Carpentaria
into Cooper's Creek and so Lake Eyre and into the Darling River.
I think someone from the National Party suggested this.

It would reduce the salt in Lake Eyre, supply Adelaide with more water,
perhaps increase the inland rainfall, enable farmers along the Darling to restart cropping.
It seems provided the civil engineering is practical to have everything
going for it.

This could just work, not as a retirement village, although that may be fun, & us old farts would not rust so quickly in the dry, but as a power house, & oil well.

Some of the latest thinking on ethanol production is that the most economic method, in both cost of production, & land area used, is to grow algae, in ponds, for the feed stock. The algae will grow best in very warm salty water, with high levels of CO2. Perhaps not that much salt, but that could be controlled.

In that area we have the heat, & the ponds, just add water, & CO2.

So, build some huge coal fired power plants. You could have a lovely railway to carry the coal out, & the ethanol back, but pumping coal out in a slurry & the ethanol back makes more sense. Now you have the CO2, & it's all ready to go. The thing would make the snowy look like something a couple of kids built with their Lego.

Self powering, no or very low pollution, & we save the food now being converted into fuel, what more could you want. All this in an area much smaller than required for any other method of producing replacement transport fuel.

The area is even big enough that I can still have my rust free retirement village, without ever seeing the industry.

Sorry, the experts have said that the evaporation would not be enough to generate rain, but they reckon the oceans will boil dry next year, so may be we can still hope for rain.

Of course, it could never happen today, someone will find a three winged blue eyed midge, which MIGHT be endangered by all this, so no go.

Still, after the chinese take over......

Ah Hasbeen, you mentioned the Experts eh ! If I remember correctly it was always experts who were consulted in a great many failed projects. It was the dumb blue collar yakkers who made things work. Why, even in my job the main frustrations are the Experts' designs. There's no question that there will be more rain in the region once the basin is full.
Flooding the Eyre Basin from some rivers in the north would work perfectly. Do a model if anyone doubts the concept but for crying out loud don't involve any experts. We really can no longer afford these saboteurs of pragmatism. Those who are against such a scheme are merely pi..ed off because of its simplicity thus their useless & expensive interference would not be needed. In fact, they might become endangered.

Willie and indivual,
Question. If proximity to water atracts far more rainfall, then how come the Nullabor is not verdant and supporting thousands of dairy cows? There are millions of acres there in close proximity to the whole Southern Ocean, yet it has minimual rainfall. Last time I went across it was not green and it was hot enough to gain heaps of evaporation.

There are thousands of miles of coastline where houses could be built with water views, but there does not appear to be a real estate rush.

The waters from Warburton Creek and Coopers Creek are presently being lost due to evaporation.

Warberton Groove

When it floods in the north of Australia, Warberton Groove eventually becomes a long shallow flow that looses its water quickly due to evaporation. It empties into Lake Eyre but may not contain enough water to flood into it.

This water can be saved as follows.

By constructing control channels off Warberton Groove that led to deep reservoirs with small evaporation areas, water could be saved all along Warberton Groove. Foliage could be planted around the reservoirs to minimize evaporation. The control channels could be opened when Warberton Groove was full to save its water. When Warberton Groove is dry, solar pumps could supply water at oasis type water holes constructed at the Groove to assist with local fauna and flora and also to keep running water in it.

Where Warberton Groove enters Lake Eyre, a series of deep reservoirs linked by pipes and solar pumps, would also be constructed to catch water that is normally lost rapidly in the big evaporation area of Lake Eyre. More of these reservoirs could be built down the east side of Lake Eyre as required over the next 100 years.

A similar project could also be used to save water down Coopers Creek.

The excess land fill from the reservoirs could be use to help seperate these fresh water reservoirs and the many thousands of man made salt water lakes which would result from the Lake Eyre pipe line

Sorry, rereading my earlier post, I find I did not make it all clear.

The idea would be to produce more than half of the nations power, out there, & transmit it all over. This may sound expensive, but compared to renewable power, or CO2 sequestering under ground, it is very cheep.

What's more, the CO2 is used, not just locked up, so a more economic solution all round.

I spent a month sick,in bed, as a kid in the 50s, & read Ian Idries? [spelling, it was a while back] book, on I think it was the Bradford Scheme, on turning the Queensland coastal rivers inland, & it's a mighty dream.

Just for fun.

I read a little while back, that the channel could be dug with controlled nuclear explosions, deep under ground. Sounds exciting, at least.

I've also seen a theory that there is lots of oil, deep under the centre, under rock, too hard to drill, with current methods. The suggestion then was a form of explosive drilling could get to it. Also sounds fun, but we'll be growing so much ethanol, by then, we won't need the oil.

It's true, we have never attempted to create a top down designed self sustaining society like this, one base around the new energy technologies of hot ponds, solar thermal electric and and SOLAR THERMAL DESAL.

When I was working as a tennis pro at Pinehurst, North Carolina, a number of fresh water lake were created there so people could have their condo on the lake. It was summer and local thunder storms would come in the afternoons. The locals told me that these storms were a new phenomenon to the area. This fits in with the following CSIRO modelling.

Local rain upto 60 Kilometers from the edge of the lakes due to evaporation may occur. See the CSIRO modelling report, "The rainfall response to permanent inland water in Australia" by K Hope and Neville Nichols.

I'm sure there will be many problems, but all our current problems stem from using old ideas from the 19th and 20 centuries, which did not consider things like pollution and over population. Even the ill health that stems from alcohol and tobacco have been passed down from previous generations.

Presently, we have 14000 square kilometers of dry salt lake dust bowls. I am suggesting these dust bowls be turned into many fresh and salt water lakes, not mining pits filled with pollution.

Col Rouge, you ask about jobs, besides the new energy and desal plants, other jobs that run on salt and fresh water are hydroponics and fish farms. As there is no salt in Lake Torrens, its southern tip could be turned into the biggest inland salt water fishing lake in the world. We are going to need a tourist attraction to replace the GBR when it disappears due to temperature and salinity.

Willie,
Sorry but you really need to do more research the ideas you put up are fascinating but In reality they are simply not feasible nor do they make sense all things being considered.
I seem to remember the Ord river scheme was going to do all sorts of things but in the final analysis it fell well short of its simplistic ambitions. Largely because of unforeseen factors.
Redirecting water depends on several factors none of which are addressed in your plan.

Individual,
To dig a dam is one thing but you need to consider the consequences. Virtually every major project like these in the past has resulted in unforeseen consequences.
Even the snowy system has had dire results that still might come back and bite us.
3 gorges dam has screwed the yellow river. The repercussion are now starting to bite especially at Shanghai.
The great Artesian basin is dropping alarmingly.
Mass farming is salting up productive areas at an increasing rate.
Likewise desertification due to clearing is consuming marginal land. Remember the dust storms recently. When the topsoil goes so does the usefulness.

The Aswan dam is filling with silt the Hoover dam is going the same way both are getting shallower and therefore evaporating quicker.

Qaddafi and his pipeline is wasting billions of gallons of fossil water (that took water 100000s of years to accumulate) it is now predicted to be used up in this century. Then what?
The list goes on.

As stated before these type of solutions are short sighted and don't consider the future.
The levels of salt an the central basin are extraordinarily large and adding water over time would make the land effectively unusable.

It would be fool hardy to use Joh mentality (anti intellectual) and push it through only to finish up with an expensive terminally polluted disaster and a bigger problem than we started with.

Ps who is going to fund these plans

Willie,
You want a dream? How about.

Build a large Tidal electricity generator on the Kimberly coast (an ideal location) where there are massive tides, to give CHEAP power that attracts industry. This in turn attracts people for work, which attracts schools, shopping centres and soon you will have a whole new city.

Something for you to think about. Better project than filling Lake Eyre with salt water.

Banjo,
Re Kimberly, but what about neaps ?
I suppose you could have a gas fired power station that you wind up and down.
At least you would know the timing better than solar or wind.

Lots of gas up there if it has not all been sold to the Chinese.

However as everything will become local in the future I suspect that
no industry would be interested in being that far from its market.

Sorry, but I think it is too late for industry up there.

Banjo, you ask why there is no water in the Nullabor. For the same reason there is no water in the center of Australia, temperature. High temperature creates high pressure which will repulse rain bearing low pressure. This effect maybe felt by low pressures 1000's of kilometers away. I talked to the BOM about this, and it seems they have never considered it. Until we reduce the temperature and hence pressure of inland Australia, things will only get worse.

I like your idea of a wave generator of the Kimberly coast. A positive idea. Eack sustainable center should generate its own clean water and power. Just needs sustainable housing and a limit to the number of people who could settle there. Top down design means considering population, unlike what is happening on the east coast. Another area to consider for this type of development would be Cooper Basin where the geothermal energy is produced. Presently BHP is sucking up half the power for one of their mines. How much do they pay for their electricity, who knows except Canberra

Examinator,
the examples you dished up here are exactly what's needed to be looked at in order not to make the same mistake. As far as I am aware the Yellow River is a high volume flow as is the Nile unlike the trickles in Northern Australia. NQ rivers are very high volume for short periods during which much waters is simply lost to run-off. That is the water that could be stored. Already the artesian water is getting low so a couple of rivers diverted inland would recharge the basin. I don't think anyone has ever proposed actual dams. It's more like re-directing water flow.
i'm not anti-intellectual as you infer, I'm anti ingnorant pretend intellectual i.e. those who received good education but don't know why & what for. Joh is dead & gone & rather than bag the man I'd suggest we learn from his successes & mistakes. Just remember, if it weren't for Joh many southerners would not be able to enjoy a good life style in the North.

<<High temperature creates high pressure>>
Umm no it doesnt.

Start weather 101

Air is a fluid and acts the same as your boiling pot of water. Warm air rises and cool air sinks. Rising air exerts less pressure at the surface leading to low pressure areas. Cold air sinks and exerts a stronger pressure at the surface thus leading to high pressure areas.

Over central australia in summer (and sometimes in winter) you will notice isolated low pressure systems. These are called heat lows and are formed directly from the heating of the arid desert soils and subsequent rising of the air (forming low pressure) over those areas. These do not contain any moisture due to there being none to begin with and the fact that it is so hot there.

The rest of the time there is a belt of high pressure over the australian continent that stretches right round the world. This is caused by a circulation called Hadlee cells that form when the sun causes heating in the tropics and causes the air to rise, in low pressure systems, all around the equator. This rising air has to be balanced by falling air somewhere and that place is the mid latitudes, right above australia.

As I mentioned before high pressure is caused by descending cool air and as it descends it gets drier and warmer and suppresses cloud formation and rainfall. This has led to deserts all across the globe that are under this belt of high pressure. Look at any map and you can see them in both hemispheres.

If you really did talk to the BOM about this they must have laughed at you quite a bit.

End weather 101

Sprawl is not the problem as the achievable density offsets within the expanding areas can deliver the desired results' but the politics of nimbyism and sucking up to the biggest political benefactors and the central ivory tower phallic symbol syndrome is.

<<air is a fluid>>
Umm no it isn't, it's a gas, year 10 physics

Mikk, point taken. Two things lead me to the conclusion that high temperature caused high pressere. Firstly, in a closed system, higher temperature does cause high pressure, howerever in this case we have an open system where the volume of the gas increases and hence weighs less. Secondly, I'v always always associated high pressures with good weather and high temperatures. My question to the BOM still stands and has nothing to do with their formation, ie, high pressures are slow moving and usually very big and hence can impede the movement of low rain bearing low pressures.

Banjo, I did a little research into why the nullabor, etc is so dry and found the following.

There are four main factors that contribute to the dryness of the Australian landmass.

Cold ocean currents off the west coast
Low elevation of landforms
Dominance of high-pressure systems
Shape of the landmass

Low rate of evaporation from this very cool body of water result in little evaporation occurring. As a result, rain clouds are sparsely formed and very rarely do they form long enough for a continuous period of rain to be recorded. Australia's arid/semi-arid zone extends to this region. The absence of any significant mountain range or area of substantial height above sea level, results in very little rainfall caused by orographic uplift. In the east the Great Deviding Range limits rain moving into inland Australia. Australia has a compact shape and no significant bodies of water (like I'm proposing)penetrate very far inland. This is important because it means that moist winds are prevented from penetrating to inland Australia, keeping rainfall low.

Very good Willie.

<<high pressures are slow moving and usually very big and hence can impede the movement of low rain bearing low pressures.>>

That is exactly what they do and the high pressure belt above Australia acts in exactly this way. Hindering tropical lows and the monsoon from the north and also polar lows from the south.

Nice work with the research and hopefully you now understand why the centre of Australia is so arid. Combine that with the vast age of the land in the west half of our continent (oldest in the world in WA) and the fact that it has been worn flat and leeched of all nutrients and you can see why farms, growing crops etc there is just never going to happen.

As i pointed out before if filling lake eyre produced more rainfall then it would have been found at times when the lake was full but many studies have found no such increase.

www.bom.gov.au/amm/docs/2004/hope.pdf

BOM research scientist Pandora Hope has done work specifically on Lake Eyre's effect on eastern Australian rainfall and said there was no specific reason water in Lake Eyre could influence weather patterns elsewhere.

"We have done some modelling, taking out the effect of a La Nina, to see what impact evaporation has on rainfall patterns, and it does not lead to greater rainfall," she said.

"The evaporation does lead to localised cooling and higher humidity, but this is only in the immediate area, basically above the Lake's surface.

"One of the main problems is that Lake Eyre generally sits under a high pressure system and the lows would not be near enough to harvest the moisture."

http://fw.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/agribusiness-and-general/general/will-a-full-lake-eyre-bring-rain-to-southern-aus/1414085.aspx?storypage=0

I'm afraid this thread has been hijacked into a discussion about creating water by changing the weather over this region. The only water creation I am proposing for these new sustainable societies would come from SOLAR THERMAL DESAL. Any other water that maybe created would be just icing on the cake.

Modeling and the observation that no weather changes occured when the lake filled proves nothing conclusive. Maybe the water has to be around for a number of years or longer before even local rain occurs, we just don't know as we have never tried anything like this.

I am proposing many smaller lakes, not one or two huge lakes. As I explained before the salt in these lakes could be removed by turning of the water supply and cleaning up the excessive salt.

Lake Eyre is not that far from the national grid at Port Augusta, so solar thermal and solar hot pond electric generation would be the major new prime business for these areas. Unlike the Pilbra, I am suggesting sustainable housing accompanied by controlled settlement would make these areas self sustaining. A controlled population would be achieved by avoiding excessive division of land as seen on the east coast, ie, a one acre block would be the standard. Land release would be exclusively thru' the SA state government to avoid greedy land developers who would attempt to push the price of worthless land sky high, and so that the money paid for a house/land package would go into the cost of the sustainability of the house.

The two pumping stations located at either end of Lake Torrens that would be need to start the siphon would produce more that 10 MW of free electricity for a 3 meter diameter pipe once the siphon started. This would be ample to run a FREE light rail system for the developments. All this, along with collecting any fresh water from floods in the north would eventually create a much wetter region than presently exists. With the coming of fire storms due to erratic weather, these areas maybe a god send.

One problem with Australia's ever expanding population growth is the future provision of food.It is a well known fact that only 10% of Australia's land is arable i.e. suitable for food production, yet Local Governments continue to approve sub-development of land which was once used for food production, e.g. Redland Bay area of Brisbane rich red volcanic soil, where the States potatoes and strawberries were once grown, now all but replaced by houses. I am quite sure that one doesn't have to look very hard to find similar things happening in other areas. I would have thought Local Governments of all persuasion would have done the exact opposite and placed restrictions on land use for this very reason. We all know how easily it is for humans to participate in corrupt activities particularly when money is king.

Two very good books which address this very subject are by Author Professor Jared Diamond, "Germs,Guns ans Steel" and "Collapse".Why did the society on Easter Island collapse and Haiti in a near state of collapse?

I asked a councilor from the Gold Coast City Council whether town planning has capped the number of dwellings in our area.The answer was a resounding NO. As we continue to sprawl, there are glimpses of infrastructure renewal but is that enough to sustain the ever increasing population growth.

Where will we in this country look to for our food requirements and drinking water if we continue to grow unchecked?
Erik

WILLIE, Individual, Banjo and Ces- nice to see some other people who are making some practical (and people-friendly) suggestions to spread out the population counter urban sprawl!
(which doesn't include forcing city people to live in smaller, crampier or shittier environments to make room- or forcing neighbouring towns to take the weight like so many other people lazily throw out).

I think that creating new cities inland with sustainable and inviting infrastructure to encourage emmigration from the crowded coast, and selling the empty housing blocks back to farming properties is definitely the ideal proposal, and quite achievable so long as the difficult measures are fulfilled (which your suggestions definitely create some circumstances definitely worth considering).

The other major problems are providing motivation to other parts of society (cultural attractiveness and business class). The major problem in Australia is the vast majority of business/commercial centers are in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and the Gold Coast, and putting to much pressure to live around these cities (not to mention the majority of Australian cities have pretty lame shops, bars, restaurants etc, so moving outside the big cities means giving up a huge amount of commercial perks.

I think any cultural attractions would be achieved by gradually encouraging various food/restaurant/clothing/product chains to open up (perhaps a financial incentive- it's not like the government hasn't done it for less), so people are actually moving to a proper metropolis and not just a dull colony. A new-business creation grant for these specific cities is also an option.
For businesses- if REAL ESTATE could be encouraged to start up, then half of the problem is solved- banks will soon follow.

It seems in Australia the biggest motivator for business of all kinds is tourism. If you advertised "Come see Australia's new hi-tech cities of the future" to the tourism industry world-wide it might create a considerable amount of excitement.

Mikk, you commented in response to Willie's proposal that, "..the vast age of the land in the west half of our continent (oldest in the world in WA) and the fact that it has been worn flat and leeched of all nutrients and you can see why farms, growing crops etc there is just never going to happen."

I just don't like the word, 'never'. It's fraught with risk, I personally try to NEVER use it. Besides, I think you're just wrong. It's been done before in other countries, why not here?

Willie's idea is a beauty and with all the potential for tourism, watersports, fishing and the rest, I don't see why the principles of Permaculture could not be applied. There are many accounts from around the world where seemingly arid, unusable land has been turned into viable agricultural land or even forests.

Creating sustainable environs by recycling everything that is used. Read more on Permaculture and Bill Mollison, Peter Andrews, Jeff Lawton and others here...
http://www.permaculture.org and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture , there are plenty of other good sites out there about this subject. Have a Captain Cook for yourself...

Now imagine that, travelling to the middle of Australia to do a spot of fishing and a bit of camping in the local forest then getting caught in an unexpected downpour! Everything in the towns powered by solar and geothermal energy, water from DESAL, organic food from permaculture and hydropoic farms - it's the way of the future!

I think with the right top down planning and the right team of people who know what is needed to make the project succeed, it could just be the brightest suggestion as to what to do about our rising population, new immigrants, power generation and water production.

Imagine if, as well as pumping the saltwater from the ocean they built or dug huge reservoirs and pumped SA sewerage inland as well and turned it into organic fertiliser to enrich the soil. It would solve two huge problems at once. Never say never!