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