Australian coastal shipping.
Load onto a rail truck, send to port, unload into a ship, ship sails, reaches port, unloads into a rail truck, goes to destination.
Substitute road truck for rail, same scenario.

Load your goods into a rail or road truck and send to destination; saves one loading and unloading and probably saves time and money.

.... unloads into a rail truck, goes to destination.
Is Mise,
My philosophy also ! Bureaucracy appears to have ample hindsight experts but sparingly few with foresight.
Same as the Bradfield scheme, hardly anyone has the imagination to see the benefits to society & environment for that. Lake Eyre could be to Australia what the Great Lakes are to the US or many of the other great inland seas all over the World. Just a little channel to Spencer Gulf & presto, 'ere goes ! The shipyards of Australia could be engaged in making all metal infrastructure required & working in with the rail, truck haulage could be reduced along with the costs for same.
All that is needed is the patience to wait for the insane profits !

I have mentioned before Is Mise that we have very few ports capable of taking any ship big enough to carrying even a few trucks or rail cars. The entrances are just too shallow & not capable of being made able at less than billions of dollars each.

In the states rail carries thousands of complete semis from one side of the country to the other, evidently it is too expensive to use rail, with our government run expensive rail.

Any idea of the cost to build roll on roll off facilities for road or rail in all the little ports presently not able to take even small ships. Even those that once served a coastal trade in very small ships like Catherine Hill Bay, Coffs Harbor, Ballina & a few others have seen their jetties reduced beyond use by shipping

This is as silly as Queensland government spending billions of our money digging a rail tunnel under the Brisbane river, to run passenger trains, carrying north shore bureaucrats to their city offices. It will cost hundreds of millions in tax payer subsidies to use the tunnel for nothing but railway union jobs. Why build infrastructure which will never earn it's keep, & is of very doubtful use?

Hasbeen,
There are some good books on the ‘60 Milers’ that used to ply our coasts and they are replete with tales of near disaster getting into and out of our coastal ports.
The sand bars can build up in a few hours and I well remember standing on the bowsprit of a 40 foot yacht leaving Evan’s Head and looking down on the liquid sand as we crossed the bar.
It was common for trawlers to wait or time their arrival to come in at high tide.
Australian coastal shipping died in the face of cheaper transport the sugar boats lasted the longest as they could load raw sugar at the mills and deliver to waterside refineries such as CSR’s facility on Sydney Harbour.

The biggest handicap to progress here is the mentality of many people who are unable to grasp the value of planning ahead, preferring instant profit instead !

Individual, I knew a bloke who was one of the hundred wharf labourers called in to load the coastal sugar ships when they called in to Urangan, Hervey Bay when the occasional ship appeared.

They loaded sugar in sugar bags, [hence the name], carried on their shoulder, up a gang plank. They did not even have a crane suitable for loading by the pallet. Can you imagine the cost involved today, when wharfies are paid a kings ransom, rather than a pittance.

Some things are past their use by date. Somewhere between the wars they stopped loading Maryborough sugar onto horse drawn carts to take it to the Urangan pier, & built a rail line. Today that rail line is redundant. They conveyor belts bulk load train cars, which take it Bundaberg, where a large terminal loads 45,000 toners in hours rather than days to load a 4,500 tonner.

When things are past their use by date, it is time to let them go.