IRRIGATION

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 314, 2 July 1912, Page 7

IRRIGATION

PROSPECTS IN AUSTRALIA. Interviewed by a Wellington Post .reporter, Mr. James McKenzie, SurveyorGeneral of New Zealand, who lias just returned from the conference of Sur-veyors-General recently held in Australia, said lie was greatly impressed with the irrigation works and proposals in that direction, all designed to bring into productiveness districts now almost barren by damming tho_ rivers ( and flooding the country. He visited an enormous undertaking at Barrenjack, some forty miles from Yass. The scheme is to dam the Murrumbidgee river by means of an embankment 200 ft high, which is being built of practically solid concrete. This will dam some forty-five ! miles of the river, and the reservoir Iwhen completed will have an area of 'about twenty-six square miles and a depth of something like 100 ft. The water is to be taken for irrigation purposes some 200 miles before it is used, and it will irrigate over a million acres of country suitable for dairying and [grain and fruit growing. This great work will cost about a million and a half of money, and, if successful, will be an object lesson for the whole of Australia, and probably lead to other similar works being constructed. The enormity of this work, in the inspection of which the conference partly put in a day, may be gathered from the fact that the dam is some 800 ft long, 170 ft wide at the base, tapered to 18ft at the top, containing 000,000 tons of solid material. including 00.000 tons of pure cement. In order to minimise the cost of transport of material, etc.. it was found economical to construct for 2.5 miles a 3ft. gauge railway, connecting with the Main Trunk line. This is also fitted up with comfortable travelling carriages, and the trains have a speed of about 15 miles an hour. The thought flashed through Mr. McKenzie's mind when travelling on it that it ought to be the very thing, instead of road construction, where road metal is scarce, for New Zealand's backblock districts, and where, at most, lines can never get beyond, the rank of feeders.