When it comes to nation-building infrastructure, the 1,700-kilometre Inland Rail from Melbourne to Brisbane will be one of Australia's most significant.
Millions of dollars are already flowing through communities along the route as construction of the now $14.5-billion project continues.
But state approvals remain held up amid pending expert reviews of flood modelling, with some landholders still worried the current plan could make serious weather events worse.
The idea of an Inland Railway has been around in some form for about 130 years – Sir Henry Parkes even mentioned it in his pro-federation Tenterfield oration in 1889:
"These are two great national questions which I wish to lay before you: one great federal army and a nationwide uniform gauge railway line."
Australia's population is predicted to top 50 million by the end of the century, and on the populous east coast, freight demand is forecast to double by 2050.
To meet that demand, the Inland Rail will be needed to help transport essential items like food, white goods, timber and steel.
But construction only began in 2018 — more than a decade after the first official route was examined in 2006 — after the Barnaby Joyce-led Nationals secured an $8.4 billion funding commitment in a Coalition agreement.
'It's been an amateur hour'
Since construction began, the rollout of the project has faced challenges along the line.
Around Coonamble in western New South Wales, flooding is just one of the persisting concerns about the Inland Rail, with the relationship between some farmers and the government-owned company Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC) becoming strained.
"ARTC, who are being chartered to build this rail line, it's been an amateur hour, and unprofessional from the outset," farmer Adrian Lyons said.
"The problem with Inland Rail is they've tried to build for budget, not specification.
"We have hydrology issues … we have a watershed that has no data capture because we're not an irrigation farming region."
Mr Lyons is a member of the New South Wales Farmers Association and the former chair of the Inland Rail task force.
He says local knowledge still hasn't been considered as part of the planning process for the new rail corridor from Narromine to Narrabri.
Yet, he claims, because the land surrounding the proposed line is not used for irrigated farming, the flood data used in current ARTC modelling is lacking in detail.
"If you put an Inland Rail bank up like that in fragile soil, and don't do your hydrology and your risk mitigation properly, you could cause a real disaster," Mr Lyons said.
In addition to concerns that the line may exacerbate flooding and erosion of farmland, there is also angst about the decision by ARTC to bypass Coonamble and the existing railway lines to save travel time.
While Mr Lyons' property will not be directly impacted by the proposed line, he believes the social and economic costs for those whose properties will be, have not been properly considered.
"It's pretty simple — you cannot do a project without consultation socially or economically, it has to be encompassing of the whole community," he said.
"For an example, they said to us, 'It's going to cost us $497 million to go via Coonamble extra, over a period of 20 to 30 years'.
"Well give us a comparison to what it's going to [cost] on a brown greenfield site where they're going to sever hundreds of farms."
ARTC interim chief executive Rebecca Pickering was formerly involved with community consultation along the Inland Rail route.
She disputes the view by some that Coonamble won't benefit from the Inland Rail.
"Coonamble, for example, is connected by its own train line to Inland Rail, so it will be able to benefit from reduced transit times of grain to the port," Ms Pickering said.
Flood risk was also seriously considered, she said.
"I do understand the concerns of locals who are seeing behaviours in the flood plain right now, and how infrastructure can impede flood water," she said.
"We've certainly worked hard to make sure that we're not exacerbating those."
Ms Pickering said ARTC had tried to take concerned landholders through its flood models to reassure them.
"Our designers have worked hard to make sure that we've got enough bridge structures, culverts that allow water to pass through that ensure that flood water is not exacerbated," she said.
Mr Lyons and the dozens of landholders around Coonamble he represents say they aren't against the project, they just want assurances that it is being designed properly.
"We are route agnostic. I'm not telling them whether they should go this way or that way," he said.
The Narromine to Narrabri section of the Inland Rail is yet to receive state approval, and there is a pending review of ARTC's flood modelling.
Climate-proof railway
The 1,700 kilometre Inland Rail has to cross a number of flood-prone water courses, but Ms Pickering said the project would actually help during rain events.
"Over recent years, we've seen some extreme weather events and … we've seen that cause a reasonable amount of chaos to some of our transport networks, cutting off roads, cutting off rail," she said.
"By having alternate train lines that traverse north-south … we can make sure that if there are impacts to other routes, we can still get goods to market.
"So this is really bolstering the resilience of our entire supply chain."
The problem though, for farmers near Millmerran in southern Queensland, is that to make the railway line flood-proof, they say ARTC plans to build a large embankment across the floodplain they live and work on.
"The Inland Rail that's to be built here is going to be three-and-a-half metres high," farmer Bud Kelly said.
"It's going to be a wall, an embankment, so the water is going to be no longer able to flow over the top of it."
The Condamine River flats, where Bud Kelly farms, have flooded six times since December 2021.
A cavernous washout along the old disused rail corridor that ARTC plans to rebuild recently swallowed up heavy machinery used by rail subcontractors.
"We originally asked them to build it at the same height as this rail, and no, no, they wanted to build it higher for better flood risk or whatever," Mr Kelly said.
"We said, 'Well, make it a bridge the whole way', and they don't want to do that either — I guess it's cost."
In the nearby village of Pampas, Bronte Harris's house stands less than 100 metres from the railway line.
She has a photo of a flood in 2010, which shows water lapping at her top step.
"ARTC modelling basically said there was no water in this area," Ms Harris said.
"Forty-nine centimetres is [the] discrepancy in that height and their modelling, so where else are their measurements out?"
But an ARTC spokesperson said it had since factored Ms Harris's observed flood height into its latest modelling, along with more than 50 other historic flood markers and more than 400 photos and videos provided by other landowners.
"There have been a significant number of independent reviews of that modelling work to verify it's been done to world's best practice," Ms Pickering said.
"There's even been an international panel of experts appointed to review our models, and they have been complimentary of the work done so far, and we've been given some recommendations to carry forward into further stages of our design."
In a draft report released earlier this year, that same independent panel of flood experts also found some floodplain catchments had been left out of modelling, and so too had soil assessments.
However five hydrology experts on the panel said it was normal for such issues to be identified during project development, and the current problems could be resolved.
The final report has been delivered and is being considered by both the Queensland and federal governments.
Former National's leader Barnaby Joyce has been a longtime advocate for Inland Rail, having originally secured its funding.
He said the project had already been thoroughly reviewed, and now it was time to get on and build it.
"I think there were 71 scientists, experts, engineers, and there were two reviews that have been reviewed by a further two reviews," he said.
"They've been reviewed, then again, by a further two reviews, [and they've] then been reviewed by an independent reviewer, and you know what they asked me for when I went to talk to them? They wanted another review."
Last year a senate inquiry into the Inland Rail tabled a report that was critical of the business case, transparency and consultation process.
The Labor government is also finalising the terms of its promised independent review of the Inland Rail project.
