Farmer’s fury over refined project plans
A CHARLTON farmer has laid bare his frustration with the Australian Rail Track Corporation over the Inland Rail project.
Tim Durre operates a successful high production irrigated fodder farm on the banks of Gowrie Creek to the west of Toowoomba.
But in September 2018, it emerged that the Inland Rail project would dissect his farm, threatening to disrupt his extensive irrigation network and cut off his access to water.
The farm is in a high priority water zone which guarantees water each week, unlike other zones along Gowrie Creek.
Mr Durre said he’d received promises from ARTC that under a previous iteration of the plan, a rail bridge would be built near the centre of his land, allowing him to pipe water beneath it.
But in a “refined” corridor map provided to Mr Durre at the end of October, that proposal had been scuttled.
The bridge had been moved to the western side of his property, with embankments on either side of it.
Altering his irrigation system to fit the refined corridor would come at a huge cost to Mr Durre – somewhere in the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars – but he said so far there had been no mention of that in relation to the latest corridor map.
“The way we stand right now, they have not mentioned any fix when they go through that irrigation. They have no proposed any other make-do or happy medium. So basically, they’re not worried about closing the show down,” he said.
“Which is what will happen. For sure.”
Mr Durre said he wanted to see better communication from ARTC, adding that with his current dealings with them, he “couldn’t even give them a rating of 1/10”.
“If they want to come through here, they’ve got to talk to us first … I don’t want to be a whinger but they’re trying to take me out and basically they think it’s a joke,” he said.
Inland Rail project director north Rob McNamara said ARTC had met with Mr Durre on several occasions to learn more about his property and agricultural business.
“Inland Rail staff again offered him an opportunity to meet and discuss the reference design prior to its public release in September, however, Mr Durre declined a face-toface meeting and was then sent information about the proposed rail alignment in relation to his property.” he said.
Mr Durre disputes this, explaining he was out of town on the two days ARTC had offered to meet.
Mr McNamara said discussions with Mr Durre and other nearby landholders over the past two years had seen the proposed rail alignment moved outside of the focused area of investigation “in an effort to beter accommodate Mr Durre’s farming machinery and irrigation requirements”.
“ARTC has examined a range of options to accommodate Mr Durre’s various requests alongside those of his neighbours who requested that the alignment remain as was first presented in the original focus area in the Charlton area,” he said.
“The competing wishes of neighbouring properties have resulted in some changes to the proposed project footprint on Mr Durre’s property, however, these may change further during the detailed design phase which will look more closely at the rail height, bridge and earthworks lengths, heights and widths.
“This will involve ongoing discussions with all landholders in the Charlton area as we continue to collect information to be fed into the detailed design process.”