Fremantlebiz - Paul's Letter from Australia

Big ocean infill project for Fremantle?

Fremantle will be buzzing today with the news of a concept plan by a bunch of entrepreneurs to fill in part of the Indian Ocean at North Fremantle. They want to create a ten billion dollar, luxury housing estate and marina. The project has tentatively been named Northport Quay. Reportedly it will accommodate 20,000 people.

Already the Labor state-parliament member for Fremantle Mr Jim McGinty has signalled on TV news grabs last night that he doesn't like the concept, so it looks like for the proposers to succeed, they may have to give some serious thought to backing a political candidate of their choice in the next election.

A lot of ocean floor has already been reclaimed in the area by the Fremantle Port Authority. The FPA have signalled they don't like the idea of a housing estate near their patch. Maybe they're concerned about terrorists? They also have a mystery mountain of dirt stockpiled adjacent to where the developers want to establish their dream-city. More likely they want to use it for some ocean infill scheme of their own. Such organisations can't have too many parks for stacking shipping containers.

I suspect there's going to be a lot of environmental objections to the new proposal. The developers are intending to produce their islands by dredging sand from the ocean floor. Existing coastal beaches have a seasonal interchange relationship with offshore sands.

Here's one of my Panoramio images showing the area which has attracted the developer consortium. If you look at the associated Google Earth satellite image you can see the underwater sand banks.

In a continent the size of Australia and with ocean levels on the rise, it seems strange to me that anyone would still be considering reclaiming the ocean to build houses. I'm rather pleased that our house is 29.5 metres (97 feet) above sea level.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

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Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

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