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Australia`s new north-south railway trade bridge to Asia
Adelaide, Australia, Jan 15: A massive freight train began the long haul across the Australian continent to Darwin today, opening an ambitious rail link that planners hope will transform the sparsely-populated northern territory into a trade bridge with Asia.
Adelaide, Australia, Jan 15: A massive freight train
began the long haul across the Australian continent to Darwin
today, opening an ambitious rail link that planners hope will
transform the sparsely-populated northern territory into a
trade bridge with Asia.
Hailed by Prime Minister John Howard as an exercise in
nation building, the 1.3 billion Australian dollar (1.0
billion USD) Adelaide-Darwin railway runs for almost
3,000 kilometres through Australia's Arid Red Centre along a
route pioneered by camel drivers in the nineteenth century.
The trans-continental rail link was first mooted 145 years ago but the project ran out of steam when the line reached Alice Springs in 1927, 1,420 kilometres short of Darwin.
It took a consortium of private companies called Asia Pacific Transport (APT), along with more than half a billion dollars in public funds, to complete the rail link last September.
Northern territory chief minister Clare Martin said the departure of the Darwin-bound train was the realisation of a dream to link Australia's north and south coasts with ribbons of steel.
The northern territory capital is also hoping the rail link will increase its chances of securing a refinery for the liquefied natural gas fields being developed in the Timor sea. It is Australia's second transcontinental rail link, joining the famous Indian Pacific, that runs east-west between Perth and Sydney.
Bureau Report
The trans-continental rail link was first mooted 145 years ago but the project ran out of steam when the line reached Alice Springs in 1927, 1,420 kilometres short of Darwin.
It took a consortium of private companies called Asia Pacific Transport (APT), along with more than half a billion dollars in public funds, to complete the rail link last September.
Northern territory chief minister Clare Martin said the departure of the Darwin-bound train was the realisation of a dream to link Australia's north and south coasts with ribbons of steel.
The northern territory capital is also hoping the rail link will increase its chances of securing a refinery for the liquefied natural gas fields being developed in the Timor sea. It is Australia's second transcontinental rail link, joining the famous Indian Pacific, that runs east-west between Perth and Sydney.
Bureau Report