"The next train to arrive on platform number one ..."

Ian Gray from the Barkly Enterprise Development Network
(BEDN) can hear the train approaching.
With his track record as a railwayman from way back
he tells us how to make the most of this opportunity.

From Tennant Creek's and the Barkly's point of view, one of the most exciting deals, I think, has been the fact that we, Barkly Development Employment Network, in June this year, managed to negotiate the Peko Road subdivision site as the main rail camp.
I was concerned that it was going to go to Warrego. With standard engineering practice, that's where it would have gone. But for someone who is trying to re-install the fabric of the community, the location in town at Peko Road was so very important.
As a result the NT government has leased the Peko Road site to us at BEDN, we have on leased it to ADrail and they are going to develop their camp there starting on the 4th of December 2000.
We have asked the Minister to place within the lease a single clause. We don't want any money out of the lease as such but we've asked for a clause to be put in there that says they must utilise local people where possible and local businesses for the preliminary works, ie, electrical, mechanical, air conditioning, plumbing, drainage, slabs, landscaping, fencing, verandahs in between etc, etc. The camp is to be developed initially to a 150-man status.
That means about thirty dongas, some of them are only 3 man dongas, while some of them have got their own ensuites, depending on where you're classified within the food chain.
The camp will have its own laundry systems, its own ablution systems, its own kitchens and its own recreation rooms. It's got a carpark with space for two hundred cars so people will be able to bring their motor vehicles if they're living in the camp.
The railworkers' camp is going to be where the old subdvision is, Boag Court, directly opposite the Outback Caravan Park.
Tennant Creek should enjoy a spillage of about six or seven million dollars a year. That is where men or women who are living at the camp, leave the camp structure after their meal and spend time in town. It's designed to be a six day week for the rail workers.
They have one day of leisure - that one day of leisure I'd suggest would see the town very busy.
We see the opportunity of a camp there as a great opportunity for an interface with tourism and tourism that can go right through to Borroloola. We're trying to enthuse people in Borroloola to try and make that available.
The camp here grows from the original 150 up to 280 persons. A shuttle bus service will run the workers on a shift basis from the camp either down to the formation (pre-track earth works) fifty kilometres away, or down to the sleeper plant at the south of town, or the flash butt welding facility which is south of town as well.
To start with we have the main line and then you have what's called a passing loop, will be used as a construction loop initially. The sleepers will be manufactured in one area, then get moved out and stack piled until they are cured.
You've then got a 28 day curing period before you can take them off and put them on the rail. The construction train will be 360 metres long made up of rail and 3000 tonnes of ballast which will come from Warrego Road quarry. The sleepers go on to the train as well.
Part of this train will go out at one time during the day and the other part at night. The ballast gets loaded at night - the sleeper factory will run twenty four hours day. You'll have buses running from town to service the sleeper plant with people around the clock.
You'll have meals being served out at the factory and then the workers go back to camp to sleep. So the camp will be running twenty-four hours a day as well.
Security will be paramount in the camp. It'll have a huge fence around it so it will be secure because these blokes will have to get some sleep. There won't be any opportunity for people being noisy or being uninvited guests. I'd suggest there'd be no guests allowed in there at all.
They'll be no one allowed into the camp at all, it will be specifically for rail workers.
The camp will also support the 25 to 30 person workforce out at the Warrego Road Quarry. The quarry is located about 13.5 kilometres out along Warrego Road. The railway line runs parallel within 2 kilometres to Warrego Road until out near Orlando where it then crosses over the road.
The rail will have a spur into the quarry so that the train can go into the quarry. The only aggregates that we should have running through town are to feed back to the sleeper factory, that's about 120,000 tonnes of aggregate. As well we've got 120,000 tonnes of sand that may well come as a by product from the quarry or alternatively come out of the Gosse River.
If it comes out of the Gosse, that's another project that BEDN has worked on. We're going to deal with the traditional land owners and we'll put together a joint venture with Julalikari and Kerr Brothers or CBC.
They have undertaken to employ approximately seven workers on the sand project out there. So if we win the contract there'll be work for indigenous people.
It's really up to Austrack, the company that's actually manufacturing the sleepers, whether they utilise sand or whether they utilise crushing dust. Crushing dust is very water costly, not too efficient and would need to be washed so there are a lot of reasons why we believe the bias should be to sand and if it is, then we're very fortunate. It becomes a bloody big project that we've been putting together for a very long time.
So rail wise, I think the excitement time is right, I think the 4th of December it starts; the 22nd of December the camp is finished. There are 25 people in town at this present time who'll move out of the motels and into the camp.
With Peko Roadside, it's a total subdivsion, it's all there. The only thing that needs to be installed now are transformers and switchboards and that's underway as we speak.
They'll drop the dongas here after about a five day trip. The earthworks start on the 4th. It will only be sand pads because it's all done - it's a beautiful site.
I'm hoping that people like Julalikari get the opportunity to do the external fencing and those types of things.
And then after a thousand days it's taken apart - gone.
There's an opportunity to keep some of the fly camps that are located at hundred kilometre intervals. When their use-by date comes up, we could do a deal on them for the local communities, That's one of the things that I will be actively pursuing.
The blokes that are involved in the early stages of the plant move on - they follow the earth works formation. When they get fifty k's away, they flick to the next camp. So one day they're out of here and their goods and everything are transferred to the same numbered donga at the other end and they just go to another end. And therein lie some wonderful opportunities for local people.
We see most of this being staffed from assistant management down, ie. the kitchen hands, cleaners, the landscapers and the security all done by local people and a great cut of that is going to be indigenous people if I have my way. I'm trying to negotiate that particular point with Bob Collins at this present time.
Bob's job is to be the Community Liaison Officer. Unfortunately we haven't seen him yet and the railway line starts here. It's very difficult to try and have someone go to bat for us if he doesn't come and talk to us. He in actual fact is employed by ADrail, but I think he was nominated by the government.
We do need him, yes we do. I've always held in my guts that the railway was going to happen - wouldn't happen overnight - but it would happen.
My concern has been - what's in it for the local bloke, what's the local business going to get ot of it?
Unfortunately, the more I see of it, it's not going to be very much. Many local businesses' equipment is not good enough, their quality of insurance, quality controls, safety, environmental policies not in place - and these railway consortium people are just that rigid.
As a consequence what happens is instead of wet hiring a piece of equipment, what they're doing is dry hiring. That means, for example, if you're a single man operator where you had a water truck, they want you to lease them the water truck on a drive-hire basis.
They maintain it totally so if something's wrong, they fix it but they don't want you as a driver. They'll bring in their own operators. As a consequence you would then have to go down and try and get yourself some dole money, because your earning opportunity has been taken away from you.
The hire rates they're offering are not flash. I have a problem with them.
The Chief Minister and Tim Baldwin have been most supportive. We could not have got this camp without them, I put a petition paper to them, I enthusiastically presented it and I told them we must have it.
I don't believe there is much opportunity for the town to get anything out of this project after the construction phase. After the line is operating we'll just listen to the train going through. We have no freight opportunity for here.
You'll have National Rail up here, my old company Austrack, could very possibly be running to Darwin, they'll just charge a gross tonne rate per kilometre for access to the track. That's where they get their money.
What they are is a seamless service as a logistics provider on a global basis, that's what they've put together. The port interfaces with the rail, the port then turns around and identifies its markers off-shore - it's a good story and it will really work.
If the economies in Asia are building at the rate at which we think they are, then I think it's fabulous. I think we'll need to keep very proactive in Tennant Creek and the Barkly region in particular in that the most difficult thing to negotiate in this deal is not the cost of building the rail, it's not the technology that we need to apply.
All those things can be done, they're simplistic. They've achieved the greatest thing of all time which is a corridor that travels from one end of the country to the other.
What happens then is the rail corridor becomes a conduit for gas, water and the identification of industries along the way.
So what should happen is that we should become very proactive in starting to do studies now with regard to what we could grow here if we had water - because here is a great opportunity to bring water straight down - it's only the cost of a pipe.
Then you turn around and say well here's that part done, let's now look at, say, the Mt Isa link. And it starts throwing up all sorts of beautiful things. Because then you've got your road and your rail and there are enough resources in Mt Isa, Cloncurry, Camooweal and Barkly Homestead to really utilise and underwrite a rail program here.
If we became joined by rail to Cloncurry and Isa, it would just cancel Queensland as a port option. The rail could follow the corridor and come down and cross just south of where the sleeper plant is and you'll have an opportunity to travel in both directions.
That then makes Tennant Creek an absolute transport heart. If this re-alignment can happen, what I'd like to see happen is that Barkly Highway, about 12 kilometres out as I understand it, is realigned straight to Tennant Creek.
What we'd do is pay for the highway and we recover all of our money by giving them carriageway for the railway coming through from Mt Isa - get all the money back - it would cost us nothing!
It can be done. We tear up the existing road to Threeways - too bad Threeways. This is real fighting stuff but the thing is you pay them a fair value for it or you make them the first service station on the way to town, relocate them.
How would you possibly justify tearing up an existing road and make people drive fifty kilometres further on the way to Darwin?
Simply for the salvation of Tennant Creek - otherwise we're finished.
If we don't, all we've got is a prosperity opportunity of a thousand days to do rail construction. We have a huge question mark over mining - there'll be no one here from Normandy soon.
They're leaving their plant in a capacity where it can be re-cranked by others but that may or may not happen. Remembering always that gold's worth as much in the ground as it is to mine it. You can sell your reserves, you can borrow against them, you can do all sorts of things. You don't have to mine the product to be a successful miner, as some people know.
The only thing we've really got to look at is tourism, it's so important, and perhaps value-added industries. If the government turned round and said if you develop a factory in Tennant Creek you will not pay payroll tax, it's got to be something like that. Or the government could say for that project we're going to give you the land, we're going to give you the infrastructure; you'll have gas, power - that's how it could work.
It's the only chance we've got. Otherwise we'll just be a pie stop. We'll be a service town to those people that are represented here, there's nothing else for us. Anyone who tries to talk up Tennant Creek beyond that and I think what are they basing it on?
If we realign the Barkly Highway and we manage to bring in the rail from the east then, gee whiz, you've made this the transport hub of Central Australia. Because then it's not only the opportunity to go into Mt Isa, you have a look at Warrego Road. You continue that through and you've got the opportunity of going into Western Australia. This then starts to make this place look pretty smart.
At a place called Werriwa, which is down near Coober Pedy, the largest coal deposit in Australia is located and that's owned by a company called Meekathara Minerals. Huge! Bigger than the Hunter Valley. The only trouble with it is it's got salt in it. Huge open cut opportunity, they will mine this deposit. This deposit alone could underwrite the railway line.
The other thing that Meekathara has is a huge pig-iron deposit up near the Adelaide River. You put coal and pig-iron together and you've got a smelter. These guys have got all the technology, they've got everything.
One of my biggest concerns about the rail is the way the indigenous communities are going to interface with the rail when they've never seen a train. You have a situation where you've got motor vehicles travelling at whatever speed and down near Joswig's it's only a hundred metres to the road. So you've got the train going at a 110, you've got cars at 150, 160 and you've got the gawk factor because you're going to see these things two containers high, much higher than the scrub, going through and just power coming out of them and the people just drifting into the railway line. It is a recipe for disaster.
What happens is, when you're going along the road and you make a right turn over the railway line, you will not hear this train coming from behind you if you're travelling in the same direction. If you turn right and don't stop you will just get cleaned up.
When I first started rail, where I operated through Griffith and the Riverina, a great wheat growing area, we had the most intense rail export. These people had lived with rail all their lives and yet we killed three people because we started to operate outside of a schedule.
I was not a government operator and what happened was I started transporting wine. So I wasn't dictated by season because wine is picked, stored and then exported on a demand basis - whereas grain is November to January.
So with rail, remember you can't always hear the train, you think you can, but you can't. Once the locomotives power off - it's down hill to Darwin - you've got more chance of hearing a train coming back one way because it's going to have power on, whereas the other way, it's just going to be using momentum. The emphasis is on living with rail.