Cooper Creek Barge reconnecting key freight and tourist routes

ABC NEWS (Australia)

In South Australia's north, cattle are fattening on pastures watered by floods and now there's a new way to get them to market on a barge across Cooper Creek.

Transcript

00:00This is the Birdsville Track, a 520km stretch between Maree in South Australia's north and

00:14Birdsville in Queensland's west. Out here, it doesn't rain often.

00:19It's desert country, like it definitely is. I think we've got 120 or 30mm rainfall

00:24average a year, I suppose.

00:25You'd be in drought more than at least half the time anyway, if you're in drought.

00:32Passing through the Tarare, Sturt Stoney and Strezlecki Deserts, the track is the official

00:37address of fewer than a dozen pastoral stations, one pub and now a boat named Margaret.

00:46Adelaide's 800km that way, Birdsville and the Queensland border 400km that way and this

00:54is Margaret. Nobody knows where she got the name but apparently it's bad luck to change

00:59it now. She's come from the north-west of WA and she's helping to ferry precious cargo like

01:04these cattle across the floodwaters of the Cooper Creek.

01:07I reckon it looks like a floating steel tank actually. There's a ramp on each end. It's

01:15pretty amazing because I thought when we put a truck on it it'd sink down more.

01:18Speaking from Dulcan Innistation at the southern end of the Birdsville track, pastoralist David

01:24Bell explains how Queensland's floodwaters have slowly drained into South Australia via the

01:30Diamantina River.

01:31It's probably in the top four or five floods that they've had so it's big enough.

01:35And then the Cooper Creek.

01:37The Cooper's the same, it's probably in the top three or four floods that they've had so it's,

01:41it's, you know, it adds some size about it that's for sure.

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