This chapter represents one facet of a more extensive research project on the historical development and future prospects of the Australian inland, especially the area that lies between the Great Dividing Range and the deserts of Central Australia. The question I will attempt to answer here is that of why a grandiose ‘nation-building’ solution to the perceived problems of the inland has retained a significant presence in public debate for more than seven decades, even though it has repeatedly and convincingly proved to be impractical and financially unviable.

My broader research project focuses principally on perceptions and understandings of the inland, both from those who have lived and continue to live there and from the overwhelming and growing majority of Australians who live along the coastal strip of the continent. I have also paid particular attention to the perceptions and policies of governments at all levels as they affect the inland.

Over much of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, the inland and northern areas of Australia have been widely perceived as being in a state of ‘decline’ or, at the very least, as languishing due to our collective failure as a nation to take action to release their untapped potential. Federal, state and local governments have produced myriad plans for improving the lot of inland and northern Australia, including monumental, ‘nation-building’ solutions, some of which — such as the Snowy Mountains Scheme, the Ord River Scheme and the Alice Springs to Darwin railway — have been completed after many decades of deliberation, while others have never left the drawing board because they have been perceived to be overly expensive and/or impractical.

Of those monumental ‘nation-building’ projects that have not proceeded to an implementation stage, perhaps the most celebrated and controversial is that which is known as the Bradfield Scheme for diverting water from the rivers of the tropical north to those of western Queensland. While it has been subject to frequent and intensive criticism from scientists and other experts, the Bradfield Scheme has had an enduring appeal among some politicians and other public figures, and has had at least two major revivals in public debate since it was developed in its current form during the 1930s: most recently in 2007, as I will now discuss.