30,000 GL per year north-to-south via the Alice Hub at 550m elevation. 40 GW pumped hydro generating capacity, 16,000 GL stored. Buybacks stop Day 1. 6.7 million new hectares of irrigated farmland. The Murray-Darling restored — not by redistribution, but by addition.
Australia's north receives hundreds of billions of litres of monsoon rainfall every wet season. Less than 3.4% is captured. The rest flows into the Timor Sea and Gulf of Carpentaria within days. The single largest renewable resource on the Australian continent, after sunlight, runs into the ocean every year because there is nothing to catch it.
Since 1997–98, irrigation water use in NSW and Victoria has been cut by over 40% through Commonwealth buybacks. Water entitlements created for productive use have been purchased and retired. Farms have dried up. Towns have died. The buybacks were always the wrong instrument: the answer to a water shortage is not less water; the answer is more water.
Australia's interior has some of the most fertile soils on earth — red plains and dark cracking clays never cultivated at scale because there was no water. Asia faces structural food insecurity for the next 30 years. The continent that could feed Asia sits on its food capacity because the water is in the wrong place.
Surplus corridor solar pumps northern river water to high-elevation reservoirs in the MacDonnell Ranges at ~550m. At night, reservoirs discharge through turbines generating up to 40 GW of clean, dispatchable power. 16,000 GL stored. Pumping cost only on the northern leg — gravity delivers the rest. The Alice Hub is simultaneously a water transfer system and the largest pumped hydro energy storage facility ever built.
Target delivery: 30,000 GL/yr to the Murray-Darling and inland farming corridors. For scale: the Murray-Darling has 11,000 GL of managed annual flow. The SBC adds nearly 3× the entire Murray-Darling system from northern capture — without touching a single existing allocation. Water wars end by addition.
Once water reaches 550m at Alice Springs, gravity delivers it south for free. Alice Springs → Coober Pedy → Port Augusta: 1,500 km of gravity flow. Tap-off every 100 km to corridor towns, irrigation districts, and the Murray-Darling system. No pumping cost south of Alice. Solar pays once.
The Water Act is amended on Day 1: no further Commonwealth buybacks. Existing entitlements remain with current holders. The SBC adds new water from the north — it does not redistribute existing allocations. Murrumbidgee, Murray, Darling, and Lachlan irrigators keep what they have and receive additional water from the Alice Hub system.
With reliable water delivered to the inland, 6.7 million hectares of currently unproductive agricultural land becomes viable. Dark cracking clay soils. Red loam plains. The same soils that produced Australia's best yields in wet years — now with year-round water security via the corridor conduit.
40 GW dispatchable. 16,000 GL stored. ~30 TWh of energy storage at 770m head equivalent. The single largest pumped hydro facility ever conceived. Solves Australia's renewable intermittency problem at continental scale. The water system and the energy system are the same system.
Asia faces structural food insecurity for the next 50 years. Australia has the land, the climate, the soils, and the proximity. What it has lacked is water and freight infrastructure. The SBC delivers both. The corridor freight tracks carry the produce to port at 3–5c/tonne/km. Australia becomes Asia's food bowl.
John Bradfield proposed a northern water diversion in 1938. Every generation of Australian engineer since has agreed it should be built. Every generation of Australian politician has refused. The SBC makes it viable for the first time: the corridor delivers the power for pumping, the structural backbone for the conduit, and the markets for the agricultural output. Bradfield finally happens.