# Creating a sea in Australia **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 14, 2020, 8:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-sea-in-australia/918059 "2020-08-14T08:42:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![PlaceboTarget](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/placebotarget/32/1073_2.png) [@PlaceboTarget](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlaceboTarget)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 8:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-sea-in-australia/918059/1 "2020-08-14T08:42:57Z")
I’ve just read that early explorers believed that there was a sea in the middle of the Land Down Under. A sea was never found there, but I wonder how difficult it would be to create one. Australia is the lowest continent in the world with an average elevation of only 330 metres. There is an area in the middle of the continent, where the land is below the sea level. It looks like if they put their mind to it, Australians could really create an inland sea and enjoy the benefits of a better climate. Has this idea ever taken into consideration? How hard can it be? [![](https://www.ga.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0013/12640/GA11759.gif) ](https://www.ga.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0013/12640/GA11759.gif) ---
**Author:** ![penultima\_thule](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penultima_thule/32/3833_2.png) [@penultima\_thule](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/penultima_thule)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 9:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-sea-in-australia/918059/2 "2020-08-14T09:10:06Z")
Lake Eyre is (when full) the largest lake in Australia and at 9,500 km2 is about half the size of Lake Ontario. It drains almost all of inland northern Australia west of the Great Dividing Range which separates the eastern seaboard from the inland. Am not sure why you think a salt lake would improve the climate. Don’t think Bonneville represents a convivial climate and and it’s pretty similar topography even to the extent of Don Campbell setting a world land speed record there. It’s baking hot and very little fresh water. Barely habitable except for mining and rangeland agriculture. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/3VHCU4Jp048/maxresdefault.jpg "Lake Eyre in Flood - 2019") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VHCU4Jp048) ---
**Author:** ![PlaceboTarget](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/placebotarget/32/1073_2.png) [@PlaceboTarget](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlaceboTarget)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 9:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-sea-in-australia/918059/3 "2020-08-14T09:15:27Z")
A larger body of water would have a greater impact on the weather, in my opinion. The lake can be enlarged into an inland sea by increasing its capacity. To fill the inland sea, desalinated water can be used. All the necessary technology is at hand. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 9:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-sea-in-australia/918059/4 "2020-08-14T09:20:20Z")
Technology, yes. Money, no. Desalinating water, and transporting water, on the scale that would be required, is not cheap. ---
**Author:** ![Acierocolotl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acierocolotl/32/6241_2.png) [@Acierocolotl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acierocolotl)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 9:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-sea-in-australia/918059/5 "2020-08-14T09:22:02Z")
> [@PlaceboTarget](#): > > How hard can it be? There is an ecosystem where you’ll be flooding, and that will be destroyed. Let’s dispense with the required ecological assessments and charge straight into the hypothetical. In short, you need to dig a trench at, say, 10 meters below sea level, connecting the nearest shore of your proposed lake to the ocean itself. If it’s through dirt, you’ll want to reinforce the sides (and top if it’s tunnelling), and if it’s through rock, you’ve got some serious digging ahead of you. Very coarsely speaking, prices seem to be around $2000 for one meter of a 4.88 meter diameter tunnel. (Quick and dirty cite: [https://vlhc.org/cna/hmm\_appendix.pdf](https://vlhc.org/cna/hmm_appendix.pdf)) Lake Eyre is roughly 500 kilometers (very roughly) from the nearest seashore. So that’s a price of roughly ten billion dollars. I don’t think you’d find much appetite for that in Australia’s budget. ---
**Author:** ![PlaceboTarget](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/placebotarget/32/1073_2.png) [@PlaceboTarget](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlaceboTarget)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 9:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-sea-in-australia/918059/6 "2020-08-14T09:25:59Z")
I agree that it would extremely expensive. But it would create jobs and give Australian people a vision and a new hope that their country could be turned into a promised land, just like the Dutch have shaped their own country. Have the Dutch affected the ecosystem? Definitely. No one is blaming them for it. ---
**Author:** ![penultima\_thule](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penultima_thule/32/3833_2.png) [@penultima\_thule](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/penultima_thule)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 9:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-sea-in-australia/918059/7 "2020-08-14T09:41:15Z")
Utter frog shit. > A larger body of water It gets all the water draining from an area larger than the US Mid West. It still has spent 80% of living memory dry. Where are you going to get the water to fill it permanently? > The lake can be enlarged into an inland sea by increasing its capacity. The capacity isn’t the issue. There is insufficient water to fill the shallow depression that’s there. Or does your Impossible scheme of grandeur include digging the salt lake to some greater depth? > To fill the inland sea, desalinated water can be used. What the bloody hell do you think flows from the Channel Country thru the Warburton Creek into Lake Eyre now and for millenia before that? > All the necessary technology is at hand. Neither the technology or funding on that scale is available And it would be an exercise of galactic standard environmental vandalism on the driest continent on earth. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 9:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-sea-in-australia/918059/8 "2020-08-14T09:43:04Z")
California did this by accident about a hundred years ago. It’s not a very nice body of water, and the climate around it is still miserably hot except the water means it’s occasionally hot _and_ full of bugs. Oh, and even though it was filled with fresh water, it’s now extremely salty, so don’t bother desalinating the water. ---
**Author:** ![PlaceboTarget](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/placebotarget/32/1073_2.png) [@PlaceboTarget](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlaceboTarget)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 9:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-sea-in-australia/918059/9 "2020-08-14T09:48:21Z")
I agree that such a project should be carefully assessed and designed by scientists specializing in environment engineering. With proper methods, I believe parts of Australia could be turned into tropical or Mediterranean areas. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 9:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-sea-in-australia/918059/10 "2020-08-14T09:54:46Z")
Even if this gigantic cesspit changed the climate beyond making it smell, Australia is _already_ blessed with regions that have tropical and Mediterranean climates. ---
**Author:** ![scudsucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scudsucker/32/14101_2.png) [@scudsucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scudsucker)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-sea-in-australia/918059/11 "2020-08-14T09:57:39Z")
If this hypothetical sea was created, would that make Australia the world’s largest atoll? ---
**Author:** ![PlaceboTarget](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/placebotarget/32/1073_2.png) [@PlaceboTarget](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlaceboTarget)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 10:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-sea-in-australia/918059/12 "2020-08-14T10:06:16Z")
> [@Lord\_Feldon](#): > > Australia is _already_ blessed with regions that have tropical and Mediterranean climates. Cool. And you can never have too many of them, can you? > [@scudsucker](#): > > If this hypothetical sea was created, would that make Australia the world’s largest atoll? Did the early explorers think Australia was an atoll? The inland sea should only be a large lake, not a real sea. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-sea-in-australia/918059/13 "2020-08-14T10:10:22Z")
I think you underestimate how large Australia is. If you want to make a big enough difference to affect the climate of the whole country (positively, I assume, which is also absurdly presumptuous) it would have to be even larger than the whole Mediterranean. Something the size of Lake Superior would be nice to visit, but not really achieve much, you have to go large or go home. [![](https://wickedwalkabout.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Australia-Europe.jpg) ](https://wickedwalkabout.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Australia-Europe.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![PlaceboTarget](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/placebotarget/32/1073_2.png) [@PlaceboTarget](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlaceboTarget)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 10:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-sea-in-australia/918059/14 "2020-08-14T10:30:02Z")
The Great Lakes in North America have a great influence on the climate. Their surface area is 244,106 km². Australia’s total area is 7.692 million km². ---
**Author:** ![Dead\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Dead\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dead_Cat)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-sea-in-australia/918059/15 "2020-08-14T10:37:48Z")
Without wishing to be too harsh, it appears to me you have nothing on which to base this belief other than your unsupported assertion. Don’t worry - science is littered with examples of nice ideas that will never actually work. Progress in science is almost always achieved by years of study to gain a deep understanding of a narrow field, followed by incremental progress at the margins. Not with grand ideas formulated after a few minutes of reading. So the best advice to you, if you are interested in this sort of thing, is to study something you love, and maybe one day you can make your own contribution to advance human understanding - if not, well it was still a worthwhile endeavour. In short, I don’t think either of us is an expert in climate science, the difference between us is that I know I’m not. ---
**Author:** ![PlaceboTarget](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/placebotarget/32/1073_2.png) [@PlaceboTarget](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlaceboTarget)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 10:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-sea-in-australia/918059/16 "2020-08-14T10:44:10Z")
> [@Dead\_Cat](#): > > In short, I don’t think either of us is an expert in climate science, the difference between us is that I know I’m not. I would appreciate if you mentioned what assertion of mine you find unrealistic and/or unsupported and why. ---
**Author:** ![Dead\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Dead\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dead_Cat)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 10:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-sea-in-australia/918059/17 "2020-08-14T10:51:54Z")
Well, basically all of them, but the one I was picking out there was “I believe parts of Australia could be turned into tropical or Mediterranean areas.”. Why do you have this belief? Lord Feldon has pointed out the example of a large inland sea created in California that did not have this effect. I cannot see any reason to believe that the creation of a larger version in Australia would be possible (even disregarding cost) or have a different outcome. Landscapes and watercourses have formed on Earth over periods of hundreds of millions of years, a bit of engineering isn’t going to change them. One thing the human race has never yet been able to effectively control is the climate. ---
**Author:** ![PlaceboTarget](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/placebotarget/32/1073_2.png) [@PlaceboTarget](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlaceboTarget)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 10:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-sea-in-australia/918059/18 "2020-08-14T10:58:45Z")
> [@Dead\_Cat](#): > > One thing the human race has never yet been able to effectively control is the climate. I can’t argue here. But this is why I started this topic. I still hope somebody more knowledgeable may have information on this. I have researched the subject on the Internet and I couldn’t find anything. ---
**Author:** ![penultima\_thule](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penultima_thule/32/3833_2.png) [@penultima\_thule](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/penultima_thule)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 11:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-sea-in-australia/918059/19 "2020-08-14T11:14:30Z")
> [@PlaceboTarget](#): > > I would appreciate if you mentioned what assertion of mine you find unrealistic and/or unsupported and why. There are some real rich pickings but let’s try… > To fill the inland sea, desalinated water can be used. Desal water is liquid electricity. It’s only economic as source of last resort for human consumption. Unless you are thinking of solar powered evaporation off a free water surface, which for about 1 year in 10 is precisely what Lake Eyre is. But recovering the water vapour is a a technical issue you have offered no solution. ---
**Author:** ![penultima\_thule](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penultima_thule/32/3833_2.png) [@penultima\_thule](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/penultima_thule)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-sea-in-australia/918059/20 "2020-08-14T11:22:01Z")
> [@PlaceboTarget](#): > > I have researched the subject on the Internet and I couldn’t find anything. You gotta wonder just how wildly, totally left field, whack job an idea is if you can’t find any supporting theorists on the internet. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-a-sea-in-australia/918059.md?page=2)