Drought security be damned says historian

While Australia's first mainland hydro-electric scheme to power an actual town was constructed here in 1922 - to supply electricity for the value-adding of agricultural produce in the form of a butter and bacon factory - there were some in the community who thought Dorrigo's rich resource could provide so much more.

A 1955 report by the NSW Department of Mines devised a series of small dams connected by tunnels to provide hydro power, dropping the left over water into the Bellinger River system.

However, there was another scheme of much grander proportion that has all but been forgotten.

Now a descendant of district visionary Harry Bailey is promoting his age-old disregarded scheme that - had it been built - would have delivered water to the towns and villages from Newcastle to the Queensland border using gravity as the only energy. Power from its falling water would also have driven electric motors for industry.

Harry was a returned World War One veteran who was awarded a soldiers’ settlement block at Paddys Plain, under which lay some of the best red soil on the Dorrigo Plateau.

An expert axeman and later a national title holder as well as a judge at the Sydney Royal Show, Harry rode his horse from the coast to the clouds and began clearing virgin scrub by hand, felling red cedar, rosewood and hoop pine - always in awe of the resource beneath his feet. Businesses followed before a long stint in public service. He was elected shire president of both Dorrigo and Coffs Shires with a career that spanned 20 years before his death in 1965.

During that time he ran as a Federal Labor candidate against stalwart Earl Page of the Country Party. Both men had visions for their regions that involved the harnessing of water for power and irrigation - one involved a dam on the lower river at The Gorge, next to the Page family farm. The other, had a plan for a dam 600m in the sky, on the swift-flowing Nymboida, not far from his own Soldier’s Settlement. Indeed, Harry with his knowledge for timber and passion for bass fishing as well as horse riding had explored the bush to the north of the plateau, where great ravines cut into the basalt harboured a living resource in trees and also hinted at another which required human intervention.

Today Harry’s grandson Greg is promoting his grandfather’s grand scheme that time has forgotten. Current drought everywhere else in the state, however, is once again piquing interest in the capture of water.

The Bailey Water Scheme, as it was known, drew inspiration from the Snowy Hydro scheme of the 1950s and was intended to take advantage of that project’s no experienced labour force.

In essence the Dorrigo scheme involved a two kilometre long dam across the Nymboida downstream of platypus Flat and upstream of the Cod Hole at a place called Jacobs Ladder, where tall ridges come close to bridging the valley. From here the river flows north to the Mann and the Clarence.

The towering dam wall would flood country behind it to the 600 meter contour, backing up water in a 60 square kilometre dam that would inundate state forest - now national park.

To provide flow to the entire coastal region, Harry envisaged a tunnel carrying water from the top of the dam near North Dorrigo, sending it under Dome Mountain and then through piping to fall into the Bellinger Valley via the Little North Arm, or Rosewood River.

In the current dry season the reliability of Dorrigo water is proven, points out Greg, with the Nymboida contributing nearly 90 per cent of total Clarence flow - 428 mega litres measured at Nymboida in mid- March while total Clarence flow at Lilydale at the same time measured 477ML.

The reliable Nymboida, sourced by springs that feed gullies on the Dorrigo Plateau usually deliver 21 per cent in an average year, at 2006 ML/day. The data to come up with this average figure goes back to 1909.

For this reason Greg says Harry’s long-forgotten scheme is worthy because holding back water from a few tributaries - the Little Nymboida, the Murray, the Blicks and the Bielsdown - would not have had a significant impact on total Clarence river flow. However, its worth in irrigation and hydro-electricity would have been enormous.

Greg says two generations of Baileys have tried to promote Harry’s ambitious project, only to have their pleas for re-investigation fall on deaf ears.

“There has been absolutely no interest to the stage of insulting dismissiveness,” he says.

“As we live in a dry continent with extremes of drought and flood and population continues to increase - particularly along the eastern seaboard - should we insure our future with projects such as the Bailey Water Scheme?

“Or should we keep pretending we are short of water and not examine the facts?”