OPENING OF TIM ORD RIVER DAM AT KUNUNURRA.
NORTHERN TERRI-TORY ON 20TH JULY, 1963
Speech by the Prime Mlinistrtht. Hn Sir Robert Menzies
Mr. Acting Premier, Parliamentary Colleagues and Indies and
Gentlemen In mny family, we have a little family joke. I
have to open th-.. ngs occasionally and every now and then I get
up and make a pc.-. wcrful speech, of course, and forget to perform
the opening ceremony. So I am now under firm instructions by
my wife to get the job over and talk afterwards. So I declare
the Ord River Diversion Dam opon. ( Laughter) ( Applause)
So you see, ladies and gentlemen, from this moment,
nobody will be able to look at this Dam and say, " What a pity
it was never opened." Everything is now in order.
The next thing I want to say to you is that I have
received a message from Her Majesty The Queen who came up here
some little time ago on, I believo, a very hot day and enjoyed
it, and has frequently told rme since how much she enjoyed it.
This is the message from her, addressed to myself
" I am so much interested to k-now that
you are opening the Ord River
Diversion Dam today. Both my husband
and I havc the happiest memories of
our visit to Kununurra last March and
we send our good wishes to all
assembled on this occasion which is
so important for the future economy
of Western Australia and for that of
the Commonwealth of Australia,
( Signed) Elizabeth R. 11
It's a strange kind of world that we live in.
Today I am credibly informed is Saturday and on Saturday morning
a week ago, we carie pie-eyed out of an aircraft that had just
arrived from the Unitod States of America. And on Sunday
afternoon, I had a pross and television interview than which,
I warn you young fellows there, there can be nothing more
terrifying in the world. Then we sat down in the Cabinet room
and have been discussing financial matters and of course
whenever we discuss financial matters, West Australia is never
very far away. ( Laughter)
We stopped on Thursday exhausted by ill-doing, no
doubt, and declared a simple adjournment so that some of us
could come over here and then go back and resume our iniquitous
tasks, so far as I am concerned on Monday. I don't mind telling
you for a while I rather felt inclined to grumble and say, " Oh,
dear me, welve just gt back from a tiring journey. Fancy
having to go all that distance." What I said under my breath
about Dave Brand and Charlie Court was really not quite polite,
but we have arrived and weVebeen driving around or been driven
around this morning and I don't miind telling you, speaking of
myself and I know even rjore so for m,. y wife, there's no weariness
left in us. This is the most exciting place in Australia at
this moment. ( Applause) oe. ./ 2
2-
For years and years what, seventeen years, I thinkyou've
had this experimental station, a combination of the
talents of your own officers and those of the C. S. I. R. 0. it
couldn't have been very easy for men of learning and qualifications
to come and, as they might think, lose themselves in what
was comparatively a desert, rune of the amenities of life,
isolated, sustained only by their tremendous skill and their
burning enthusiasm. You know, all round the world, there is a
disposition to think of the Australian as a rather cynical
fellow you kno~ w, agin everybody, agin everything. Well,
true enough in politics of eourse, temporarily. ( Laughter)
But whenever I go to where things are being done in Australia,
I am reminded that this country can produce more concentrated
enthusiasm and skill and devotion to the appropriate task than
any other country that I know, and I want to make my bow in the
direction of those people who started the experimental station
and who did work, without which we wouldn't be here today and
there would be no Ord Scheme at all,
The application of science, combined with enthusiasm,
based upon caref'ul research work we have today a dermonstration
of one stage of what can be done when those things come together.
It's been a very great privilege, I think, for the Commonwealth
and in particular my own Government, to be associated with this
work, but I don't hesitate to say that the work could not have
been done except for enthusiasts far far mmovod from the Cabinet
room at Canberra. The work has been done by your people and with
immense skill, The other day I was at Washington and then two days
before that or three days before that I was at Monticello,
tho home of the great Thomas Jefferson, and I there made a speech.
I'm not going to repeat it to you, so be at ease on that point.'
But one remark I venture to rop eat today. When the United States
of America was established and, when in the early part of the
nineteenth century, Thomas Jefferson became President and served
as President for two terms, he presided over a nation of 5 million
people. We today have 11 million. We know what has happened
in the case of the United States. We know that there you have
a country roughly with our area which, within a measurable term
of years, will have 200 million people and which will be, as it
is now, the grea~ test physical power in the world. All I want to
say to you is that there is nothing that has happened there that
cantt happen here. Eleven million poople. Twice the population
we had forty years ago, with the clear prospect of having
million peopleo in the lifetime of quite a few of those present
today. We can look forward with confidence to our future
provided, of course, that we keep in our minds that nothing is
impossible. In my own grown-up lifetime, in my own time in
public life, which now grows, as anybody can tell you, very
lengthy, I have seen things that were regarded as impossible
brought to fruition. If anybody had by some process gone
through this country thirty years ago and had talked confidently
about having this great irrigation scheme this enormous vista
of the future, beginning in an ostablishoa way by 1963, he
would have been told not to talk nonsense " That's quite
impossible." But the whole history of Australia is the history
of the impossible becoming the possible and of the possible
becoming the probable nnd of the probable becoming the certointy,
the living fact. This, indeed, is the challenge to all of us
who are Australians and it is a challenge which ought to give us
great pride., 9* */ 3
3
It isn't a challenge, ladies and gentlemen, that
can be postponed indefinitely. If there is one thing that
we have all lea.' nt it is that in this country of ours, the
future hurries in upon us. What we thought of as something
that might be looked at in ten years, all of a sudden becomes
something that we ought to look at in five years because the
future is pressing in on us. One of the reasons for that is
that our population is growing, gzowing at an unprecedented
rate, and the rioment that you begin to increase your population
in a country lie this at the rate of say, 250,000 a year, you
begin to feel the pressure upon resources so that we may sustain
that population and so that we may attract more so that we may
become a bigger and a stronger country, more and more rapidly.
Therefore, the pressure is on all of us to attract our minds
to works of devlopment which will be the foundation for future
economic and population growth.
Now there is just one aspect of that that I would
like to say something to you about not that I want to keep
you here too long. Australia, we dontt need to remind
ourselves, is a large place. de have our population concentrated
to an enormous extent in a relatively narrow stretch of country
from Brisbane to Adelaide probably at least 80 per cent. of
the people of A. ustralia in that area and every now and then
we do attract our minds to the problem of getting over this, of
decentralising, In every State you will hear State Premiers,
State Ministers discussing the problem of decentralisation, of
doing something to prevent the movement of people, the aggregation
of people in the big cities, so that the country may live
and prosper, so that the nation may live and prosper. Well, that's
a very powerful problem, but viewed nationally, there is another
aspect of it and that is that we must cease to regard Victoria,
Now South Wales, for example, as highly-developed States
affording a great field for future growth. We are not to
think of it simply in those terms. What we must think of
increasingly is how in the larger States we can secure a development
which will lend strength to the nation as a whole.
There are two outstanding examples of this, of course,
in West Australia and in Queensland, the largest States, States
whose resources are not yet fully known, States in which development
may occur which will alter thie entire economic balance of
the Australian nation. Now this is not going to be done
overnight. I don't profess to say nor does anybody else, that
what has been done here solves the problem. It doesn't. It
begins to solve the problem. It i. s an indication of what may
be done in the future. 1%. aer e not at the end of something
here today; we are at the beginning of something, just as
the experimental station is not at the end of its work but at
the beginning of its work. We must go on and on and on if
these great areas in Australia are to grow and become effective
contributors to Australian life. Now that is a broad statement
but it is a trla statement. I ho! ce that it is one that we
will all have in mind.
In Queensland, for exazpie, the discoveries in the
mineral world, :. ncluding some oil., have been such as were not
dreamed about * ixenty years ago, and in mineral development in
particular, thm-t State may have t whole of its character
changed and the whole of its cont.: z. bution to Australia increased.
In Western Aus,. alia, of course, you also have mineral development;
only at t[ te beginning of it, I venture to say but year
after year after year, this area associated with great names
among the early settlers I say nothing about the best-known
ones because I don't need to mention them, but even a man
0 000/ q +
namied Kelly put his name on a knob of rock somewhere hero.
Alexander Forrest investigated this place many years ago and
wrote hopefully about its future, but for the most part it has
remained as a sort of vague dream. Rainfall, yes. Water, yes.
but what do you do about it? And that's why it was
a masterstroke, in my opinion, for somebody to conceive the
idea that investigation might develop an agricultural industry
in this part of the world on a quite roemarkable scale.
Well, of course, this has boon taken up with
immense enthusiasm; the work has been done as far as I have
been able to see it quite magnificently. I have had a close
look at things I have never looked at closely before. I saw a
cotton harvester at work this morning. It looked as if it had
been designed by the late Heath Robinson. It does all sorts of
things like this under cover and brings in the cotton. Those
in charge of the cotton work here, of course, are so enthusiastic
thp't they have already persuaded no that it is the best cotton
in the world that in due course, and with occasional interruptions
it will be practically immiune from pests that it
will command the worldts price nnd well I don't krnow....
I got so excited about it I began to think that the Commonwealth
might be raising heavy revenues out of the cotton industry up
here. But that it cnn be done is clear. I greatly enjoyed
seeing these marvellous green stands of safflower until a very
distinguished representative of the OSIRO took occasion to say
to me " You ought to be interested in that. You know, after
all, it's just a thistle."' ( Laughter) ( Applause)
Sir, the only other thing I want to say to you is
this. If this were just a miatter of opening a dam of this
particular size, if this were just a matter of opening something
that deals with a relatively few thousand acres of land, somebody
might say, " Well, intrinsically, that's a matter of no great
moment, That kind of thing must be duplicated many places in
the world." But it is more than that. This is a most symbolic
occasion, Man has here conquered nature in the most spectacular
fashion; has done it in a part of Australia in which it was
needed and needed desperately for the future of our country.
And it has happened, and having happened it will go on and as it
goes on, more and more people l~ iving 1,560 miles 2,000 miles
away from here will become interested in it, will come to realise
that what's going on up here is on the whole rather more important
than what's going on in Toorak or Bellevue Hill, And it is.
This is a memorable occasion. This is a symbolic
occasion. It is a very great honour for me to have been invited
to come here and open it. I congratulate everybody associated
with it. More than that, I thank everybody associated with it.
This has been no mere clock job. This has been a work of the
heart, a work of devotion, as well as a work of the mind and of
the hands. Sir, I repeat myself. I declare it open.