As communities throughout Victoria, and beyond, lament the downgrading of the Melbourne to Mildura rail line, a report has come to light at the “Buloke Times” office. It was more than two years ago (on September 21, 2022) by the not-for-profit Ouyen Inc. In common with towns including Birchip, Donald and St. Arnaud, Ouyen is located on the Melbourne-Mildura line, and the media release from there at the time was as follows, under the heading:

For Northwest and Central Victoria Rail …
An Absolute Game Changer

The Parliamentary Budgets Office (PBO) released its costings on Friday 16th of this month, for the Ouyen Inc.’s “Reinstatement of the Ballarat rail freight corridor plan”, a plan that overcomes the two reasons cited by the Victorian Government for not completing the Murray Basin Rail Project in full.

Scott Anderson of the volunteer, not-for-profit group, Ouyen Inc., said “the PBO figure of $115.1 million to fix the critical Ballarat rail corridor (Maryborough to Gheringhap) is an absolute game changer. And not only for our Sunraysia Mallee Port Link intermodal project and the grain trains in the Northwest, but for the current and future rail requirements in the vicinity of Bendigo and Ballarat as well.”

Ouyen Inc. consultant, Michael O’Callaghan, said “the Reinstatement of the Ballarat rail freight corridor plan” was submitted to Government by Ouyen Inc. along with a long list of stakeholders as co-signatories, ranging from VFF to the Port of Portland. He said the plan was formulated in response to Governments decision to halve the scope of the Murray Basin Rail Project in 2020.

“That decision triggered a whole raft of serious repercussions, including the need for 99 million truck kilometres over the next four years,” he said. “So, we set about resolving the two key reasons cited by government for not finishing the project.”

The “Ouyen Inc. Reinstatement of the Ballarat rail freight corridor plan” outlines how a freight train can travel through the “passenger-freight train overlap section” in under 5 minutes at 40km/hr and not disrupt passenger trains. It also shows that the dual gauging from Gheringhap through to Ballarat is not warranted and this is now backed up by independent analysis undertaken in July this year. That analysis found that, although the Public Transport Victoria’s (PTV) preference is to have the Gheringhap (Nth Geelong) to Ballarat section dual gauged, so as to allow metro broad gauge passenger trains to traverse to and from Ballarat for maintenance, there is ample capacity on the existing broad gauge Bacchus Marsh line for them to do this. “Converting the 132 km from Gheringhap through to Maryborough to standard gauge, instead of dual gauging, brings down the cost significantly,” Michael said.

Scott Anderson said he would like to thank the Member for Mildura, Ali Cupper, for submitting the “Reinstatement of the Ballarat rail freight corridor plan” to the Parliamentary Budgets Office for Election Policy Costing. “It demonstrates her direct support for the Sunraysia Mallee Port Link (SMPL) project and all of its many stakeholders, including the road transport industry.”

The aim of the project is to:

• Get half to two thirds of the 800,000 tonnes of intermodal freight (shipping containers) in our catchment region on to rail, including almonds, table grapes, grain, citrus, wine, tartaric products and vegetables.
• Implement value adding projects including a hay export facility.
• Support future mining of mineral sands and rare earths. Iluka Resources’ letter of support states it will change the economics of mining the many proven strands in the region. In the last twelve months there has been a plethora of mining exploration applications close to the Sunraysia Mallee Port Link.

Scott said, “The Parliamentary Budgets Office’s figure of $115.1 million to reinstate the critical Ballarat freight rail corridor equates to about half the cost of a metro rail crossing removal.

“It certainly paves the way to resolve a long list of opportunities that have been left on the table as well as present new ones, particularly in Central Victoria.”

This article appeared in The Buloke Times, 3 December 2024.