Many of Australia's early houses, schools, churches, cathedrals
and town halls were designed and built along traditional European
lines. The colony's first building technology transfers from
Europe were initiated by acclaimed architect Francis Greenway
who was transported to Australia in 1814 for a forgery offence,
and went on to build some of the colony's finest buildings.
Today, among the most notable national landmarks are the
Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, both of
which were considered major construction and engineering achievements.
There have, however, been many other important projects, which
at the time of their completion, were often record breaking
in their proportions.
The largest single engineering project ever undertaken in
Australia was the Snowy Mountains Scheme. Spanning an area
of 3,200 square kilometres of mountains, some 80 kilometres
of aqueducts, more than 140 kilometres of tunnels, 16 large
dams, a pumping station, and seven power stations with a total
generating capacity of 3,740,000 kilowatts, were constructed
between 1949 and 1973. The power stations generate supplementary
peak load electricity for the States of Victoria, New South
Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. The scheme also
provides irrigation water over the Snowy Mountains to the
inland.
The Kangaroo Creek Dam completed in 1969, was the first concrete
faced compacted rockfill dam in the world where the bulk of
the rockfill was a weak rock instead of the conventional hard
mineral rock. This successful variation from previous practice
paved the way for the economic construction of many more dams
of the same type around the world.
Australia's climate has harsh extremes. A river that is dry
for several months a year, can carry more water in flood than
the Nile as does the Ord River. Bridge engineering technology
allowed the crossing of large rivers, gorges and estuaries,
that had previously inhibited expansion, literally opening
up the huge country with a network of roads and railways.
Like their counterparts in other fields, engineers that built
these bridges had to rely on their own resourcefulness, the
availability of materials and labour. As a result, Australia
has some of the most dramatic and advanced bridges in the
world.
The Gladesville precast concrete, voussoir arch bridge in
New South Wales, was the longest span concrete structural
arch bridge in the world when it was completed in 1964, and
more recently, in 1988, the Gateway Bridge in Brisbane, Queensland
became the world's longest and widest balanced cantilever
construction in precast concrete.
Inevitably, the big country necessitated big projects. Moving
large amounts of natural resources and agricultural produce,
required massive materials handling facilities. The world's
largest modern grain handling, storage and shipping complex
is the Kwinana terminal in Western Australia, with a capacity
of handling up to 5,000 tons of grain per hour. The world's
largest sugar loader over a berth construction, which at 5.76
kilometres from shore, also happens to be the farthest offshore
connected berth in the world, is the Port of Hinchinbrook
at Lucinda Point, Queensland.
These and many other comparatively smaller complex building,
construction and civil engineering projects have given an
uncommon degree of expertise and experience to the industry
in Australia. The lessons of the past have culminated in the
development of many new products, processes and technologies,
that today are among the best in the world.
There have also been some major innovations in the area of
private housing, initially arising from the need to house
large numbers of migrants from overseas. At the time gold
was discovered in 1851, the population of Australia was just
200,000. The gold rush brought more than 500,000 migrants
from China, America and Europe, and by 1876, the population
was approaching 2 million. In 1971 population was 13 million
with some 2.7 million born overseas.
Despite the fact that early settlers judged the local hardwood
timbers to be of little use and not fit for building, today
there are more than 600 species of forest timbers available
for structural purposes. In fact, Australia is a world leader
in timber technology for house frame construction, with unique
framing techniques and automated roof truss construction.
More than 50% of Australian houses have roof trusses finely
engineered by computerised systems.
The prohibitive cost of building solid brick homes, led to
the development of brick veneer housing, with a single outer
layer of brick supported by a wooden inner frame. Encouraged
by the sunny climate, many major developments in solar heating
also originated in Australia.
Today, Australia boasts many hundreds of highly innovative
products and technologies in building and construction. Many,
such as household accessories, are among the best in the world
in their design. While the innovations we have reviewed are
by no means the only ones, they represent the very best currently
commercially available products and technologies from Australia.
Public Notice:
Due to an unresolved dispute
with the Australian Trade Commission (Austrade),
who copied and adopted as their own certain material from
Tomorrow's World, the Australian Initiative, and published
the material in their Australia Open for Business website,
without remorse or recompense, access
by Australian Government servers to this online edition
has been blocked indefinitely.
