The little Far North town with big plans for the future
A small Far North outback town is set for a population explosion off the back of major projects on its doorstep with its council snapping up land in preparation. INSIDE BOLD PLANS
Cairns
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LAKELAND is poised to become a Far North boom town with Cook Shire Council planning for a population explosion.
The little town, about 250km northwest of Cairns, has a state school, hotel, caravan park and a couple of dozen houses right now, but that will change if the Regional Development Australia (RDA) irrigation project gets the green light.
Lakeland is home to large-scale agriculture with bananas, avocados and cattle among commodities – but Cook Shire Mayor Peter Scott said only a third of the highly fertile land was being used because of a lack of water.
Council has snapped up an 11ha block of land adjacent to the township, adjoining existing council-owned land.
“There are some fantastic large-scale projects being discussed that will offer significant growth and development of Lakeland,” Cr Scott said.
“The challenge is that the current needs of the town have already outgrown the land that’s available.”
He said the land would allow for expansion of critical local government infrastructure along with availability of land for essential services, government agencies, residential and commercial purposes.
“Lakeland has got massive potential, with the RDA and state government looking at a dam on the Palmer River – it doesn’t flow for much of the year, but flows at very high capacity for a short period,” Cr Scott said.
“Lakeland is an incredibly fertile food bowl, this proposed dam would gravity feed water through tunnels and could quadruple production, and then would come the need for the town to service a whole new industry,” he said.
And the vision for Lakeland goes beyond merely growing produce.
“We are looking at secondary industries such as processing, canning, drying and manufacturing,” Cr Scott said.
“We could be looking at a town of 2000 to 3000 people, the same size as Cooktown, and we have an application in for funding to look at planning for a town out there.”
He said a ministerial delegation would visit Lakeland in July.
RDA Tropical North chief executive Sonja Johnson said the detailed business case would be released later this year.
“The scheme will open up close to 8000ha of irrigated crops, creating hundreds of jobs and bringing in excess of $400m per annum to the region.”
Lakeland has a wind farm that will provide energy for more than 50,000 households in the final stages of development.
It is also home to the Lakeland Solar and Energy Storage Project, which was bought for $8m in May by Australian renewable energy developer MPower.
It is a 10.8MW solar farm and lithium-ion battery storage facility, a purchase agreement for 100 per cent of output with Origin Energy until 2030 and an expected remaining operating life of about 20 years.
A sculpture park at Lakeland was recently launched, highlighting Cape York diversity.
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Originally published as The little Far North town with big plans for the future
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