Parkes now on the fast track to revival

A couple of parallel lines of steel have delivered Steve Magill and his NSW central-west town of Parkes a boom.

Steve Magill with excavator operator Billy Payne on the inland rail track near Parkes. Picture: Nikki Short

It’s got the observatory famously known as The Dish, the Elvis Festival­, and now a couple of parallel lines of steel have delivered Steve Magill and his NSW central-west town of Parkes a boom.

Mr Magill’s excavators, bulldozers and trucks have been at work on the $10bn inland rail project, the new freight corridor from Melbourne to Brisbane, one of the government’s recession-busters given a fast-track boost in Scott Morrison’s economic stimulus package last week.

Parkes is a key hub on the route, where the north-south inland­ rail intersects with the east-west Indian Pacific line. The 103km leg from Parkes to Narromine, the first leg in the inland­ rail project, is pretty much done.

Steve Magill Earthmoving was one of the first civil contractors on the leg, starting in late 2018, ­helping build the construction site compound. At that point, Mr Magill­ said, he had 16 employees, and that’s grown to 22, in large part because of the inland rail.

“It’s allowed our business to grow and expand … in the current climate with the drought and COVID-19,” he said. “We have been fortunate to be contracted to the inland rail.”

It’s a common story among the hundreds of local contractors who have helped build the first section of the rail line.

Bernard McCabe, who runs McCabe Ready Mixed Concrete, supplied the concrete for the culverts for the railway line.

“It’s a huge boost in turnover as concrete goes, it was basically three years in one,” Mr McCabe said. “Employment went from five people up to 12, and on top of that we brought in subcontractors from surrounding towns.

“We were in a drought-affect­ed area, there was not much activit­y in the construction game going on, leading up to it.”

The head of the inland rail prog­ram, Richard Wankmuller, said the Australian Rail Track Corporation had spent more than $100m in the Parkes to Narro­mine area. “In these small regiona­l towns, that’s around 1000 businesses,” Mr Wankmuller said. “Twelve hundred people have worked on the project, and 300 of them were indigenous.”

The route’s next section, the 188km leg from Narrabri to North Star near the Queensland border, would be three times the size. “Our original target date is 2025 — we are looking at whether we can accelerate some of that,” Mr Wankmuller said of the overall inlan­d rail project.

Railway Hotel owners Bianca Sheridan and Kasie Ferguson. Picture: Nikki Short

The construction boom in Parkes has seen a property spike, boosted by big projects assoc­iated with the railway, including a new terminal and logistics hub. “We have seen really solid figures … with both rentals and sales,” said Parkes Chamber of Commerce president and stock and statio­n real estate agent Geoff Rice.

The workers who have flocked in from around the country to help build the inland rail have provided a lively trade for hotels, motel­s and pubs.

At the Railway Hotel, run by Kasie Ferguson and her partner Bianca Sheridan, the influx of workers for the rail has helped them rejink their business.

“We had felt a downturn in trade,’’ Ms Ferguson said. “The old-school drinking trade, the old blokes coming in every evening, it doesn’t really exist any more.”

The inland rail drew in young people with disposable income, she said. “We had these guys here and they were keeping us alive.”