Antarctica-to-Western Australia Liquid Freshwater Shipments Using Stauber Bags in a Paternoster-Like Transfer System: Inaugurating a Southern Ocean Antidrought Action Sea-Lane

Australia is one of the driest continents on earth with most interior lands classified as steppe or desert. With an expanding coastal population pushing farther inland, the need for freshwater increases for urban use, agriculture, and industry and because there is little freshwater at the surface and most of the groundwater is too saline and generally unsuitable for multiple uses, new sources of freshwater must be sought to sustain future development of Western Australia's interior. To mitigate this ongoing macroproblem, it is proposed to establish a new Southern Ocean maritime sea-lane between Antarctica and Western Australia with the first large-scale deployment of very capacious floating liquid freshwater containers (Stauber bags), barges hauled and shuttled regularly by carousel-type supertugboats to convey a directly acquired, essentially cost-free, bulk-harvested potable subglacial Antarctic meltwater possibly siphoned from beneath the floating Amery Ice Shelf and transported to Western Australia. Access of the floating liquid freshwater containers to Perth, the capital city, would be up-slope the offshore Perth Canyon to the continental shelf. Stored containers could lay off in the lee of Rottnest Island at the Perth Terminal. From there, freshwater could be transported to wherever needed in coastal rural and urban Western Australia. On land, Pecero self-rolling bags could be used to distribute all imported freshwater farther inland and serve also as stationary (parked) reservoirs. Stock watering, farm irrigation, and drinking water as well as mineral mine, petroleum refinery, and sewage treatment processing are likely additional income-producing consumptive users. Both bulk long-distance conveyance and long-term storage on land by such means will naturally reduce the present-day stress on Western Australia's domestic water supplies, storage, and delivery systems that are limited by regional climates with long-term seasonal dryness. Freshwater imported would absolutely reduce freshwater stress on Western Australia's excessivelyexploited rivers and excessively mined aquifers.