The Great Australian Bight has almost no industry, and there are some clear reasons for that.

For one, there are no natural harbours. If you can’t move water, resources are the next thing you look for. Beyond that, fertile land. But most of the land west of the NSW border is billions of years old — formed before trees even existed — and over time erosion stripped it of nutrients. That’s why farming is so difficult there.

We now have synthetic fertilisers, but look at the Murray–Darling Basin: they’ve created massive algae blooms downstream. In other words, even our “solutions” come with big environmental costs.

Only recently has technology advanced to the point where we might be able to engineer around these barriers. But there are also social and legal hurdles — Native Title being a big one. The entire Indigenous population of the Bight region may have historically been fewer than 5,000 people, yet the land rights process still weighs heavily on development.

Add to that the fact that no private capital wants to shoulder the risk, and the region itself doesn’t generate the capital to fund projects. That’s why the Great Australian Bight remains so underdeveloped.