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  Too good to be true? Australia's high-speed rail dream leaves a bitter taste

Too good to be true? Australia's high-speed rail dream leaves a bitter taste

   The disused train line at Tallygaroopna, Victoria, a tiny town outside
   Shepparton where Nick Cleary planned to buy land for the first stage of
   the high-speed line. Photograph: Chris Hopkins/The Guardian

   A would-be developer’s vision involves building eight cities between
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   Main image: The disused train line at Tallygaroopna, Victoria, a tiny
   town outside Shepparton where Nick Cleary planned to buy land for the
   first stage of the high-speed line. Photograph: Chris Hopkins/The
   Guardian

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   The federal government gave $8m of $20m earmarked to progress
   high-speed rail to a consortium led by a man who has no expertise in
   major infrastructure projects, who had been a bankrupt and who was once
   a National party candidate.
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   Cleary is a man with big dreams. Clara has sold bureaucrats and
   ministers on a vision so large it’s almost eye-watering: a high-speed
   rail network between Melbourne and Sydney that would open the way for
   not one but eight new cities, each between 200,0000 and 600,000 people,
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   the tyranny of distance,” Cleary says. “Between now and 2061 we are
   going to grow the population by 15 million. Our plan is to build cities
   at scale connected by high-speed rail.”

   The main street of Tallygaroopna, Victoria
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   The Guardian has also learned that many of the options Clara signed
   with landowners along the proposed route for the high-speed train have
   lapsed, leaving a bitter taste for farmers who were swept away by
   Cleary’s promises of cities rising from the paddocks.
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   “The Australian Government funding contribution to the Clara proposal
   is up to $8,000,000,” its fact sheets on high-speed rail say. “However,
   it should be noted that financial support for the development of a
   business case does not indicate Australian Government support for
   delivery of a project.”

   The question is: would such a move set high-speed rail back another
   decade or more?