Halls Creek airport land leased to leading geoscience agency for East Kimberley global positioning upgrade

The East Kimberley is set to benefit from improved global positioning capabilities after the Shire of Halls Creek approved the lease of airport land to the Federal Government’s leading geoscience agency. The land will be used as part of Geoscience Australia’s $225 million Positioning Australia program, which is set to establish 170 new global navigation satellite system stations across the country to provide “instant, accurate and reliable positioning data” and improve Australia’s current 5m-10m accuracy to 3cm-5cm in mobile coverage areas. The agreement will see 1600sqm of airport land leased to Geoscience Australia at a rate of $1 a year for an initial 10-year period to cover a gap in the organisation’s national network. The station will require permanent infrastructure, which will be installed from the start of the lease on June 1. Geoscience Australia will cover all installation, legal and maintenance costs associated with the station. With the land standing unoccupied, Halls Creek Shire president Malcolm Edwards said it made sense to offer the lease to Geoscience Australia to support improved GPS accuracy in the region. He said the Shire believed it would bring increased productivity to the East Kimberley, with improvements to community safety and support for further innovation. “It will benefit aircraft, the police, the SES, the mining industry and its autonomous vehicles,” Mr Edwards said. “It’s land that we’re not using and don’t need and obviously there’s a big benefit to the community.” Several others sites are set to be installed or upgraded across the Kimberley.