BNE-feat

Brisbane Airport draws a $1.3 billion line in the sand

Any parent who has undertaken the relatively tedious task of visiting the local hardware store on a mission to top up the kids’ sandpit knows that a 20kg bag of sand weighs … well, 20kg and that means more than a bit of back-bending to get it on to the shopping trolley. Multiply that by an average sandpit top-up of six bags and you might wish you had done a few more weights down at the Gym.

Or maybe you are a do-ityourselfer ready to lay a set of pavers or a patio. It takes a lot of patience, a lot of shovelling, and a lot of wheelbarrowing to shift a single cubic metre of sand dumped unceremoniously in your driveway by the landscape supplier’s delivery truck. So spare a thought for a project that has relied for its very success on just a tad more sand – like another 10,999,999 cubic metres.