Come and be inspired at the Queensland Conference in Cairns!

This year, with Ozwater’22 being held in Brisbane in May, the two regular Queensland conferences (NQ Conference and QWater) are being combined into one conference event, to be held in Cairns from 20-21 October 2022. 

The Queensland Conference will take place during National Water Week. It will bring together the best of the regional and metro water industry to share and learn from operational and strategic challenges and celebrate successes. The conference will explore the theme ‘Surviving, Thriving and Inspiring’ with a focus on the efforts of the water sector not only to meet today’s challenges but to learn from those and work towards building a more resilient future.

Thank you to our Host Sponsor, Cairns Regional Council, for their support in organising what is shaping up to be a great conference, with a potent mix of local content as well as papers from across the state and almost 200 delegates already registered to attend from across Queensland. Thanks also to our Principal Conference Sponsors, ARUP, Eurofins and Veolia.

Chris Bulloch, Executive Leader Integrated Solutions at Urban Utilities, is providing a keynote address on Day One of the Conference. In keeping with the theme of thriving in the future, Chris will be sharing Urban Utilities’ commitments to improving its energy efficiency by increasing its renewable energy use to 100%, working alongside the industry to reduce carbon, and investing in local offset projects that deliver more than just carbon sequestration. 

He will discuss the increasingly active role that Urban Utilities is taking in city-shaping and water security to help deliver plentiful, affordable and resilient services to South East Queensland now and into the future and the approach they are taking to influence integrated planning and delivery outcomes in partnership with other key stakeholders and pursue an ‘all options on the table’ approach to future water supply options.

Chris will also share the opportunities already being explored to design and build innovative and sustainable water and wastewater infrastructure for key Olympic and Paralympic precincts that can provide vast amounts of clean, green energy.

Other keynote speakers include GudjuGudju and Jenny Lynch, who will share their local land and sea conservation efforts that combine traditional sustainability methods and ecological knowledge with Western tools for conservation and measurement. 

Before the conference, on Wednesday, 19 October, GudjuGudju will host a Traditional Walking Tour of the Botanic Gardens to showcase the connection with water and its spiritual importance for life, which can be booked as an optional site tour. An additional site tour will be hosted on Wednesday afternoon to visit the Cairns Resource Recovery Precinct. The site tours will be followed by an optional Welcome Networking Function, sponsored by GHD, at Hemingway’s Brewery.

At the close of any One, delegates will join Exhibitors for networking before making their way to the Conference Dinner at the Kuranda Rainforestation Nature Park, kindly sponsored by Premise. Attendance at the Conference Dinner is included in all full conference delegate registrations. 

 A further two keynote speakers will open Day Two of the Conference. Thitichaya (Jia) Poontanasombat will share the journey of the sugar industry’s innovation in Cairns, and Gavin Singleton will explore cultural water values with a focus on the impacts and opportunities for the water sector and how traditional owners can participate in managing urban water quality. 

 The Young Water Professionals will host a panel discussion and workshop to explore ‘Building Community and Environmental Resilience: Where Should the Water Industry Lead Next’.

Interflow will provide coffee for the event as our Coffee Cart Sponsor Interflow, and the University of Queensland is again sponsoring the Best Paper Award.