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Northern Australia's emerging energy-compute node

Townsville

Northern Australia's emerging energy-compute node.

Townsville is treated as a first-class development geography, not a secondary map layer. Lansdown is a 2,200 ha industrial pad. NQ SPARK, JCU and Lavarack are a different, urban sovereign-compute object. CopperString changes the 2030s energy map. None of that is a verified 2028 MW figure for compute.

Location zoom

Sentinel-2 and live meteo

Townsville / Lansdown Eco-Industrial Precinct

19.591°S 146.808°E

Sentinel-2 cloudless 2024 · pad not a survey

Deliverable MW today

Preliminary

0–50 MW

Existing industrial and town load is served. No verified block of tens-to-hundreds of MW is sitting idle for a campus. The low bound is zero for compute; the high bound is a small industrial connection that has not been offered.

Time to power (likely)

Preliminary

2035

Likely later because there is no compute proponent, and industrial load will queue first.

Overall confidence

moderate

SITE-AU-QLD-TOWNSVILLE-LANSDOWN-001

Why Townsville?

  • Publicly owned industrial land at scale.
  • Prescribed-project precinct.
  • Port, rail, highway.
  • Defence and research density unusual for a regional Australian city.
  • CopperString Eastern Link targeting 2032, subject to approvals.

What is missing?

  • Connectable MW for 2028 / 2030 / 2032 / 2035.
  • A compute proponent at Lansdown.
  • Diverse fibre to Woodstock.
  • An operating raw-water supply to the precinct.

Infrastructure class

  • Existing

    Lansdown land (2,200 ha)

    TCC owned. High Impact Industrial.

  • Existing

    Powerlink transmission in the geography

    Existence ≠ connectable MW.

  • Existing

    NQ SPARK at JCU

    Simulation/HPC, not hyperscale.

  • Existing

    Lavarack Barracks

    Defence adjacency for proposition B.

  • Existing

    Port of Townsville

    Logistics, not a CLS.

  • Committed

    CopperString Eastern Link

    2032 subject to approvals.

  • Committed

    Flinders Substation

    MID 23 Dec 2025.

  • Proposed

    Lansdown 275 kV BSP

    Solquartz/Quinbrook catalyst. Not built.

  • Proposed

    Supernode North BESS

    3 × 260 MW / 8 h DA.

  • Proposed

    Lansdown solar up to 500 MW

    Primarily for Northern Quartz Campus.

  • Proposed

    Raw water pipeline

    In design from Ross Dam pipeline.

  • Speculative

    Hyperscale AI campus

    No proponent in the TCC list.

Candidate sites

Projects

Evidence

  • VerifiedExisting

    Lansdown Eco-Industrial Precinct is a 2,200-hectare High Impact Industrial site at Woodstock, about 40 km south of Townsville, acquired by Townsville City Council in 2001.

    Townsville City Council · About | Lansdown Eco-Industrial Precinct · published 2026-01-08 · accessed 2026-09-18

  • High confidenceCommitted

    CopperString Eastern Link is just under 350 km of 330 kV transmission from Reid River near Townsville to Hughenden, with first-stage delivery set for 2032 subject to approvals. Construction-commencement approvals are required by 2028.

    Powerlink Queensland · CopperString | Powerlink · published n/a · accessed 2026-09-18

  • High confidenceExisting

    Townsville City Council's published proponent list for Lansdown does not include a data-centre or hyperscale compute project. Current named proponents are industrial, silicon, hydrogen, storage and manufacturing.

    Townsville City Council · Proponent Projects | Lansdown Eco-Industrial Precinct · published 2026-08-10 · accessed 2026-09-18

  • VerifiedExisting

    NQ SPARK is a $32.2 million simulation and HPC facility now occupying space at JCU's Bebegu Yumba campus, Douglas. It is not a hyperscale campus.

    James Cook University · JCU the new home of NQ Simulation Park · published 2026-05-07 · accessed 2026-09-18