Southeast Queensland's population growth makes it inevitable Queensland's newest dam will be built at Linville, near Blackbutt, one of the region's best-known landholders believes.
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Linville is closer to Kingaroy than Ipswich - let alone Brisbane - and north of Lake Somerset.
Eighty-year old Simeon Lord was an Esk councillor for 39 years and is very familiar with plans for a dam near Linville in the 1960s, the 1970s and the 1990s.
His family now runs 1200 head of Brahman cross-bred cattle on about "11,000 acres", of lease and freehold land a few minutes drive north of Linville.
Simeon Lord says new development at Ripley, near Ipswich, was proof it was time to look at building new dams to protect Ipswich and Brisbane from flooding.
"I was always expecting that with growth in the evolution of Brisbane as a huge metropolitan area that we would be in line to get a dam," Mr Lord said.
"I don't think it was any secret that one day they would come and look at some of these (past) dams to store more water."
Simeon Lord said most local government representatives understood why Linville would be a successful location for a dam.
"I think the Linville dam would be one on the top of their list, if they were going to put one up here," he said.
"Because of the fact that it has three or four main tributaries in this north-eastern part of the catchment."
Those tributaries are the Cooyar Creek, Monsildale Creek and the east and west branches of the Upper Brisbane River.
Mr Lord said Linville was good place for a dam geographically.
"If you go further up the streams into the mountains your walls have got to be so high that they would probably baulk at the cost of building a dam."
He said earlier plans for the Linville Dam showed it coming to the edge of his family's property.
"If the dam wall is higher and it takes out our good freehold country, well we probably won't be in a position to stay here any longer," he said.
"We will probably get them to resume the lot.
"It will be sad, because home is where it is."
When Wivenhoe Dam was built after the 1974 floods, Esk dairy farmers were given money from the resumptions and bought new dairies in the South Burnett, while some bought big properties at Roma.
Mr Lord said tourism effectively saved Esk.
"When the cattlemen and the dairy farmers left, it nearly put the boot into Esk," he said.
"It nearly put Esk on its back.
"It is only that the tourists picked it up a bit and picnic areas developed and daytrippers came in cars from Brisbane that rescued it."
Mr Lord said he thought the same could happen to Linville.
"I know the publican in there and he would be over the moon."
"Those people in the little timber towns of Linville and Moore, the townspeople in both Linville and Moore would be delighted with it.
"Because the little shop in Linville is on the verge. People drive away to shop now, to Kingaroy and to Nanango.
"When the timber industry and the dairy industry in this area closed, it put Linville and Moore both onto the backblocks."
He said until the 1970s there was "once 50 or so" timber workers in Linville and "25 or 30 employed at the sawmill."
Today Linville has about 30 people and Somerset mayor Graham Lehmann described it as "dying".
The decision to investigate options to build eight new dams west of Ipswich to mediate floodwaters damaging Ipswich and Brisbane was announced by Premier Campbell Newman on Tuesday.
It included eight dams, including dams on the Upper Brisbane River at Linville - north of Somerset Dam - and on the Bremer River near Mt Walker.
