Rise of Australia

Chapter 353 Industrial Base and Railway Construction

Before the expeditionary force set off, Arthur gave an encouraging speech to the Fourth Division, and said that after the successful return of the Fourth Division, he would personally award honors and medals to them.

This speech aroused the frenzy of the Fourth Division. The enthusiasm of the soldiers for the war is still very high. After all, there are not many wars in Australasia, and every war is a big victory. Just wait for the credit. .

Arthur has great trust in the combat ability of the Fourth Division, and also trusts in the command ability and adaptability of the commander of the Fourth Division, Scott Malone.

Scott Malone can be regarded as a talent cultivated by Australasia itself, a native Australasian.

Commander Scott successively served in the Australasian Colonial Garrison, the First Australasian Division, and the First Guards Division. He also studied at the Royal Military Academy in Sydney, and was then sent to the Second Guards Division as the deputy commander.

When forming the Fourth Division, Scott successfully became one of the candidates, and eventually won the position of commander of the Fourth Division.

The current Mr. Scott is less than 40 years old, and there is still a lot of room for improvement waiting to be tapped.

After sending a note to Commander Scott, asking him to kill as many of Argentina's vital forces as possible while reducing casualties and win the war, Arthur watched the expeditionary force leave with great peace of mind.

Arthur's consistent purpose is to try not to blindly intervene in the army's war.Except for its own guard division, the operations of the regular division are basically carried out under the command of the Ministry of National Defense.

Of course, the results and progress of the war also need to be reported to Arthur. After all, how can a monarch who does not understand the current military situation manage the country.

It will take some time before the expeditionary force arrives at the border between Chile and Argentina, and at this time, Arthur also has more important work.

It has been more than half a year since the second phase of construction of the Leonora Industrial Base was fully completed.

For more than half a year, the investment attraction of the Leonora Industrial Base has been very smooth, and most of the industrial areas have been put into production.

Of course, the relocation and establishment of the factory is not so fast.According to the conservative estimate of the industrial sector, from the end of this year to the beginning of next year, the second phase of the construction of the Leonora Industrial Base will be able to enter the state of full production, which will greatly enhance the industrial strength of Australasia and at the same time promote the development of Australasia. economic development.

It is no exaggeration to say that the current Leonora industrial base is the industrial core of Australasia and the brightest industrial pearl in Oceania.

The current Leonora industrial base has nearly 200 factories and 17 workers and technicians, covering all aspects of Australasia.

The successful completion of the construction of the first and second phases of the industrial base also gave Arthur and the Ministry of Industry full confidence to promote the construction of the third and last phase of the industrial base.

Time waits for no one, because it has already entered August, and Arthur does not want to wait for the second phase of the industrial base to be fully put into production before starting the third phase of the industrial base.

Fortunately, the second phase of the industrial base is relatively far from the planning of the third phase of construction, so there will be no interference between the two parties.

On August 1913, 8, after a cabinet meeting was held as usual, the Australasian government officially announced the start of the construction of the third phase of the Leonora Industrial Base.

The construction plan for the third phase of the Leonora Industrial Base is the largest and most expensive of the three phases of the industrial base.

According to the planning information provided by the Ministry of Industry, the total construction area of ​​the third phase of the industrial base is nearly 6000 acres.

Among them, the construction area is 4800 acres, and greening, environment, drainage, environmental protection and road construction consume a total of 1200 acres of land.

If the total area of ​​the first, second and third phases of the industrial base is included, the entire Leonora industrial base will be a super large base covering an area of ​​more than [-] acres.

According to the standards of the second phase of the industrial base, the third phase of the industrial base will have at least 400 standardized factory workshops and 50 large storage areas, which can accommodate at least 200 ultra-large factories and hundreds of small factories.

This also means that the third phase of the industrial base alone can accommodate nearly 35 employees and create 35 jobs.

The entire Leonora industrial base will create more than 55 jobs in Australasia, and the industrial and economic growth it will bring to Australasia is immeasurable.

Perhaps because the construction of the first two phases of the industrial base has filled the Ministry of Industry with experience, the design and planning of the third phase of the industrial base went very smoothly.

On August 8, after mobilizing a large number of construction teams from Sydney, Victoria and New South Wales, the construction of the third phase of the Leonora Industrial Site officially started.

As usual, Arthur attended the groundbreaking ceremony of the industrial base and expressed satisfaction with the construction and production of the first two phases of the industrial base.

Today's Leonora Industrial Base is well-known in Australasia and even abroad. The start of the third phase has also attracted many Australasian media.

"The construction of the third phase of the Leonora Industrial Base has officially started. What kind of exaggerated potential does the Ruhr area of ​​Australasia have?"

"There are 500 standardized workshops and 100 large storage areas. What is the exaggerated scale of the Ruhr area in Australasia?"

Along with the official start of construction of the Leonora Industrial Base, major newspapers and media outlets have published their own news one after another, and they all chose eye-catching topics in a tacit understanding.

For the European people, the prosperity and development of Europe is a matter of course.People are also happy to talk about things outside of Europe in their spare time.

As one of the currently recognized powers, Australasia is already well-known in Europe.

Even relying on Australasia's own strength, Oceania has become the first choice for European immigrants after the Americas.

And there are various news and reports about Australasia, which often attract many Europeans to watch and be curious.

They are always curious about novel things, and it is not surprising that Europeans want to know about Australasia, a country thousands of miles away across the ocean.

In fact, if we only talk about large cities, the development of Australasia is not inferior to that of European countries.

Traffic lights, street lights, all kinds of cars and modern facilities that can be seen everywhere in Europe can also be seen in Australasia.

Buses and cable cars of this era can also be seen in major cities in Australasia.

Even though Arthur looks at the present Sydney with the eyes of later generations, sometimes he can't help but have some illusions, thinking that Sydney is a modern city.

It is no exaggeration to say that the current development of Sydney is more developed and prosperous than that of some cities in later generations.

Because of the participation of Tesla, the development of electric power in Australasia has spread to almost all cities, and is spreading to villages and towns further afield.

Electricity is no stranger to Australasians, and it has become one of the daily lighting methods that can be seen everywhere on the streets of Australasia.

It is worth mentioning that when Australasia was building aggressively before, aborigines in Southeast Asia could be seen almost everywhere, and they were common free labor in Australasia.

But so far, various large-scale constructions in Australasia have tried to replace those indigenous people with their own people.

Except for some relatively high-risk jobs that still employ aborigines, other relatively normal jobs have all been performed by Australasians.

The occurrence of this situation is inevitable. With the development of time, sooner or later, the aborigines of Australasia will be completely consumed or repatriated to Southeast Asia.

It is also a disaster for these people to stay in Australasia. If they are not dealt with early, it will be even more troublesome in the future.

With the development of science and technology, some machinery has been able to gradually replace labor, or save a lot of labor demand.

Coupled with the fact that the population of Australasia has been rising steadily, and seeing that it is already moving towards 1300 million this year, the demand for labor is not so tight.

Therefore, most of the aborigines in Australasia have been sent to the northern colonies and royal territories.

The development of colonies and royal territories still needs these aborigines. Anyway, the distance is relatively long, the population is small, and no one cares about exploiting aborigines.

It has to be admitted that the aborigines have made considerable contributions to the development of Australasia.

Australasia was able to develop so rapidly in the early stage without oppressing the civilians of Australasia at all, all thanks to these aborigines.

According to incomplete statistics, from the establishment of the Principality of Australia to August 1913, a total of more than 8 million aborigines came to Australasia and made sufficient contributions to the development of the country.

At present, the only remaining aborigines in Australasia are no more than 30 at best.

Even with the addition of more than 100 million aborigines who were transported to the northern colonies and royal territories, the number of aboriginals who came to Australasia is less than 140 million at most.

This also means that, after all the calculations, nearly 80 aborigines were buried in Australasia in more than ten years, in exchange for the prosperity and development of Australasia.

In order to give back to these aborigines, Arthur deliberately ate meat that they hadn’t seen for a long time before transporting these aborigines to the colony. The meat was the part that Australasians didn’t eat very much, and the kind that couldn’t be sold. .

The construction of the Leonora industrial base this time only used thousands of indigenous people, and they were all in high-risk positions.

In addition, all the workers and technicians of the engineering team, including the experts planning the construction of the industrial zone, are all from Australasia.

In addition to the Leonora industrial site, plans for another major construction were discussed at the cabinet meeting.

The saying that if you want to get rich, build roads first is common in all eras.The road construction in Australasia is going well. At present, the states have connected all cities and large towns and villages, and some small villages are also connected by roads.

In terms of railways, after the Industrial Railway and the Northern Railway, the transportation department applied to start the next railway construction plan.

The first is mainland Australasia, which is the region of Australia.

The Northern Railway and the Industrial Railway have connected the Australian region around the island, and the next step is the railway connecting major cities to the central part of the Australian region.

According to the planning of the transportation department, the next railway construction plan is named as the Central Railway as a whole.

The Central Railway is divided into three parts. The first part is located in the entire state of Western Australia. It starts from Esperance in Western Australia, connects to the industrial railway in the north, and connects to the Leonora industrial base in the north, followed by Mikasara, Newman, Port Hedland.

The construction mileage of this part of the railway is not long, and the railway near the industrial base is already ready-made. Therefore, it is estimated that the construction period will only take one and a half years.

And the second part of the Central Railway, in the true middle of the Australian region, connects Darwin, Bodham, Tennant Creek, Alice Springs and Thakura from north to south, and finally still connects to the Industrial Railway .

The third part of the Central Railway is actually about the railway connection of the four regions of Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland Capital Territory.

These four regions are all located in the eastern part of Australia, which is also the most populous region in Australia.

The railway planning in this part is relatively complicated. Not only the railways between the four regions are connected to each other, but also within each administrative district, the railways must also form a loop to facilitate the movement of population and economic exchanges.

This part of the railway can be divided into Queensland, Townsville, Huendon, Dajara, Jericho, Rockhampton, Brisbane, and Charleville railway rings in detail.

Newcastle, Orange, Walgate, Bourke, Durhambandai Railway Loop in New South Wales.

Geelong Obster Rail Ring, Melbourne, Victoria.

and the Circum-Sydney Rail Ring in the ACT.

The four major railway rings each form a system and are connected to each other, which can promote economic exchanges and population flows in this area on a large scale.

If the three major parts of the Central Railway can be fully completed, the railway construction in the Australian region will be considered to be more than half completed, basically meeting the transportation needs brought by the current population.

Of course, the three major parts of the Central Railway add up to a more difficult construction plan than the Northern Railway and the Industrial Railway.

Because the estimated total mileage has exceeded [-] kilometers, the estimated construction period is about ten years.

If the construction of the Central Railway is started, the transportation department will be quite busy in the next ten years.

Moreover, due to the large-scale construction of railways, the government's financial burden will also increase, and the increase in government fiscal expenditure is inevitable.

But this is also impossible.If you want to get rich, build roads first. This sentence is applicable at all times, and it is also the truth of national development.

Any construction and economic circulation requires a well-developed mode of transportation. The construction of the Central Railway in Australasia is inevitable and necessary.

Fortunately, the government's financial situation is still very good, so after consideration, Arthur agreed to the railway construction plan of the transportation department.

Of course, as the saying goes, you can't eat a fat man with one bite.Although the construction plan of the Central Railway was agreed, this does not mean that the three parts of the Central Railway construction plan should be carried out at the same time.

For the construction of the Leonora Industrial Base, and also because the Leonora Industrial Base has a ready-made railway, the construction is relatively smooth. Under Arthur's order, the transportation department will first build the first part of the Central Railway , that is, the railway that runs through the Leonora industrial base.

After the completion of this railway, the traffic in Western Australia will become very developed, and it will also be convenient for the Leonora industrial base to quickly transport materials from the Northern Railway and the Industrial Railway.

According to the principle of order of importance, after the first part is completed, the third part that needs to be built is the most difficult and longest.

The third part is located in the central part of the Australian region. It is the most populous and economically developed region in Australia and even the entire Australasia, and it is also the core region.

This part of the railway is far more important than the railway that runs through South Australia, and it is also an important goal of the government's railway construction.

Only after the construction of these two parts of the railway is completed can the transport department consider the construction of the railway in South Australia, and then complete the entire central railway.

According to the estimates of the transportation department, the construction of the entire central railway will take about ten years, and the capital required is at least 5000 million Australian dollars to start.

But the good news is that this fund is not a one-time expense, but is slowly consumed during the construction period of more than ten years along with the construction of the railway.

This also means that the average annual railway construction expenditure required by the government is only about 500 million Australian dollars, which is completely within the range that the government can afford.

You must know that the increase in jobs brought about by the construction of the railway alone will allow the economy of Australasia to continue to grow.

At the national level, infrastructure construction is not a loss at all, and the funds spent will promote the country's economic growth in another way.

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(End of this chapter)