Chapter 353 Industrial Base and Railway Construction

Before the expeditionary force set out, Arthur gave an encouraging speech to the 4th Division and said that he would personally award them honors and medals after the 4th Division successfully returned.

This speech aroused the enthusiasm of the 4th Division. The soldiers were still very enthusiastic about the war. After all, there were not many wars in Australasia, and every war was a great victory, waiting to get credit.

Arthur had great confidence in the combat capability of the 4th Division, and in the command and adaptability of the commander of the 4th Division, Scott Malone.

Scott Malone was a talent cultivated by Australasia itself and a native Australian.

Commander Scott served in the Australasian Colony, the 1st Australasia Division, and the 1st Guards Division, and studied at the Royal Military Academy in Sydney. He was then sent to the 2nd Guards Division as deputy commander.

When the 4th Division was formed, Scott successfully became one of the candidates and eventually won the position of commander of the 4th Division.

Commander Scott is currently less than 40 years old and there is still a lot of room for advancement to be explored.

After notifying Division Commander Scott and asking him to kill as many Argentine manpower as possible to win the war while reducing casualties, Arthur watched the expeditionary force leave with great confidence.

Arthur's consistent principle is to try not to blindly interfere in the war of the troops. In addition to his own Guards Division, the operations of the regular divisions 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 be in charge of the country?

It will take some time for the expeditionary force to arrive 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 the construction of the Leonora Industrial Base was fully completed.

In the past six months, the investment promotion 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 conservative estimates by the industrial sector, the second phase of the Leonora Industrial Base will enter full production from the end of this year to the beginning of next year, greatly enhancing Australasia's industrial strength and promoting Australasia's economic development.

It is no exaggeration to say that the current Leonora Industrial Base is the industrial core of Australasia and the most dazzling industrial pearl in Oceania.

The current Leonora Industrial Base already has nearly 200 factories, 170,000 workers and technicians, covering all aspects of Australasia.

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

Time waits for no one. Because it has entered August, 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 far away from the planning of the third phase of construction, so there will be no interference between the two sides.

On August 9, 1913, after a cabinet meeting as usual, the Australasian government officially announced the start of the third phase of the Leonora Industrial Base.

The construction plan of 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 6,000 acres.

Among them, the building area is 4,800 acres, and greening, environment, drainage, environmental protection and road construction consume a total of 1,200 acres of land.

If the total area of ​​the first, second and third phases of the industrial base is counted, the entire Leonora Industrial Base will be a super large base covering an area of ​​more than 10,000 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 meet the settlement of at least 200 super-large factories and hundreds of small factories.

This also means that the third phase of the industrial base alone can accommodate nearly 350,000 employees and create 350,000 jobs.

The entire Leonora Industrial Base will create more than 550,000 jobs for Australasia, and the industrial growth and economic growth it brings to Australasia are immeasurable.

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

On August 15, after a large number of construction teams were mobilized from Sydney, Victoria and New South Wales, the third phase of the Leonora Industrial Base officially began.

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, the Leonora Industrial Base is well-known in Australasia and even abroad. The start of the third phase has also attracted a lot of media in Australasia.

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

"500 standardized workshops and 100 large storage areas. What kind of exaggerated scale has the Ruhr region of Australasia reached now?"

With the official start of the Leonora Industrial Base, major newspapers and media have also published their own news, and they all tacitly chose more eye-catching titles.

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

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

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

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

They are always curious about new things, and it is not surprising that Europeans want to know about Australasia, a country thousands of miles away from 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, various 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 if Arthur looks at Sydney now with the eyes of the future, sometimes he can't help but have some illusions that Sydney is a modern city.

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

Because of Tesla's participation, the current development of electricity in Australasia has almost spread to all cities and is spreading to villages and towns farther away.

Electricity is not unfamiliar to Australasians. 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 under construction, Southeast Asian aborigines were almost everywhere and were common free labor in Australasia.

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

Except for some more dangerous jobs that still use aborigines, other more normal jobs have all been performed by Australians.

This situation is inevitable. With the development of time, the aborigines of Australasia will sooner or later 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 more difficult in the future.

With the development of science and technology, some machines can gradually replace manual labor or save a lot of labor demand.

In addition, the population of Australasia has been rising steadily, and it is approaching 13 million this year, and the demand for labor is no longer so tight.

Therefore, most of the indigenous people in Australasia have been sent to the colonies and royal territories in the north.

The development of colonies and royal territories still needs these indigenous people. Anyway, the distance is far and the population is small, so no one cares about exploiting the indigenous people.

It has to be admitted that the indigenous people have made a significant contribution to the development of Australasia.

The fact that Australasia was able to develop so rapidly in the early stage and did not oppress the civilians of Australasia at all is attributed to these indigenous people.

According to incomplete statistics, from the establishment of the Principality of Australia to the current August 1913, a total of more than 2 million indigenous people came to Australasia, making sufficient contributions to the development of the country.

At present, the number of indigenous people left in Australasia is no more than 300,000 at most.

Even if more than 1 million indigenous people were transported to the northern colonies and royal territories, the number of indigenous people who came to Australasia is less than 1.4 million at most.

This also means that, in total, nearly 800,000 indigenous people died in Australasia in more than ten years, in exchange for the prosperity and development of Australasia.

In order to give back to these indigenous people, Arthur deliberately ate meat that they had not seen for a long time before transporting them to the colonies. The meat was the parts that Australasians did not eat much and could not be sold.

This time, only thousands of indigenous people were used in the construction of the Leonora Industrial Base, and they were all in some high-risk positions.

In addition, all the workers and technicians of the engineering team, including the experts who planned the construction of the industrial zone, were all from Australasia.

In addition to the Leonora Industrial Base, the government also discussed the plan of another large-scale construction at the cabinet meeting.

If you want to be rich, you must first build roads. This saying is universal in any era. The road construction in Australasia is going smoothly. At present, all 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.

First is the mainland of Australasia, that is, the Australian region.

The northern railway and the industrial railway have connected the Australian region around the island. The next is the railway connecting major cities and connecting the central part of the Australian region.

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

The Central Railway is divided into three parts. The first part is located in the entire Western Australia. Starting from Esperance in Western Australia, it connects to the industrial railway to the north, and then connects to the Leonora Industrial Base to the north, followed by Mikasala, Newman, and Port Hedland.

The mileage of this part of the railway construction is not long, and the railway near the industrial base is already ready, so the construction period is expected to take only one and a half years.

The second part of the Central Railway is located in the true center of Australia, connecting Darwin, Bodham, Tennant Creek, Alice Springs and Takula from north to south, and finally connecting to the industrial railway.

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

These four regions are all located in the east of Australia and are also the most populous regions in Australia.

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

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

New South Wales' Newcastle, Orange, Walgett, Burke, and Dillanbandi railway loops.

Victoria's Melbourne Geelong Obost railway loop.

And the Sydney railway loop in the Capital Territory.

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

If the three major parts of the Central Railway can be fully completed, the railway construction in Australia will be completed by half, basically meeting the transportation needs brought by the current population.

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

Because the estimated total mileage has exceeded 10,000 kilometers, the estimated construction period is about ten years.

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

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

But there is no way. If you want to get rich, build roads first. This sentence is universal at any time and is also the truth of national development.

Any construction and economic circulation requires a 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 still agreed to the railway construction plan of the transportation department.

Of course, as the saying goes, you can't eat a fat man in one bite. Although the construction plan of the Central Railway was agreed, it 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 transportation 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 industrial railway.

According to the principle of priority, after the construction of the first part is completed, the third part, which is the most difficult and longest, will be built.

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

After the construction of these two parts of the railway is completed, the transportation department can consider the construction of the railway in South Australia and then complete the entire Central Railway.

According to estimates by the transport department, the construction of the entire central railway will take about ten years, and the required funds will start at at least 50 million Australian dollars.

However, the good news is that this money is not a one-time expense, but is slowly consumed over more than ten years of construction as the railway is built.

This also means that the average annual railway construction expenditure required by the government is only about 5 million Australian dollars, which is completely within the government's affordability.

You know, the increase in jobs brought about by railway construction alone can keep the Australasia economy growing.

For the national level, it is not a loss to carry out infrastructure construction, and the funds spent will promote the country's economic growth in another way.

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