OT: Australia Day

[Targan]

My non-Australian friends are probably not aware that today is Australia Day, a national public holiday. I am very proud of my country and I say to all my Aussie friends happy Australia Day and I hope you all get well and truely plastered, cook up some steaks and snags on the barbie and have a great day.

[pmulcahy11b]

Is it analogous to Independence Day in the US

[Caradhras]

Happy Australia Day.

(as a Brit, I will bite back any colonial banter )

[Targan]

Is it analogous to Independence Day in the US

Yes, same sort of thing. January 26 1788 was the date that Captain Arthur Phillip, commander of the First Fleet of eleven convict ships from Great Britain and the first governor of New South Wales, arrived at Sydney Cove.

Australia wasn't one nation until 1901. Prior to that it had been a collection of British colonies with limited self rule. The individual colonies became the states of Australia after federation. The first colonies, at Sydney Cove and Van Diemen's Land (now the island-state of Tasmania) were settled using convict labour but my state of Western Australia and our neighbour South Australia were founded by free settlers a few decades later. The Western Australian and South Australian colonies were established by Britain mainly to prevent the French from taking the western half of the continent for themselves.

[jester]

Paul; that makes it more like Columbus Day vice Independance Day. There is a difference, now send us your women....only the hot ones mind you!

[Targan]

Paul; that makes it more like Columbus Day vice Independance Day.

I see what you mean. But Columbus Day celebrates the discovery of the Americas by Christpher Columbus. We don't really have a day of celebration to mark when the Dutch first discovered Australia in 1606, or British Captain James Cook's mapping of (and claiming for Britain of) the east coast of Australia in 1770. Does the USA have a public holiday marking the founding of its first European colony That would be analagous to Australia Day for us.

[headquarters]

hohhoho

"French Australia"

what a tingeling thought .
( Yes , I like contrafactual history musings)

Good thing though , or Australia would probably have had loads of wars etc like the other continents that were colonized by the major powers..

Question : do you have oilwells down under On land I mean .

Could say Western Australia or any other part of Australia stay organized and survive the events of T2K

Or wopuld it be like the excellent documentary about life in Australia:
Mad Max I-III

Have a good celebration all Aussies and auxilliary aussies too.

Yes, same sort of thing. January 26 1778 was the date that Captain Arthur Phillip, commander of the First Fleet of eleven convict ships from Great Britain and the first governor of New South Wales, arrived at Sydney Cove.

Australia wasn't one nation until 1901. Prior to that it had been a collection of British colonies with limited self rule. The individual colonies became the states of Australia after federation. The first colonies, at Sydney Cove and Van Diemen's Land (now the island-state of Tasmania) were settled using convict labour but my state of Western Australia and our neighbour South Australia were founded by free settlers a few decades later. The Western Australian and South Australian colonies were established by Britain mainly to prevent the French from taking the western half of the continent for themselves.

[Legbreaker]

Ah, better make that 1788 Targan, otherwise we had the bicentenial a decade too late!



I believe there are some oil reserves on land, however I can't think of any actual wells in use. We do have a number of offshore platforms, mainly up off the Western Australian coast between us and Timor.

We also have the bulk of the worlds Uranium.....

[Targan]

Ah, better make that 1788 Targan, otherwise we had the bicentenial a decade too late!

Oops. Typo

[Targan]

Question : do you have oilwells down under On land I mean.

Australia is a major exporter of coal, natural gas and grains so we have energy reserves we could use instead of petroleum products. We produce vastly more wheat than we consume domestically so we could produce heaps of alcohol if need be. Also it is a relatively simple procedure to convert cars to run on natural gas. We do use large amounts of artificial fertiliser so I suppose its lack would be a problem. I imagine that most domestic oil production in Australia during and after the Twilight War would be reserved for military use.

[Cdnwolf]

.

We also have the bulk of the worlds Uranium.....

Ummmm second place for the Uranium...

The world's top uranium producers are Canada (28% of world production) and Australia (23%).

Its more like the July 1'st Holiday in Canada when it proclaimed a country...

(And yes we have oil and lots of other minerals that our southern aggressive neighbor would love to steal... )

[headquarters]

he

Ummmm second place for the Uranium...



Its more like the July 1'st Holiday in Canada when it proclaimed a country...

(And yes we have oil and lots of other minerals that our southern aggressive neighbor would love to steal... )

better get some wmd`s before they come and grab everything

I hear they envy your bacon ..

[Legbreaker]

Canada might produce more, but I think Australia's reserves are greater, around double the next best contender - Kazakhstan. Canada is a poor 5th on the list behind Russia and South Africa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_reserves

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf48.html

Australia is also the most efficient producer of sugar cane, a resource even more readily convertable to alcohol production than grain.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

James Cook was a Lieutenant when he charted the east coast of Australia in 1770. Upon his return to Britain he was promoted to Commander and later embarked on a second voyage. Upon completion of the second voyage he was promoted to Captain.
While the Dutch sighted Australia decades before the British (as early as 1606), there is also circumstantial evidence to suggest the Portuguese sighted the continent in the 1500s. They were trading in Timor which lies less than 700km NW of Australia and actively patrolling the region to prevent Spanish ships trading in the area. Even the Spanish were lured 'down under' with the promises of discovering some 'unknown southern land' and were the first Europeans to discover Vanuatu.

As for uranium, Cdnwolf is quite right, Canada is the largest producer and exporter of uranium in the 2000s, although Kazakhstan is likely to claim the title by 2010. However Australia does have the largest currently known uranium deposits with 24% of the world's uranium reserves.

There is some oil & gas production on mainland Australia, mostly in the Cooper Basin. The Basin stretches between South Australia and Queensland but the amount available is minor in comparison to offshore sites. However it has also been found to be a potential source of geothermal energy with oil drilling having been responsible for the discovery of this information.
South Australia is sparsely populated and the biggest oil production facility is located in Moomba in the more desolate part of that state. Control would be difficult simply because all food, water and spares would have to be trucked in to the site and although a sealed landing strip is available, whose going to have the avgas to fly supplies in/out of the town
The temperature sits around 38C in summer and 20C in winter and there is minimal rainfall during the year. While oil and gas pipelines do transport those products to cities such as Sydney, patrolling over 1000km of pipeline would also provide massive challenges in the T2k setting.

[Targan]

Ummmm second place for the Uranium...

You're talking about production. I think Leg was talking about reserves (as in "we have" rather than "we produce"). Estimates vary but some figures suggest that Australia may have greater exploitable uranium reserves than anywhere else.

Edit: Just read Leg and SSC's posts where they say what I just said.