OFFERED TO JAPANESE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 25, 16 September 1946, Page 6

OFFERED TO JAPANESE

AUSTRALIAN NORTHERN TERRITORY WAS SPURNED 70 YEARS AGO

Seventy years ago—in 1877, to be precise—We couldn’t coax the Japanese into Northern Territory, even with written invitations and the offer of free fares! The “official invitations” were issued by the South Australian Government, which, desperate after the succession of blunders in its administration of the Territory from July 16, 1863, had resolved that the North was “fit only for coloured people,” and recommended settlement by Japanese, whose fares it offered to pay to Australia. Even after the Government had sent Mr Wilton Hack as its 4 emissary to Japan, the Japanese refused to accept - the offer of free settlement in the Trritory. Then the Government tried to induce Silesians to take over 50-acre farms at 1/- an acre. What happened was that the North got a polyglot population of foreigners, who not only showed strong disclination to work, but , had a strong antipathy to seeing anyone else work.

A Plague Spot Northern Territory, as' a result has been a plague spot for labour troubles. One tragic monument to these ineffectual upheavals stands on a high hill overlooking Darwin— Vestey’s meat works, vast industrial undertaking that promised a new era for the Territory. After continual labour disputes the big establishment was closed in 1919, and has remained deserted ever since, except for, military wartime use of part of it as an ice works and warehouse.

White ants have so thoroughly riddled the building that the sound of a voice has been known to cause parts of the ceiling to collapse!

War’s balance sheet for the Northern Territory is mostly credit—a £5 million 954-mile asphalt highway from N Darwin to Alice Springs, the £1,500,000 Barkly (east-west) highway from Mount Isa (Q) to Tennant Creek, a 10,000 ft. runway at Darwin, adequate for the largest aircraft, research by Army farms units in the North and Centre, which showed that almost anything can be grown there with proper irrigation.

Darwin Damage Principal debix entries are the heavy damage to Darwin’s £57,000 wharf, and the cluttering up of its harbour with wrecks which will remain a danger to shipping, and cause silting of the channels unless they are removed at considerable cost.

Some of Darwin’s best buildings were damaged in the 65 Japanese air raids, but by a strange paradox, most of the Japanese bombs were aimed as unerringly as though the pilots were town-planners destroying with an eye to the future. Darwin’s China-town, for example, was practically obliterated when sticks of bombs fell along Cavanagh Street. Northern Territory suffers from one great disability—all its rain falls in the six months of summer, and the winter is invariably rainless. Immediate and obvious problem is to conserve at least part of the summer rain, most of which is wasted, and use it for irrigation in the dry season. This is not simple, as the North lacks the valleys and hills necessary for big water storage dams and, furthermore, evaporation has been recorded as much as an inch a day.

Holdings Too Big Of the Territory’s 130 holdings with an area of 194,000 square miles the biggest has an area of 13,000 square miles, while other station areas are almost as extensive. It has been claimed that tardy and unscientific pastoral developments of the North has been due partly to it having been divided into holdings so big that they could not be worked efficiently. -> Another contributing cause is that while 63 resident lessees hold 73,000 square miles of land, 107,000 square miles are held by absentee lessees.

Most practical of suggestions for proper development of the Northern Territory, which remains today as Australia’s great colonising problem, was one that the whole area should be divided into three belts so that each could be developed individually, according to its own climate and topography. The recommended belts are as follows: First Belt: Coast area, down to 15th parallel; big rainfall, agricultural possibilities, navigable rivers, gold and other mineral deposits, mostly unexplored.

Second Belt: Between 15th and 20th parallels; cattle (in some places also sheep) grazing, possible timber industry in tropical I'ain forests south of Pellew Island Group. Third Belt; 20th to 26th parallel;

for primary industries, cattle, vegetable growing', unknown mineral resources, with South Australia as its natural outlet from Alice Springs.

Choice of Capital Darwin was not by any means a unanimous choice as capital and seat of government for the North. South Australia’s early, rather tragic, experiments, notably the muddle of Escape Cliffs, which cost about £IOO,OOO, and later led to payment of £73,396 in 1873 to aggrieved landholders for breach of contract, was a prelude to the later choice of Darwin as capital. Travelling south from Darwin today is an eerie experience. All the way to Adelaide River, almost 80 miles, there are “ghost” camps—hundreds of deserted buildings from which the troops walked out, taking only the more valuable equipment, when the Japanese were no longer an enemy. Beside the military highway, the wind-indicating “sausages” still fluttering in the breeze, are the asphalt.ed fighter and bomber strips from which we hit back at the Japanese, and from which we hoped to smash any invasion force that might have left Timor for Australia, as we knew the Japanese had been planning. Off the road in one place there is a great deserted R.A.A.F. station, complete with spacious strip for the biggest bomber. Not far away the white screen and bill-box of an open air picture theatre stand in grotesque remoteness among the trees.

Naval Arsenal Some miles off the main highway there is a great naval arsenal, built secretly among the hills, its isolated buildings dispersed and screened so that a direct hit on one ammunition store could not set off others. It cost £1,500,000 including its own railway siding. The military people apparently^were, so eager to get home that they left a few railwaytrucks behind them at the deserted siding. Only a few miles from Darwin, purposely remote, is a complete military hospital, but secretly, to accommodate 800 of the casualties we expected when we invaded Timor. The invasion was never necessary, and ,as it turned out, neither was the hospital, but the authorities wisely decided to take no risks. Today the unused hospital buildings are for sale.

The military highways are both a fine asset and a heavy liability. The north-south road will cost more than £350,000 a year to maintain, and the east-west highway £200,000.

The 630 miles. between Birdum and Alice Springs remain to be bridged by rail, but the. vexed question of standard rail gauges may delay this as much as the financial considerations.

Millions will be necessary to explore and exploit the North’s mineral resources, known to consist (in undetermined quantities) of gold, silver, tin, wolfram, copper, lead and mica.

Grandiose Plans

Grandiose plans for. a new Darwin of glistening white concrete buildings, zoned for residential and business afeas, with schools, creches, kindergartens and civic and cultural centres, will be pointless unless Darwin becomes an outlet for the products ofa vast, developing Northern Territory: Handed back by the military when its importance as a possible battle ground for the defence of Australia had ended, the North remains a challenge to Australia’s post-war planning. Australia put millions of pounds into war-time necessities that will become either important peace-time assets for the North, or will be written off as part of the ‘‘waste of war.”