ANZAC AREA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 January 1942, Page 4

ANZAC AREA

NAVAL PROTECTION PROBLEM GREAT DISTANCES. IMPORTANCE OF TASMAN SEA. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, January 28 Attention is drawn in authoritative circles in London to the enormous distances that are involved in the naval protection of what is now known as the Anzac Area in the eastern Pacific. The distance, for example, from Sydney to Wellington is 1235 miles (which is further than Southampton to Gibraltar), from Honolulu to Fiji 2783 miles, and from Brisbane to Adelaide 1471 miles. The strategical centre of the area is the Tasman Sea, because all the principal ports of Australia and New Zealand are upon its shores. All the vital Australian industrial populations and industries—9o per cent—are between Brisbane and Adelaide, while New Zealand depends for industrial supplies from Australia on the Tasman Sea ports. The vast majority of the overseas traffic of troops, munitions and supplies leaves the ports in the Tasman Sea area, while the Australian coastal shipping trade is of vital importance. One reason for the latter is the transport of raw materials, as it is impossible by rail because the States have different gauges and transhipment of supplies would have to be made at the State boundary. The danger of further infiltration of Japanese along the Solomon Islands toward the south would be the establishment of bases from which surface or submarine raiders could operate against the Tasman Sea area. It is felt that the problem of distance could equally apply to the Japanese, and the further progress they might make to the east the greater the opportunity for the Allies to menace their line of communications.