AUSTRALIAN NORTH

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 May 1943, Page 4

AUSTRALIAN NORTH

LARGE AREAS OF RICH LAND OPENED UP BY MILITARY ROADS. GREAT FIELD FOR DEVELOPMENT AFTER WAR. (Special Australian Correspondent.) (Received This Day, 10.0 a.m.) SYDNEY, This Day. Thousands of Australian and American soldiers fortifying Australia’s northern coastal zone have discovered potentially rich country in the desert foreshadowing a tremendous agricultural and industrial development. They expect a great land rush when the war is over. I travelled along an interior road, running over’ 600 miles through the wilderness, and I heard Australians as well as Americans express amazement at the type of country which text books had always referred to as something comparable with the Sahara and fit only for cattle grazing. But there are thousands of square miles of green pasture and plenty of water for those who know how to find it.

Many observers see this as one postwar area where Australian migrants and returning Americans will form “A United Nations territory."

One American private commented: “I reckon one day, in the movies back home, we will see a travelogue showing great concrete highways running right across Australia. There will probably be pictures of Darwin as one of the best vacation resorts in this part of the world.” Some Australian soldiers who cultivated three acres of garden produce in the middle of this “waste land," gathered literally tons of vegetables, including tomatoes, lettuce and cabbage. They had successfully bored for water and their major problem was fighting insects with limited equipment and materials. An Australian Government engineer is quoted as saying: “Australians are just beginning to discover their own country. Defence projects are infiltrating to the Far North and workers for the first time are discovering what is at their own back door. Minerals galore wait for the working. Transportation was the chief obstacle to the development of file interior, but as a result of the war formerly prohibitive freight costs are now shrinking. And it is only the beginning.”