The Rise Of Australasia - Chapter 90

Chapter 90: Chapter 90: Steel Crisis (Please subscribe!)

Translator: 549690339 |

The fleet was naturally carrying Arthur’s long-planned ambassador candidates and visiting group.

Of course, Duchess Louise was among them, and Margaret and Patricia naturally had to follow.

As for the reason why Duchess Louise went to the Netherlands, it goes without saying.

At the same time, Hunter Steward was also part of the group, and he would accompany the fleet to Europe and be responsible for the establishment of the new award.

For the soon-to-be-born Victoria Award in the field of scientific research,

Arthur gave it an important name.

Nominally, it was to commemorate Arthur’s beloved grandmother, Queen Victoria, but it also inevitably borrowed the prestige of Queen Victoria to quickly make the new award famous in Europe.

In order to prevent the yet-to-be-born Nobel Prize from impacting the Victoria Award, Arthur deliberately prepared an award of up to 300,000 pounds for the Victoria Award, so that even with six major awards including literature, physics, chemistry, mathematics, medical, and technology, each winner could still receive support worth 50,000 pounds.

This amount of prize money has far exceeded the prize money of the first Nobel Prize in history, even three or four times as much.

Moreover, if the winners can work in Australia for at least ten years, the

Australian Royal Family will also provide additional research funding and venues.

Even in the economically developed United Kingdom, the annual income of a senior professor is only a few thousand pounds.

The prize money of any Victoria Award is equivalent to decades or even a hundred years of income for a British senior professor.

Plus, with the tremendous prestige of Queen Victoria, it can be expected that the new Victoria Award will certainly be more popular than the Nobel Prize in the original history.

The Victoria Award will also become a powerful tool for Australia to attract top talents, allowing Australia to maintain sufficient prestige and attractiveness in the scientific research field for years, decades, or even centuries to come.

The annual cost of hosting the awards is just over 300,000 pounds, which, although it seems like a lot, is entirely affordable for Arthur’s property.

Besides, the renovation of the car factory production line is also in full swing. Cars will also bring in a huge amount of income for Arthur, which is a huge market worth billions or even tens of billions of pounds.

Arthur chose to stay in Australia, not because he didn’t attach importance to the trip to the Netherlands, but because there are too many important projects currently in Australia that Arthur needs to personally oversee.

The railway construction plan is one of Australia’s most important development plans at present, which has attracted the attention and emphasis of many Australians since its inception.

This has also led to a very smooth process during the railway construction land acquisition.

Most of the areas where the railway has to pass are uninhabited wastelands, and some already allocated areas are bought by Australia at twice the market price.

Of course, for those who don’t want to exchange for money, the Australian Government organises the Indigenous Peoples for land reclamation, and compensate with the same area of reclaimed land.

Do not ask why the Australian Government is so generous; just know that there are many Indigenous Peoples.

Australia currently has nearly 20,000 Indigenous Peoples participating in construction, and it continues to grow at a crazy rate of nearly 6,000 people per month.

Although various industrial constructions also lead to the bloodshed and sacrifice of hundreds of Indigenous Peoples every month, this number of deaths is insignificant compared to the huge human resource supplement.

As one of the most valued construction projects, the construction of the railway has invested a lot of resources from both Arthur and Australia.

In terms of workers, more than 20 German experts have been involved in the railway construction plans and surveys, and several hundred trained Australian railway workers have also joined.

As for cheap labor, self-explanatory, at least 5,000 Indigenous Peoples have been assigned to railway construction, and are increasing in scale of at least 1,000 people per month.

Meanwhile, major steel mills are also working overtime to produce rails. The reason why railway construction can become a symbol of industrial countries is because constructing railways not only consumes a lot of manpower and material resources, but also heavily tests a country’s steel production capacity.

Australia is constructing a broad gauge railway. This railway greatly enhances carrying capacity, and train travel is very smooth. The interior of the carriage can also become more spacious and comfortable.

Of course, the broad gauge railway also has very obvious shortcomings, such as occupying more area, increasing the cost of bridges and tunnels, and increasing the turning radius.

But now, because Australia is not short of funds or land, it is clear that the broad gauge railway is more suitable.

At the same time, most of the railway is single-track, and only a few high-traffic sections have been designed as double-track railways.

This is not absolute, though. Even before the construction of the railway began, the entire design team already had plans to change the entire railway to double-track at any time.

With this in place, any section of the railway can be converted into a double-track railway after any further changes.

This to some extent also alleviates the demand for Australian steel production.

According to the estimates of German experts, Australia’s railway construction consumes about 170 tons of rails per kilometer, and the entire railway requires at least nearly 700,000 tons of rails.

If the extra consumption of tunnels, bridges, train stations, and so on is added, the entire railway needs at least 800,000 tons of steel production.

Although this is the total consumption over more than ten years, it still takes at least 80,000 tons of steel per year on average.

Australia’s current steel production capacity temporarily cannot keep up with this figure, so expanding the scale of steel mills is an urgent problem to solve.

Cars are also a steel-consuming beast. Building a car requires a large amount of steel, ranging from a few hundred kilograms to several tons.

Once cars become popular in the global market in the future, the steel required to build cars every year may amount to tens of thousands of tons.

This has put a lot of pressure on Minister Pierre.

All of the sudden, the pressure falls on Minister Pierre, and the Ministry of Industry can only speed up the construction of industrial zones and steel mills, allocate more Indigenous Peoples, and expand steel mill production capacity as much as possible.

Fortunately, in this era, it is both difficult and simple to expand steel production capacity.

With the prerequisites of technology, equipment, mineral resources, funds, and manpower, it is easy to expand steel production capacity.

However, without these conditions, it is not easy to expand steel production.

Australia is lucky enough to have all the necessary resources, equipment, technology, manpower, experts, and funds. Except for the time it takes to build new steel mills and expand capacity, there is no other problem..