Oceania Draka?

[MerryPrankster]

The climatic effect of flooding Lake Eyre would apparently be negligible (there is another thread on here that discusses the matter).

A canal to the interior would make travel/transportation much quicker an easier.

There is a native plant called spinifex or salt bush that is salt tolerant (surprise, surprise) and that apparently makes good cattle fodder. The problem for large scale grazing in the area is water suitable for stock and human consumption.

1. Could you link to it? I did a search for the board and only found this thread. I'm pondering an AH scenario based on this that features flooding the Erye Depression as a megaproject done by Aussie "Will to Power" (and masses of Aboriginal and Indonesian slaves) and I'd like more information.

2. That'd be another reason to build it too.

3. If the Erye Depression were turned into an inland sea, I think the Murray and Darling would still flow into it. The area near the rivers wouldn't have the water problem.

Salt-bush plantations to feed Aussie cattle and export for cattle feeding elsewhere?

 

[St. Andrew]

There were actually two threads that discussed flooding deserts. The first one was AHC Australia Wank by thekingsguard in post 1900 (addresses Lake Eyre in particular but you have to wade in a bit) and the other was Flooding the Sahara by Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy (pre 1900) which may have some useful info as it is discussing the feasibility of a similar project.

To the best of my knowledge the Murray-Darling doesn't flow into Lake Eyre - it exits the continent near Adelaide but flows mostly through NSW and Sth Qld (Darling) and along the NSW/Victoria border (Murray).

 

[Strategos' Risk]

Doesn't Krakatoa blow its top around the time they'd be moving over there? Maybe they name themselves after the volcano, to prove themselves that badass? The Overman of the Volcano, the Krakatoans.

The Krakas.

Just say it out loud.

Holy moly, this is a parody that writes itself!

 

[MerryPrankster]

The Krakas.

Just say it out loud.

Holy moly, this is a parody that writes itself!

Given how the bulk of the ruling class will be a lot lower-class in origin than the Draka were (convicts versus fallen aristocrats), I imagine they'd be a lot less refined and polite than the Draka are.

Fridge Brilliance in two different ways--not only is it hilarious, but it also makes sense.

 

[MerryPrankster]

There were actually two threads that discussed flooding deserts. The first one was AHC Australia Wank by thekingsguard in post 1900 (addresses Lake Eyre in particular but you have to wade in a bit) and the other was Flooding the Sahara by Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy (pre 1900) which may have some useful info as it is discussing the feasibility of a similar project.

To the best of my knowledge the Murray-Darling doesn't flow into Lake Eyre - it exits the continent near Adelaide but flows mostly through NSW and Sth Qld (Darling) and along the NSW/Victoria border (Murray).

Thanks. I'll need to look it up when I've got more time.

 

[MerryPrankster]

Have we figured out a POD yet?

I suggested those various revolts, but at best that'd lead to an independent SE Australia with the British (or other powers) controlling the rest.

A "Dominion that goes bad" could combine Australia and New Zealand territory-wise, but the British would restrain the worst of the Aussie-Draka's excesses. Plus NZ was a lot more pro-British than Australia was.

Maybe the Napoleonic Wars go differently and the British take the Dutch East Indies and govern them from Sydney?

The local government manages to exploit the Indonesians for labor, initially as outright slaves or really degaded "free" laborers, and rebels against abolitionism?

Getting New Zealand to go along with this might be hard, plus unless a lot of the British Fleet goes with the Aussies, the Australians might find themselves losing Indonesia (although if they import a whole lot of Indonesian laborers beforehand, you'd still get a Draka-analogue society going).

 

[Strategos' Risk]

I still want to work in an evil pre-20th century corporation angle- either have the British East India Company and/or the Dutch East India Company involved. But yeah that comes after the POD.

 

[MerryPrankster]

I still want to work in an evil pre-20th century corporation angle- either have the British East India Company and/or the Dutch East India Company involved. But yeah that comes after the POD.

They could be the founders and operators of this state. Eventually the home government tries to assert stronger controls over them or remove them and rule directly (think the British government displacing the East India Company), only the corporation in question is strong enough to resist?

The operation being a corporate state will also enable them to grow territorially under the home country's protection--that was the problem with an early revolt in SE Australia is that it still leaves Britain with the rest of the continent and limits their ability to expand territorially.

 

[Admiral Matt]

I'll have to find my copy of Guns, Germs and Steel and get back to you.

In the meantime, just think of the Draka as a nation of Chuck Norrises.

1816- The Draka invent the first steam-powered revolving door.
1817- The Draka slam it shut.
1903- Sigmund Freud discovers the Draka are not afraid of heights.
1953- Edmund Hillary discovers heights are afraid of the Draka.
1960- Mathematician Kurt Gödel proves that repeating decimals never stop, until they meet the Draka. Then they turn around and go the other way.
1970- The CDC confirms that the Draka sneeze with their eyes open.

And so on.

Admirably put, but it goes to jeckl to sum up the true character of this thread:

That could work, they could cut a cannel to lake Erye (Sp?) and flood it giving OZ an inland sea.

I also think absorbing the tats from Maori culture would be cool and they should ride moa's and train the great eagles (the things that ate moas) how cool would that be.

Have fun guys; I won't even say the acronym.

 

[Strategos' Risk]

Hm, it would make sense that they have a different national animal. Though I think their insignia should be a volcano, for Krakatoa.

 

[B_Munro]

Given how the bulk of the ruling class will be a lot lower-class in origin than the Draka were (convicts versus fallen aristocrats), I imagine they'd be a lot less refined and polite than the Draka are.

Fridge Brilliance in two different ways--not only is it hilarious, but it also makes sense.

Ok: the Kraka . I get the mental image of a fat but muscular tatooed guy brandishing a couple of AK-47s while riding on top of a Emu - sort of a Hell's Angel on LSD...

Bruce

 

[Strategos' Risk]

Instead of their national culture be around a weird neo-classical fetish (and magical discovery of some stash of ancient works buried in the desert), perhaps the Krakas' weird religion could be based on Australian Mormonism?

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=182139

Hell, maybe through that they can rationalize why they may favor some non-white races (Maori) and not others (nearly everyone else).

And another weird coincidence: while the "Australian Mormonism" in the above thread isn't actually Mormonism but rather the creating of a distinct Anglo-cultural variant of Christianity (so you might as well call it Australian Jehovah's Witnesses or Australian British Israelism or even Australian Rastafarianism), apparently real-world Mormons do have something for Polynesians!

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=203164

Fridge brilliance is all over this project.

 

[MerryPrankster]

An "Australian Mormonism" might also provide the rationale for:

1. Larger families to conquer lots of territory.

2. Imperialistic expansion.

3. An eventual break with Britain.

That could be really interesting...

 

[carlton_bach]

I once played around with a very cinematic TL that had the Bounty mutineers as the foundation legend of a white-dominated Oceania (centred on Australia and New Zealand, but also including large parts of Melanesia, all of Polynesia, New Guinea and New Caledonia. The nation owed its existence mostly to the military vacuum in large parts of the South Pacific in the early 1800s and succesful early convict revolts, and it wasn't really very Draka-like. Nastily racist, but more Orval Faubus than Gwendolyn Ingolfsson.

You know, maybe I should revisit the short story I was working on.

 

[The Kiat]

Australia has poor soil and marginal lands, not a benefit if one is trying to create an empire by having large number of immigrants. Sooner or later, the homeland would become dependent upon food imports. The problem with that it there was these things called submarines, perhaps you have heard of them?

 

[carlton_bach]

Australia has poor soil and marginal lands, not a benefit if one is trying to create an empire by having large number of immigrants. Sooner or later, the homeland would become dependent upon food imports. The problem with that it there was these things called submarines, perhaps you have heard of them?

Well, there is always New Zealand, which is admirably suited to agriculture. I'm told Hawaii also produces surpluses. And bear in mind this would largely be a nineteenth century phenomenon (I can't see its local power status surviving in the face of an industrialised Japan and China and an independent Indonesia). the population numbers, while substantial, need not be huge (I'm thinking single-digit millions of white settlers mostly concentrated in New Zealand and New South Wales).

Regarding subs - if an enemy can operate submarines in sufficient numbers that far into Oceania's territory, it's already lost the war.

 

[MerryPrankster]

Australia has poor soil and marginal lands, not a benefit if one is trying to create an empire by having large number of immigrants. Sooner or later, the homeland would become dependent upon food imports. The problem with that it there was these things called submarines, perhaps you have heard of them?

Hydroponics and desalination might help with that.

 

[Strategos' Risk]

Australia has poor soil and marginal lands, not a benefit if one is trying to create an empire by having large number of immigrants. Sooner or later, the homeland would become dependent upon food imports. The problem with that it there was these things called submarines, perhaps you have heard of them?

The Krakas will probably somehow attract Confederate exiles, who will bestow upon the magic of the secret of early submarine technology.

 

[MerryPrankster]

Carlton,

I'd like to see this story and TL. If they're not Draka-like, you could always post them in your own thread.

(Be sure to put the story in the Writer's Forum so it doesn't count as being published.)

 

[carlton_bach]

Carlton,

I'd like to see this story and TL. If they're not Draka-like, you could always post them in your own thread.

(Be sure to put the story in the Writer's Forum so it doesn't count as being published.)

Remind me to do so once I have access to the hard drive on my old computer. I just realised most of my old TLs didn't make the last migration:-(