The Draka's entire system relies on plantations. Australia does not have plantations.
aside from cotton, two other major crops were produced by plantation style agriculture... tobacco and sugar
Australia is one of the world's leading sugar cane producers, and also has significant cotton production as well. So in theory, there is no reason Australia could not have plantation type agriculture. Blackbirding (slavery by another name) was widespread in the late 19th Century in Oceania (for labor for phosphate mining on Pacific Islands and Chile). The elements are there.
As to resources, Australia has immense natural resources... "Australia has the world’s largest resources of recoverable brown coal, lead, rutile, zircon, nickel, tantalum, uranium and zinc, and ranks second in the world for bauxite, copper, gold, ilmenite and silver." from here
http://www.dfat.gov.au/facts/resources_sector.html
what Australia did not have in most of the 19th Century was a very large labor force. The other huge issue for Australia is the fact that a lot of the country is desert, and economic exploitation can be difficult and expensive (you have to haul water in).
The Draka timeline has problems, but if you hand wave the problems in the timeline and simply look at geography, Australia works as well as South Africa as a base for Draka expansion.