Vive l'Antipodée: A French Australia Timeline

[Gabingston]

Part 10: GOLD RUSH!​

While the French remained largely concentrated around the Havre Martinière, some French colonists explored out into the plains and hills around the bay. Once the Irish showed up in the 1840's, they settled on the frontier away from the bay (although some settled in the emerging towns and cities, like Marnebec and Grandmont). Hearing about a large river to the north, the French colonists organized several expeditions to find the river. One of these expeditions just happened to run into gold at a site about 80 miles northwest of La Martinière (OTL Bendigo). The site, which they called La Fortune quickly grew as more people found out about the gold. Eventually, word got to Europe, and in 1851 about 31,000 Europeans (of which 23,500 were French) showed up, followed by 39,000 in 1852 and 37,000 in 1853. Prospectors searched around for gold, and other gold sites were found at Ballerêt and Ennis (named by an Irish settler after his hometown back in Ireland). Gold was found in the other provinces as well, most notably in La Pacifique at Ganaboula and Belle Plaine. Within three years, the population of Terre Australe (a name is coming soon) had grown from 300,000 to 430,000, and would only continue to grow due to the high birth rate and drastically increased immigration.
This update was surprisingly annoying, because I'd typed a few more paragraphs, only for the website to freeze and lose it all. Anyway, here are some things I'd like to cover in the coming updates:
Culture of Terre Australe
Infrastructure (Railroads, Telegraphs etc.)
Various different immigrant groups (Asians, Italians etc.)
Interior Exploration
West Coast Colony
More Towns

 

[Gabingston]

Part 11: Railways in Terre Australe​

With the French Terre Australe colony comprising an area several times the size of France itself and a rapidly growing population, new means of transportation were needed for getting people and goods around the colony. The first railway in Terre Australe was constructed from Louisport to Bèrmatte in 1847, followed by connecting Louisport to Ville Dufresne (to distinguish it from the island/province) the following year. It was a challenge connecting Louisport to Elouara and Rochelle due to the rough terrain (hills, cliffs, wide bays etc.), but three years later, the line was complete. Meanwhile, La Martinière was connected to the goldfields of the region as well as the growing secondary cities around the bay throughout the 1850's, making La Martinière a major transport hub and making the goldfields more easily accessible. In the north, Méouar and Philippeville were connected in 1859, but bigger projects were to come...
The First one launched was the Louisport-Martinière Railway. The distance of over 500 miles and the largely unsettled frontier with varying landscapes would make it challenging, but construction commenced in 1856. Largely using Irish workers, the railway first split into two at Borel (one going to Louisport, the other to Elouara), and then continued to cross the mountains and into the rolling hills and vast plains of the frontier. Along the way, numerous towns were founded, such as Clermont, Gondegai, Montvert, Miléoua, Angèratte, and Balouge. After seven years of construction, the railway commenced in 1862, connecting what would become the two largest cities in the colony.
The colonists wasted no time in making sure to build a northern line as well. In 1860, while the aforementioned line was still being built, the provincial governments ordered the building of a Rochelle-Méouar line. The region had started seeing French settlement in the late 1830's, which only sped up after the potato famine and gold rushes. Towns that already existed like Port Gaillac, Yambe and Baline were connected along the way, and by 1865 the line was up and running.
Charlesville requested a rail link to the growing national network as well, so the new Martinière-Charlesville railway began construction in 1863. The line already existed up to La Fortune, so from La Fortune the line ran across the plains to Mattecoupat, where a line was built to Gondegai as well to get a shortcut for people traveling from Charlesville to Louisport, then ran across more plains until crossing the Tungalle River (the river mentioned in part 10) at Pombéruc, and then crossing the coastal hills and coming into Charlesville.

 

[Gabingston]

Part 11.5: Origin of the Name "Antipodea"​

Over the years, several names were proposed for the French Terre Australe colony, but the name "Antipodea (Antipodée in French)" gradually became the name for Terre Australe. Coming from The Antipodes, one of the European terms for the south pacific due to being on the opposite side of the world from Europe (even though the antipode for Louisport/OTL Sydney is actually in the North Atlantic near The Azores), and the name "Antipodea gradually became the name for the French colony and Australia became the name for what we call Oceania in OTL. As such, I have renamed my timeline "Vive l'Antipodée: A French Australia Timeline".

 

[Gabingston]

Oh BTW, I forgot the link for the towns Mattecoupat and Pombéruc, so I've got them now.

 

[Gabingston]

Part 12: The West Coast​

While the east coast of Antipodea was booming, the west coast remained a lightly settled backwater. Of the hundreds of thousands of Europeans that had gone to Antipodea over the years, only around 10,000 of them had gone to the less fertile and drier west coast. By 1850, the European population of the west coast was only a little over 20,000, most of which was concentrated on the Plaine Bonaparte. Other small villages had sprung up over the years along the coast, like Mandge (quite similar for the French word for "eat", which is mange) and Nouvelle-Toulon, surrounded by fields of olive trees, lavender, vegetables and vineyards. Early visitors remarked how different the speech here was to that on the East Coast, with one traveler remarking in his journal that "It's almost like a different language over there". However, in the early 1850's, new Emperor Napoleon III sent thousands of political opponents to penal colonies, and the largest one was on the west coast of Terre Australe. Between 1850 and 1860, about 12,000 Europeans, including 4,500 political exiles and convicts settled on the west coast. The new penal colony of Tricolore became the furthest north French settlement on the west coast (although the French government also sent farmers over as well so that, you know, the exiles and convicts wouldn't die). By 1860, the population of the west coast had grown to just under 39,000, almost doubling in one decade.

 

[Gabingston]

Part 13: Sugar! Yes Please!​

After the success of the Amalia sugar plantations, the French looked for more places along the northeast coast to grow the sweet, lucrative crop. They found that for the most part regions around rivers had the most fertile soil for sugar, so plantation towns along rivers like Bèrbarre, Mérouquitche, Hortense, Coutéringe and Baie Trinité, with other smaller towns popping up. With Europeans being unwilling (or arguably unable to) work under the hot tropical sun from dawn 'til dusk, the French imported workers from South and East Asia. While the first workers were Indian, Chinese and Melanesian, the labor pool eventually diversified, as the French started importing workers from the Spanish Philippines and from Japan as well. Most of the workers came as indentured servants on five to seven year contracts to pay off their voyage, but the conditions weren't much better than that of slaves. The working hours were long, the work was hard and the plantation owners would often use umm... harsh punishment for minor "offenses" (flogging for laying down after working for six hours straight under the hot sun), although laws were eventually passed forbidding overly harsh punishment.
As for what happened after their indentures were up, it was varied. Some returned home, some continued working on the plantation for higher pay, some moved into town and some started their own small farms. Many workers had family back home that they'd work to bring over after their contract was up, as they for the most part came alone. The Male to Female ratio early on was 3:1, so many would go back home and look for wives to bring to Antipodea. Each ethnic group would largely stick with their own and form ethnic enclaves in Antipodea (except the Filipinos to a certain extent, as the common religion between Frenchmen and Filipinos led to some Frenchmen and Filipinos marrying and having biracial kids). Europeans moved to the northeast coast as well, mainly to work in sugar mills, ports or towns. Mineral resources were discovered as well, which diversified the economy beyond just sugar and drew in more migrants as well. The Northeast Coast developed a distinct culture and identity different from the rest of the country, as the culture took in European, Indian, East Asian, Aboriginal and Pacific influences and mashed them all together.

 

[Gabingston]

Part 14: Explorers and Farmers​

Over a half-century since colonization began, and Antipodea was still divided in two, a smaller west coast colony and a much larger east coast colony, separated by over 1,000 miles of desert. Previous communication and contact between the two colonies was maintained by ships sailing along the Great Australian Bight. However, the colonists wanted to connect the two colonies overland, so that's what happened. The provincial government of Lamanon recruited two dozen men, lead by local explorer Pierre Hernandez (his dad was born in Spain). The expedition party, which included two Aboriginal guides, a Priest, local survival experts and Hernandez's wife set off in November of 1847. They first trekked 165 miles to the north at the tip of the Golfe de Lamanon, at which he founded the future town of Hernansville, and then turned to the west into the great unknown...
After leaving Hernansville, the terrain quickly transitioned into dry steppe, and fresh water was hard to find. Figuring that with the water being scarce, Hernandez sent all but six of his crew back home, which proved to be a good choice as over 800 miles of desert lay ahead. Up until Chédounes the coast was dotted with large bays, but afterwords the coast was largely straight with large cliffs. Over the next several months, the crew trudged west across the wide expanse, until reaching more habitable regions and finally arriving in the town of Quingelin in May of 1848, becoming the first Europeans to cross from Eastern to Western Antipodea by foot. Despite that, it'd remain decades before the two were connected by railroad.
Despite the attention being paid to the gold rush, much of the settlement actually came from farmers wanting to take advantage of the abundant land. The mild oceanic climate of much of the Martinière province was familiar to Western Europeans, and many European crops could grow just fine in Antipodea. Farming communities like Arnamboule, Rennes (named for a city in Brittany), Auxerre (named for a city in Burgundy) and Linse were founded during the 1850's, as thousands of European (largely French, but also German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Irish etc.) farm families poured in to grab whatever land they could. Between 1853 and 1860, an average of 23,000 Europeans (or 161,000 in total) arrived in Antipodea. Coupled with natural growth of 2.75% a year, the population of Antipodea in 1860 had grown to 680,000 (still well behind OTL Australia, which had about 1.1 million by 1860, as Frenchmen don't have as much of a tendency to emigrate as Brits do).

 

[Gabingston]

Part 14.5: At The Bottom Of The World​

In 1845, the population of British Patagonia was only 2,600 people, split between Port Desire and Sandy Point. The cold, dry climate and lack of fertile land discouraged settlement of the region. However, the voyage of the Beagle increased European attention on the region of Patagonia, and the British realized the strategic potential of controlling the Cape Horn. With the famine in Ireland, 12,000 Irishmen (as well as 2,500 other Europeans) arrived in Patagonia, founding the new towns of Sligeach, Port Fitzroy and Ceanainn. The Irishmen who arrived mostly became ranchers or fishers, as not many crops could grow in the cold and dry conditions. However, sailing up the west coast the conditions went from dry to very wet, and the Brits soon recruited farmers from Germany and Scandinavia to settle in the valleys and fjords. The most notable Nordic colony in Patagonia was the town of Aysen. Between 1850 and 1860, over 12,000 Germans and Scandinavians arrived in Patagonia, along with 14,000 Brits (English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish) and 2,000 other Europeans, growing the Patagonian population to 51,000 Europeans in 1860.

 

[Sceonn]

If the British redirected their colonization efforts of Australia to South Africa it would completely change the dynamics of the colony. The Boers would be totally outnumber and eventually subsumed...

 

[Gabingston]

If the British redirected their colonization efforts of Australia to South Africa it would completely change the dynamics of the colony. The Boers would be totally outnumber and eventually subsumed...

The Brits are also colonizing New Zealand and Patagonia, but there will be a much larger White British population in South Africa (or "Sood Eefrica" in a South African accent) in this timeline.

 

[Gabingston]

Part 15: Crossing the Continent​

Pierre Hernandez returned to Charlesville a hero, but he wasn't done yet. He decided that he'd want to be the first person to cross Antipodea from bottom to top. He did some smaller expeditions, reaching as far as the rich opal fields of Coubapiti and then turning around. Then, his next expedition reached the center of the continent, at a site Hernandez appropriately called Le Centre. Knowing how to get through half of the continent, Hernandez decided that he'd go from coast to coast on his next expedition, a journey of at least 1,300 miles (2,092 km) across empty steppe and desert. The expedition left Hernansville, which by then was a port town home to around 300 people, on the 12th of August in 1854, so that they could arrive up north in the beginning of the wet season. They crossed the explored areas rather fast, traveling to Le Centre in about six weeks. After that, however, is where the struggle began. The land was dry, they didn't know where water was and often took detours to find it and the Aboriginals in the area were sometimes unfriendly (sometimes they were friendly, though, and helped the crew get water). It took a month to travel just 200 miles from Le Centre. However, as they went further north it got wetter and water was more readily available. However, it was VERY, VERY HOT and the animals were incredibly dangerous. The crew started the journey with 18 men, but they were down to just seven now, as many had given up and gone back home and two crew members, Patrick McIntosh and Benoit LaRoche had passed away on the journey. The crew was treated to torrential downpours and amazing thunderstorms, as they arrived in November of 1854, in the wet season. Finally, on December 2nd, 1854, Pierre Hernandez took a bath in the Timor Sea, thus becoming the first person to cross Antipodea from south to north, and then becoming the first to cross from north to south, leaving the north coast on March 4th and returning to Hernansville on May 29th, to much fanfare. Pierre Hernandez would pass away in 1914, going down as the most notorious explorer of the Antipodean interior.

 

[Gabingston]

Part 16: Choo Choo!​

By 1865, with the completion of the Philippeville-Trinité railway, the entire east coast of Antipodea had been connected by railroad, and with the spread of the telegraph to Antipodea, the east coast had become connected by this new invention. However, both Île Dufresne and the West Coast remained unconnected to the east coast by either (well, good luck building a bridge to Île Dufresne). With the new routes across the interior being discovered, the French decided that it was time to connect the coastal colonies by rail, a transcontinental railroad down under. And thus, on April 27th, 1867, the transcontinental railroad began construction in Charlesville. The jaunt up to Hernansville was quick and easy, taking only about two months to build the 180 miles needed to make that connection, and then the real challenge began...
They first built across the rolling steppes in between Hernansville and Chédounes, which became a good-sized rail town (a few thousand residents, but still it's a huge city when compared to the desolation surrounding it), a distance of about 270 miles (240 as the crow flies, and yes I am American so I use the old imperial system, convert it to metric if you so desire). The came crossing the Nullarbor, the near-empty plain in between the habitable zones on the south coast. They built about 300 miles to the cliffs of Incullier (tried to not make it sound like "Enculer", which means "F**k" in French), then running on the bottom of the cliffs for 110 miles to Gandathe. From there, they followed the coast for about 350 miles to Espérance, the easternmost town in the west coast colony. The final step was to build the last 275 miles to Quingelin, thus connecting the east coast and west cost railroads.

 

[Gabingston]

Part 17: The (18)60's​

With Antipodea now being on the world scene due to the gold rush, more Europeans were willing to take the longer voyage to Antipodea than had before. More gold was being discovered across the country, such as in Les Gimpies and Desroches, drawing in thousands of prospectors to the north. Meanwhile, to the west of Méouar a rail link had been built to the towns of Calcaire (French for "limestone", due to the abundant limestone in the area) and Taoambe, of which the neighboring Plateau de Sol Noir had some of the most fertile soil in the country. Taoambe grew from 350 residents in 1860 to 4,000 in 1870 due to the influx of farmers. Martinière and Louisport continued to grow into bustling port cities, and an average of 21,000 people arrived each year in the 1860's, or 210,000 in total, growing the population to 1,100,000 when combined with the 2.75% yearly natural growth (OTL British Australia had 1.65 million people).

 

[Gabingston]

I know that update was pretty short, but it was late at night and I was out of ideas.

 

[Gabingston]

Here is the extent of French/European settlement of Antipodea in 1870. Light blue means European Activity, while dark blue means actual settlement.​

 

[Gabingston]

Part 18: The Top End​

As you can see from the map above, the areas of French settlement stretched from OTL Whyalla, SA to Cairns, and on the west coast from Esperance to Geraldton, but the entire north coast of the country remained uncolonized. Other areas had French activity, such as railroads and minor ranching. The French had viewed the far north as a hot wasteland with dangerous pests and crappy soil, but fears of British, Dutch or Portuguese settlement prompted the French to settle the region. Thus, on March 23rd, 1872, the town of Port Thiers was founded (named for the then-president of France). Port Thiers did not attract much European settlement for a while (you'll see what happens) due to the hot climate, burning sun and poor soil, so many of the settlers were Asians hired to work on the docks or on plantations surrounding the city. During the 1870's, other colonies were founded on the north coast (Ganteaume in 1874 and Doschameau in 1877), although both remained small for a while (more foreshadowing). Only a few thousand people lived up in the north, as isolation and struggles were an ever-present part of living in the settlements, until they'd be connected to the outside world.

 

[Gabingston]

Part 19: Choo Choo Part 2​

With the new northern colonies now up and running, the French government sanctioned railways to circle the Antipodean continent. With a labor source in Italian, Lebanese and Chinese migrants and a political will to do so, the grand project of the Trans-Antipodean Railways began. The plan was a circular route around the continent, with a line following the Hernandez route across the center of the continent. The railroad already stretched along the east coast and the south coast, but the north and west coasts needed to be worked on, not to mention the hot, dry, dangerous interior. Tricolore was thusfar the terminus of the railroad, so they started building north along the coast toward the Baie des Requins. The terrain slowly turned from grassland to full on desert, and the railroad reached Couiniardoux. Uncertain about the building through the interior, the railroad proceeded to hug the coast (although cutting inland to avoid peninsulas and stuff like that). Although smaller stations like Carathe and Marapicourina were set up, the line went straight along the coast to Ganteaume, and then cutting inland to get to Doschameau and then going northeast to Port Thiers, being completed in the mid '80s (1880's, there wasn't any hairspray or leg warmers here).
The railroad from Baie Trinité to the top end was being built simultaneously with the western line, crossing the hot plains of the north. The line met with the overland line at La Jonction and went northwest to Port Thiers.
The overland line began construction in 1878, building north from Hernansville along the Hernandez route across the center of Antipodea. After several years of building across the desert, including founding a permanent settlement at Le Centre, they finally reached La Jonction and built with the eastern line up to Port Thiers, thus connecting the entire Antipodean colony by rail. Of course, telegraph lines had been built alongside these rail lines, improving communication drastically and leading to new discoveries (spoiler for the next part) of rich resources.

 

[Deadspaguettis]

This Antipodea has a less population than Australia. But with the better french civil engineering of the late nineteen century, this Antipodea will have better roots for industrial developpement in the early twenty century i think.

 

[Ameck16]

This Antipodea has a less population than Australia. But with the better french civil engineering of the late nineteen century, this Antipodea will have better roots for industrial developpement in the early twenty century i think.

certainly looks that way.

 

[Gabingston]

"This Antipodea has a less population than Australia. But with the better french civil engineering of the late nineteen century, this Antipodea will have better roots for industrial developpement in the early twenty century i think."
The French immigration policy won't be as strict, so immigration is going to be much larger (although a lot won't be French, but another Romance European country famous for their food and wine, also having a vertical tricolor flag).