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As many of you will be aware there was a long history of planned settlement from Europe in many of the Settler countries (Argentina, Australia, NZ, US, Canada etc), where an organising group or government would create a settlement for whatever reason in the new lands.

Most of the big cities in Australasia were initially settled as part of this kind of scheme, for example, Adelaide, Melbourne, Wellington, Dunedin and Christchurch. These settlements were usually privately organised by either specifically created companies or religious groups and often by the same person. Edward Gibbon Wakefield was a particularly prolific planner!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Gibbon_Wakefield

North Western Australia is a pretty lightly populated area of the continent and has long had trouble attracting settlement, probably for good reason. I don’t imagine it would be a particularly pleasant place to live prior to air conditioning and I also suspect that prior to the modern day minerals boom there was not a huge economic incentive to settle there.

I wonder what would happen if someone was able to put a planned settlement somewhere along that coast, say, somewhere like OTL Broome? If that settlement was placed somewhere during the 1830s-1870s and it survived, then the NW coast would have a strong urban centre that could develop the whole area further than IOTL. It may also act as a minor defence or war POD, having a major port closer to DEI/Indonesia/Timor etc. Perhaps, assuming WW1/2 still occur roughly on schedule, it may offer advantages to Australia and the Allies? Noting of course that Broome was hit IOTL by Japanese air raids.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broome,_Western_Australia

I would think it unlikely that ATL Broome* or a more developed NW Australia would be very big till the 1930s-post War, but perhaps it may be big enough to justify extension of roading or rail infrastructure too?

Now who would be the colonists? I was thinking perhaps a simple POD being that the Welsh Argentine settlement instead go to NW Australia. Sure, it is perhaps not the best destination, but it is also sufficiently far enough away from English speaking Australian colonies that it would have a fair degree of cultural independence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_settlement_in_Argentina

Any thoughts or ideas on this WI?
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