The Rise Of Australasia - Chapter 310

Chapter 310: Chapter 273: Water Cabinet and Tank

The two Unified-class strategic cruisers to be built in the Royal Shipyard, named Unity Scott and Peace Harmony, officially began construction in mid-January of this year.

Since the main task of the Royal Shipyard this year is to build these two fast cruisers, the construction speed of these two warships will be slightly faster, expected to be completed in October at the earliest, and should not exceed December at the latest.

After attending the opening ceremony of the warships, Arthur approached the person in charge of the Royal Shipyard and asked the same question he had previously asked Director Theodore at the Aerospace Laboratory.

Without bragging, the person in charge of the Royal Shipyard carefully and cautiously thought for a while before giving Arthur a tentative answer.

After receiving the response, Arthur nodded with satisfaction and ordered the person in charge of the Royal Shipyard to connect with the Aeronautical Research Room.

The development of aircraft carriers cannot be achieved without the joint efforts of the shipyard and the Aeronautical Research Room – not only must the aircraft be able to take off in a short distance, but their combat capabilities and designs must become more reasonable.

Let the Aerospace Laboratory and the Shipyard deal with the specific designs and experiments! For Arthur, all he needs to do is come up with an idea, and there are many people to put it into practice.

After attending the opening ceremonies of the two warships, Arthur officially approached the members of the International Olympic Committee in late January and held a grand banquet to welcome their arrival.

After the banquet, Minister Grant and the International Olympic Committee members immediately went to the designated area of the Australasia National Stadium.

The International Olympic Committee is generally satisfied with Australasia’s arrangements. After all, their requirement is to build a sports venue that can accommodate up to 40,000 people. According to Australasia’s plan, the National Stadium will be a super-large sports venue that can accommodate 50,000 people, far exceeding the requirements of the International Olympic Committee.

To build the National Stadium, the Australasian Government has spared no expense to hire well-known designers and construction companies from Europe and America, aiming to build a national stadium that will be in use for over a hundred years. Even if the stadium is no longer in use in the future, it can serve as a witness to the development of Australilarasia over the centuries.

Determining the design of the stadium is not an easy task, as the Australasia National Stadium will become one of Australasia’s landmarks and an external symbol of its sports field.

This also means that the design requirements of the stadium are very strict, not only to show the country’s good side, but also to be innovative enough to attract more people.

Under the coordination of the international committee and Minister Grant, major construction companies and designers took more than a month to finalize the initial design.

During this period, more than half of the time was spent arguing over which design was better. Two construction companies even quarreled over it, not ruling out that one party was British and the other was German.

Once the design is finalized, the next most important task is definitely to enter construction.

Arthur, Prime Minister Walter, Chancellor Kent, and several ministers attended the groundbreaking ceremony of the National Stadium. At the ceremony, Arthur delivered an important speech, emphasizing how important sports are to the diversified development of Australasia. He also encouraged and called for more Australasians to devote themselves to the development of sports, making contributions to the country while keeping fit and healthy.

According to Minister Grant’s report, thousands of Australasians wanted to sign up to become athletes just on the day Arthur’s speech ended.

However, selecting athletes must be done carefully and strictly, evaluating their physical fitness and talent while also giving priority to patriotic young people.

Arthur’s speech relieved Minister Grant. As this speech began to spread nationwide, there was no need to worry about the number of athletes.

Minister Grant even suspected that if the sports department relaxed the recruitment of athletes, the number of athletes in Australasia could easily exceed tens of thousands at any time.

It sounds crazy, but there is no real need for such quantity. It is important to remember that even the Olympics with the most athletes involved just over two thousand people.

At the London Olympics, where a single country had the most athletes, Britain sent only over seven hundred athletes.

There are only first, second, and third places in the sports industry, no participation or consolation prizes, so the selection of athletes should focus on quality rather than quantity.

Minister Grant made great efforts to select nearly five hundred young people with seemingly good physical fitness and talent from the tens of thousands of applicants. In addition to the over one hundred athletes who had participated in the previous Olympics, he assembled a team of over six hundred athletes, preparing for the Sydney Games to be held in Australasia.

With nearly two and a half years before the Sydney Games commence, Minister Grant sent these more than six hundred athletes to designated locations for secret training.

It is believed that more than two years of training will yield results for these athletes. Minister Grant’s expectations are not high – as long as one-tenth of these more than six hundred athletes can win medals, it will satisfy his expectations.

It is worth mentioning that Minister Grant specially spent part of the funds to consult the National Committee officers on methods for rapidly training athletes, which could provide shortcuts for their training.

Fortunately, there is no strict regulation in current sports training, mainly relying on instinct and physical fitness.

In March 1910, the construction of the Australasia National Stadium officially began. The construction of the sports venue is expected to take 20 months, but may be delayed to about 24 months.

This also means that the stadium will be completed by March 1912 at the latest, barely in time for its official use before the opening of the Olympic Games in June 1912.

The construction of hotels and other facilities, as well as roads to support the sports venue, is expected to be completed by the end of 1911 at the earliest and no later than March 1912 at the latest.

The construction period is carefully planned and predicted by various construction companies and designers, and will not exceed the predicted range.

Arthur is generous with the construction of the stadium, with an initial budget of 6 million Australian dollars, a reserve budget of 4 million Australian dollars, and the option to add more at any time.

Arthur’s only requirement is to ensure quality and efficiency, and complete the construction on time.

This demand is quite flexible for the construction companies, so their enthusiasm for work is relatively high.

Furthermore, with the input of many Indigenous people, it saves a lot of labor and manpower, reducing the cost of the stadium’s construction.

In April, Arthur went to the Royal Agricultural Machinery Factory in the Sydney suburbs to inspect the recent situation of the factory.

Of course, Arthur’s visit is ostensibly to inspect the construction of tractors and the specific situation of tractors at the Royal Agricultural Machinery Factory.

Since tractors began to be used on a large scale in some parts of Australasia a few years ago, they have become an integral part of the development of Australasia’s agriculture.

People were surprised to find that tractors not only significantly reduce labor consumption, but also perform better than human labor in plowing the land.

At the same time, tractors can be used for harvesting and some other tasks. They are like dedicated serfs with great strength, other than being expensive and requiring fuel consumption.

By now, Australia has more than 1,000 agricultural tractors in use, with more than 70% of them in state-owned or royal farms in Australasia.

The substantial growth of Australasian grain production is indeed attributable to the contribution of tractors.

However, Arthur would not personally intervene in such a small tractor matter. The real reason he came is that the Agricultural Machinery Factory, under the guise of researching tractors, researched and manufactured the first-generation tank.

Of course, the reason this thing is called a tank is because in order to keep its research secret, the Agricultural Machinery Factory called it a “water cabinet”, which is “tank” in English.

After Arthur’s approval, the thing, which had nothing in common with tractors in its actual use, was officially named the “tank”.

The tank made by the Agricultural Machinery Factory is slightly taller than a normal tractor in appearance.

At first glance, it is not much different from a tractor except for the addition of a seemingly thick layer of steel plate.

Of course, due to the steel plate coverage, the front of the tank has only one small observation hole, and it is basically airtight in other places.

A long gun barrel protrudes from the top of the tank, its dark muzzle seemingly capable of capturing souls.

This tank has a total of four crew members: a driver, a commander, a gunner, and a loader.

Normally, the commander also serves as the tank commander and observer, standing at the tank’s only observation hole.

The driver sits in the front part of the tank, operating the entire tank in the same way as a tractor is operated.

The gunner is responsible for firing and aiming the 75mm howitzer mounted on top of the tank while also being in charge of the machine gun at the very top.

Of course, in order to use the machine gun at the top, passengers must stick half of their body out of the tank, which is bound to be somewhat dangerous.

The loader’s simplest task is to load ammunition into the tank’s guns. The ammunition compartment and guns are on either side of the loader, who doesn’t need to move to load the ammunition.

The observer, also the tank commander, is responsible for guiding the tank’s movements and fire.

Through the observation hole, the observer monitors the tank’s position and direction of movement, ordering his three subordinates to perform corresponding actions.

The four crew members work together, maintaining the operation of the entire tank.