From northern frontier to front door

摘要

Australia is rare, in a global g context. Expansion in significant areas of a country is not a luxury afforded to many nations across the globe when availability of land or economic opportunity is considered. But Australia has economic prosperity and it has land, and plenty of'it. It has abundant arable soil and is endowed with energy and minerals. According to the CSIRO, there are up to 17 million hectares of arable soil in the north, potentially suitable for a variety of agriculture and horticulture. Australian writer Gerald (GM) Glaskin wrote: "The north is a country in itself, a third of the size of the United States - three times the size of Texas. It is a land that has slept through the centuries, but can sleep no more ... It is stirring now - stirring and waiting for man [humans] to be sufficiently civilised, sufficiently knowledgeable, to make it his [their] own."