AUSTRALIAN STEEL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24629, 10 June 1941, Page 4

AUSTRALIAN STEEL

Australia, Canada and South Africa have been called arsenals of Empire. That New Zealand cannot be included in this category, in spite of the variety of war supplies which she produces, is due to force of circumstance. A country which is to produce a wide range of modern instruments of war must have as, the foundation of its effort the basic industries of iron and steel production. In the close co-operation that is developing between Australia and New Zealand lies the immediate hope of securing adequate arms for defending both dominions. These arms flow from Australian steel and the industries which have grown up round the basic product in the years of peace, and also with great rapidity since the war began. The changes speeded up by war are also expressed in new features of the country’s landscape. Thirty years ago ore from Iron Knob, near the Spencer’s Gulf coast of Eyre’s Peninsula, crossed the gulf in barges to be used in the works of the Broken Hill Proprietary Company at Port Pirie. A handful of cottages and a long jetty were the only coastal expression of the fact that South Australia possessed a large hill of iron ore of a quality perhaps unsurpassed. To-day that small township is called Whyalla, port for the modern blast furnace commenced two years ago, and soon to build merchant ships of substantial tonnage. Such a transformation, as dramatic as any of the mushroom growths of the industrial revolution, is due not only to the war. It has had its basis in Australian steel. As the industry developed, soon after 1914, the iron ore was taken to Newcastle and Port Kembla in New South Wales, a journey considerably less than the distance between pro-

Auction centres and supplies in some of the older producing countries. This fact, the convenient position of the coal and limestone supplies, and the quality of the iron ore itself, helped to make possible the production and sale' of Australian steel at prices lower than the British product. The vigorous and growing industry has been switched to the task of providing munitions as quickly as possible. Perhaps the best expression of the success achieved in developing basic products, new industries to manufacture machine tools, as well as -to make the actual tools of war, is the recent despatch to Malaya of a force completely equipped with weapons made in the Commonwealth. The 25-pounder field gun, now standard in the British anny, is being produced in considerable numbers, accompanied by. guns to combat tank and plane, by Bren guns and rifles. Aeroplanes of the trainer and fighter types, one of them an Australian modification of an American model, have been in production for some time, and they are soon to be followed by Beaufort bombers, to make the parts for which it is said that 26,000 different tools and jigs had to be fashioned in the Commonwealth. These and other products are representative of this Empire arsenal, but they all depend fundamentally on the striking growth of Australian steel.