SINGAPORE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 56, Issue 4043, 4 May 1938, Page 10

SINGAPORE

DEFENCE OF AUSTRALIA. No admiral in Ids senses would undertake an attack on Australia if lie knew that at Singapore, on his Hank, (here was a powerful British fleet. Singapore, seventh seaport, in the world, is now also the strongest naval base. It. has the only graving dock for British warships in the Far East. The dock is capable of taking a battleship of 50,000 tons. In addition, there is an air base and powerful land fortifications. It is believed that storage for more than a million tons of fuel oil is provided. Naturally, this gigantic imperial project has not been accomplished at a small cost. The base itself cost £9,000,000. When the expenditure on ancillary works is taken into account, the total cost of the great sea fortress will probably be well over £20,000,000. The engineering problems which demanded solution make a most romantic chapter. Swamps and rubber plantations have been, by determination and ingenuity converted into docks, dry land, roads, railway sidings and so forth. Thirty miles of piles have been driven through mud to solid strata. Hills have been moved —six million cubic yards of them. —London Evening Standard.