Australia in the 1920s

From Masks of Nyarlathotep: Australia in the 1920s is a modern country built upon immemorial roots. Distances and travel times here are continental in scope. At this time, Australia is an independent dominion within the British Commonwealth. Internally, it is a federation. There is no meaningful central taxation until 1942. There is no one standard rail gauge, reflecting days not long past when only ships connected the separate colonies. The Australian continent, especially the western twothirds, is an ancient and stable tableland, notable for strikingly-eroded terrain, including single rocks the size of small mountains. Though the Australian continent is vast, nearly all of the people live in the narrow, fertile bands along the east, southeast and southwest coasts. The greater part of the continent is semi-arid or desert where scattered native clans wander traditional ranges. In the past 30 years, major gold strikes in the west (the Pilbarra, Kimberly, and Coolgardie fields) have opened portions of the interior, and stockmen searching for new pasturage and markets have traversed much more. Still, large areas of western and central Australia above the Tropic of Capricorn are little known until after World War II. Where the whites settled along the coasts, the Aboriginal clans were exterminated, and little is known of them. Since the European voyage of discovery by Cook, the native population has been halved to about 170,000. Though some Asian laborers were imported, the rigid exclusionary laws of 1901 have since limited non-white entry to negligible numbers. Australia in the 1920s is a rugged land. Scholars and the like are rare. Australian tall tales may hold

good clues for investigators, as may the more mundane stories told in pubs where the countrymen drink astonishing amounts of excellent lagers and stouts. English common law applies, and Rifles, shotguns, and pistols should not be carried or discharged in settled areas without good reason.

Australia is the driest, flattest, and smallest continent. It is as big (2,966,200 square miles) as the continental United States, but has a fraction of the inhabitants - six million people in 1925, about twice that of Britain’s American colonies in 1776. Three quarters of the land is outback, beyond the settled areas, scrub plains and grasslands that seem to sweep on forever. A wild mountainous backbone in the east, the Great Dividing Range, stretches from northern Queensland to the island of Tasmania. In the north, dripping rain forest covers the eastern slopes of these mountains. Further south, west of Sydney, where the climate is more temperate, the forests are eucalyptus. Yet further south are the Australian Alps, where snow is common in winter. Many rivers run off to the east of the divide, nourishing the fertile coastal strip. To the west, streams flow out to the endless plains, eventually vanishing into desert or salt lakes. Immediately west of the mountains the land is arable. West of these farms, the inland is drier yet, and less settled. Here exist huge cattle and sheep stations (ranches). The stock is watered by windmill-driven wells with bore holes from fifty to five thousand feet deep. Beyond the stations shimmers the arid heart (known as the Centre) of Australia, where many of the surviving indigenous Australians roam. This outback is a colorful and forbidding landscape of red sand, plains of gibber stones, rock ranges, and tracts of spinifex and mulga scrub.

The Climate

The north of Australia resembles India or the Sudan in climate, and the rain comes principally in a single monsoon season. The southern states of Victoria and New South Wales are more like California or Southern France. Across the vast majority of the continent, daytime temperatures can climb to over 40°C, and nighttime temperatures can fall to freezing. Seasons are in opposite phase to the Northern Hemisphere: summer lasts from December to February, autumn from March to May, winter from June to August, and spring from September to November.

Mail is land-carried. Regular airmail service between principal cities does not appear till the 1930s. Telephones are uncommon in rural areas. The telegraph system, on the other hand, spans the land, and a picture-graph system between Sydney and Melbourne opens in 1929. Wireless arrives during the 1920s, with establishment of many radio stations from 1923 onward. The new inland wireless system is a boon to remote settlements. In the outback, word spreads at the speed it is carried. The Overland Telegraph runs down the middle of Northern Australia, forming a communications backbone. But messages relayed to a station along the line, as with letter and package mail, must wait for the addressees to pick them up.

Travel

Information may be found here.