The Rise Of Australasia

How hard is it to build a capital city from scratch? Arthur didn’t have a definite answer before. After witnessing the construction process of Saint Arthur Castle, he had a preliminary and clear answer.

Not to mention the capital city of a country, even building a simple city from scratch requires careful site selection, planning, and design before construction can begin.

Even after construction begins, the city’s basic infrastructure such as drainage must first be designed before building the city’s skyscrapers.

The construction of Saint Arthur Castle will take at least five years, and the relocation of the capital may not happen until seven or eight or even ten years later.

After all, Saint Arthur Castle must possess adequate administrative facilities to serve as a country’s capital.

Currently, the construction projects have only just begun one month ago. Most of them don’t even have a preliminary shape yet.

The first thing Arthur visited was the construction of the new Administrative Court.

More precisely, this is a large building that integrates the Administrative Court, the House of Representatives, and the National Court.

If you look at the design drawing, this building looks a bit like the Chinese character "six," but the square in the middle is more like a rectangle.

The Administrative Court, the House of Representatives, and the National Court, three different institutions, are deployed at three points of the "six."

The rectangular building in the middle is the venue for large meeting rooms, reception rooms, and open areas.

This building, in the shape of "six" combined with other auxiliary building areas and garden area, comprises the new national government headquarters.

Compared to the Administrative Court in the suburbs of Sydney, this new government building is several times larger and more grand and splendid.

Of course, this is only the effect of the design drawing. The actual effect can be seen only after the entire building is completed, but it must be a huge building and one of the future national symbols.

The government’s budget for this national government building is as high as 12 million Australian dollars, which shows its importance.

However, the national government will move with Arthur. This means that Saint Arthur Castle will not become the capital of Australasia until the completion of the construction of the new royal palace.

Apart from the grand national government building, the second place Arthur visited was the location of his royal palace.

Similar to the layout in Sydney, the site selection of the royal palace and the national government building is not far apart. The national building is closer to the urban planning area, while the palace is closer to a nearby hill.

The new palace is much larger than Sydney Palace. The budget is about four times higher than the 5 million Pounds budget for Sydney Palace.

The new palace is expected to cover an area of up to 1.18 million square meters, which is more than twice the size of Sydney Palace.

The planned building area is about 250,000 square meters, the road area is 50,000 square meters, the hill occupies 200,000 square meters, the artificial lake and stream cover an area of 150,000 square meters, and a huge royal garden occupies an astonishing 250,000 square meters.

Additionally, there is a massive royal square covering up to 280,000 square meters, which can accommodate up to 600,000 people.

Just from the area of this square, one can see the most significant change in the new palace.

The Sydney Palace Square can only accommodate about a hundred thousand people, which significantly limits the number of people involved in national day activities and other important holidays.

Remember, the total population of Sydney has already exceeded 2 million and is on track to reach 3 million.

This means that during important holidays, over 2 million people in Sydney are fighting for about a hundred thousand spots, not to mention the competition from people in other cities.

Moreover, the sheer number of people has caused severe congestion on the roads near Sydney Palace. Some people from outside Sydney come to Sydney but cannot find a spot. They can only gather on the nearby roads, causing serious traffic jams.

While more public participation in national activities is good, if it leads to severe traffic congestion and even accidents, it would be a case of the cure being worse than the disease.

The new square can accommodate 600,000 people, which is quite sufficient for Australasia at present. n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

After all, if the square were any larger, it would be hard to ensure that all citizens could comfortably participate in activities.

Imagine the front row and the last row being several kilometers apart. Are they there to participate in the activity or to exercise their eyesight?

The building area, which has been expanded by more than two times, allows the new palace to have over 800 rooms, more than 30 small and large meeting rooms, and provides over 30 private dining rooms and 15 medium to large public dining rooms for royal family members.

There are also as many as 70 offices, 5 reception halls, up to 40 watchtowers, and hundreds of royal guard rest points. The sheer number of rooms could cause one to get lost.

The private rooms for royal family members even exceed a thousand square meters, and there’s even a super suite close to 3,000 square meters for selection.

Each room not only has its private reception room, office, wine cabinet, and bathroom, but also a cloakroom over 200 square meters to accommodate the abundant wardrobes of royal family members.

Like the previous Sydney Palace, the new palace has a large royal hospital located within, a vast and fully equipped church, cemeteries prepared for royal family members, several large private theaters for royal family members to watch their favorite movies.

The back hill is specifically for training, not only for horse-riding but also for practicing marksmanship at a special shooting range.

Unlike the former Sydney Palace, the new royal residence not only has a huge artificial lake but also relies on the Mure River to create a water network that runs through the entire palace, allowing for the future construction of various bodies of water in the Palace of Nations area.

Since it’s connected to the Mure River, the water here will be fresh and clean, eliminating the concern of any odd smell.

Of course, the security of the water source connected to the outside world is a major concern, so the new Royal Palace will have even more manpower for protection.

The new palace will have a security staff of up to 3,000 people who will work round the clock to ensure the safety of the palace.

At the same time, the First Guard Division and the Second Guard Division will be deployed near the new palace, providing the best security for the palace and Arthur.

In addition to a staff of 3,000 security personnel and two guard divisions, Arthur also has a royal guard force of thousands of people, protecting all members of the royal family closely.

A considerable portion of these people are orphans who previously benefited from Arthur’s relief efforts and the rest are chosen from the Australasian Army, ensuring absolute loyalty.

With these three forces for defense, the security of the future new palace will be beyond doubt. No external threat needs to be worried about.

The National Heroes Monument in the Sydney Palace Square will also be proportionally reproduced in the Square of the new Palace.

The new monument will be bigger, and the names of more heroes can be inscribed on it.

According to the chief designer of the palace, once the palace is fully built in the future, the National Heroes Monument can be seen from the hills of the palace. It will be even more conspicuous when viewed from the square.

Queen Mary also reviewed the design of the new palace. In fact, the size of the royal garden in the new palace was increased per her strong request.

A royal garden spanning 2.5 million square meters is absurdly large—it’s equivalent to 25 hectares, or 375 acres of land.

Looking down from a high place, the future Royal Garden will be like a sea of flowers, incredibly beautiful, definitely a place that will attract women.

Owing to the water source from the Mure River, the royal garden will have a complete irrigation system. It only needs manual operation to irrigate the entire flower sea.

Of course, the upkeep of the flower sea still requires human management.

For this, the new palace plans to employ at least 500 maids and a thousand other servants to manage the entire palace, clean rooms and carry out other tasks.

Although it seems exaggerated and extravagant to have such a large number of servants, and it does hint at the decay of the feudal system.

But if you truly understand the treatment of these servants, you’ll realize that their condition is actually not bad compared to ordinary citizens, and is perhaps even much better.

Firstly, the minimum yearly salary of a servant in Australasia is at least 60 Australian dollars, and with various welfare policies considered, this amount can even exceed 70 Australian dollars.

This salary level is equivalent to that of soldiers and far exceeds the current average income in Australasia.

Secondly, although servants serve people, they also enjoy various delicious foods with Arthur. Their food, clothing, housing, and transportation are basically all in the palace, which takes care of their livelihood.

Although Arthur also needs these servants to provide service, he always treats the servants kindly.

After all, these servants who can often approach the royal family members could easily do things that are detrimental to them.

Moreover, it’s not that easy to become a servant or maid of the palace.

The palace’s requirements for recruiting servants are even strict than those for soldiers. First of all, you must have lived in Australasia for at least 20 years—that’s a hard rule.

Secondly, no one in your three generations of relatives has committed any illegal activities or died due to government penalties.

Besides that, the Security Intelligence Bureau will conduct a very strict review of these servant candidates. In addition to checking their backgrounds and previous behaviors, they also evaluate whether they have any diseases, if they have a decent appearance, if they are efficient at work, whether they love the country, have a positive attitude, are cheerful, and so on.

The servants and maids who meet all the conditions will be handed over to Butler Kent and, after two months of training, will be assigned to various positions in the palace.

The previous Sydney Palace employed approximately 500 servants and about 200 maids.

Because of this, these two jobs are very popular in Australasia. Each time recruitment information is released, there’s basically a rush of people desperate for a chance.

But it’s clear that both these jobs require strict qualifications and demand a long-term commitment.

Generally speaking, the longer someone works at the palace, the more loyal they tend to be, making them even more trustworthy.

Except under special circumstances like the construction of a new palace, the palace usually doesn’t do massive open recruitment.