CHAPTER Utah oe Down 11 Under DECADES PRIOR TO Captain James Cook’s voyage up the fertile east coast of Australia in 1770, European explorers told stories of a vast island between the Indian and South Pacific Oceans, filled with exotic plants and strange animals, fit only for wandering aborigines, and devoid of worth to the Western world. To the English, who established the first permanent white settlement at Port Jackson (later Sydney), the place seemed useful primarily as a dumping ground for criminals, bankrupts, and other dregs of the British Isles. By the middle of the nineteenth century, however, the massive agricultural and mineral potential of “the land down under” created the foundation for what became the united Commonwealth of Australia in 1901. Subsequently joining the modern family of nations with a strong and diversified economy, Australia emerged from World War II as one of the most highly industrialized exporting nations. Yet much of its huge store of mineral wealth was still undeveloped. With the continent’s strategic proximity to the burgeoning markets in eastern Asia, particularly Japan, the great potential of Australian mining attracted the attention of the bustling Utah Construction & Mining Company. By the late 1950s, when Utah moved forcefully into Australian mining, the firm already had done extensive construction work and strip mining on the huge continent-nation. The company’s first major project there began in 1951 when the State of Victoria commissioned the Big Eildon Dam re