Australia has necessarily had to try to meet its demand for new capital from its existing sources, and it is obviously not possible to increase their capital resources fast enough to provide for all the development projects that could be undertaken. As a result, money is hard to come by and very expensive by our standards. I have already alluded to some of the difficulties of materiel that make the development of an Australian mining project unusually difficult and costly. The infrastructure in much of the country is simply not available and must be provided by the mining company rather than by the Australian equivalent of the State, County, or Municipality. The inadequacy of the Nation's transportation network merely aggregates the aforesaid problems of marketing and labor. Mineral developers in Australia are almost invariably burdened with the economic considerations of building and maintaining costly access routes, railroads, and port facilities as well as the attendant investment in locomotives and rolling stock. As an interesting sidelight on this problem, three different gauges have been employed in Australian railway systems, largely determined by practice within the various states. As a result, freight shipments might have to be loaded and unloaded as many as three or four times in order to reach their final destination. This situation is now being corrected with the construction of standard gauge, at least on the major rail routes. Much of the specialized equipment needed for mining and its related facilities is not produced in Australia and must be imported. Where items are locally produced, the boom in mining has taxed their production facilities, -13-