Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 2 · column 3 of 9 · from the scan, no model involved
Australia’s state of Victoria, though small in size, looms large on production and population charts.
Since World War II, Australia has emerged from a pastoral to an industrial society. Nearly a third of the labor force works in manufacturing, compared to a tenth in agriculture.
“Perhaps more than any other state in the Commonwealth, pacesetting Victoria has been caught up in the dynamics of this changing land,” writes Senior Assistant Editor, Allan C. Fisher, Jr., in the February National Geographic.
Drawn by tax benefits and skilled labor, 150 foreign companies have moved to Victoria in the past decade.
Buried Treasures Off the coast, wells thrust deep into the submerged Gippsland Basin and siphon off rich reserves of gas and oil. Ponderous stripping machines in vast open pits mine one of the world’s largest deposits of lignite, or brown coal. Reserves fill a continuous seam 30 miles long, 5 to 10 miles wide, and 200 to 600 feet thick. The fuel feeds a state-owned power complex that makes briquettes and generates most of Victoria’s electricity. Called a “mini-giant among Australian states,” Utah-sized Victoria covers less than 3 percent of the Australian Continent. Yet it supports a population of 3,440,000, more than a quarter of
DeoDle. and produces nearly a
95.0%