Australian Front: WW2

[PJ Norris]

If the Republic of New South Wales took on it's neighbors in WW2.
For an introduction of this thread see the end of Australian Federation: Australian commonwealth shaped differently. So far we've got a far-right fascist New South Wales, a socialist Queensland, a prosperous peaceful Victorian Republic and South Australia and then there is Western Australia that is very much alone. Here's a map of Australia, 1939.

 

[Syphon]

Well first off Indonesia should be the Dutch East Indies.

With the colonies seperated the Best for NSW would be to head north.
Lots of resources and land with a fraction of the population that Qld has now.
Heading south would only buy NSW trouble as Victoria is prosperous and this tends to attract people to live and work.
In this instance the Vics would have probably the same sized population as NSW if not larger as well as the industry and wealth to protect itself.

If NSW is militant it has a good chance of grabbing Queensland but logistics of distance would prevent much more expansion until better roads and or railways are built to ease the problem.

One result of this sort of action on the part of NSW would be the likely alliance of SA and Tasmania with Victoria and quite possibly a form of confederation as all three have what the others might need.

So in a nutshell we have the socio-political situation of Europe played out on roughly the same landmass (?) yet with only a faction ( a small one at that ) of the european population and even less of the infrastructure.
I sure hope the gringoes like walking they'll need to do a lot of it.

 

[Mayhem]

Well, there shouldn't be national road & rail networks, that's for sure. The different gauges up to confederation would have encouraged more localised infrastructure development, particularly in NSW, VIC, and SA, if they're the more industrious nations out of this. WA might have developed a larger rail network by this time, too.
Not forgetting, of course, that there would be more spreading-out of population, with the starting-out of larger towns by this date, although the nations would largely resemble city-states with hinterlands... Oh, hang on, they do...