by Chris Wayan, 2006
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Australian Ocean: overview
Three great seas make up the Australian Ocean:
Let's tour them from west to east, north to south...
The Wharton Sea
The Wharton Sea is tropical--but not tropical as we pre-catastrophe cultures understand it. Scorching heat! The dense air in this deep basin makes it a heat-trap. Heavy evaporation, 100% humidity. Contemporary humans would find it an uninhabitable steambath. But Culture abhors a vacuum just as much as Nature does, so expect giant intelligent parrots to build villages in the crowns of Wharton's rainforests. They'll trade with the big-brained Amazonian otters that dominate sea-trade all over the low basins.
The climate? Constant hurricanes! They're less frequent in winter--that is, about like our worst hurricane seasons. Summers are just storm after storm. Rainfall on the islands and along the coasts must be measured in meters--ten to twenty meters, in places.
Rainforest covers the slopes of the Ninety Range, Java, Brokenia, Cape Wallaby and the Cuvier and Exmouth Plateaus, even the edge of the Australian Plateau--which is a cool, high forest, sparse and scrawny, but forest where in our world the Great Western Desert once sprawled.
You wouldn't think siphoning water away would green a dry continent! But the sharp temperature gradients between the ex-continents and the newly exposed sea-basins generates strong monsoons all over Siphonia; and the Wharton is one of the strongest.
The Diamantina Sea
Diamantina, in the temperate zone, is cooler and drier than the steaming Wharton basin, but still warm due to its dense air. Much like our Caribbean: balmy, moderately rainy, dotted with islands. Prone to hurricanes, especially in the north, but not like the Wharton's steady barrage. Likely to be the population center for the region--habitable by both pre-catastrophic peoples like humans and post-catastrophic peoples like the giant intelligent parrots and big-brained Amazonian otters dominating Whartonia.
It's likely but not certain that there's a natural channel through the Australian-Antarctic Discordance, a fracture zone on Diamantina's southeast shore. If it exists, it leads south to the Davis Sea; and if not, the westernmost of these cracks is so close to sea level that digging a canal would be feasible. A third possibility is that the cool misty Davis Sea may get enough precipitation to make it spill over through the Discordance gap with no prompting at all. Whichever hydrological scenario is correct, shipping will funnel through Discordance Valley; it will be the hub of trade for four seas: Wharton, Diamantina, Davis and Tasman. Expect a major, cosmopolitan port city or city-state called Discordia, with all the intelligent species of the hemisphere represented. Despite the name, it's probably a fun town: scenic, with mile-high crags east and west; culturally diverse; and with a pleasant climate.
the Tasman Sea
The current map foreshortens the Tasman Sea badly. It's really quite a broad leaf-shape: narrow in the north, in Middleton Bay, but over 1000 km wide in the center and south.
Middleton Bay may be biologically narrow, too: its shores are likely to be as dry as the Sea of Cortez, except where the great river comes down from the north. Further south, below the Cook Range, the Tasman coast is rather Californian--warmer and wetter, but not shockingly alien like most of the Deeps. Humans and the newer Deep-adapted species coexist here and further south: air pressure is dense enough for megaparrots and ravens, while temperatures are human-tolerable.
The temperate south end of the Tasman Sea looks temptingly close to the Agassiz Sea (south Pacific); but neither a natural channel nor a canal is likely. Agassiz is fully a kilometer lower, and the Macquarie Range between them is 3-5 km tall; even the lowest passes appear to be 2 km high. Canals could easily re-link most of the seas in the old Atlantic and Indian Basins, allowing world sea-trade; but shipping (and sea life) in the seas of the old Pacific Basin are likely to stay separate forever.
The following route snakes around Siphonia, covering most features (under construction)
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