I only know a little bit about the lore of Australia in the Cyberpunk canon. The biggest event being the civil war between East and West Australia (Monarchists versus Republicans) according to the wiki. However, I have no idea why we 'need' all that plastic, unless it is a corporate cover for "We are dumping it all into the Great Barrier Reef because it is dead anyway." Unless we are using it to mass produce plastic-wood composites (which would fit in cyberpunk dystopian lore) or something similar.
To put it simply, I am very curious to know what this advertisement is referring to, as Australia seems to be a fairly blank slate in the canon. Any lore, context, or explanation would be appreciated!
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It’s an ad for a cargo/disposal company, they’re just using moving Australian waste around as an example of their company’s expanding capacity. You can see airships like that one dumping trash into heaps outside the city; the ad is geared towards getting more customers to contract with DTR to dispose of their own industrial waste.
Australia has a lot of vast empty space between its cities and most of it is either uninhabitable, dangerous or both. All this ad says is that there’s a transport company that can handle that kinda thing.
From the 2020 RPG material, the unrest in Australia isn’t civil war between monarchists and republicans. That difference of opinion went away when the monarchy ended in England. The resources-rich West seceded from the rest of Aus and the vast empty space between the two side of the country led to there being not much more than nasty rhetoric about it. Relatively poor rest of Aus refused to recognize West Aus independence and WA’s corpo sponsors didn’t GAF.
There was ongoing guerilla fighting by several indigenous independence groups back in the 2020s but haven’t seen any lore on it for 2077
Possible theory – as humanity abandoned crude oil and vast majority of plastic products is made from crude oil and natural gas, something must have replaced that. So most likely beside CHOOH2 plastic is also made from bio components, probably crops. Possibly even in the same process as CHOOH2. And Australia isn’t too friendly when it comes to growing crops already, even more in Cyberpunk world with environment devastated globally. Industrial greenhouses are probably used, but they still require water.
Also from what I see even now, IRL, Australia is importing a lot of plastic with local production being only small portion of total annual plastic consumption.
I don’t know if anyone in CDPR thought as deep about it, but who knows.
Slap some cannons on that and it’s Highfleet
It’s funny tho given WA’s only wealth is mineral while east coast is all talent, but honestly the mad Max thing would happen as soon as we get bored.
This imagery seems to be an intentional juxtaposition by the devs to highlight how global corps treat nature and culture. In the image you can see Ularu, also known as Ayer’s Rock by western culture. It’s not a mountain, but rather the largest actual rock in the world. It’s a sacred place to Australia’s Aboriginal population, and irl it has been closed off to non-Aboriginal visitors so as to protect its sacred status.
Here in this image you can see how many fucks the corps give about that, going as far as sending floating garbage barges right over this sacred place. You could imagine how much garbage debris is dropped all over and around it.
Oceans are pretty much impassable thanks to self-replicating smart mines attacking ships indiscriminately – a remnant from the last Corporate War. That’s why Saburo’s visit to Night City was such a big deal: he traveled aboard an Aircraft Carrier protected by an entire flotilla.
So freight hauling is done by airship.
It seems like black humor about Australia’s “big scrapyard” role in the 2077.