Area 10 · Act 2 · The Goldfields Push
The Long Straight
The Nullarbor Plain along the Trans-Australian Railway — anchored on the real 478 km dead-straight stretch between Ooldea and Loongana; treeless limestone plain, fettlers' camps, and water tanks every fifty miles.
DAY 79: THE ARMY GARRISONS THE ONLY WATER FOR 300 MILES. THE EMUS DRINK IT ANYWAY.
The history behind it
The Trans-Australian Railway (completed 1917) needed water trains to survive the waterless plain. The army's genius plan: garrison the water tanks and 'let the desert do the fighting.' The emus, who crossed deserts for sixty million years before railways, are not consulted on this plan's assumptions.
Outposts (4)
Take all of them and the area is yours. Retreat halfway through and the ones you already hold stay held.
Ooldea Water Siding
Rail siding · Defence tier 3
The plain's one reliable soak, now ringed with Barbed Wire and a Lewis Gun Post. Zero terrain cover — this is a pure Weave-and-reload-window fight. Capturing it opens a friendly spawn deep in the crossing.
Fettlers' Camp 512
Supply depot · Defence tier 2
Rail-maintenance camp of tents and tool sheds: a Rifleman Line, a Sandbag Officer, and glorious quantities of peckable rail hardware (Scrap). Cavalry Patrol sweeps the flat between here and Ooldea.
The Armoured Train
Gun post · Defence tier 5
The war's setpiece: a parked armoured rail wagon acting as a mobile Lewis Gun Post pair with Field Artillery on a flatbed. Immune from the front; the capture zone is the locomotive cab. Peck the coupling, storm the footplate.
Loongana Spotter Strip
Airfield · Defence tier 3
A graded dirt strip with one Biplane that strafes the whole treeless map until this outpost falls. Thin Rifleman Line guard — the run TO it, under strafe telegraphs with nowhere to hide, is the hard part.