THE temperature hit an all-time high of 49.2C in the sleepy West Australian hamlet of Onslow just before Christmas.
For the 600 scorched locals, the rising mercury was perhaps a sign of things to come: economic activity in this one-horse Pilbara town, 1400km north of Perth, is about to heat up like never before.
The resources boom formally arrived in Onslow on December 1, when WA Premier Colin Barnett joined senior executives of US energy giant Chevron in celebrating the start of construction of one of Australia's biggest industrial developments -- the $29 billion Wheatstone liquefied natural gas project.
The industrial hub of Ashburton North, just 12km from Onslow, will be home to the jutting steel pipes of the Wheatstone plant as well as BHP Billiton's $1.6bn Macedon domestic gas project.
The Australian
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