thanatos wrote:A lot of what you say relies upon assumptions not backed by textev. The only textev we have is the name of the place, what we know about Shan-wei terraforming expedition (resources she discovered) and the fact that the Barren Lands are even less of a blip on the radar than Trellheim.
You assume that the islands have potable water. You assume that there are good anchorages around the islands for a naval base. You assume that one could bring enough stored water and enough agricultural resources could be shipped there to give any potential colonists the time to set up a sustainable colony. Utah had the benefit of still being attached by land to more habitable parts of the country, with the possibility of food, livestock and water being transported in (especially with the advent of the railroad). Australia had a small native population that managed to find ways to gather the food and water they needed in order to survive (and the Europeans that came later could build upon that).
There was very little in to way of "Aboriginal agriculture" in Australia when Europeans arrived. They didn't find anything at all to "build upon" and in fact imposed an Old World system of agriculture on a continent not suited to it. The Aboriginal people managed their lands through fire, and that suited some food species, and there is evidence they managed food sources such as cycads through both fire and other intervention. Australians have come to realise the value of Aboriginal land management through fire- mosaic burning, but that has more impact in forest management, and even Americans are coming to view Australian forest management through fire with a more favourable viewpoint, after many years of fire exclusion policy there, which has proved disastrous.