February 1, 1658, this day is the Chinese New Year's Eve of the Ding You Year of the Lunar Calendar, and after this day, it is the Spring Festival of the Year of the Lunar New Year.

Although it was an ordinary day for the Portuguese in Dili, Pimont, Degus and Duchess Margaret knew that it was the most important holiday of the year in the minds of the Orientals.

Therefore, on this day, with Pimont as the host, a large banquet invited all Australians to the Governor's House for dinner---- including all Australian sailors.

Only Degus was a little surprised that Pimont's invitation list included ordinary sailors, but Pimont told him that they were just a group of sailors, but in fact these Australian sailors were not ordinary people, and Pimont also told Degus that he had spoken to all of them, and that they were as knowledgeable as the naturalists in the headquarters of the East India Company in Diu, so Pimont suggested that Degus have a good chat with these sailors, and also made many of them very close friends such as Ren Ke, ** and others were introduced to Dergus one by one.

As it turned out, the connections that Degus gained as a result benefited him for the rest of his life, as well as for future generations, but that's another story.

On this day, in the renovated conference hall of the Governor's Palace in Dili, Pimont Sr. Sun Lao, on behalf of Macao and Portugal, formally signed the "Agreement between the Viceroyalty of Timor and the Dili Free Trade Zone of the Commonwealth of Australia" and the "Mining Charter of Dili". Miss Zezilia, who has become a celebrity in Dili City, will certainly not be absent.

The Australian representatives were Sun Lao, Gu Jin, and Hou Xianglin, who had already decided to stay as the "Governor of Xin'an", and these people participated in the signing ceremony with representatives of the board of directors of Diao Mining.

Because the company was headquartered in the Governor's Palace in Dili, the day-to-day operations of the company were actually handled by Pimont, who was given a position that made his name novel: Chief Executive Officer, or Chief Executive Officer, of Te O Mining Co., Ltd.

At present, the chairman of "Diao Mining" is temporarily held by Sun Lao, but he has clearly informed the Portuguese shareholders on the scene that this position will soon be held by a mining expert from Australia, and the chairman will be a young woman.

In short, after dealing with Australians for a long time, your nerves will become bigger, and you will gradually become accustomed to all kinds of so-called surprises.

At the celebratory banquet that followed, Sun Lao and Margaret admitted that the two were already lovers, which made the whole banquet even more lively.

The banquet lasted until the early hours of the next morning.

On February 5th, Hou Xianglin, the "Governor of Sin'ancheng", began to lead 20 black slaves from Margaret's estate and 50 hired people from Dili City, and officially began the construction of the infrastructure of the free trade zone. The Nicole unloaded a large amount of supplies, not only food, but also tools and, of course, silver.

The employees were very happy with the food provided by the Australians, and these people later became permanent employees of Hou Xianglin.

Hou Xianglin first instructed the group of people to build a stilt house at the mouth of the Xin'an River with wood, which was his temporary office location, which was a familiar job for Hou Ge, and allowed him to regain the feeling of taking a group of migrant workers to the wilderness to work on the construction site in the old world.

On the morning of the day the stilt house began, the Nicole and Pride set sail for their home.

At ten o'clock in the morning on February 15, 1658, the Red Wharf on Mornington Island finally welcomed the returning fleet.

This ocean voyage was fruitful.

First of all, such a long voyage did train the crew, the fleet from south to north a total of more than 5,500 kilometers one way, and then to the southwest to Timor Island, the whole round trip reached more than 12,000 kilometers, lasted more than two months, experienced two naval battles, opened up the route to Macao and Dili in the north, and established a simple supply dock on Zixia Island.

Another important achievement was the signing of a number of bilateral documents and trade agreements with the Portuguese, including the Macau Consensus, and the acquisition of an "overseas territory", the Komoka River Free Trade Zone, now known as the "Sinseong Free Trade Zone".

In addition, in the name of the Commonwealth of Australia, the time-travelers made their voices heard about this new world for the first time: the "Macao Declaration" was issued in Macao.

The glass, sugar, and sweet potato wine business paid off handsomely, and brought back three sisters by the way.

In this way, it was worth the trip.

"Come on!"

"Is that smoking Nicole?"

"I see the sails!"

The sharp-eyed children standing on the hill near the pier were the first to shout, and in the distance, the Nicole and the Pride invariably sounded a long whistle, and the crowd on the dock boiled......

At this time, many off-duty crew members of the Nicole and Pride also gathered on the foredeck, and they looked out at the red pier, at the familiar white sand beach and low and gentle land in the distance, and picked up binoculars to observe.

In fact, without binoculars, the crew can see a large group of colorful people looking over the railing on the steel floating dock, some waving and some jumping excitedly, most of which are women.

As the fleet approached, many crew members were a little surprised to notice that after more than two months, the facilities near the pier had suddenly increased a lot, and the perception of the entire dock area had changed greatly.

The first thing that caught everyone's eyes was two towering iron towers, everyone was surprised, and quickly picked up the binoculars to observe and confirmed, yes, it was indeed the same building as two iron towers, and the crew who were familiar with the ship's boom structure quickly judged that it was obviously two simple single-arm pulley tower cranes with steel structures.

It is a single-arm boom that rotates 360 degrees in a plane, similar in principle and structure to the boom on the Nicole, except that the steel boom is replaced by an iron tower and then placed on two cement foundations about one story high.

It's just that the complicated steel structure makes people think at first glance that it is two miniature and simple versions of the Eiffel Tower, but in the absence of high-strength steel pipe materials, using this tower structure as a foundation and installing a boom on it is indeed a feasible solution under the existing conditions.

Upon closer inspection, the crew determined that the crane was purely human, and that the hoisting system was apparently composed of a winch, a block of pulleys, and a thick cable, and no power machinery was found.

The crew also found that there was a feeder railway that extended to the sand near the tower crane, and the crew couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief when they saw this, because it meant that after the ship docked, it only needed to lift the cargo in the hold onto the dock, and then the tower crane would relay the cargo bags directly into the train wagon.

Although the single lifting capacity of these two cranes may be much smaller than the booms on the Nicole and Pride from a structural point of view, for the crew who are fed up with manual loading and unloading on the docks, this device makes the entire loading and unloading operation easier, and there is no doubt that the efficiency of loading and unloading will definitely be much improved.

Obviously, this is the happiest thing for the crew, the completion of the tower crane, whether there is labor support in the future, these loading and unloading operations will not make the crew who return from the voyage tired and tired to unload, and the work of loading cargo on the ship in the future is much easier.