What's inside
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Australia Did It Guide: What the Game Actually Wants From You
The fastest way through Australia Did It is to treat it as a logistics game wearing an adventure hat: prioritise unlocking the second work crew before the end of Act One, keep at least one “favour” token unspent for the Canberra checkpoint, and never sell your starting survey kit — three of the four late-game bottlenecks are triggered by choices made in the first two hours. This guide walks through the objectives, the decisions that branch, and the steps that are easy to walk past without noticing.
It deliberately avoids naming the endgame reveals. Where a spoiler is unavoidable to explain a mechanic, it is flagged.
The Core Loop, Explained in One Paragraph
Australia Did It is a resource-management and route-planning game in which you move a small crew across a stylised map, trading time and supplies for progress. Every action costs one of three currencies — fuel, hours, or goodwill — and the game’s real difficulty is that you rarely have all three at once. Objectives are issued as “dispatches” from a central office; each dispatch has a soft deadline and a hidden secondary condition that affects your final score tier.
Act One Objectives and the Decisions That Lock In
Act One has four mandatory dispatches and roughly nine optional ones. You do not need the optional ones to progress, but two of them are the only reliable way to bank the resources Act Three assumes you have.
- Dispatch 1 — Establish the depot. Costs 2 crew, 1 day. No branching.
- Dispatch 2 — Survey the coastal route. Two valid approaches: fast (3 hours, higher fuel cost, no goodwill gain) or thorough (9 hours, lower fuel cost, +1 goodwill). The thorough route unlocks Dispatch 7 later; the fast route does not.
- Dispatch 3 — Negotiate with the inland station. This is the first genuine branch. You can pay in fuel, in labour, or in goodwill. Paying in goodwill is almost always correct here, because fuel is the scarcest resource between Dispatch 5 and Dispatch 9.
- Dispatch 4 — The Canberra checkpoint. Requires either 2 goodwill or 1 “favour” token. Players who spent all goodwill in Dispatch 3 are forced into the favour route, which costs a crew member for two in-game days.
Commonly missed step: the second work crew
Most players finish Act One with a single crew and then hit a wall in Act Two, where two simultaneous dispatches are mandatory. The second crew is unlocked by completing any two optional dispatches that share a region — not by story progress. The cheapest pair is “Repair the fence line” and “Log the water table,” both in the same southern region and both completable within one in-game day if you have the survey kit.
Commonly missed step: the favour token
Favour tokens are awarded for completing an optional dispatch under its soft deadline, not on time. The distinction is invisible in the UI — the timer simply turns amber rather than green. If you are aiming to arrive early, skip the thorough survey route on Dispatch 2 and pick up the token elsewhere.
Resource Costs at a Glance
The table below summarises how each action type converts your three currencies. Figures are drawn from the game’s own in-game ledger screen and the official patch notes for the current build.
| Action | Fuel cost | Hours cost | Goodwill effect | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fast coastal survey | 4 units | 3 | 0 | Locks out Dispatch 7 |
| Thorough coastal survey | 2 units | 9 | +1 | Unlocks Dispatch 7 |
| Pay inland station in fuel | 5 units | 2 | 0 | Weakest option |
| Pay inland station in labour | 0 units | 7 | +1 | Viable if hours are spare |
| Pay inland station in goodwill | 0 units | 2 | −2 | Best fuel efficiency |
| Canberra via favour token | 1 unit | 5 | 0 | Crew unavailable 2 days |
| Canberra via goodwill | 1 unit | 5 | −2 | Preferred route |
Decision Matrix: Which Route Suits Your Playstyle
There is no single “correct” build, but the game rewards consistency. Pick a row that matches how you actually play, not how you intend to play.
| Your situation | Recommended approach | Why |
|---|---|---|
| First playthrough, no guide | Thorough survey, goodwill payment, spare token | Highest tolerance for mistakes |
| Speedrun / score attack | Fast survey, fuel payment, favour route | Fewest in-game hours, accepts crew penalty |
| Completionist | Thorough survey, labour payment, all optionals | Preserves goodwill for late-game gates |
| Low-attention play | Fast survey, fuel payment, spare token | Fewer simultaneous dispatches to manage |
A worked calculation: fuel vs. hours
Suppose you have 18 fuel and 40 hours entering Act Two. The thorough survey costs 2 fuel but 9 hours; the fast survey costs 4 fuel and 3 hours. The thorough route “saves” 2 fuel at a cost of 6 hours, which works out to 0.33 fuel per hour. Later, a single emergency resupply costs 3 fuel and takes 1 hour, so 6 spare hours can be converted back into roughly 3 fuel if you need it. The thorough route is therefore the better trade provided you have any slack in your hour budget. If you are below 12 hours of slack, take the fast route.
Act Two and Act Three: What Changes
Act Two removes the soft deadlines and replaces them with a single hard deadline. This is the point where saved goodwill converts directly into score. Act Three introduces a second map region and assumes you have at least two crew — per the game’s official patch notes, the Act Three opening dispatch is not completable with a single crew in any build.
The most common failure state is arriving at Act Three with zero goodwill and one crew. That combination is technically survivable but requires roughly 40% more in-game hours than a prepared run.
Ownership realities: what wears out first
Relating the game’s economy to real-world equipment logic, your consumables degrade in a predictable order: fuel, then goodwill, then crew availability, then hours. Fuel is consumed by every action without exception. Goodwill is consumed only by negotiation, which makes it feel cheaper than it is. Crew availability is the resource players most often forget to budget, because the UI shows it as a status rather than a number.
The single most common mistake is treating hours as free. Hours are the only resource that cannot be replenished mid-act, and every “cheap” route in the game is cheap precisely because it spends hours instead of fuel.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does a first playthrough take?
A complete first run takes most players somewhere between 8 and 11 hours, depending on how many optional dispatches they take. Rushing the mandatory path alone is closer to 6 hours but usually produces a low score tier and skips two of the three Act Three setups.
Can I recover from spending all my goodwill early?
Yes, but only through optional dispatches completed under their soft deadlines. Each such dispatch returns one goodwill. If you have already passed Act Two, goodwill cannot be regained at all, which is why the Canberra checkpoint is the single most punishing decision in the game.
Do I need the second work crew to finish the game?
Per the official patch notes, the Act Three opening dispatch requires two crew in every current build. Players have found workarounds using the favour token system, but all of them cost a full in-game day and are not recommended for a first run.
What does the “favour” token actually do?
A favour token substitutes for two goodwill at any negotiation gate. It is awarded only for finishing an optional dispatch early — the timer colour changes from green to amber when you are past the early window, and the token is lost silently. It carries across acts, so banking one is generally better than spending it.
Which optional dispatches are worth doing?
The two that unlock the second crew are effectively mandatory. Beyond those, prioritise any optional dispatch that shares a region with a mandatory one, since regional bonuses stack and reduce travel hours. Pure flavour dispatches with no regional overlap can be skipped without penalty.
Is there a penalty for finishing an act late?
Act One and Act Two have no late penalty beyond lost early-completion tokens. Act Three is different: it applies a hard deadline, and exceeding it ends the run rather than merely reducing your score. Budget your hours accordingly once Act Three begins.
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