Windsor, while the residents, along fifty miles of the river traversed
by the Royal launch, assembled at the water's edge and waved flags and
cheered as the Prince went through what is probably one of the most
beautiful water-ways in the world. At Hawkesbury River Landing, where
the Prince rejoined the train and met a number of mothers and widows of
men fallen in the war, the entire station had been decorated by the
unpaid labour of those working upon the line. At Fassifern, which he
went through after nightfall, the entire valley was lighted up by
bonfires, and the station and wharf at the small township of Toronto,
where the Prince spent a night at the house of Mr. Duncan McGeachie, was
a fantasy of Chinese lanterns.
The following morning the Prince received and replied to an address on
the local pier which juts out into the beautiful Macquarie lake. Here,
waving over his head, was a Canadian flag, presented to this Australian
namesake by the capital city of Ontario. From Toronto the Prince was
taken by train past a number of the pit-heads of one of the richest
mining districts in Australia, at that time supplying coal at the very
reasonable price of seventeen shillings per ton f.o.b. on the seaboard.
Every heap of slack and every railway truck, as the Prince's train went
by, had upon it a contingent of miners who cheered in a way to warm the
coldest heart.
Newcastle, the second city of New South Wales, was reached at noon. The
Prince, on alighting, was received by the Mayor and Corporation,
supported by a smart guard-of-honour of naval cadets and an immense
crowd of spectators. He crossed the harbour by launch and landed on the
low marshy foreshore of Walsh Island. Here he shook hands with a long
line of returned men, employed in the shipbuilding yards, who gave him a
most cordial reception. Similar scenes were repeated, at least half a
dozen times in the course of the day, at the entrance to each set of
works. At Walsh Island, over which he was conducted by Mr. Estell, State
Minister of Works, and Mr. Cutler, General Manager, New South Wales
Shipbuilding, he launched a fine six-thousand-ton freight steamer, built
by state enterprise on behalf of the Commonwealth Government. The
launching was to have taken place at flood tide, but, owing to
postponement of the Prince's visit, had to be done at the ebb. A strong
west wind on the ship's quarter added to the difficulty of the
undertaking which was entirely overcome, the ship taking the water
beautifully.
These vessels are an interesting example of state enterprise in New
South Wales. They are designed to carry produce away from Australia, and
to bring British emigrants back. There was at the time plenty of demand
for their services, as thousands of would-be settlers were awaiting
passages in the old country, and wheat was rotting in Australian
granaries that was badly wanted to reduce prices of bread in Europe. The
claim was made for them that they were being built at rates materially
lower than those offering for the construction of similar vessels in any
dockyard in the world at the time the contracts were given out. The
cost, I was told, ranged from L31 per ton until the last rise in wages
took place, which brought the rate up to about L35. At the time of the
Prince's visit no workman employed in the yard was receiving less than
fourteen shillings and fourpence daily, the average being very much
higher than this figure. The vessel launched was the fifth of six
uniform steamers under state construction. The four previously completed
had been rated "A1" at Lloyds.
After leaving the Government dockyard, the Prince was taken over works
of private enterprise of even larger significance, the steel-furnaces,
rolling-mills and rod-mills of the Broken Hill Proprietary Company,
which are also located in Newcastle. Here he was conducted by Mr.
Delprat, general manager, and Mr. Baker, local manager, and saw the
whole of the processes, from the emptying of three open-hearth blast
furnaces, to the conversion of glowing molten steel into 72-lb. railway
rails, of which these works claim to have manufactured, last year, some
hundred and sixty thousand tons. The capacity of the works is very much
larger even than this amount, two separate strikes having reduced
out-turn in this period. The price paid for these rails by the various
state railways in Australia, which now depend almost entirely upon this
source of supply, was thirteen pounds per ton. I learnt also that the
average pay of the labour employed in the works was about one pound
sterling daily per man. The profit upon the L4,000,000 capital of the
concern is such that its one-pound shares were quoted in the Sydney
Stock Exchange the day the Prince went over the works at sixty-four
shillings apiece.
After seeing the steel-works, the Prince was conducted by Mr. MacDougall
over a neighbouring wire and nail factory, which claims to be now
filling the entire demand of Australia for plain-wire fencing. The firm
was preparing to set up additional machinery upon a large scale to make
barbed wire which Australia has hitherto bought in Europe. The
significance of this development is considerable, since barbed wire
forms the top, as smooth wire does the lower strands, of fences of which
hundreds of thousands of miles are already in existence in Australia,
and millions of miles more have still to be built.
After leaving the wire-works, the Prince drove in procession, through
decorated, crowded, cheering streets, to a sheltered park overlooking
the Pacific, where thirty thousand people had assembled and Mayor
Gibson read a civic address. In the course of his reply the Prince dwelt
upon the remarkable industrial development of Newcastle. "Your harbour,"
he noted, "your shipping facilities and your manufactures have greatly
enhanced the importance this district has possessed from the earliest
date on account of its rich deposits of coal."
Leaving Newcastle in the afternoon by train, the Prince returned to
Sydney through a pleasant land of tidy orange plantations and ragged
blue-gum bush. On the way he held a reception in the city of Gosford,
and saw further reaches of the beautiful Hawkesbury river. A record
crowd cheered him at Sydney railway station, and along the route to the
harbour where he rejoined the _Renown_.
XV
WESTERN AUSTRALIA
The Prince went from Sydney two thousand miles by sea to Western
Australia, a state as large as the combined areas of England, France,
Germany, Austria, Spain, and Holland, with a population of less than
half a million people to develop this stupendous territory.
On the way, in traversing the Australian Bight, that borders the
southern coast of the continent, the _Renown_ encountered weather
remarkably bad even for this region of frequent gales. Green seas swept
over forecastle and quarter-deck alike. The engines were slowed down.
The big ship strained, clanked, and groaned, but proved her
seaworthiness magnificently. The waves were still high in King George's
Sound outside Albany, where owing to shallow water the _Renown_ had to
lie four miles from land in a wide and but partially sheltered bay.
Where the shore could be seen it lay in rocky grass-grown hummocks, on
which the surf beat heavily. A picket boat conveyed the Prince and his
staff through a narrow entrance into the small landlocked harbour, where
they landed on a desolate pier, wet decorations flapping dismally in
cold wind and spray. The entire population had turned out, however,
despite the weather. The Governor of Western Australia, Sir Francis
Newdegate, the State Premier, Mr. Mitchell, and a number of other
members of the Government awaited the Prince upon the pier. The Mayor of
Albany read an address from a wind-swept platform in front of a town
hall prominently situated on a low hill facing a wide street that led
down to the harbour. The crowd here was a varied one. It included
traders, merchants, commission-agents, and manufacturers belonging to
Albany itself, also large numbers of fruit-growers and farmers from
stations in the interior of this prosperous land of orchards and
wheatfields. Gatherings of returned soldiers and school children, also
nurses and other war-workers flanked the general assemblage. A night
train journey followed through rolling country and bush, with arable
fields, apple orchards and orange gardens which looked most attractive
next morning in brilliant sunshine in the freshest of rain-washed air.
The Prince was cheered by gatherings at many wayside stations, including
Parkerville, where a number of children, in charge of gentle-faced
sisters in black robes, sang patriotic songs in the chill morning air as
the train went through. About noon he alighted at Perth, capital of
Western Australia, an extraordinarily beautiful city, with wide streets
and solid masonry houses, situated on the low banks of the picturesque
Swan River--here so wide as to be almost a lagoon.
The streets were decorated and lined with cheerful people. Those who
received the Prince included the Governor, the State Premier, the Mayor,
Mr. Lathlain, the Chief Justice, Sir R. MacMillan, the leader of the
State Opposition, Mr. P. Collier, the Chairman of the Reception
Committee, General Sir Talbot Hobbs, also most of the other members of
the local houses of Parliament and of the Perth municipal corporation.
The Prince went through the usual inspection of naval and military
guards-of-honour, and then proceeded by motor-car through the city,
which looked delightfully fresh in bright winter sunshine. The crowd was
lined up behind wooden barriers on either side of a lane kept by
blue-jackets from H.M.A.S. _Sydney_, also men of the Royal Australian
Naval Reserve, and returned soldiers, cadets and scouts. The route taken
was some two miles in length. It lay through the principal business and
residential streets, the crowd extending the entire distance, clapping,
cheering, laughing and flag-waving as the Prince went by. The procession
disappeared inside the shady grounds of Government House, a place of
green lawns and rose-bushes blossoming in the shade of banana-trees and
Insignis pines.
Later on H.R.H. visited the principal theatre, where he addressed
several thousand returned sailors, soldiers and nurses. He congratulated
them on their services, alike during the war and since their return
home, where they had shown that they stood for the maintenance of law
and order. From the theatre the Prince went on to a big civic luncheon
in the Town Hall, where Mayor Lathlain told an appreciative audience of
their guest's keen personal interest in the welfare of the people of the
Dominions. He also mentioned the fact that the Prince had come as
representing "the dear old Motherland, the heart of the Empire, the land
upon whose Navy so largely depends Australia's ability to carry on her
peaceful avocations." H.R.H. was loudly cheered when he rose to reply,
and his pleasant little speech evoked the greatest enthusiasm. He
felicitated Perth and Western Australia generally upon their wonderful
progress, of which much had been achieved within the memory of the
present generation. He said he knew Western Australia's record in the
Great War, and desired also to congratulate its women--alike those who
had gone abroad and those who had worked at home. An investiture at
Government House and a State ball completed the day's work.
The visit to Perth lasted about a week. It had several memorable
features, among them a review, when, in a wide thoroughfare bordered by
pleasant residences bearing such British names as Ilfracombe, Warwick
House, and St. George's Terrace, the Prince stood, framed in a
background of crowded grandstands, taking the salutes of a number of
thousands of Australians, including a solid contingent of blue-jackets,
a yet larger one of returned soldiers, some in khaki, some in mufti,
cohorts of cadets and boy scouts, both naval and military, phalanxes of
red cross nurses in smart white dresses, and girl guides in a dense
column of blue, followed by what seemed an endless procession of
children, every school within ten miles of Perth being represented.
From the review the Prince went to Mayor Lathlain's "people's
garden-party" in the National Park. Here upon a dais beneath a statue of
his great grandmother, Queen Victoria, in the shelter of big
timber-trees, commanding a magnificent view of the city and the river,
he stood for an hour while the people of Perth streamed past in column.
Babies were carried pick-a-back on their fathers' shoulders, men doffed
hats, mothers and daughters waved hands, handkerchiefs or flags, as
they passed. One old lady delayed the line to shake hands with him, but
accepted the Admiral's clasp as a makeshift, the Prince being too busy
taking off his hat and returning eight smiles at a time to have a hand
to spare. Everybody was so engrossed gazing at the visitor, every head
turning on its neck for a long backward glance after the dais had been
passed, that hardly an eye was drawn off when a noisy aeroplane, which
had been stunting unnoticed in the Prince's honour overhead, suddenly
swooped out of intolerable oblivion to within a hundred feet of him.
A further notable function was the State banquet at Perth Government
House. Here were present all the leaders of thought and enterprise in
Western Australia, politicians, administrators, squatters, settlers,
traders, naval and military commanders, ministers, judges, ten V.C.'s,
and everybody else who counted. Grace was said by that soldierly
episcopal, Archbishop Riley, who, as a Chaplain-in-Chief of the
Australian forces in the field, is known and loved from one end of
Australia to the other. The Prince's health was proposed by Premier
Mitchell. After it had been drunk with the usual cheering and waving of
napkins, H.R.H. made a speech. "Your policy," he said, "is to draw
settlers from the old country, at the same time ensuring that they shall
not suffer from lack of experience when they are first put upon the land
of their adopted country. I am delighted to hear that you are giving to
Imperial ex-service men the same chance of starting life upon the land
when they arrive in this state, as you give your own diggers. I can
think of no more admirable way than this of continuing the splendid
traditions of the war and maintaining our united British spirit." It
was a note which has often been sounded since to appreciation and
applause throughout the Empire.
One of the expeditions made from the state capital was by launch down
the wide placid reaches of the Swan River, still the haunt of the black
swan, emblem of Western Australia, to hold a reception at the port of
Fremantle, some ten miles distant, where the river joins the sea. No
black swans graced the occasion, only an occasional porpoise leapt
alongside the launch as it entered the estuary. The entire population of
the countryside lined the banks as the vessel went past, every village,
settlement, and factory _en route_ contributing its quota, which in the
case of saw-mills, cold-storage plant and electricity works, consisted
almost entirely of workmen.
Arrived at Fremantle the entire city was found awaiting the Prince,
crowding the pier and lined up along the streets. Naval and military
guards-of-honour, with bands, saluted. The chairman and members of the
Harbour Trust and the Mayor and members of the city council stood
bare-headed as he made his landing. From the pier he was conducted in
procession, first to a picturesque display by thousands of children, and
afterwards to the big "Anzac" military hospital where convalescent
patients were drawn up with doctors and nurses outside, and where the
warmth of the cheers that came from the wards, where he went round the
beds of those too ill to move, was more than touching.
Speaking later at a civic luncheon, the Prince looked forward to
Fremantle's eventually becoming one of the leading harbours in the
Empire, the importance of its position as the first port of call on the
western seaboard being emphasized by the completion of the
trans-continental railway. Returning to Perth later in the afternoon by
motor-car, he was taken through the magnificent National Park, a
well-kept forest upland, full of fine timber, including a whole avenue,
each individual tree dedicated to some West Australian soldier fallen in
the war. Just before entering this park, the Prince passed some
thousands of children drawn from schools in the Cottesloe, Claremont and
Subiaco municipal areas, who stood hardily in the rain in the open to
wave their flags and sing their patriotic songs.
Still another rewarding expedition was by car to some of the fruit
gardens near Perth. Orange groves in the dips and apple orchards on the
rising slopes made odd neighbours. The apple-trees were bare, but
oranges hung in the golden profusion of Malta or Seville. Fifty acres of
this fruit in some cases meant a clear income of over a thousand pounds
per annum to the fortunate owner after paying for all labour other than
his own. The orchard zone was near the coast. Further inland is one of
the wide wheat-belts which feed Australia and furnish a surplus for
Great Britain. Beyond this again begin the cattle-stations of the Great
North-West. Perth was buzzing with the Great North-West. A commission
composed of parliamentarians and publicists had just returned, loaded
with information and optimism, from a two-thousand mile expedition
through it by motor. In addition the highways were blocked and the views
were obscured by mountainous men, full of deep cocktails and deliberate
conversation, who had descended from this region for the occasion of the
Prince's visit. Some of these genial giants worked, as private pasture,
areas ranging to over two million acres. They seemed in themselves a
sufficient indication of what the country could produce, and an adequate
reason for railway enterprise in their direction. In this state land
nationalizes may note the character of the movement towards small
holdings. It has recently been laid down that no peasant or other
proprietor shall obtain a fresh grant of more than one million acres.
Not a long step toward communistic property, but possibly a beginning.
XVI
WHEAT, GOLD, AND LOGGING
The state saw-mills and logging-camps of Pemberton, about a hundred
miles southward along the coast, made an important fixture from Perth.
On this occasion the Prince was accompanied by the Premier and other
members of the West Australian State Government and was conducted by Mr.
Humphries, state saw-mills manager. He was taken over mills where the
enduring Karri trees in trunks sixty feet long and seven feet through
were being sliced by revolving saws into uniform railway sleepers for
export. He also made his way, in heavy rain, partly by railway and
partly on foot, up gorges of great natural beauty in the heart of a
dripping forest, himself took a hand with sinewy axe-men and sturdy
sawyers, in the felling of these giant trees, and saw their subsequent
extraction from swampy thickets by teams each comprising, in some cases,
twenty-four splendid locally bred Clydesdale horses, in others a score
and a half of equally fine Australian bullocks.
In the presence of a gathering of the entire logging force and their
wives and children, who gave him the most cordial reception, the Prince
afterwards presided at a local log-chopping contest in which champion
woodmen from all parts of Western Australia competed. The excitement of
the forest community of onlookers was intense, and considerable sums
changed hands upon the result. The men were given trunks of as nearly as
possible equal thickness and hardness to hew through. The less
proficient received a certain number of seconds' start. Axes fell with
marvellous rapidity and precision, slices rather than chips flew
incredible distances in pre-ordained directions--it was a remarkable
exhibition of muscle rivalling machinery. One of the long-handicap men
eventually won from the scratch competitor, a magnificent young giant
who was about a second behind. The logs cut through were about fifteen
inches in diameter. Most of the axes used bore the names of American
manufacturers, and had edges still razor-like after the contest was
over.
A fine exhibition of table-vegetables, grown in pockets in the
neighbouring hills, was also shown to the Prince. Rich land close to the
railway suitable for market-gardening and already cleared is to be had
in this region, it seems, at L25 per acre. It is claimed to produce per
acre from six to nine tons of potatoes, which were fetching on the spot
L12 per ton. The principal prize-winner was a Scotch gardener, who told
the Prince he had come but six years previously without any capital
whatever, and that his holding was now clear of debt and valued at
L1,300.
On the way back to Perth the Prince had his first and only experience
during the tour of a railway accident. Speaking of it in a reply to the
toast of his health at a public dinner at Perth, a few days after it
occurred, Premier Mitchell expressed thankfulness that the Prince had
escaped unhurt. His Royal Highness in reply treated the matter from a
humorous point of view. He did not regret, he said, to have been able to
add a harmless railway accident to his Australian experiences. The
mishap was very much nearer to being a disastrous one, however, than
this would suggest. It occurred on a single-track, three-foot-six-inch
line, in swampy Westralian forest, some ten miles from the township of
Bridgetown. The Royal train was a heavy one, consisting of some nine
corridor sleeping coaches. It had passed over the spot, which was on a
curve, the same morning on the way to Pemberton. Heavy rain fell in the
course of the day, and on the return journey at about three o'clock in
the afternoon, the track had become so soft that the rails gave way.
The train was, fortunately, only going at about fifteen miles an hour at
the time, having had to slow down owing to cattle on the lines. The rear
saloon, which was occupied by H.R.H. and Admiral Halsey, seems to have
been the first to leave the line. The saloon immediately in front, which
contained the remainder of the Royal staff and most of the state party,
afterwards followed it. The derailed wheels then bumped along over the
sleepers, which they cut up in the most complete manner, the line for
two hundred and thirty yards being converted into a tangled mass of
twisted rails and broken splinters. The engine-driver felt the jolting
and applied the brakes. This happily took the way off the train, for a
moment later the two derailed vehicles rolled over the soft embankment,
here a couple of feet high, and lay on the ground below, all their
wheels in the air. The train came to a standstill, the coupling between
the wrecked and the unwrecked portions remaining intact. The Prince and
his staff were still inside. Heads quickly appeared through windows now
pointing to the sky, and the occupants of the front saloons, who had
hastily jumped out, learnt to their relief that nobody had been
seriously hurt. One after another the members of the Royal party,
including the Premier and other state ministers, were extricated through
the windows, now the only means of egress.
While this was happening smoke began to issue from the first of the two
overturned saloons. Investigation showed that this was from the cooks'
galley, which, in falling, had set the saloon on fire. The flames were
promptly extinguished with water brought from the portion of the train
still upon the rails. Ten minutes later the Prince, who had declined to
move till he had collected his overturned papers, cheerfully climbed
out, being thus, sailor-like, the last to leave the wreck. He had been
talking to Admiral Halsey when the derailment took place, and was pinned
between overturned pieces of furniture when the coach rolled over, thus
escaping falling through the plate-glass window, a thing which occurred
to several members of the party, including the Premier. The only person
at all materially hurt, however, was Surgeon-Commander Newport, the
Prince's doctor, who cut his shin rather badly when he went through the
window, an incredibly small casualty list for the nature of the
accident.
All the fittings that were movable flew through the air when the upset
took place. A large mirror in the Prince's compartment was amongst the
articles which crashed to the ground. The mix-up and disorder of broken
furniture, crockery and luggage inside was most complete.