SOUTH AUSTRALIA.
CONFIGURATION--THE LAKE COUNTRY--HEAT IN
SUMMER--FRUIT--GLENELG--ADELAIDE--MOUNT LOFTY RANGE--PARKS AND
BUILDINGS--MOSQUITO PLAIN CAVES--CAMELS--THE OVERLAND TELEGRAPH
LINE--PEAKE STATION--THE NORTHERN TERRITORY--EARLY
MISFORTUNES--PRESENT PROSPECTS--INSECT
LIFE--ALLIGATORS--BUFFALOES.
[Illustration: J. A. G. LITTLE. R. G. PATERSON. C. TODD. A. J. MITCHELL.
OVERLAND TELEGRAPH PARTY.]
[Illustration: GOVERNMENT HOUSE AND GENERAL POST OFFICE, ADELAIDE.]
South Australia should rather be called Central Australia, for it lies
half-way between the western and the eastern seaboard, and the colony
runs right through the continent from north to south. It is an enormous
tract, 2,000 miles in length and 700 in breadth. The total area is
903,000 square miles, of which at present barely a tenth is in
occupation, though exploration has already made known the existence of
millions of acres of magnificent pasture-land ready for settlement. In
the colonies, when you speak of South Australia, you are understood to
mean the district of which Adelaide is the centre. If you referred to
the inland portion, you would speak of the 'far north;' and again, if
you meant the Port Darwin--Gulf of Carpentaria country--you would use
the term 'Northern Territory.' The original South Australia is first to
be noticed.
[Illustration: WATERFALL GULLY, SOUTH AUSTRALIA.]
No part of Australia is more strongly marked with Australian
peculiarities than this. The Murray is the only river, and this stream
brings down the waters of the ranges of the south-eastern colonies; the
other streams are merely courses in which, under favourable conditions,
water may be looked for, and not otherwise. The ranges are few in
number, and are of no great elevation. But the grass plains and the
scrub plains are immense. Gazing round from an eminence, the impression
produced by the equal height of the vegetation, and the dull glaucous
colour of the foliage, is that you are looking upon the open rolling
illimitable ocean. South Australia contains whole principalities of the
ordinary park-like bush of Australia; the eucalypts standing in grass
without any undergrowth, either singly or in clumps, as though planted
by a landscape gardener. If an expert were whisked during his
sleep--like another Bedreddin Hassan--and dropped from Europe, Asia,
Africa or America anywhere in these regions, he would exclaim the moment
he opened his eyes--''Tis Australia.' A glance at the map would lead to
the conclusion that the colony is well supplied with lakes. On paper,
Lake Torrens, Lake Eyre, Lake Gardiner, Lake Amadeus, cover large areas,
but unfortunately an antipodean meaning must be attached to the term;
for the most part these lakes are either muddy reed-covered swamps, or
salt marshes unfitted for navigation in winter, and evaporating into
vast glittering clay pans in summer. The level of several of these
extensive depressions is believed to be below that of the sea, and the
cutting of a canal to unite them to Spencer's Gulf, the deepest
indentation on the southern coast, has been suggested, and will probably
some day be carried into effect, and then there may be changes worked in
the climate.
[Illustration: A MURRAY RIVER BOAT.]
At present, however, South Australia is decidedly hot during its summer
months of December, January and February. The thermometer runs up to 110
and 112 and 116 degrees. 'But then,' says the typical South Australian,
taking you by the buttonhole, 'it is a dry heat, and really you do not
feel it; there is no enervating aqueous vapour about;' and there
certainly is not. No complaints of wet and sloppy weather are ever to
be heard. On the contrary, when the south-easter brings a heavy bursting
bank of cloud with it, there is a general rubbing of hands and utterance
of congratulatory remarks. 'Splendid rain to-day,' is the usual phrase;
and 'How far north does it extend?' is the current query. But, admitting
that the South Australian summer is hot, it must be added that the
climate during the other eight months is delightful. One enthusiast
declares that the pure soft balmy air is such as one would expect to
blow over 'the plains of heaven;' and at any rate there is first-class
medical testimony that for people with weak lungs there are few more
hopeful resorts. The 'far north' is subject to droughts and to floods,
and the Northern Territory has a weather system of its own. As the
description of its climate suggests, South Australia is a grand fruit
country. Grapes, peaches, apricots and oranges, grow practically without
cultivation, and attain perfection in the open air. In the season there
are few tables in Adelaide on which piles of grapes and plates of
apricots and peaches are not to be regularly found. The fruit can be
purchased in the market at a penny a pound, so that at current wages
there is no occasion for the poorest of the working classes to stint in
these luscious products of the soil.
[Illustration: ADELAIDE IN 1837.]
Adelaide, the metropolis of South Australia, called after the wife of
William IV., was founded in 1836. To-day, with its suburbs, it contains
about 170,000 inhabitants. On the 28th of December, 1836, Captain
Hindmarsh, who had served under Nelson at the Nile, landed from H.M.S.
Buffalo at Holdfast Bay, in St. Vincent's Gulf, and beneath the shade of
a patriarchal gum-tree, and in presence of a few officials, read his
commission as the first Governor of South Australia. The anniversary of
that event is observed as a public holiday by all classes in the
community, while the old gum-tree has become a source of solicitude, and
is reverently cared for by the municipal authorities of Glenelg--a
fashionable watering-place which has grown up within sight of Governor
Hindmarsh's landing-place.
And indeed this Glenelg is a fitting entrance to the fair city of
Adelaide, with which it is connected by two lines of railway. Facing the
dazzling white beach are the seaside residences of squatting kings,
wealthy merchants, and other successful colonists; while the bay itself
is studded with yachts and other pleasure craft, with perchance a
man-of-war, or two or three mail steamers, at anchor in the offing, for
all the ocean-borne mails are either landed or shipped at Glenelg.
During the summer evenings the sands and long jetty are thronged with
visitors from the capital, who have come down to enjoy the fresh cool
breezes, or to listen to the various bands of music.
Adelaide itself is laid out on a gently sloping ground, from 96 to 176
feet above the sea-level, on both sides of the Torrens, which is spanned
by three large handsome bridges. The part out north is called North
Adelaide, to distinguish it from 'the City,' which lies on the other
side of the river. The streets are all unusually broad, even for
Australian cities, and run at right angles, many of them being bordered
with rows of trees, the shade of which is very refreshing in the hot
summer days. One of the features of the place is the number and extent
of its beautiful public squares and park lands. In this respect it
transcends even Melbourne. The squares in each quarter of the city are
reserves of several acres in extent, embellished with flowers, trees,
and fountains; while the parks are extensive reservations, surrounding
the city on every side, separating it from the suburbs.
Adelaide, with ordinary care, can never be other than a healthy city.
Moreover, it can never extend its boundaries. This fact accounts for the
high prices obtained for city property. Land originally bought for eight
or ten shillings an acre has recently changed hands at L1000 a foot. Its
surroundings are the charms of the city. On the west is the sea. Four or
five miles to the east is the thickly wooded Mount Lofty range, so
called from the highest peak, 2400 feet above the sea-level, which,
trending away to the southward, closes in on that side the undulating
plain on which the city is built. To the northward the range takes a
more easterly direction for twenty or forty miles. These hills, which
are reached from Adelaide by railways and tram-lines, and excellent
carriage-roads, are a favourite summer resort of those citizens who can
afford to avail themselves of the coolness and seclusion which they
offer.
[Illustration: KING WILLIAM STREET, ADELAIDE.]
The buildings in Adelaide show well. A very white freestone has entered
largely into the more recent erections; and, as there are comparatively
few large factories in the city, and no shipping nearer than Port
Adelaide, they lose but little of their pristine freshness by smoke and
grime. Then the unpleasant effect produced by the sight of a hovel
adjoining a palatial bank or pile of warehouses several storeys high, is
of rare occurrence, while the broad streets offer the most advantageous
conditions for the display of the various architectural styles employed.
The town has been called 'the city of churches;' and the number of
ecclesiastical edifices which it contains places its pretensions to that
distinction beyond question. The Anglican Cathedral of St. Peter is a
large and imposing building, a portion of which is still uncompleted,
occupying an elevated position in the southern portion of North
Adelaide. The Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. Francis Xavier is in the
south, and recalls the early days of the colony, when the prophecies of
its future importance were few in number. All the other great religious
bodies are also creditably represented.
Nearly all the Government departments are in the vicinity of Victoria
Square, an ornamental reserve, through which King William Street, one of
the most handsome thoroughfares in Australia, has been carried. No
traveller should leave Adelaide without spending some hours in the
Botanical Garden. To omit that lovely resort would be an error indeed.
[Illustration: AN ADELAIDE PUBLIC SCHOOL.]
South Australia contains a little over 300,000 inhabitants. Its chief
industries are agricultural, pastoral, and mining. Very early in its
history it became the granary of the colonies, and, although it can no
longer claim that distinction, it is still one of the few places in the
world where the visitor can travel over three hundred miles in the same
direction between fields of waving yellow corn. Despite the small
returns from wheat-growing, the area under cultivation is enlarged every
year, and is now not less than two million acres. More attention is
being paid to scientific farming, thanks to the influence of the
recently established Agricultural College at Roseworthy, thirty miles
north of Adelaide, experimental farms in various parts of the colony,
and the lectures delivered in the chief agricultural centres. The yield
is so dependent on the rainfall that the average for the colony rarely
exceeds ten bushels per acre, and occasionally falls below three. The
subject of irrigation has lately been warmly taken up by the
agricultural community, and the next few years will see not only a more
rational system of farming, but the adoption of means to render that
community less dependent on the uncertain rainfall. At the London
Exhibition a splendid sample of wheat grown at Mount Barker--a
beautifully situated township amongst the hills, twenty miles south-east
of Adelaide--obtained the highest award.
[Illustration: REAPING IN SOUTH ADELAIDE.]
Of the show places of South Australia none are more interesting than the
curious caves of the Mosquito Plains. They have been described at length
by the naturalist Tennison Woods, in his _Geological Observations of
South Australia_: 'In the midst of a sandy, swampy country, a series of
caves is found, whose internal beauty is at strange variance with the
wildness of the scenery around. The entrance is merely a round hole on
the top of a hill, which leads to a small sloping path under a shelf of
rock. Descending this for about twenty-five feet, one gets a first
glimpse of the magnificence enshrined below. The observer finds himself
at the entrance of a large oblong square chamber, low, but perfectly
lighted by an aperture at the opposite end; and all around, above and
below, the eye is bewildered by a profusion of ornaments and decorations
of Nature's own devising. It resembles an immense Gothic cathedral, and
the numbers of half-finished stalagmites, which rise from the ground
like kneeling or prostrate forms, seem worshippers in that silent and
solemn place. At the farther end is an immense stalactite, which appears
like a support to the whole roof; not the least beautiful part of it
being that it is tinted by almost every variety of colour, one side
being of a delicate azure, with passages of blue, green, and pink
intermingled; and again it is snowy white, finally merging into a golden
yellow. The second cave or chamber is so thickly studded with
stalactites that it seems like a carefully arranged scene, which, from
the interminable variety of form and magic effect of light and shade,
might easily be taken to represent some fairy palace. Very soon the
cavern becomes as dark as night, and further exploration to the numerous
chambers and fissures beyond has to be made by the assistance of
torches. On leaving the last chamber, we return to the light; a narrow
passage, richly wreathed with limestone, is observed on the right hand
going out. Proceeding a little way down, a large vaulted chamber is
reached, so perfectly dark and obscure that even torches can do but
faint justice to its beauty. Here, above all other portions of the
caves, has Nature been prodigal of the fantastic ornament with which the
whole place abounds. There are pillars so finely formed, and covered
with such delicate trellis-work, there are droppings of lime making such
scroll-work, that the eye is bewildered with the extent and variety of
the adornment. It is like a palace of ice with frozen cascades and
fountains all round.'
A special feature of the settlers' life in the 'far north' is the
increasing use of camels. At Beltana a camel-breeding establishment has
been in existence for nearly twenty years. Sir Thomas Elder introduced
the animals first from Afghanistan, and, as they are found to be well
adapted for work in Central Australia, they are now largely used. They
are broken in to draw drays, or to trot with a buggy behind them; and
the 'belle of Beltana' uses one for a hack. Nearly a thousand camels
have been provided from this establishment for hauling stores and for
doing the every-day work of bullock and horses. The ordinary team is
composed of six camels. A team of eight will drag a dray with three tons
of goods through the heaviest sand. The animals wear large leather
collars, and their harness is in other respects very similar to that
used for horse teams. No great difficulty has been experienced in
training the camel to this novel sort of work. But the Australian
bushman would not hesitate about putting a hippopotamus into harness.
[Illustration: CAMEL SCENES.]
For pluck in public works South Australia has a character of her own.
One of her great enterprises was the construction of the 'Overland
Telegraph Line' from Adelaide on the one side to Port Darwin on the
other side of the continent, to meet the cable laid from Singapore to
that place, and thus to establish direct communication with Great
Britain. Two years were spent in this arduous undertaking. The country
was awkward; materials and stores had to be transported across the
desert as the work went on. For months the parties were stopped by
floods; some perished from thirst, and the blacks harassed others. When
at last the line was up it was found that the white ants had destroyed
the poles in the Northern Territory, and they had to be replaced with
iron columns. One contractor and one officer after another gave up in
despair, and at last Mr. Charles Todd, Superintendent of Telegraphs, who
was responsible for the scheme, had to leave his city office; and,
though he had no bush experience, his zeal and his intelligence were
rewarded with success. An engraving is given on page 98 of Mr. Todd and
three of his most energetic colleagues in the work: Messrs. Paterson,
Mitchell, and Little. The work was begun in 1870, and on August 22,
1872, the first message was sent over the 1700 miles of wire. It was
feared that the blacks would never let the line stand, but, though they
have 'stuck up' the stations occasionally and killed operators, they
have never interfered with the wires. While the line was being
constructed the operators gave every black who visited them the
opportunity of enjoying a gratuitous electric shock. The peculiar
sensation vividly affected their nerves and their imagination, and thus
a wholesome awe was engendered of what they called 'the white-fellow's
devil.' The illustration given on this page represents Peake Telegraph
Station, situated over seven hundred miles north of Adelaide. The large
building in the centre is the telegraph station and Government
buildings; to the right is a cattle station. The hills in the background
are mostly of a stony character common to Central Australia, with a
slight growth of bushes here and there. Round about the station there
are large numbers of blacks camped, and the officers have to go about
heavily armed. The station at Barrow Creek, farther north, was 'stuck
up' by the blacks a few years ago, and two of the officers killed. At
every station there are usually two operators and four line repairers.
As the adjacent station is 150 or 200 miles away, and there are no
nearer neighbours, the little garrisons lead a lonely life. Whenever a
breakage occurs two men start from either station between which the
fault exists; each party takes, besides a supply of wire, a field
instrument, and at every thirty miles a 'shackle' is put down, and the
party communicates with its own station, and so each proceeds until one
or the other finds and repairs the defect. Communication being restored,
the news is conveyed to the other party, and both take up their
instruments and retrace their steps without having seen each other.
[Illustration: PEAKE OVERLAND TELEGRAPH STATION.]
At the Barrow Creek station, a party of the employes were surprised in
1875 by the blacks, when they had left the building to indulge in a
bathe. They had to run for their lives through a volley of spears to
regain the shelter of their loop-holed home. Mr. Stapleton and a line
repairer were mortally wounded, and two others were badly hurt. Mr.
Stapleton was found to be sinking rapidly. The news was flashed to
Adelaide. In one room of the city stood the doctor and Mrs. Stapleton,
listening to the 'click, click' of the messages. A thousand miles away
in the desert, in a lonely hut beleaguered by the blacks, lay the dying
man with an instrument brought to his bedside. He received the doctor's
message that his case was hopeless. He heard his wife's adieus, and he
telegraphed an eternal farewell. It is easy to believe that the
affecting spectacle moved those around the group in Adelaide to tears.
South Australia's next great feat is to run a railway across the
continent. Already the line is completed a distance of nearly four
hundred miles northwards towards Strangeways Springs. Camels imported by
Mr. H. J. Scott are used to carry stores, rations and water to the men
employed in advance, whilst, from the other end, the Palmerston and Pine
Creek line, 150 miles in length, is in the hands of the contractors. It
is hoped that within the next ten years the transcontinental railway
will be completed, thereby uniting Australia and the east.
[Illustration: COLLINGROVE STATION, SOUTH AUSTRALIA.]
When John McDouall Stuart at last crossed the continent from sea to
sea and from north to south, there was great enthusiasm in Adelaide. The
explorer received L5000 from Parliament, and the colony obtained
permission to push its bounds up to the Indian Ocean, thus annexing a
nice little tract of 531,402 square miles. Thus, in the year 1863, was
the Northern Territory acquired. It was resolved at once to form a
settlement in the new country. The Imperial Government from time to time
had endeavoured to colonise North Australia, settlements being formed in
turn at Melville Island, Raffles Bay, and Port Essington; but each place
in turn was abandoned. Undeterred by these failures, the South
Australian authorities sold land, marked out a township, appointed an
official staff, and invited colonisation. And then South Australia went
through its painful experience. The owners of land warrants complained
that they had been 'sold' as well as the land; the expected colonists
did not put in an appearance; while the members of the staff were
quarrelling, the blacks made a raid and stole and destroyed nearly all
the stores, and finally many of the Government officers took to open
boats and escaped after a hazardous sea voyage to Western Australia. For
years and years the Northern Territory was a source of expense and
anxiety to the good people of Adelaide; but a colonist--and least of all
a South Australian colonist--never despairs. The party that counselled
abandonment was looked upon with scorn, and after every disaster a new
staff was sent up to Port Darwin, and more and more attractive land
offers were made. But the Adelaide Government was taught the lesson all
larger and more important Governments have yet to acquire: namely, that
you cannot force colonisation, that the one condition of success is a
natural growth. Times have changed recently. The overlanders, having
accounted for Queensland, pushed into the Northern Territory, and
consequent upon their favourable reports runs have been taken up in all
directions, and in immense areas, and in all probability the Northern
Territory is on the eve of a great development. In the last two or three
years tens of thousands of cattle have been moved from Queensland and
New South Wales into the new country, and at the Roper and Macarthy
rivers bush townships have been established, and the town of Palmerston
(Port Darwin) has witnessed a large increase in private and substantial
buildings. Prospectors have opened up gold, copper and tin mines. The
gold export is now L75,000 per annum, and copper mines are being
energetically worked; and a railway which is about to be constructed to
the present mineral centre is expected to effect a revolution, as the
want of carriage has hitherto checked mining progress.
[Illustration: SHEEP IN THE SHADE OF A GUM-TREE.]
Residents in the Northern Territory speak hopefully about the climate.
That the white man cannot perform the same amount of constant work in
tropical Australia that he can in his own climes and countries is
admitted, but still, it is contended, he can work and be healthy and
happy. There is an absence amongst the population of the enervation so
conspicuous in India, Java, Singapore, and Ceylon. Artisans ply their
callings on the eight hours system, as elsewhere in Australia, without
special precautions against the sun. The climate is, in fact, more
Australian than it is tropical. But at Port Darwin itself there is much
to remind the traveller that he is in the tropics, and is nearer to the
equator than to Capricorn. Mingled with the characteristic flora of
Australia are the palms, bamboos, rattan canes, and wild nutmeg-trees,
and other flora of the adjacent Spice Islands. The ground, the
vegetation, and the atmosphere are alive with insect life. Linnaeus has
eleven orders of insects, but, as one settler facetiously remarks, had
the eminent naturalist in question visited the Northern Territory, he
might have classified one hundred and eleven orders. Fire-flies flit
about; beetles display their metallic brilliancy; radiant moths and
butterflies fleck the gloom. The observant man admires and marvels; but
not always does the view charm, for myriads of mosquitoes and sand-flies
have at him, and the bung-fly, attacking the eyelid, will cause a
swelling that will close up the eye for several days. Ants are found
literally in legions. In the houses some amusement is to be derived from
watching the ant-eating lizard, who is allowed to run up and down the
walls without molestation, and is, indeed, welcomed as a highly useful
domestic animal. In the bush surprise is excited by the enormous
ant-hills. Some are twenty-five feet in height, and six or eight feet in
diameter; but usually they are from six to twelve feet high, and about
four feet in diameter; and along a belt of country extending perhaps one
hundred miles, they may stand apart but fifty or a hundred feet. To
level these cunningly devised cellular structures, occasionally, would
prove far more costly than levelling the ground of timber. In other
places the 'meridional' ant-hill is met with. These edifices are from
three to six feet high, and more. They are broad at the base, and taper
to a point at the summit. The form therefore is that of a long wedge,
and the peculiarity is that all the summit lines are true north and
south, as though laid down by a surveyor.
In the rivers the traveller is introduced to the alligator. Many are the
tales of horror and of escape related in connection with these saurians.
One member of the original exploring party of the South Australian
Government, a man named Reid, fell asleep in a boat on the Roper river,
with his leg hanging carelessly over the side of the craft. An alligator
seized the limb and dragged the man out of the boat, his screams too
late calling attention to his fate. The alligator is found right down
the Queensland coast. While writing, the following telegram appears in
the _Argus_ (Melbourne, March 10, 1886): 'A girl named Margaret Gordon,
the daughter of a dairyman on Cattle Creek, thirty miles from
Townsville, has been devoured by an alligator. She went with a
servant-girl to the creek for water, when a large alligator rushed at
her and carried her off. The occurrence was witnessed by the girl's
father, who was unable to render any assistance.'
The one trace left of the early settlements of Raffles Bay and Port
Essington is that herds of buffaloes are to be met with in the districts
in question, and also some Timor ponies. Both animals were introduced
from Timor, and when the settlements were abandoned males and females
were left to run wild. The buffaloes have spread along the north coast,
nearly, if not quite, to the Gulf of Carpentaria, and to the south as
far as the bottom of Van Diemen's Gulf. They are generally found
congregated in herds of twenty to fifty, under the guidance of a single
full-grown male, oftentimes of enormous size. But stragglers are often
met with far beyond these limits. The young males are turned out of the
herd by the patriarch as soon as they approach maturity, becoming
wanderers for life unless they can re-establish themselves, or gain a
footing in other herds; and this can only be done by killing or driving
off the leading bull. Of course many are doomed to a solitary life, and
roam far from the haunts of their fellows. There is no danger of the
buffaloes mixing with the herds of the settlers, as the antagonism
between these cattle races is pronounced and insurmountable.
[Illustration: THE BOTANICAL GARDENS, ADELAIDE.]