in Perth, on the history, condition, and prospects of Western
Australia, that the colony, “as defined by her Majesty’s Commissioners,
includes all that portion of New Holland situated to the westward of
the 129th degree of longitude, and extends between the parallels of 13°
44′ and 35° south, its greatest length being 1,280 miles from north
to south, and its breadth from east to west about 800 miles. The area
is about 1,000,000 square miles, or about eight times the size of the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.” The total population
on December 31, 1871, as given in the Blue Book published in 1872,
was 25,353. On the 31st March, 1870, the population, as taken by the
census, had been 24,785. For a young colony that can only thrive by
an increasing population, the figures are not promising; and they
are the less so, in that the latter number may be probably taken as
exact, whereas the former, showing the increase, has been matter of
calculation. In such calculations there is always a bias towards the
more successful side. With an area so enormous, and a population so
small, the value and distribution of the land form together the one
all-absorbing question. The new-comers arrive intending to live out
of the land, which at any rate is plentiful;--and as new-comers are
not plentiful, it is necessary to tempt them with offers of land. In
all the Australian colonies the system has been the same, although it
has been carried out with various limits and various devices. In the
early days of Western Australia very large grants indeed were given on
compliance by different individuals with certain stipulations as to the
number of emigrants imported and value of stock and goods brought into
the colony. The following grants were made:--
To Mr. Thomas Peel 250,000 acres.
To Colonel Latour 103,000 ”
To Sir James Stirling 100,000 ”
I need hardly say that the estates thus conferred were very extensive,
and such as would together constitute a county in England. The county
of Berkshire contains only 481,280 acres. But it has not appeared that
grants on this scale have done good to the colony, or to those to whom
they were made. In neither of the cases above named has any prosperous
settlement been established on the lands granted, nor, as I believe,
have the families of the recipients been enriched, or permanently
settled in the country. It was soon found that land divided into
smaller quantities would more probably produce the energy which was
wanted, and other schemes were invented. The grants above named were
made under an order issued from the Colonial Office called Circular A,
which was in existence prior to the regular settlement of the colony.
Circular B was issued in 1829, and entitled settlers to free grants of
land at the rate of one acre for every sum of 1_s._ 6_d._ invested on
the land,--the land to be made over in fee at the end of twenty-one
years, if the improvements effected satisfied the government. But this
was soon again changed, and Circular C granted land on and from 1st
January, 1831, to all settlers, at the rate of an acre for every 3_s._
invested, and 100 acres for every servant introduced into the colony,
limiting the time of improvement to four years. But on the 1st March,
1831, Circular D appeared, doing away with all free grants,--excepting
to officers of the army and navy retiring from their profession with
the intention of becoming settlers,--and substituting for such free
grants the sale of the crown lands at a minimum price of 5_s._ an acre.
In July, 1841, the price of the crown lands was raised to 12_s._ an
acre; and subsequently, in the same year, to 20_s._ an acre,--which
may be called the normal Australian price, though variations have
been made upon it in all the Australian colonies;--and, at this rate
of 20_s._ an acre, it was to be sold in blocks of not less than 160
acres each, with a right of commonage attached to each block. In 1843
another change was made, which, however, did not alter the price, but
had reference to the maximum and minimum limits of land which might
be purchased. In 1860 the price was again reduced to 10_s._, and the
quantity to 40 acres. Then, in 1864, came further alteration, and
other laws were enacted, which were those in operation at the time
of my visiting the colony, but which were again changed while I was
there. Under the regulations of 1864 lands were classified as town,
suburban, country, and mineral. Town and suburban lands, the value of
which was of course dependent on the prosperity of the so-called town,
and on the nature of the land around it, were saleable by auction, the
upset or reserve price being fixed by the governor. Mineral lands, or
lands known or supposed to contain minerals, were saleable in lots
not less than 80 acres each, at £3 an acre. The ordinary country
lands,--land, that is, which might be selected here or there by the
immigrant or other intending purchaser,--were again to be sold at
10_s._ an acre, and in blocks of not less than 40 acres each. It is as
to land of this nature,--the ordinary land of the country left open
for inspection,--that the emigrant should interest himself. The same
law of 1864 also defined the term under which pastoral lands should
be let by the Crown in the various districts of the colony, being in
one district at the rate of 20_s._ per 1,000 acres, and in another
10_s._,--with various other stipulations. But the pastoral squatter’s
relations with the Crown are of much less interest to him than are
those of the free-selecter or purchaser. This last law of 1864, as
did all previous land laws in the colony, require that the purchaser
should pay his money down. At first indeed there were free grants under
certain stipulations, then 5_s._ an acre was charged, then 12_s._
then 20_s._, then 10_s._,--but in each case the money was to be paid
at once. In this way during the eleven years up to 1869 inclusive,
117,854 acres were alienated in the colony, showing an average of
something over 10,000 acres a year. For this the Crown,--or we may
more safely say the colony,--received £69,440--or an average of about
£6,300 per annum. The absolute price realised was about 12_s._ 6_d._ an
acre; but the sale had been very slow,--the injury arising from which
was to be found, not in the smallness of the money received, which was
and is a question of quite second-rate importance, but in the absence
of inducement to immigrants, of which it seemed to be evidence. There
is the land, undoubtedly in many districts so fertile as to offer to
new-comers the means of living easily upon its bounties,--producing
wheat, oats, barley, grapes, potatoes, with ordinary fruits and
vegetables in abundance; with a climate preferable to Englishmen to
any other Australian climate except that of Tasmania; certainly with
many drawbacks, the chief of which is the distance from each other of
the districts which are so gifted;--but still a country with all these
gifts. How shall men be induced to come to it, and partake of its good
things?
I cannot say that the question is asked by the colony at large in any
spirit of wide philanthropy, or that it is asked eagerly, as it is,
by those in whose hands rests the government of the colony, with any
special view to benefit the hungry labourers of England and Ireland.
In Western Australia it is simply a question of self-preservation. I
do not know that any good can be done by soft words in the matter. The
colony has never prospered as yet, and is not prospering at present. I
have endeavoured in a previous chapter to show, if not the reason for
the fact, at any rate the fact itself. At first a scanty population
spread itself over a wide district, and, having no extraneous help to
foster it, was on the brink of perishing by its own natural weakness.
Then it called for extraneous help, and received it in the guise of
convicts. But the very aid was an injury,--which has still to be
endured, and, if possible, gradually cured. Convicts do not make a
colony popular with intending colonists. Gold makes a colony popular;
but gold has not been found in Western Australia. Coal makes any land
prosperous; but coal has not been found in Western Australia. Good
harbours assist a colony,--and Western Australia has a magnificent
harbour at King George’s Sound;--but it is 260 miles from the capital,
and is divided from the capital by an uninteresting and useless
country. The so-called harbour near to the capital, that at Freemantle,
is simply a road in which vessels cannot lie safely. Struggling against
these evils, the colony has not hitherto prospered;--but the question
still arises whether something further may not be done to induce men
to settle on its shores and till its lands, and gather its grapes
and figs, and make themselves fat with its fatness. There are two
things which may yet be tried, say the governors and those who are
interested,--which may be tried, perhaps, with some greater confidence
than can be placed in the Micawber hope for gold, and coal, and pearls.
Let us have representative government, and let us have another land
law. The new land law has been passed and proclaimed; and the condition
of the government is a state of transit, being at present half Crown
condition and half representative condition. These at present are the
two great panaceas.
As to the land, I have no doubt that the governors are right. I use
the word in the plural number, as I neither wish to give to any man
the glory which should be another’s, or to take from any man the glory
that is his, and I am not at all aware how far this gentleman or that
is responsible for the new regulations. I will postpone to the next
chapter my endeavour to explain the new law, or that part of it which
may be important to emigrants, as in this chapter I am desirous of
confining myself to the present condition of the colony. The law,
though proclaimed when I was there, had not so come into operation
that any action had been taken under it. The intermediate step between
Crown government and representative government had already been taken,
and had produced effects. This step I believe I may safely attribute
to Mr. Weld, the present governor of the colony, and my readers will
understand that I should not mention his name, did I not thoroughly
agree and sympathize with him in his efforts to do away with a fashion
of government under which I believe that Englishmen will never prosper.
The other Australian colonies are governed by responsible ministers
under irresponsible governors, each with two legislative chambers, of
which the larger and more influential is elected, and the other is
either elected, as in Victoria, or nominated by the leading colonial
minister, as in New South Wales. In these larger colonies the kings,
lords, and commons to which we are accustomed at home, are repeated,
though there is an overriding power in the Secretary of State at home
which somewhat clips the wings of these colonial parliaments, and robs
them of that omnipotence which is the great attraction of our own
Houses. But Western Australia is still a Crown colony. The governor
is responsible, and his advisers, as such, are not so. Legislation
takes its initiation with him. He is supposed, in truth, to govern,
whereas governors in the other colonies are ornamental vice-sovereigns,
whose business it is to superintend society, and to be the medium
of communication between the great minister at home and the smaller
ministers in the colonies. But in Western Australia at present the
governor does not quite govern in the true Crown-colony fashion.
Under the auspices of the present governor, and with the consent of
the Secretary of State at home, an intermediate condition of things
has been reached which is intended to pave the way to responsible
government. There is an executive council, of course,--as there always
has been,--consisting of the governor himself and four officers, of
whom the colonial secretary is supposed to be the leading spirit. These
gentlemen form the governor’s cabinet. But there is also a legislative
council,--a parliament with one house,--of which six members are
nominated by the government and twelve are elected by the different
districts of the colony. Of the six nominated members, three, but not
more than three, may belong to the executive council, and be paid
servants of the Crown. This chamber is nominated and elected for three
years. It sat for the first time in November, 1870, and was deposed
after a second session early in 1872, in consequence of a change in
the adjustment of the right of voting. A re-election was about to take
place when I was in the colony. The last session had, I was told,
been rather stormy. The next, it was thought, would be less so. As
things stand at present, the governor can effect nothing without the
House, nor can the House effect anything without the governor. It
is not so with us or in the other colonies,--as all who understand
parliamentary action are aware. The governor of Western Australia is
under no obligation to accede to the wish of the people as expressed by
the House; but the House has the power of voting supplies, and can, of
course, cause this power to be felt.
Such a confused condition of governing and legislating,--for it is, in
truth, a confused condition,--can only be justified by the inexpediency
of rushing at once from the secure but repressing despotism of a Crown
colony to the unpractical energies of a full-fledged, double-housed
parliament, with responsible ministers, who shall go in and out in
accordance with the majorities of the day. The feeling of the present
governor, and of the minister at home, is, no doubt, in favour of the
full-fledged representation system; but in so small a colony,--in
a colony with a sparse population, scattered over an immense
area,--there must necessarily be great difficulty in finding men fit
to be legislators. And they who may, after a while, become fit, have
as yet had but slender means of learning how legislation should be
conducted. The system, as at present adopted, which will hardly bear
strict investigation on its own merits, may probably be found useful
in giving the necessary training to the leading men of the colony, and
in bringing them by degrees into the ways of discreet legislation. I
must confess that in Western Australia one hears of doings in days not
far remote which lead one to think that any amount of ignorance in a
legislator, that any amount of what I may, perhaps, call rowdyism in a
chamber, is better than practically irresponsible power in the hands
of a would-be mighty colonial officer, removed from home by half the
world’s circumference.
I do not wish to be understood to say that I look to responsible
representative government as a panacea for all the evils with which
Western Australia is afflicted, or that I think that a colony which
would perish without that remedy would by that alone be saved from
ruin. I have no such belief in any form of government. It is in
Western Australia, as elsewhere, by the people and their energy that
the people must be made to flourish. But I do think that a people who
are empowered to act for themselves in politics, even though their
political action should in many instances be unwise, are more likely
to be stirred to energy than are a herd of men driven this way or that
in matters of policy, according as some men from without may choose to
drive them. I am aware that a population of 25,000 is very small to
support, very small to need, all the paraphernalia of a double-housed
parliament; Queensland, however, had not so many when she commenced
the experiment, and with Queensland it has succeeded. I am aware that
there is at present great difficulty in getting proper men for the
position of legislators in Perth;--perhaps I may go further, and say
that as yet these are not to be found in the colony. Men are wanted who
can yearly afford to give a portion of their time in the capital for
nothing, who shall have trained themselves to think, as legislators,
of their country’s good, and not of their own special wants, and who
shall be possessed of that patient demeanour and forbearing temper
which a legislative chamber demands. I doubt whether such men can as
yet be found in Western Australia. I know they have not been plentiful
in the other colonies. I know that in some of the legislative chambers
of Australia rowdy manners are common, and class interests very much
in the ascendant. I am well aware that these chambers are not what
they should be,--are very short, indeed, of being model legislative
chambers. But nevertheless the work is done,--if not in a perfect,
still in a wholesome manner, and the colonies are upon the whole
raised to energy, vitality, and dignity by the unseen operations of
representative government. I believe that the same result would follow
in Western Australia, and that the colonists would gradually throw off
that Micawber tone of hoping to which I have alluded, if the duty were
imposed upon them of managing for themselves.
I reached the colony from Melbourne at Albany, and I left the colony
starting from the same town for Adelaide in South Australia. Albany is
a very pretty little town on King George’s Sound,--which is, I believe,
by far the best harbour on the southern coast of the continent. It is
moreover, very picturesque, though not equally so with Port Jackson and
the coves round Sydney. In Albany there are a few stores, as shops are
always called, a brewery, a depôt for coals belonging to the Peninsular
and Oriental Company, a church, a clergyman, two or three inns, and
two or three government offices. Among the latter I found an old
schoolfellow of my own, who filled the office of resident magistrate,
and in that capacity acted as judge in all matters not affecting life
for a district about as big as Great Britain. His training for these
legal duties he had gained by many years’ service in the Prussian army,
and, I was told, did his work uncommonly well. Albany itself was very
pretty, with a free outlook on to a fine harbour, with bluff headlands
and picturesque islands. The climate is delightful. The place is
healthy. I was assured that the beer brewed there was good. The grapes
were certainly good. For a few moments I thought that I also would like
to be a resident judge at Albany, with unlimited magisterial power
over perhaps a thousand people. It is pleasant, wherever one’s lot is
cast, to be, if not the biggest, at least among the biggest. But I was
told that even at Albany there were squabbles and factions, and that
the rose-colour of the place did not prevail always. And then, though
grapes grew there, and other fruits, and some flowers, I could not find
anything else growing. The useless scrub covered the stony hill-tops
close up to the town. The capital was distant 260 miles, and between
it and the capital there was nothing. The mails came and went once a
month. At each of my visits to Albany the mail excitement was existing.
The Tichborne case was at its highest, and people had much to say. When
I was departing, there were two bishops there. I fancy that I saw the
best of Albany, and that it would be rather dull between the mails.
I travelled to Perth with a friend, having made a bargain with the
mail contractor to take us,--not with the mail, which goes through
without stopping in seventy hours,--but by a separate conveyance in
four days, so that we might sleep during the nights. This we did,
taking our own provisions with us, and camping out in the bush under
blankets. The camping out was, I think, rather pride on our part, to
show the Australians that we Englishmen,--my friend, indeed, was a
Scotchman,--could sleep on the ground, sub dio, and do without washing,
and eat nastiness out of a box as well as they could. There were police
barracks in which we might have got accommodation. At any rate, going
and coming we had our way. We lit fires for ourselves, and boiled our
tea in billies; and then regaled ourselves with bad brandy and water
out of pannikins, cooked bacon and potatoes in a frying-pan, and
pretended to think that it was very jolly. My Scotch friend was a young
man, and was, perhaps, in earnest. For myself, I must acknowledge that
when I got up about five o’clock on a dark wet morning, very damp, with
the clothes and boots on which I was destined to wear for the day, with
the necessity before me of packing up my wet blankets, and endeavoured,
for some minutes in vain, to wake the snoring driver, who had been
couched but a few feet from me, I did not feel any ardent desire to
throw off for ever the soft luxuries of an effeminate civilisation, in
order that I might permanently enjoy the freedom of the bush. But I did
it, and it is well to be able to do it.
No man perhaps ever travelled two hundred and sixty miles with less
to see. The road goes eternally through wood,--which in Australia is
always called bush; and, possibly, sandy desert might be more tedious.
But the bush in these parts never develops itself into scenery, never
for a moment becomes interesting. There are no mountains, no hills
that affect the eye, no vistas through the trees tempting the foot
to wander. Once on the journey up, and once on the return, we saw
kangaroos, but we saw no other animal; now and again a magpie was heard
in the woods, but very rarely. The commonest noise is that of the
bull-frog, which is very loud, and altogether unlike the sound of frogs
in Europe. It is said that the Dutch under Peter Nuyt, when landing
somewhere on these coasts,--probably near Albany,--were so frightened
by the frogs that they ran away. I can believe it, for I have heard
frogs at Albany roaring in such a fashion as to make a stranger think
that the hills were infested with legions of lions, tigers, bears,
and rhinoceroses, and that every lion, tiger, bear, and rhinoceros in
the country was just about to spring at him. I knew they were only
frogs, and yet I did not like it. The bush in Australia generally is
singularly destitute of life. One hears much of the snakes, because
the snakes are specially deadly; but one sees them seldom, and no
precaution in regard to them is taken. Of all animals, the opossum is
the commonest. He may be easily taken, as his habits are known, but he
never shows himself. In perfect silence the journey through the bush
is made,--fifteen miles to some water-hole, where breakfast is eaten;
fifteen on to another water-hole, where brandy and water is consumed;
fifteen again to more water, and dinner; and then again fifteen, till
the place is reached at which the night-fire is made and the blankets
are stretched upon the ground. In such a journey, everything depends on
one’s companion, and in this I was more than ordinarily fortunate. As
we were taken by the mail contractor, we had relays of horses along the
road.
Perth I found to be a very pretty town, built on a lake of brackish
water formed by the Swan River. It contains 6,000 inhabitants, and
of course is the residence of the chief people of the colony,--as
the governor is there, and the legislative chamber, and the supreme
judge, and the bishop. The governor’s house is handsome, as is also the
town-hall. The churches,--cathedrals I should call them,--both of the
Protestants and Roman Catholics, are large and convenient. On my first
arrival I stayed at an inn,--which I did not indeed like very much at
first, as the people seemed to be too well off to care for strangers;
but which in its accommodation was better than can be found in many
towns of the same size in England. I must acknowledge, however, that I
was much troubled by musquitoes, and did not think the excuse a good
one when I was told that a musquito curtain could not be put up because
it was Sunday.
I found that crime of a heavy nature was not common in Perth or the
districts round it, though so large a portion of the population
consisted of men who were or had been convicts. Men were daily
committed for bad language, drunkenness, absconding, late hours, and
offences of like nature. For men holding tickets-of-leave are subjected
to laws which make it criminal for a man to leave his master’s employ,
or to be absent from his master’s house after certain hours, or to
allude in an improper manner in his master’s eyes. And for these
offences, sentences of punishment are given which seem to be heavy,
because it is difficult to bear in mind the difference between free men
and prisoners who are allowed partial freedom under certain conditions.
I have heard it said, more than once or twice, in reference not
specially to Perth, but to the whole colony, that the ticket-of-leave
men are deterred from violence simply by fear, that they are all
thieves when they dare to steal, and that the absence of crime is no
proof of reformation. The physiognomy, and gait, and general idleness
of the men, their habits of drinking when they can get drink, and
general low tendencies, are alleged as proof of this. It cannot be
supposed that convicts should come out from their prisons industrious,
orderly men, fit for self-management. The restraint and discipline to
which they have been subject as convicts, independently of their old
habits, would prevent this. The Bill Sykes look of which I have spoken,
is produced rather by the gaol than by crime. The men are not beautiful
to look at. They do spend their money in drink, filling the bars of the
public-houses, till the hour comes at which they must retire. But it
is much in such a community that they should not return to crimes of
violence.
For myself, I must say that I spent my time in Perth very pleasantly.
I remember being reminded once of the injustice done to a certain poor
community by a traveller who had wandered thither and had received
hospitable treatment. “They cannot be so poor,” the traveller had
said, “because they gave me champagne every day.” Doing honour to the
stranger, they had broached their last bottles of the generous wine,
and, though poor, had put their best foot foremost in exercise of
genuine hospitality. I was told how cruel this was. “We were poor,”
said my informant, “but we gave what we had freely, and were then
twitted with making false complaints.” I cannot but think of this
as I tell my experiences of Perth. I heard very much of the poverty
of Western Australia, but I found that people there lived as they
do elsewhere. There were carriages and horses, and good dinners,
and, if not liveried servants,--a class which is not common in the
colonies,--men waiting with white cotton gloves, who in London would
be presumed to be greengrocers, but who in Perth were probably “lags.”
They seemed to hand the dishes very well.
Of the other town, Freemantle, I have already spoken. I went also
sixty miles up to the west, to Toodjay and Newcastle, which, from
the returns showing the acres under cultivation and the produce, I
find to be one of the best agricultural districts in the colony. It
is surpassed only by the Greenough district. As to the prospects and
past experiences of farmers in this and other parts of the colony, I
found it very difficult to get information on which I could rely. I
came across men who had been farmers, whose report was anything but
good,--who said that to farm in Western Australia was simply to break
the heart. And I came across others,--notably two old colonists in the
Toodjay and Northam districts,--who assured me that they had done very
well. In each of these cases the men had had sons capable of working
with their own hands and not too proud to work. Hitherto I do not think
that there has been scope for farmers who employed much outside labour.
The labour has been dear and bad,--and money has been hard to get.
There has always been and still is a great effort to pay labourers in
produce,--but this cannot be done entirely, and the farmer who hires
has drained from him almost all the money that he can earn.
That the farming has been and is atrociously bad, there can be no
doubt. Men continue to crop the same ground with the same crops year
after year without manuring it, and when the weeds come thicker than
the corn, they simply leave it. Machinery has not been introduced.
Seed is wasted, and farmers thrash their corn with flails out on the
roads after the old Irish fashion. I need hardly say that there is no
reason why this should continue to be so. That the land would soon pay
for good farming I have no doubt, even though the surplus grain were
sent home to England. At present the colony, which should above all
things strive to be an agricultural colony, actually imports flour and
grain to the amount of about £6,000 per annum.
I have already said that wool is the staple commodity of the country.
I doubt much whether it will continue to be so, as the trade of
wool-growing does not seem to extend itself in any way at all
commensurate with the area of land which it occupies. In 1869, there
were 654,054 sheep in Western Australia, and in 1871 the number had
increased only to 670,999. In the other wool-growing colonies, it is
thought that no squatter can make money on a run with less than 10,000
sheep. In Western Australia, 3,000 or 4,000 are considered to be a
fairly large number, and squatters frequently run flocks that do not
exceed 1,500 or 2,000 over enormous tracks of land. In New South Wales
and Queensland, few squatters have less than a sheep to three acres. No
rule can be laid down, as every run must be considered as a whole, and
on most runs there is some land, more or less, which is not fit for use
at all. But a squatter with 60,000 acres will generally have grass for
20,000 sheep. In Western Australia, one hears of a sheep to ten acres,
and a sheep to twenty acres. The sheep of the Australian colonies
amount together, I believe, to about forty millions. In Western
Australia, which boasts of being the largest in area of them all, there
is not as yet one million. In truth there is very much against the
squatter. It is not only that much of the land which is called pastoral
bears a poisoned shrub fatal to sheep;--but that, from this and other
causes, the distances are so great that a sufficient number of sheep to
make the business really remunerative can hardly be kept together.
I found rural wages lower in Western Australia than in the other
colonies,--the reason for which is of course to be traced to the
nature of the labour market. The squatter, or farmer, expects to get
a man who is or was a convict, and the price of the work is arranged
accordingly. It averages about 3_s._ a day without rations, or from
30_s._ to 40_s._ a month with rations. I was told that a man’s rations
cost 10_s._ a week,--which is much higher than in the other colonies. I
do not doubt that the men are charged at this rate. If the man be paid
full wages, so that he has to feed himself, he must in most cases get
all his supplies from his employer’s store, and the employer exacts a
large profit. If the employer feeds the man, he calculates the rations
supplied at the rate that he would sell them, and fixes his wages
accordingly. Thus a man with 40_s._ a month, with rations, would be
supposed to receive 80_s._ a month, although he would not cost his
employer above 68_s._
The wages of mechanics are about the same here as in the other
colonies: masons, carpenters, and blacksmiths earning about 7_s._ a day
throughout the colony.
There are so-called public schools throughout the colony, supported by
government, and free to necessitous persons. They who can pay are made
to pay, at rates ranging from 6_d._ to 1_s._ a week; but the greater
part of the expense of the schools is borne by the colonial revenues.
The sum so expended is between £3,000 and £4,000 a year. In 1871, there
were 1,730 scholars at these schools, a number which seems to be too
small for the population. I find, however, that in the year previous to
that, namely, 1870, out of the whole population, there were only 3,945
above the age of five who could neither read nor write.
In Western Australia the State still takes charge of the religion
of the people, and pays £3,560 per annum for its ecclesiastical
establishment. Of this by far the lion’s share goes to the Church
of England. There are fourteen so-called chaplains stationed in
different districts of the colony, and the theory I believe is, that
they are appointed to look after the souls of the convicts. They do,
in fact, act as parish clergymen. They receive from the government
£200 per annum each, and their income is subsidized to a small degree
by the public who attend their churches. Small payments are also
made to the Roman Catholic and Wesleyan Churches. But all this will
soon be altered. The payments from imperial funds will doubtless
be discontinued as the convict establishment dies out, and all
ecclesiastical payment will be brought to an end by representative
government here, as has been or as is being done in the other colonies.
I fear that, when it is so, the difficulty of maintaining clergymen in
Western Australia will be very great.
CHAPTER IV.
FUTURE PROSPECTS.
I fear that it will seem that in what I have said I have given a
verdict against Western Australia. I have intended rather to show how
great may be the difficulties attending the establishment of a young
colony, which in its early years finds no special or unexpected aid
from remarkable circumstances. The same struggles with equal hardship
and similar doubts have no doubt been made before, and nothing has been
said of them. The stragglers have lived through and fought their way to
prosperity, and but little has been heard of the details of the fight.
When the Puritans were landed on the shores of Massachusetts men did
not rush about the world and write books. It may probably be that they
too, at their first starting, had but few glimpses of the glory of the
coming Yankee world. It was perhaps only by hard fighting with adverse
circumstances that they could get corn, and labour, and money. But they
went on, and the glories of Yankeedom are now patent to the whole earth.
It is to the gold that has been found in Eastern Australia that the
eastern colonies have owed their rapid rise and great name;--and in a
great measure, the want of reputation under which Western Australia
labours is due to the golden achievements of her sisters. She would not
have been thought to have done so badly, had not those sisters done so
well. This cannot be pleaded as being entirely sufficient to account
for the effect, because we know that South Australia has not done much
with gold, and South Australia holds up her head. I have not yet
spoken of South Australia, but, when doing so, I will endeavour to show
how and why she has prospered.
And then, in another way, the gold-diggings of the eastern colonies
have been detrimental not only to the reputation, but to the very
existence of Western Australia. Men have constantly gone after the
gold. It became almost useless to land emigrants on the western
shore. Tidings came of this rush and of that rush, and the new-comers
disappeared, soon turning up, as new chums again, in the golden land. I
have expressed my opinion more than once that the majority of those who
have rushed after gold have done themselves but little good;--but they
enriched the colony to which their labour was given, and from which
they drew their supplies. Gradually this evil of “rushing” is dying
out. The amount of Australian gold produced may go on increasing year
by year for many years. They who profess to understand the matter think
that it will do so. But the gold will come from quartz-crushing,--from
that eating up and digesting of the very bowels of the mountains by
heavy machinery, which I have endeavoured to describe elsewhere,--and
not by the washing of alluvial soil. It is the latter pursuit which has
produced the rushes, whereas the former produces steady industry with a
fixed rate of wages. The shifting of labour from colony to colony will,
I think, from this cause, become less common than it has been, and
agricultural work will hold its own against mining work,--in Australia
as in other countries. It is a mining country, and there will be many
miners;--but it will not occur to every man that he should be a miner.
In speaking of the future of Western Australia I shall not receive
the thanks or sympathies of many of its inhabitants, if I express
an opinion that that future is to be independent of gold. The idea
is deep-rooted that there should be gold and must be gold,--that
Providence cannot have been so unjust as not to have put gold there.
Why not in the west as well as in the east? And then the stranger is
told of mica, and slate, and quartz, and boulders,--and of the very
confident opinion which Mr. Hargreaves expressed. I know nothing of
mica, and slate, and quartz, and boulders,--and very little of Mr.
Hargreaves. But I know that no gold worthy of the name has been found
yet; and that the finding of gold in infinitesimal quantities has
been common in many countries. Doubtless gold may turn up in Western
Australia, but I trust that the colony will be too wise to wait for it.
Should it come, let the favour be accepted from the gods;--but I do not
think that men should live expecting it.
In the meantime what other measures may serve to turn the tide, and
produce some life and action? The land is good, and if properly tilled
will produce all that is necessary for man’s life. And the land that
will do so, though widely scattered, is abundant. I need hardly
say that at home in England there are still among us millions of
half-starved people,--half-starved certainly according to the dietary
of the poorest even in this poor colony,--to whom the realisation of
rural life in Western Australia would seem to be an earthly paradise if
it could be understood,--to whom it would be a paradise if it could be
reached. I have spoken in anything but flattering terms of the colony
and its labourers. I have not depicted the present normal Western
Australian carter as a very picturesque fellow. But, bad as he is, he
can always get enough to eat and drink, and, if he will behave himself
well, can always have a comfortable home.
But they who will come now will not be unpicturesque with the
lineaments of the gaol, as he has been, and the more that may come
the less probability will there be of mistaken suspicions. Living is
cheaper than in England, as meat is 4_d._ instead of 10_d._ a pound,
and wages are higher;--for in no agricultural county in England do they
rule so high throughout the year as 18_s._ a week. In the colony 18_s._
a week are the lowest that I have known to be given without rations.
And the rural labourer in Western Australia is more independent than
in England. How, indeed, could he possibly be less so! He is better
clothed, has a better chance of educating his children, and certainly
lives a freer and more manly life.
But how shall the rural labourer out of Sussex, Suffolk, Essex, or
Cambridgeshire get to Western Australia? If there were no pecuniary
difficulty in the journey,--if every labourer were empowered by Act
of Parliament to go to some parish officer and demand to be sent
across the ocean,--it is probable that a very large fleet of transport
ships would soon be required, and that English farmers would find
it difficult to get in their seed. This can never be the case, but
something towards it is done. The colonies assist intending immigrants,
and the mother country too assists, or, in some cases, pays the entire
expense of emigrants. We sent out those ill-born and ill-bred women
who were wanted as convicts’ wives,--and who, when received, were
found to be mere Irish. But it is ill bringing a man out who will not
stay when he is brought. If you, my philanthropical reader, send out
some favoured tenant or parishioner, your object is fairly achieved
whether the man make himself happy in Western Australia or Victoria.
But it is by no means so with the colony, when the colony pays. When a
colony has paid for three or four hundred immigrants, and finds after a
few months that they have all disappeared, and gone to more fortunate
lands, the colony not unnaturally becomes disgusted. Then it is that
the colony feels that nothing will do but gold. And the mother country
is affected somewhat in the same way, though less bitterly. It is
said now that England has promised a certain number of free emigrants
to Western Australia, and that she has not kept her word. But the
mother country says that, as regards Western Australia, it is useless
to send her emigrants unless she can keep them. In speaking of the
continuance of the obligation on the part of England, Lord Granville,
in July, 1869, wrote as follows:--“It has already been laid down as a
condition of that continuance that the immigration should be wanted,
and such as the colony can provide for; but it is clear from the census
returns that the large proportion of these persons who reach Western
Australia do not remain in it. There is therefore the strongest primâ
facie evidence that the immigration is not wanted.” The men are tempted
away; and do the colony, for whose benefit they were sent, no good
by their short sojourn. Then why send them? Renewed petitions for
emigrants, emigrants to be sent out at the expense of the government,
were made; but the Secretary of State was firm. Nominated emigrants
would remain,--emigrants nominated by friends in the colony. So pleaded
the governor, with an anxiety which showed that at any rate his heart
was in the matter. But the Secretary of State was still hard. “Her
Majesty’s Government are fully aware,” he said in 1870, “that nominated
emigrants are more likely to remain in the colony than others; but
unfortunately they have no evidence before them that either one or the
other class do in fact remain.”
How shall men and women be got who will remain:--who will come to the
place in order that they may live upon the land, and not simply making
it a stepping-stone to some rush for gold? It can only be done by
making the land attractive; and the great attraction offered by land is
ownership. Let a man understand that he can have land of his own and
live upon it, owing rent to no one and service to no one, subject to
no bondage, with no one to order his coming in and his going out, with
no tasks laid on his shoulders by another, that he can be altogether
free from the dominion of a master, and you open up to his mental eyes
a view of life that is full of attraction. This new home, that is so
unlike the home that he is to leave, is indeed far across the waters,
in another world, away from the comrades and circumstances of his life
amidst which he feels that, though wretched, he is secure. He feels
that if he go he can never return; and he hears vague, unsatisfactory,
even contradictory accounts of the new land. He knows that he is
groping his way, and that, should he go, he will at last take a leap in
the dark. Even with those among us who have many friends, the nature
of whose life has taught us where to look for information, who can not
only write but express in writing what we mean, who can not only read
but know where to find the books that will teach us that we want to
learn, there is felt to be much difficulty when the question arises
whether we shall remove ourselves and our household gods to the new
home that we call a colony, or whether we shall send a son to push his
fortunes in the new country. To digest what we have learned and bring
it all together so that we may act upon it safely is no easy task. What
must it be to the working man whom some newspaper has reached, or some
advertisement to emigrants; and who, in addition to this, has heard
the vague surmises of his neighbour? He goes to the parson, or to the
squire, or perhaps to his employer,--and is recommended to remain.
The adviser hardly dares to say otherwise, and is probably himself
impregnated with the patriotic idea that there is no place for an
Englishman like England. For members of parliament, and men with £5,000
a year, or with prosperous shops in Cheapside,--for some even whose
fortune is less brilliant than that,--England is a very comfortable
home. No land can beat it. But for Englishmen in general, that is, for
the bulk of the working population of the country, it is I think by
no means the best place. A large proportion of our labouring classes
cannot even get enough to eat. A still larger proportion are doomed so
to work that they can think of nothing but a sufficiency of food. In
all the Australian colonies, if a man will work the food comes easily,
and he can turn his mind elsewhere. I do not assert that there is no
poverty,--no distress. Even in Western Australia the government is
obliged to maintain an establishment for paupers. But poverty is not
the rule, and a man who will work and can work may be independent.
Success in emigration depends much on the fashion of the thing, and
this peculiar exodus,--to Western Australia namely,--is not at present
fashionable. If in the course of the next two or three years two or
three thousand new-comers were to land upon its shores and stay there,
the thing would be done. And the two or three thousand would find
plenty and happy homes. But solitary immigrants to the colony feel that
they become mixed with the convict population. At the present moment
great encouragement has been offered to new-comers,--to men who on
arriving with a few pounds in their pockets will be willing to work
with their own hands, but who will so work on their own lands.
I do not know how far, in what I have written of the other colonies,
I may have been able to make my English reader understand the nature
and position of a “free-selecter.” I found it very difficult to
understand myself, or to come to a conclusion whether he should
be regarded as the normal British emigrant,--manly, industrious,
independent, and courageous,--or a mere sheep-stealer. There was one
other alternative, hardly more attractive than the last. He need not
be a mere sheep-stealer, though probably he would do a little in
that line; but might have free-selected with the first great object
of making his presence so unbearable to the squatter on whose run he
had perched himself, that the squatter would be obliged to buy him
out. I certainly found that the manly, independent, and courageous
free-selecter was not the free-selecter of whom the squatters talked
to me in Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria. The squatters did
not carry me with them altogether; but it certainly is the case that
free-selecters in these colonies often do steal sheep, and often do
make themselves disagreeable. A man desirous of free-selecting,--say
in Queensland and New South Wales, for the game has nearly been played
out within the smaller and more valuable confines of Victoria,--has the
whole world of the colony open to him, and very little to divert his
course. He searches and inquires, and, actuated by good or bad motives,
settles down on some bit of land which he thinks will grow corn, and
where he is sure to be hated by the squatter whom he is invading. The
colonial governments offer him every possible encouragement as to
money,--land at 15_s._ an acre, land at 10_s._ an acre, and especially
land with deferred payments,--with payments taking the shape of rent,
perhaps 1_s._ 6_d._ or 1_s._ an acre per annum,--the land becoming
his own at the end of a term of years, the yearly deferred payments
having been taken as the price of it. But the governments have done
little or nothing to assist the free-selecter in placing himself. A
part of the charm of the thing in the eyes of the free-selecter has
been the power of choosing his land. We can understand that there is a
pleasure in going well on to the run of some great squatter, pegging
out some 40, 80, or 160 acres, and saying, “By your leave, sir, I mean
to have this.” We can understand that there is pleasure in doing it,
and great pain in enduring it. My sympathies have been chiefly with
the free-selecter, not believing that he is always a sheep-stealer,
and feeling that the land should be open to him. Pastoral autocrats
with acres by the hundreds of thousands,--acres which are not their
own,--cannot fill up a country. They are the precursors of population,
and, as the population comes, should make way for it. But might it not
be arranged that the free-selecters should be invited to come and take
up their lands in some manner less objectionable than that which has
hitherto prevailed?
When I was in Western Australia new land regulations were issued and
proclaimed, having just received the sanction of the Colonial Office at
home; and these regulations go a long way towards effecting a remedy
for those evils attaching to free-selection which I have attempted
to describe,--and they will remedy another evil which, in Western
Australia especially, is very detrimental to the selecting farmer.
They will bring the agricultural occupiers of the land together. Men
are invited to occupy lands chosen for “special occupation.” By this
arrangement the skill and experience of the land officers of the colony
will be used on behalf of the selecter, who will not only be enabled to
place himself on soil capable of bearing corn, but will find himself
surrounded by others, occupied as he is in producing corn. In this
way rural communities may be formed which shall not be sheep-stealing
communities. The locality having been chosen in the first place, not
by the new-comer, but by the government, sheep-stealing will not at
any rate have been the object when the choice was made,--nor the idea
that a squatter if harassed sufficiently may at last be induced to buy
his neighbour out. Communities will be formed, and communities will
make markets. I have sometimes thought that free-selecters like to
take their land up far away in the bush, at long distances each from
another. There is a wild independence in the doing so which charms. But
no decision can be more detrimental to the man’s material interest.
When so located he is driven to consume all that he grows, and
then,--unless he steal sheep,--he can consume nothing else. That which
is most to be desired by him is that gradually a township should be
formed round his homestead.
Immigrants and others are invited by these new regulations to take
up land selected for special occupation, and great boons are offered
to those who will do so. In the first place the payment of the price
of the land is deferred. Hitherto in this colony it has always been
necessary that the price of the land should be paid down. The land, as
has been explained elsewhere, has been purchased at various prices,
ranging from 5_s._ to 20_s._ an acre,--but there has been no deferred
payment. At last 10_s._ an acre was the settled price,--and so it
remains. The ordinary free-selecter may go where he will beyond the
limits of town, suburban, or mineral lands, and, if no purchaser have
been before him, may purchase any amount of land in blocks of not
less than 40 acres, at 10_s._ an acre. But when purchasing after this
fashion he must pay his money down. If he will take up land selected
for special occupation, he need not pay his money down. He need only
pay 1_s._ an acre per annum, such payment being required in advance. He
must then fence the whole of his land and till a quarter of it during
the ten years over which the payment is deferred.--and if he do thus
the land becomes his own.
There are other stipulations which the intending emigrant should
understand. The purchaser cannot purchase in this manner less than 100
acres. It is considered that he cannot crop all the land yearly, and
that less than 100 acres will not afford a man subsistence. Nor can he
take up more than 500 acres. In addition to the use of the land which
will be his own at the end of the ten years, and will be in his own
hands during the previous occupancy, the selecter will be entitled to
run cattle and sheep upon commonages, or neighbouring lands not fitted
for agricultural purposes. It is stipulated that the common land shall
in no case exceed 200 per cent. of the land fitted for agricultural
purposes,--so that the commonage for 2,000 agricultural acres, or
acres fit for agriculture, shall not exceed 4,000 acres. It is not
stipulated that the commonage shall amount to any fixed number of
acres. It is understood, however, that it will suffice,--not of course
for the produce of wool,--but for meat and milk.
In writing for the information of future emigrants, it is very
difficult to make the exact truth clearly intelligible. The new
regulations speak of land fitted for agricultural purposes, and in
what I have written above I have spoken of “agricultural” land. The
emigrant who comes out to take up lands selected for special occupation
in Western Australia, must not expect that he will find ploughed
fields. He will find forest land, covered more or less thickly with
timber,--what all the world in Australia knows as bush,--and it will
be his first work to clear that portion of his holding from which he
intends to get his first crop. But the land will have been chosen as
being fitted, when cleared, for agricultural purposes. The thickness,
and what I may call obduracy, of timber is very various. It may be
presumed that the land chosen will not be heavily timbered. I was told
that the average price of clearing bush in Western Australia was about
£4 an acre. A man contracting to do such work would expect to make
25_s._ a week. If this be so, a man knowing what he was about would
clear an acre in three weeks.
But, to my thinking, the best part of the offer made still remains
to be told. Any emigrant taking up land in the colony selected for
special occupation within six months of his landing,--the time named
should I think have been prolonged to at least twelve months,--and
who can show that he has fulfilled the above conditions with regard
to improvements, is entitled to the value of his passage-money out,
provided that passage-money does not exceed £15; and he will have the
same allowance made to him for every adult he brings with him,--the
money to be credited to him in the payments made for his land. The
offer in fact amounts to this,--that thirty acres will be allowed free
for every adult whom the immigrant may bring with him to settle on the
land, provided that the passage out has cost £15,--which is I presume
the usual price of sending an adult to Western Australia. I am also
assured, certainly on good authority, that half the allowance will be
made for non-adults; but there is no proviso in the bill itself to this
effect.
The result of all this any intending emigrant can calculate for
himself. A man with a wife and one adult and one non-adult child would
in fact get his one hundred acres for nothing. If his family were
larger, he would get more land;--but he should bear in mind that he has
to fence it all and till a quarter of it within ten years, and that in
this way a larger acreage may become an increased burden to him rather
than an increased property.
Of course I am here addressing those who have in their own hands
the means of emigrating. Not only will the £15 a head be wanting in
bringing out his family, but also something on which to live when the
new country is first reached. But, presuming that a working man with a
working family can raise £200,--a very strong presumption I fear,--I do
not know that he could do better than establish himself as a farmer in
Western Australia.
I believe that Western Australia has no agent at home, as have the
other colonies, a part and perhaps the chief part of whose business it
is to facilitate the emigration of those who intend settling themselves
in the new colony. Why should we pay an agent to send us emigrants
when no emigrants will come to us? That no doubt is the feeling of a
desponding Western Australian. And yet the colony has, as I think,
with much wisdom offered most alluring terms to emigrants. At present,
however, I do not see how these terms are to be made known to persons
at home. I say this as an apology for the insertion here of details
which cannot, I fear, interest the ordinary reader.
It is admitted on all hands that Western Australia cannot be made
to thrive until her population shall be increased by new-comers.
Twenty-five thousand people may perhaps live together in comfort within
confines which shall be sufficiently extended to afford to all a
sufficiency of land, and at the same time compact enough to bring them
together. But Western Australia is an enormous country, and its scanty
population is spread about it by hundreds. The so-called settled
districts are twelve in number, and the average area of each is more
than half as big as England. The average population of each district is
only just above 2,000. Let the English reader conceive the ten northern
counties of England with 2,000 inhabitants between them! And in saying
this I am speaking of the settled districts,--not of the distant
regions which are claimed by the colony as belonging to it, and which
will remain probably for centuries, perhaps for ever, uninhabited. An
influx of population is necessary to Western Australia, not only that
there may be enough of men and women to form a community and administer
to each other’s wants, but that the very nature may be changed of those
upon whose industry the colony now depends. In its deep distress it
accepted convicts, and was saved, as I think, from utter collapse by
doing so. But the salvation effected was not healthy in its nature. I
have given the figures over and over again. To make up a population of
twenty-five thousand souls, ten thousand male convicts have been sent!
Life and property are fairly safe. Work is done. The place is by no
means a lawless place. Those who emerge from their sentences reformed
are encouraged to prosper. Those who come out unreformed are controlled
and kept down. But nevertheless the convict flavour pervades the
whole,--to the great detriment of that part of the working population
which has always been free. This evil is of course curing itself by
degrees. The colony receives no more convicts, and the very birth and
growth of its young citizens will gradually obliterate the flavour. But
this would be done much more quickly and much more effectually by an
influx of new blood. Nothing would tend so much to the improvement of
the people as any step that would enable the enfranchised convict to
move about among his fellow-labourers without being known as a convict.
It is so in New South Wales and Tasmania. Intimate intercourse will
probably reveal the secrets of a man’s past life in any country; and
if a man once degraded afterwards rise high, his former degradation
will be remembered. But in these once convict colonies time is having
its effect, and men’s minds are not always referring to the matter. It
does not affect the rate of wages, nor the character of the work to
be done. The once convict does not feel that every one regards him as
a convict, and does not therefore work as convicts work. In Western
Australia the man who never was a convict will fall into such habits of
work, simply because they form the rule of life around him. Nothing but
an increasing population will cure this quickly.
But the very fact that it is so, the very injury to which the colony
has been subjected in this matter, gives in one respect the surest
promise that here a new-comer may find a prosperous home. In England,
as all the world knows, residences of all kinds are to be had at a much
cheaper rate to the east of London than at the west. The east has all
its disadvantages,--which are chiefly of a sentimental or fashionable
nature. The man who can despise these may live there in a commodious
house, who would be forced to put up with straitened quarters if he
allowed himself to follow the fashion. Western Australia is the east
side of London. The objections to it, bad as they are, concern chiefly
sentiment and fashion. I do not recommend the man who is taking out
£20,000 to a colony, with the idea of becoming a great man, to go
there; but to him who feels that with £200 or £300 he has but little
hope in England, and who would prefer independence and property of
his own to the composite luxuries and miseries of a crowded country,
I think that Western Australia offers perhaps as good a field for his
small capital as any other colony.
I have endeavoured, as I have gone on, to indicate the natural sources
of wealth to which the colony has a right to look. To those that I
have already named I should add the breeding of horses, for which it
seems to be specially adapted. At present the business is limited by
the difficulty which the breeders have in disposing of their produce.
India is their great market,--together with Batavia and Singapore. But
there are no middle traders to take the young horses off the hands of
the breeders,--who cannot themselves breed horses, and charter ships,
and conduct the sales. This again is one of the evils to which a scanty
population is ever subject.
I have no doubt that the exportation of jarrah-wood and of pearl-shell
will become large and prosperous trades. The former will probably be
by far the most beneficial to the colony, as it will be prosecuted by
men in the colony,--whereas the pearl-shell will be sought and taken
away by coasting strangers. It is hard, too, to believe that a country
should be so prolific in grapes as this is without some result. I
will not take upon myself to say that I drank West Australian wine
with delight. I took it with awe and trembling, and in very small
quantities. But we all know that the art of making wine does not come
in a day;--and even should it never be given to the colony to have its
Château This, or Château That, its 1841, its 1857, or 1865, or the
like,--still it may be able to make raisins against the world.
Gold of course may turn up even yet. For myself, I look to corn and
fruit, and perhaps oil,--to the natural products springing from the
earth,--as the source of the future comfort of this enormous territory.
INDEX.
SOUTH AUSTRALIA.
Aboriginals at Work, 65
Acres under Cultivation for various Crops, 43
Act of Parliament under which the Colony was formed, 11
Adelaide, Capital of the Colony, 19, 21, 28
Albert, Lake, 5
Alexandrina, Lake, 5
Angas, Mr., 12
Ballot, 77
Barker, Captain, Mountain named after him, 6
Burra Burra Copper-mines, 60
Church of England, 24
Cockatoo Farmers, 33
Constitution given to the Colony, 15-18
Coorong River, 6
Copper, 58
Darling River, 5
Debates in Parliament, 79
Droughts prevalent, 38, 45
Early History of the Colony, 3
Farming badly done, 32
Gambier-Town, 55
Gawler, Colonel, second Governor, 12
Gold, 58
Gordon, A. L., the Poet, 57
Goyder’s Line of Rainfall, 38
Great Northern Railway through the Colony, 72
Grey, Captain, Governor, 13
Hindmarsh, Captain, first Governor, 12
Hutt, Sir William, 12
Kapunda Copper Mines, 59
Kooringa-Town, 60
Land, Price of, as regards the Colonies generally, 10
Land, Sale of, 36-38
Legislature, 76
Light, Colonel, Surveyor-General, 12
Mail Coach “Bushed,” 67
Meat, Price of, and Exportation, 52, 53
Moonta Copper-mine, 61, 62
Mount Gambier, 55
Murray River, 5
Murrumbidgee River, 4
Nepean Bay, 12
Nobs and Snobs, 60
Northern Territory, 68
Pastoral Rents, 54
Population, 19
Portalloch Cattle Station, 55
Port Darwin, 74
Port Wallaroo, 62
Religious Sects, 25
Revenue, 81
Robe, Colonel, Governor, 14
Salt-bush, Pasture for Sheep, 50
Sheep, Loss of, for Want of Rain, 45
Sinnett, Mr., his Account of the Colony, 12
Smelting Works at Wallaroo, 66
Strathalbyn-Town, 55
Sturt, Captain, his Discoveries, 4
Telegraph Wire from Adelaide to Port Darwin, 69
Torrens, Colonel, 12
Torrens River, 26
Victoria, Re-emigration to, from South Australia, 14
Vineyards, 41
Wakefield, Mr. Gibbon, 8-11, 37
Wallaroo Copper-mine, 61, 65
Water Supply, 26
Wheat, Staple of the Colony, 30
Wine, 42
Wool, 44, 47
WESTERN AUSTRALIA.
Aborigines, 89
Albany, Town of, 122
Cathedrals, 125
Certificate needed on leaving the Colony, 114
Coal, 95
Convicts, Condition of, 96, 99, 110, 113
Convicts, Effect of, 96
Convicts, Native, 107
Convicts, Petitions that they may be sent out, 93, 94
Corroboree, Native Dance, 109
Emigrants, Allowance to, in Land, 140
Emigrants cannot be sent out by Government, 135
Eyre, Mr., Explorer, 94
Farming badly carried on, 104, 127
Freemantle, Captain, of the “Challenger,” 87
Freemantle, Town of, 109
Free-Selecters, 137
Future Prospects of Colony, 131
Gas, 95
Gold, 100, 132
Government, Form of, 120
Grapes, 93, 123
Hargreaves, Mr., searches for Gold, 100
Jarrah-Wood, 103
Journey to Perth, 123
King George’s Sound, 86, 94, 123
Knight, Mr., his Book on the Colony, 115
Land, Grants of, 115
Land, Modes of Sale, 116, 137
Land selected for Special Occupation, 139
Lockyer, Major, 87
New Norcia, Roman Catholic Establishment for Native Children, 90
Newcastle, 127
Nickol Bay, 101
Nuyt, Peter, afraid of Frogs, 124
Pearls, Fishery, 101
Perth, Capital of the Colony, 112, 125
Poisonous Shrub, 103
Population, 115, 141
Provisions, Price of, 133
Rottnest, 106
Sandal-Wood, 103
Schools of the Colony, 129
Sheep, Number of, 102
Stirling, Governor, 87, 93
Squatters, 128
Ticket-of-Leave Men, 126
Toodjay District, 95, 127
Wages, Rate of, 129
Weld, Governor, 104, 119, 121
Wine, 144
Wool, Staple of the Colony, 102, 128
THE END.
PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO., CITY ROAD, LONDON.
Transcriber’s notes
Page 95 - Corrected 9th January, 1860 to 9th January, 1868
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations
in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other
spelling and punctuation remains unchanged, unless otherwise noted
above.
Italics are represented thus _italic_.