The Legislative Council has experienced sincere gratification in the
announcement made to it by your Excellency, of the arrival, at the
Goolwa, of the first river-borne wool, the produce of the vast basin of
the Murray.
The opening up of the navigation of the Murray has long been anxiously
desired; and your Excellency's earnest and undeviating exertions to
promote that important object well deserve the warmest thanks of this
Council and of the Colonists of South Australia.
Your Excellency's personal superintendence of the first practical
experiment--which has resulted in demonstrating that that great river is
navigable by steam, for commercial purposes, for at least fourteen
hundred and fifty miles of its course--must necessarily connect the name
of your Excellency with that successful enterprise; and the Council
think that so great a public service should be appropriately
acknowledged.
The Council, therefore, requests your Excellency to cause three Gold
Medals to be engraved, with suitable device and
inscriptions--commemorating the auspicious opening up of the steam
navigation and commerce of the Murray, and the first arrival at the
Goolwa of river-borne wool. And the Council requests that--as the
Lieutenant-Governor of South Australia, whose personal exertions
promoted this great enterprise, and in whose administration it
originated and has been successfully accomplished--your Excellency would
be pleased to receive one of the said Medals.
And the Council further requests that your Excellency will be pleased to
cause one of the said Medals to be conferred on Captain Francis Cadell,
who completed the first commercial voyage, as owner and commander of the
_Lady Augusta_ steamer and _Eureka_ barge, with a cargo of Murray wool;
and the remaining medal may be deposited with the records of the
Legislature of South Australia, under whose sanction the necessary
pecuniary aid was voted in encouragement of the steam navigation of the
River Murray.
JOHN MORPHETT, Speaker.
Legislative Council Chamber, Adelaide,
21st October, 1853.
Reply of His Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor.