Northern Territory

“ The Northern Territory is the tropical area of some half a million square miles ceded by the state of South Australia to the central government. The Federal Territory corresponds nearly to our District of Columbia; for it is the nine hundred and forty square miles set aside for Canberra, the new capital of the Commonwealth. During the erection of the necessary buildings at Canberra, the capital remains at Melbourne. The territory of Papua, or British New Guinea, is the southeastern part of the island of New Guinea and is administered by officials nominated by the Governor-General of Australia. ”

“ 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. ”

“ DENNIS JOSEPH DOHERTY, M.L.C.
AUSTRALIA is so young and so large that there are immense areas of her country unsettled, and even unexplored. In the north of Western Australia, in the Northern Territory of South Australia, and in remote Queensland, there are expansive stretches still hid in their primal gloom. No white man has trod these wastes, no pathfinder has picked his curious way through these tropical regions; the natives—the children of the bush—remain lords of their primeval birthplaces. ”

“ The best thing Australia can do with the Northern Territory is to combine its administration with that of New Guinea, under the Crown Colony system of Government, and permit the introduction of native labour from New Guinea—at any rate for domestic service or work on the plantations. ”

“ In my opinion, the Northern Territory cannot absorb all those people in employment, and, consequently, the question of disposing of the half-caste population arises. Should the total population reach 10,000, there will be work for, say, 3,000 of them. The problem will then arise as to who will do the work that is available. If half-castes are employed, the whites will be unemployed, and they will leave the country. If, on the other hand the whites are employed, the half-castes will be out of work, and will have to be maintained by the Commonwealth Government. ”

“ Victoria lay more to the south than our province, and now that we stretched far inside the tropics the name seemed ridiculous. My friend Miss Sinnett suggested Centralia as the appropriate name for the State, which by this gift was really the central State; but in the present crisis, when South Australia finds the task of keeping the Northern Territory white too arduous and too costly, and is offering it on handsome terms to the Commonwealth, Centralia might not continue to be appropriate. Our northern possession has cost South Australia much. ”

“ That policy, which has since been adopted by Western Australia, has been assailed from time to time, and, therefore, I shall give reasons for it. The white population of the Northern Territory is less than 4,000. Unless some unforeseen event occurs, such as the discovery of oil in payable quantities, or of valuable deposits of precious metals, that population is not likely to exceed 10,000 or 12,000 during the next half-century. ”

“ G. R. McMinn, and during that gentleman!s extended absence he supervised the northern Land and Survey Department, and also the Public Works Department. A considerable portion of the Northern Territory, although one of the earliest parts of the Australian coast to be sighted by old world navigators, was, at this time, practically unknown, and even to-day much survey and exploration work requires to be conducted. While in charge of the Survey Department there Mr. Lindsay entered some of the pathless expanses, and, according to his bent, was ambitious to penetrate and explore them more fully. ”

“ Those employed on stations as stockriders and horse-hunters become very useful and clever at the business, having a special aptitude for working among stock, and they are, as a rule, well treated, clothed, and fed. The Northern Peninsula up to Cape York is the only territory in Queensland where the natives may still be found in their original state, and on some of the rivers flowing into the Gulf they are still numerous. ”

“ To these things the leaders of the people had determined not to submit; and rather than brook such treatment, an exodus from the Territory was determined upon.
Early spring saw the people in the northern settlements moving en masse for the south, leaving only enough men in the deserted settlements to fire them and lay waste the country. Alfred Cumming might be Governor of the Territory, but the people leaving would make his sceptre a barren one. ”

“ According to the commission whereby this colony is governed, the Sovereignty of the Crown is asserted over the whole of the territory comprised within the limits it defines ? limits always including a large portion of the Northern Island of New Zealand; that part in fact between which and New South Wales any intercourse existed ? limits which by a Commission of so late a date as the 15th of June, 1840, were further extended so as to comprise that group of islands in the Pacific commonly called New Zealand. ”

“ It has joined Perth to Albany by a good railway, and several branch railways have been constructed, as well as a large number of telegraph lines; and at Albany, the town on King George’s Sound, it has established a coaling depôt for the mail steamers on their way to Adelaide, Melbourne, and Sydney. But West Australia is still what it was called twenty years ago, “the giant skeleton of a colony,” consisting of about forty thousand people, scattered over a hundred thousand square miles of territory, behind which stretches a vast region of unexplored wilderness. ”

“ The North-West Frontier Province is, with the exception of Behar, Chota Nagpur and Orissa, the youngest of the provinces into which British India is divided, while in respect of population and extent of territory administered according to British law, it is also the smallest. ”

“ The backwardness of the Territory as compared with the rest of Australia is due chiefly to political causes. When the Australian colonies first set up separate households it was convenient to none of them to include the Territory, and it was left in the hands of the Imperial Government. In 1863 South Australia took over the responsibility for the Territory, intending to connect it with Adelaide by a north-to-south trans-continental railway. With such a railway it would have been brought within the ambit of South Australian development. ”

“ Although the colony of Western Australia was in a very backward position in those days, the young medical man saw in her expanse of territory the makings of a country rich in all the products valued by mankind. ”

“ The new regulations, under which the Surveyor-General received the title of Commissioner of Crown Lands, divided the colony into four districts—the Central, the Northern, the Central Eastern, and the South-Eastern—in which the lands were classified as town, suburban, rural, and mineral. All rural lands in the central district were open for sale in sections of not less than forty acres, at 10s. ”

“ Fifty years ago a handful of settlers, not quite 24,000 in number, claimed and obtained the right to manage their own affairs; and the British Government, in granting that right, virtually handed over to those few pioneers the ownership of this vast territory now called Queensland—a territory exceeding in area the combined areas of England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Portugal, Spain, and Italy. ”

“ Let there be no misunderstanding with respect to the desirableness of the coastal tract of North Queensland as a territory capable of supporting a large, prosperous and healthful population. It is no part of the present purpose to extol the mineral or the pastoral districts. They lie apart. ”

“ It is understood that, in surrendering to Her Majesty all the rights, etc., of the Company in any part of British North America not comprised in Rupert's Land, Canada, or British Columbia, the Company are to retain the posts they actually occupy in the North­West Territory. ”

“ It is needless to dwell on the history of the dark days of bondage and weakly infancy, which has little to do with the early days of settlement in North Queensland, except to show the starting point. The North is free from the stain and drag of convictism. The real life of the colony began with the first days [Pg 6] of free settlers, then immigrants poured in rapidly, and the occupation of the interior advanced. With this strong growth of material progress, came also the desire for self-government, and separation from New South Wales. ”

“ They are, through the Northern Districts, a fine, intelligent, able-bodied race, and when, as in the Roebourne District, they have been brought into the employment of the settlers, have proved valuable as shepherds, shearers, and divers. ”

“ The first territories added to the Union were Rupert's Land and the North-Western Territory, (subsequently designated the Northwest Territories) , which were admitted pursuant to section 146 of the Constitution Act, 1867 and the Rupert's Land Act, 1868, by the Rupert's Land and North-Western Territory Order of June 23, 1870, effective July 15, 1870. ”

“ One reads constantly of rust and moth, and of the insufficiency of the grain produced, and even of the difficulty of procuring seed. The farming has been thoroughly bad, and very bad it is still.
From the commencement of the settlement up to the present day Western Australia has been a crown colony, or, in other words, has been subject to rule from home instead of ruling itself. A governor has been appointed to it, whose duty it has been to initiate such changes in the laws as have appeared necessary to him, and as have met with the approval of the Secretary of State for the Colonies. ”

“ If, after what has been said, it be granted that Western Australia, as far as natural advantages go, is well suited for the purposes of colonization, still it will be apparent, from the principle on which the colony was founded, that its success must be greatly dependent on the capital and exertions of the settlers. The charge of maintaining a military and a civil establishment being all his Majesty’s Government was pledged to, every other expense was to be borne by the emigrant; such as his outfit, voyage, and settlement in the colony. ”

“ The New Province, called South Australia, which, by an Act of the Imperial Parliament, was erected into a free British colony on 15th August, 1834, is situate on the South Coast of the Great Island Continent of New Holland, in the Southern or Indian Ocean, extending from 132° to 141° E. longitude, and from 38° to 26° S. latitude, and contains nearly two hundred millions of acres. It is twelve thousand miles distant from Great Britain. ”

“ It was by perseverance and toil alone that they first established and ultimately spread themselves over that part of the territory, which, flanked by the ocean on the one hand, and embraced as it were by the Nepean River on the other, is now entitled the County Of Cumberland. For many years, this single district supplied the wants of the settlers. Upon it they found ample pasture for their herds, and sufficient employment for themselves. ”

“ 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 [Pg 122] 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. ”

“ In going westward, the region we are traversing beyond the Pennsylvania boundary gradually changes 404 from coal and iron to a rich agricultural section. As we move away from the influence of the Allegheny ranges, the hills become gentler, and the rolling surface is more and more subdued, until it is smoothed out into an almost level prairie, heavily timbered where not yet cleared for cultivation. This was the Northwest Territory, first explored by the French, who were led by the Sieur de la Salle in his original discoveries in the seventeenth century. ”

“ I had run the Castlereagh, the Macquarie, the Lachlan, the Murrumbidgee, the Hume, the Darling, and the Murray down to their respective terminations, but beyond them I had not passed--yet--I looked upon Central Australia as a legitimate field, to explore which no man had a greater claim than myself, and the first wish of my heart was to close my services in the cause of Geography by dispelling the mists that hung over it. ”

“ My husband has, however, been fortunate enough to meet most of the politicians and leading public men, for at Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane the Parliaments have been in session, and this, after all, is the main object of our visit to the colonies. I have before given our reasons for not attempting to visit South Australia; and the Crown Colony of Western Australia, with its capital of Perth and still barren settlements, one would hardly go to except under compulsion. The few emigrants who arrive there rarely remain, and 25,000 numbers the entire population of Western Australia. ”