Western Australia

“ The Australians themselves do not seem to know very much more about the Northern Territory than the average Englishman. They speak of it as an arid wilderness, much in the same way as they regard Western Australia; yet, to the visitor from home, it is the beauty and the wildness of Western and Northern Australia, that make an appeal far more profound than that of the busy, civilised, and comparatively populous southern and eastern states. With all their differences they are still too much like home to stir the imagination. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No wonder that with such inducements to linger in the neighbourhood of a town, men should shrink from the harder, more vigorous life up-country. Yet it is “up-country” men that Australia wants, to clear, sow, and till her rich, fertile soil; with enterprise and energy to win certain fortune, and courage to face the initial hardships and loneliness, which bring their own reward.
With all her natural advantages Western Australia’s development is only a matter of the last twenty years. Like most of the rest of the continent, she has an inhospitable and forbidding coast. ”

“ The goldfields of Western Australia are the greatest in the world, and are almost unrivalled, and the colony has magnificent timber, a productive soil, and a good climate. With such immense resources, with free communication to all the markets of the mother land and of Australia for everything we can produce, why should we not hold our own and flourish as well as any of the other colonies? ”

“ GEORGE GLYDE, J.P., EX-M.L.C.
THE span of human life is wide enough to bridge the history of settlement in Western Australia. It seems strange that there still survive among us men who left Great Britain in 1829 to join the bands of pioneers in this colony. Moreover, it speaks well of the geniality of our southern climes that, notwithstanding vicissitudes and hardships, these men move among us to-day, hale and hearty, evincing a healthy and paternal interest in a colony whose birth and adolescence they witnessed. ”

“ The distance of Western Australia from the large centres of English population, and the consequent tardy means of obtaining information, returns from products, and answers to correspondence, were infelicities which prevented a few isolated people from utilising the land as it deserved. The colony did not contain such magnificent resources of soil as Eastern Australia, but her convenient position and wide pasture lands should have more than counterbalanced any weakness in that regard. ”

“ THE most thoughtful and best read of the public men of Western Australia have sedulously aimed at settling the lands of the colony, recognising that younger communities in other parts of Australasia, with a smaller territory, but not many idle acres, had made rapid progress by developing their productive resources, which are the source of national wealth and the foundation of the prosperity of the people. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Australians have been intermittently cast into inordinate emotion by the rumours of discoveries in this colony which, if true, would quickly yield wealth enough to pay off the national debt of the whole world. That the emotion was really existent has been proved by the rapid inflow to Western Australia of people representing every civilised country. News of almost every kind is like the rivulet starting from the mountain top, the farther it goes the more swollen it becomes, and the louder it roars. ”

“ Colonies seem peculiar instruments for discovering and trying man's heart and fibre. The survival of the fittest is here an axiom, whose truth is ever tested and confirmed. Pluck, heart, courage—summed up in the narrow word "fortitude" are virtues which Western Australia has ably put to the test. We have had many dauntless adventurers since the first days of Anstey, and each one's history constitutes a narrative at once teeming with romance and shimmering in the gilded edges of success. ”

“ Substantially, Western Australia had for its pioneers more highly educated men of good society than perhaps any other British dependency. It would certainly have been better had the first arrivals been all simpler-minded men, inbred to constant labour, and possessing in their determined minds and strong bodies the essentials of a character which will not be daunted, which will reduce the waste to beneficent productiveness, which will penetrate to the ends of the earth to serve its purposes. ”

“ THERE can be no doubt that the best blood and enterprise of the sister colonies of Australia have been efficient factors in the material development of Western Australia. The voluntary influx of this new leaven seems to have enriched the wholesome bread of political and commercial life. These men brought with them an accumulated knowledge of institutions and ordinances, and a complete fusion of temperaments and cognition has resulted, with salutary consequences to Western Australia. ”

“ THE life of this well-known exponent of science, whose scholastic achievements are ineffaceably impressed on the goldfields development of Western Australia, needs no lengthened preamble or prologue to enlist attention and attraction. The name serves recall by various mental associations memory-images of his many felicitous exploits, and the splendid benefits he has conferred upon the colony. ”

“ Western Australia is a vast and unknown country, almost mysterious in its solitude and unlikeness to any other part of the earth. It is the greatest of the Australias in extent, and in many features the richest and loveliest. ”

“ If any country in the world is versatile, it is America, and that versatility is due to a pliable and complete gift of adaptation. In 1874 Australia claimed his services, and after various scientific achievements, he was engaged from 1884-87 in the Railway branch of the Public Works of New South Wales. At this period Western Australia was yawning and tossing dreamily about. It had remained long quiescent and inactive, and now thought of action and progress. ”

“ There—not contented with disseminating the worst reports of Western Australia, little of which, if any, he could have seen, except the sandy district of the coast—he industriously sought out those emigrants who touched at the Cape; and, after telling them he had but lately left Swan River, proceeded to give such a description of the country as was calculated to deter them from prosecuting their voyage thither. ”

“ The climate of Western Australia is decidedly salubrious. For years past the residents have sought to induce the Indian authorities to make it their sanatorium for invalid officers, but so far nothing definite has resulted from their representations. Sport is plentiful in every part of the province, and the homely hospitable character of the people renders a visit to the colony a most enjoyable experience. The great pride of Western Australians is in the wild flowers that cover their plains in the spring time. ”

“ The position of Western Australia as a Crown Colony was sometimes mortifying. While other members of the group had obtained autonomy, when possessed of no larger populations than her own, it seemed a slur upon local intelligence that the Imperial Government would not concede the privilege to her people. From the very beginning the Western Australian was an isolated community, and since the days of Responsible Government in other colonies the official isolation had been particularly marked. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the early eighties, quite a number of young Englishmen came to Western Australia to try their fortune in the land, and it is well that those who fought for the colony in her darker days should be rewarded in her prosperity-sharing. ”

“ Western Australia, as its name implies, is the tract of country lying upon the western side of the great island continent of the south. A glance at the map shows that the eastern side of the island, and much of the southern, is occupied by the colonies of South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland, the land in which is taken up by squatters, by agriculturists and miners for hundreds of miles inland, while the coast-line is studded with large cities, like Melbourne, Sydney, and Adelaide, and with numerous flourishing settlements. ”

“ In odd contrast to European towns, men everywhere preponderate over women in the streets. Perhaps because of its newness, the attitude of the other states to Western Australia is still a little patronising. Western Australians themselves are fully conscious of this, they on their part always talk about “the East” in tones of desire: “I hope we shall go to the East next year,” is often heard in Perth. At first we thought they meant China or Japan, but we soon found that in Western Australia “the East” means Melbourne or Sydney. ”

“ Sir John Forrest prophesied, ten years ago, that in the future Western Australia would come to the fore, and the prophecy is being amply fulfilled; no travellers now ever think of making a tour in Australia without coming to the West. Mr. Frederick Villiers, the famous war correspondent, says that when he came to the colonies, seven years ago, he was nearly coming here, and, now having been, he professes to be so much charmed with Perth, and the view of the Swan River, as to feel inclined to settle down and end his days there. ”

“ Western Australia is the most sparsely populated of all the states, only the coastal fringe and the gold-fields show any evidences of settlement, and if the area were divided amongst the population there would be but ten persons to 52 sq. m. The population is almost exclusively of British origin, and only differs from that of the other states in that there is a larger body of Australian-born, who are not natives of the colony itself. About 45% of the population are members of the Church of England ”

“ 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. ”

“ While Captain Thomas has been hid in the interminable forests and the gloom and mystery of silence in Western Australia, cities have been born on the continent which have grown to such dimensions as to be recognised the world over. Notable men have appeared, and in his own colony and the others of the group great industries have risen, and the white man's ingenuity and industry have sedulously penetrated where the black in 1829 reigned supreme. ”

“ Vague speculations were indulged in in 1890 that Western Australia contained the nucleus of a great goldfield, and prospectors from all over the world drifted here at intervals to explore her vastnesses. ”

“ Sir T.C. Campbell also asserted that Western Australia, as a whole, was in favour of the movement. There could, he said, be no federation of Australia without free government in Western Australia, and there could be no free government without full control locally of the Crown lands. The colony contained all the elements of prosperity, and the people only wanted a free hand to take advantage of them. ”

“ English maritime enterprise in the Pacific, Indian, and Southern Oceans had hitherto been small indeed, and beyond irregular voyages by privateers, buccaneers, and merchantmen among the East India Islands, they thought little of countries which in times to come their descendants would inhabit. Practically they had never heard of Australia, and it was not until after that worthy forerunner of English ascendancy in the Southern Hemisphere—Dampier—was, partly against his will, brought to the coast of Western Australia, that the public was made acquainted with such a large continent. ”

“ MATTHEW PRICE.
THE population of countries such as Australia are necessarily nomadic. There are really very few old-established business houses in proportion to those of mushroom growth existing in our cities. Australians move from place to place in search of wealth, and as they go they naturally meet with many romantic adventures, and experience the vicissitudes so common to young communities. Perhaps there are few of the Australian colonies in recent years which have given greater opportunities for adventures than Western Australia. ”

“ Leichardt, Eyre, Mitchell, Kennedy, Burke and Wills, McKinley, Sturt, and others, had each succeeded in divesting the remote interior of Australia of many of its mysteries, but, except along the coasts, the prodigious stretch of country separating Stuart's route from the western coast was wholly unknown. When these seemingly impregnable areas were traversed, the main parts of Australia were practically explored.
Up to 1869 the interior of Western Australia and the borders of South Australia defied the strength and resolute wills of explorers. ”