SIR JOHN FORREST, K.C.M,G., F.R.G.S., F.G.S., &c.
THE FIRST PREMIER.
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Photo by SIR JOHN FORREST, K.C.M.G., F.R.G.S., F.G.S., &c. Greenham & Evans. |
The spasmodic efforts at governing a British Colony in its infancy are well calculated to bring the best men to the front. Either by predilection or force of circumstances they rise to the higher positions. Each Australian Colony has produced men who will be remembered in local history for their splendid pioneer political work, but it must be remembered that most of them came from Great Britain. In Western Australia, however, such is not the case, for the administrator who towers, Ajax-like, above his fellows, is native born. This is the Premier, Sir John Forrest, K.C.M.G. Born in the generous southern sunshine amid primeval solitudes, with few companions in his youth, with an education at a comparatively small school in Perth, Sir John is a true and great son of Western Australia. He loves the jarrah forests, the eternal stretches of plains and deserts, the low ranges and high cliffs, the sand dunes and granite hills, the "black boy" and fern, the outcropping quartz reef and mulga wastes, the gentle undulating sweeps of goodly pasture land, the farms and orchards and vineyards.
Throughout the sixty-eight years of the colony's history not one man has come forward who can compare with him. Indeed, one might almost say that what Cecil Rhodes has been to South Africa, and Sir Henry Parkes to New South Wales, Sir John Forrest has been to Western Australia. Early entering the Public Service under the Crown Colony régime, Sir John rapidly forced his way to positions of trust, and when twenty-two years old was chosen by the local Executive Council as the most suitable to command an exploring expedition which went into the hungry, silent deserts of the interior, to search for the remains of the celebrated Leichardt and his party of explorers. Two other exploring expeditions, which entailed herculean labour and patient suffering, were made by him with such conspicuous success that honours rained on him from England, Italy, Vienna, and St. Petersburg, not to mention the oft-shown pride of his countrymen in Australia. Then he entered the more peaceful fields of life, became head of the Western Australian Lands Department and a member of the Executive and Legislative Councils. He filled other important positions and, later, patriotically assisted in the agitation for the right of West Australians to mould their own political destinies, and when that privilege was gained he was chosen the first Premier. To-day he is looked up to as the greatest man the colony has produced.
There are, probably, other local men who are competent to fill the position of Premier, but none who would be so universally respected by colonists and the outside world as Sir John Forrest. He may almost be said to have the hardihood and stability of the jarrah forests and the geniality of the Southern spring. He seems an inseparable part of the nature round him, and, may be, is unconsciously compelled to help mould the early history of self-government.
In 1843 Mr. William Forrest, the father of the Western
