THE NORTHERN TERRITORY
The Northern Territory is one of Australia's
many problems. How can the immense
tract of rich and fertile country with its tropical
northern area be cultivated, and its great
resources developed, without the importation of
coloured labour? The native black population,
though they are useful and efficient with stock,
are found to be unadapted for agriculture, and
incapable of the steady methodical work essential
to its success. The immigration of Chinese, who
formerly were the market gardeners of the
neighbourhood of Port Darwin, supplying the
small resident white population with fruit and
vegetables, has now been discouraged, and we saw
the plantations they had cultivated falling back
into, and becoming merged with the wilderness
of the bush. It is still an open question
whether white men can perform manual labour
under the tropical suns of the coastal belt.
Yet the future of Port Darwin must be assured
if it is eventually to become our nearest and most
