ADVANCED AUSTRALIA
Chapter I
WESTERN AUSTRALIA
MOST voyages are not travelling, now-a-days; but merely existence on a mail steamer. Again, more than one hundred and fifty globe-trotters pass through the Suez Canal every week on their way to Australia; and though the number is not in itself overwhelming, imagination boggles at what would happen if every globe-trotter committed his voyage to print, as most of them do to paper. Yet, on the other hand, not to keep a stylograph in your board-ship coat-pocket were the merest profligacy. For, east of Suez, a man sometimes raises, not only a thirst for "pegs," but a hunger for information; because, though the world is undoubtedly shrinking, and the (till '95) inaccessible desert places of (for example) Kalgoorlie are now graced by an excellent club, which is within an easy thirty days of London, yet there are such things, even now, as local atmospheres. And an outward Australian liner carries about with her somehow, stowed away in her inner consciousness, a local atmosphere of the Bush which she dons with her suit of awnings somewhere about the Red Sea. You have left Charing Cross behind you at the starting-end of the long trail, and the talk henceforward, under the patronage of the twin Australian heroes, Mr Lansell and the late Mr Tyson, is all of squatting and gold-mining, "the Gulf" and "the Block," and a hundred other stimulating technicalities, with their resultant yarns, in half an hour. Ten days of this sort of thing after leaving Colombo, and you are in Western Australia: "W.A," as its inhabitants and neighbours usually call it; or, as it is dubbed by journalists, "the Golden West." Western Australia, in effect, is a colony which has been brought very prominently under the notice of the English public during the past four or five years, on account of the remarkable gold discoveries which have taken place there. But no traveller, who is not also an explorer and is prepared to devote years to the task, can hope to take anything but a hasty glance here and there in passing at this great area, which comprises nearly one-third of the whole Australian continent, and is equal to one-fourth of Europe, with Great Britain and Ireland included.
The first point at which the mail steamers touch, after crossing the Indian Ocean, is King George's Sound. Albany, on the north side of Princess Royal Harbour, within the Sound, is a pretty little town of about 4000 inhabitants, some 340 miles from Perth. It has a rising timber trade, and is by way of being a sanatorium; though perhaps its chief support is drawn from the two or three hotels on the harbour front, and the shillings spent there by passengers. As a coaling-station, it is of great strategic importance, and is garrisoned by a battery of permanent artillery, maintained at the joint expense of the colonies. An enemy's fleet which should set out to attack Australia would find its coal supplies exhausted by the time it reached the southern portion of the continent, and would be practically helpless; hence the fortifications, by which in time of war the coal stored here would be preserved for the use of the British ships. Albany lives in continual fear of being superseded, as a port of call for the mail steamer, by Fremantle; and indeed it cannot be looked on, at present, as offering a favourable field for the investor in corner allotments.
To reach Perth, the capital city of the colony, a railway journey of some thirty hours in a north-westerly direction is necessary. This line was constructed by the West Australian Land Company, and was opened in 1889. The company received from the Government a grant of 12,000 acres of land for every mile constructed, to be selected within a distance of 40 miles on either side of the line, with half the frontage to the railway reserved to the Government. The line has recently been taken over by the Government for £1,100,000. There are other private, or land-grant lines in the colony, chief amongst which is the Midland Railway, running back north to Geraldton. But the system has in most cases given dissatisfaction to all parties concerned—Government, investors, settlers, and the travelling public.
Whilst Sir John Forrest is in power, it will be utterly useless for the most philanthropic of concessionaires to propose to build railways for the colony. The colony has undertaken the work itself, through contractors, and has achieved an astonishing record for cheapness and celerity of construction. The gauge is 3 ft. 6 in. in all cases, and the line was open in March 1898 as far as Menzies, a mining town to the north of Kalgoorlie, 450 miles away in the interior of the Eastern Desert. Warned by the extravagance which some of the other colonies have displayed in regard to the cost of their earlier railways, and assisted, no doubt, by the absence of all physical difficulties except the scarcity of water, the Government has so contrived that its railways are run at a profit of 4½%, the best result in Australia. One of the projects of the future, the distant future no doubt, is to connect the Kalgoorlie line with the most westerly extension of the lines in the colony of South Australia. When that is done, the traveller landing at Perth will be able to travel by rail right through the continent from west to east. The capitals of all the other colonies—Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane—are already connected by rail.
The city of Perth, which a few years ago contained a population of only 9,000, has since the gold discoveries sprung up to 40,000 souls. It is situated on the Swan River, about twelve miles inland from Fremantle, and under the shelter of a bold hill, Mount Eliza, which is crowned by the public park. The view from the summit, looking across the river, which widens opposite the city into the two lakes of Perth and Melville Waters, divided by the long flat promontory of Mill Point and fed by the broad and winding stream of the Canning, is picturesque enough: but otherwise the city generally is squalid and dirty; and it cannot be said to have anything especially attractive in its sandy surroundings. It possesses, however, some handsome buildings, and some fine streets. St George's Terrace, where the Western Australian Bank and public offices are situated, is a fine avenue. Government House, where Sir Gerard Smith, the Governor, lives, is a handsome and commodious residence. The Town Hall is also a fine building, standing on a slight eminence. An electric tram service is in process of completion.
The first subject to which I naturally directed inquiry in this land of gold was the subject of gold-getting and gold output; the present position of the industry and its prospects. The eyes of gold miners in all parts of Australia have for many years been turned to the great inland territories of Western Australia as a region possessing great possibilities of mineral wealth. Sir Roderick Murchison's name is on its map. So far back as 1865, a capable young surveyor named Hunt penetrated with horses and a waggon to the country east and south of what is now Kalgoorlie, and reported country "probably auriferous." He had happened on a wet season; but his achievement was still most remarkable, and his track, and even one of the dams he constructed, were of much use when the country was opened up more than thirty years afterwards. He found the valuable district of the Hampton Plains, and seems even to have reached, with a flying party, the still very remote region of Kurnalpi. Hargreaves, the celebrated prospector from N.S. Wales, was given £500, about this time, to inspect and report on the colonies' mineral resources. But he was only shown the coastal districts, and his report was discouraging, though some quartz which must have come from near Coolgardie was taken to Sydney in 1866. In 1869, again, another young surveyor, John Forrest (now the Right Hon. Sir John Forrest, the Premier), discovered and named Mounts Malcolm, Margaret, and Leonora; each of them now the centre of rich mining districts to the north of Kalgoorlie; and in 1871, Alexander Forrest, his brother, the present Mayor of Perth, camped for a time at a gnamma-hole which must have been close to Bayley's find and the Tom Tiddler's ground of Fly Flat.
The word "rush" is used in Australia to describe the great rush of miners from one goldfield to another when news of rich finds is published. Western Australia has had several "rushes," and the bleached bones of many of the pioneers lie all over the continent. Kimberley, in the far north, had its rush in 1896; but fever and the difficulties of transport crushed its prosperity, though mining is still carried on there by a few persistent adventurers who live on, as is usual with such haunters of derelict goldfields, in the hope of good times to come. It was not till July, 1892, that Bayley and Ford, two prospectors whose headquarters were at Southern Cross, a struggling camp then on the remotest fringe of civilisation, pushed out along Hunt's old track to Coolgardie, and discovered a very rich reef, which was afterwards known as Bayley's Reward Claim. In one year half a ton of gold was obtained from this mine by the most primitive processes. The fame of the yields spread, and then one of the greatest "rushes" ever known in Australia occurred.
The whole mining, or migratory and prospecting population of Australasia set out in hot haste for the fields, and was followed by all the wastrels and failures who had been left "on their uppers" by the bursting of the Melbourne land-boom. The tract which ran eastward through the primeval bush was a curious sight in those days. Heavy waggons, laden with flour, chaff, and whisky, lumbered axle-deep through the mud, drawn each by its team of a dozen great horses in single file—for 1893 was a wet season—and each accompanied by its string of "swampers" who paid perhaps almost their last 30s. for the privilege of walking alongside for ten days and having their swags of a hundredweight carried on the top of the load. Big Broken Hill men, and ruined speculators from all the colonies, went up with their own buggies or teams; alluvial men walked up with little more than their water-bags; "Kimberley wheel-barrows," or one-wheeled cart nondescripts drawn by a human team, were a fashionable, if not a very efficient, means of transport; and one man, a German, actually packed a flour barrel with stores, pierced the whole concern with an axle, and rolled or dragged it the whole painful way to Coolgardie. Men walked blindly into the unmapped desert in search of an utterly imaginary Golconda of the moment known as Mount Youle, and found Kalgoorlie, and then did not know what they had found. Every one who could afford it carried his own condenser, because the only permanent water "out back" was salt. The extraordinary reports that came down to the coast were but half believed for some time in Perth itself. Miss Flora Shaw, who was investigating Australia for the Times, was not allowed even to visit Western Australia, and the London papers ignored the rush as long as they could. But a few of the better informed, chiefly from Piccadilly, of all places, found their way out, and met with their reward. They were followed by "mining experts," newspaper correspondents, "agents of the Rothschilds," and the rest. Everything that could be sold or floated was floated or sold, in Adelaide, or locally; in London, or to the French. Prospectors on foot and on horseback, with camels and on bicycles, spread themselves all over the interior; living and looking for gold where a few years before well-equipped expeditions of experienced and scientific explorers had found it difficult to penetrate. Boilers and machinery were dragged through the silence and desolation of the bush to far outlying mines, which in some cases have been left once again to desolation and silence. For before long the boom subsided. The excitement of the market had passed. That strange community of the prospectors of Australasia, the best gold-finders of the world, whose coming to any country is always followed by discoveries which without them might have remained for ever overlooked, and who had reserved, as it were, this greatest of antipodean "rushes" for their most striking and perhaps for their final manifestation, scattered themselves to the four quarters of the earth. They may be found at Klondyke, in New Guinea, in Siam, in China, or in South Africa; but they have left the Western Australian goldfields, as yet only half exploited; and without them new discoveries will be made but slowly. They have left behind them, however, a large population of wages-men and others on the fields, who are steadily developing the mines for the European capitalist. Coolgardie, which is situated about 240 miles east of Perth, has had to give place to Kalgoorlie, its neighbour 25 miles to the east again, as a gold producer and the principal centre of the goldfields. The fame of the large telluride lodes of the Boulder group has spread to London and Paris, and the immigration of thousands of new citizens (chiefly from the sister colonies) to the goldfields has been followed by the investment of millions of European capital in the purchase of mining shares.
I do not propose to write a history of gold mining in Western Australia, but will in preference devote some attention to the results up to the present. There can be no doubt that many of the mines which were floated as companies were utterly worthless. This always happens in Australian mining, and is in some measure due to the fact that all mining is of necessity an uncertain and peculiar business. A scientific prospector, with all the learning of the geological schools at his finger ends, may err widely, whilst an ignoramus blunders on to a rich lead or a highly payable reef. No man can see beyond the end of his nose. "Where it is, there it is," runs a Cornish mining proverb. Position, too, is often worth gambling upon, though it is as often misleading. Whenever a really good mine is found, there are sure to be scores of others floated in its vicinity. Alluring prospectuses are drawn up, and neat plans are published, showing on paper that the reef runs directly through the property offered to the public. The Great Boulder line was caricatured, in the Sydney Bulletin, as an octopus. An amusing story is current in Western Australia, which shows what the residents there thought of the way in which the British public were, in their opinion, "got at" by the mining company promoter and his London confederates. A very rich patch or "blow" of quartz was found by a prospector near the surface. Off went a promoter who had obtained a share to London to float a company, taking the quartz with him, which was thickly studded with gold. The shares were eagerly subscribed for, and a board of directors appointed, which sent out orders to work the mine at once, and get out a crushing. Months elapsed, and there was no return from the rich property; and then a peremptory telegram was despatched: "Crush at once and wire result; surprised at unexplained delay." This elicited a prompt response at once as follows: "Cannot crush till you send back the reef." The only quartz which the mine yielded was that which had been taken to London to float the company.
The story is a parable: but it must be remembered, in fairness to the colonial vendor, that "wild-cat" properties are usually handled and floated in the City by shady professional promoters, who for the most part are looking for wild-cats, and whose misdeeds are not to be visited on the colony. And, moreover, the ignorance, or impatience, of London Boards of Directors who do not know the difference between a developed mine and a prospecting shew; who sometimes, apparently, suppose themselves to be buying the one at the price of the other; and who often allow their English consulting engineers, quite acquainted, perhaps, with the nature of the ore to be crushed, to saddle them with expensive mining-plants before the reef is opened up, is likely to be at least as ruinous to the prospector, who has parted with his lease, possibly, for valueless shares, as to the London investor who is loudest in his abuse. The only safety, for all parties concerned, lies in the combination of a Board which knows something of business with efficient local supervision. Mining, altogether, is an extraordinary industry. But almost more extraordinary than the ignorance of London Boards, and the recklessness of British investors, is the haphazard way in which engineers and managers are selected. And one's ordinary calculations as to human motives and conduct are sometimes quite upset by the unscrupulous calm with which an incapable, inexperienced, careless, drunken, or dishonest manager will sacrifice the hundreds of thousands (may-be) of his company's capital to his own petty advantage, or to secure another quarter's payment, perhaps, of his salary of £500 a year. It is far easier, and often more immediately profitable, to mutilate than to make a mine. On the other hand, it is not, perhaps, so generally understood as it might be, that under the conditions of mining in Western Australia, £30,000 for developing, or £50,000 for equipping, a mine, is by no means too large an allowance of working capital.
But, if there have been many failures in mining ventures in Western Australia, there have also been extraordinary successes. During my stay in Australia a company was wound-up by voluntary liquidation; or, to speak more accurately, the winding-up was completed, for the assets were so huge that it had taken more than a year to conduct the operation. Its history reads like a version of the "Arabian Nights Entertainments," and is a justification of the sanguine hopes that the deserts of West Australia would turn out an El Dorado. The original capital was only £150, subscribed by a syndicate of ten speculators in Adelaide, the capital city of the colony of South Australia, who each risked the price of a second-hand bicycle to send a prospecting party to Coolgardie, in June 1893. A little more than four years afterwards, when the liquidation commenced, the assets consisted of 25,000 Associated shares, 10,000 Lake View Extended, 100 Lake View South, 200 Royal Mint shares, and £1513 in cash, and there were no liabilities. The value of its holdings were a couple of months since:—In the Great Boulder, £1,662,500; Lake View Consols, £2,812,500; Associated Mines, £2,475,000; Ivanhoe, £1,875,000; Kalgoorlie Mint, £100,000; Lake View South, £220,000; Lake View Extended, £65,750; Great Boulder, No. 1, £65,000—total £9,275,750. There have also been distributed to the shareholders £3,421,000 in shares and £950,000 in dividends, making a gross return of £13,646,750. That these are not mere paper values—such fairy coinage as that which makes millionaires in a month in what is known as a land boom and, before it can be realised, turns into insolvency schedules—is shown by the fact that the above mines have already produced 17 tons of gold, to the value of £2,250,000 sterling. The process by which one man's investment of £15 is in five years turned into £1,364,675 has, as I have said, its other side, and many wasted millions are to be placed to the debit of the account. But the thousands who lose their small stake can generally afford to do so, or, at any rate, suffer so little that they prefer holding their tongues to admitting that they have been the dupes of a glowing prospectus and the victims of a glib promoter. So the game goes merrily along, and there is always money forthcoming for the schemes that can point to such results as those given above, and tickle the public ear with the suggestion that there is a chance—if it be only a five million to one chance—that a new investment may in like manner multiply twenty-thousand-fold annually. It is rather a grim comment upon the fate of the pioneer miner that the chairman of this syndicate, at the meeting which adopted the final report, in accepting a vote of thanks, moved to express gratitude to the discoverer of this enormous wealth. He would forward the motion, he said, by letter; "as he understood that Mr Pearce, the original prospector, was now at Klondike trying his luck." This Pearce it was who "pegged out" the Great Boulder, the Lake View, and the Ivanhoe; and thus founded the present Boulder City. Paddy Hannan, who found the alluvial at Kalgoorlie, was lately rescued from indigence by the mayor of the town which once bore his name, who secured two allotments for him as a sort of endowment. And Bayley, who started Coolgardie, is dead. But the average man is blind to the reverse of the picture, and, tempted by such glittering bait as that contained in the above statement of accounts, will risk health, life, and savings on the chance of drawing a dazzling prize.
The output of gold from Western Australia has been disappointing to many eager investors; but this is accounted for to some extent by the very difficult nature of the country, especially in respect to water supply, and it has taken a long time to manufacture and erect the adequate machinery for extracting and treating the ore. But for the year 1898 the returns have shown a remarkable increase. The output of gold for October in Western Australia was 116,824 ounces, value £444,000. This, compared with the largest previous monthly output, 93,395 ounces, showed an increase of 23,429 ounces. The export of gold from Western Australia for the last ten months of 1898, the latest date at which the figures were available, when I left the colony, amounted to 841,625 ounces. The importance of that statement will be made apparent when I say that for the whole year of 1896 the total output was only 281,265 ounces. Therefore, in two years they have increased the output no less than 560,300 ounces. It was estimated by the Premier of the colony, Sir John Forrest, that the output for the whole year of 1898 would exceed one million ounces.[1] Sir Gerard Smith, the Governor, went further than that, and said that the output for the year 1899 would reach one and a half million ounces of gold. Should Sir Gerard Smith's estimate be realised, and I do not think there is any reason to suspect that it is an extravagant one, then the value of gold produced next year will be close upon £6,000,000.[2]
Kalgoorlie gold is particularly pure, and has more than once fetched £4, 4s. 4d. per ounce. Speaking roughly, the annual dividend forthcoming from Western Australian mines may now, perhaps, be computed at about one and a half millions sterling, or rather over £1 to the ounce of reef gold recorded; a figure which should be much exceeded in the future, but which, as it stands, is a very handsome return on the amount of British capital actually expended in the colony. The amount absorbed in the way of margin or commission by London promoters and the like is quite another story. But of the nominal capital of twenty millions, not all was paid up, and comparatively little reached Western Australia.
The greater part of the area of Western Australia is dry, sandy, desert country, which would seem to be the natural home of sandal-wood and quandongs, and where most of the gum-trees are "piped." And yet so vast are the resources of the colony that there is an area of forest country in its south-western portion which is equal in size to the whole of Great Britain, and which contains a mass of marketable timber which is, perhaps, only equalled in the famous red-wood districts of North California. The classic description of Australian forest scenery was written by Marcus Clarke, the author of the most widely-read Australian novel, "For the Term of His Natural Life." He says: "The dominant note of Australian scenery is a weird melancholy. The Australian mountain forests are funereal, secret, stern; their solitude is desolation. They seem to stifle in their black gorges a story of sullen despair. No tender sentiment is nourished in their shade. In other lands the dying year is mourned. The dying leaves drop lightly on his bier. In the Australian forests no leaves fall. From the melancholy gums strips of white bark hang and rustle." Perhaps, as is averred by later writers, this description partakes too much of the gloom of the writer's own imaginings, but the traveller is not likely to dispute the truth of what has been so poetically expressed. The forests of Australia are, to a large extent, wanting in the umbrageous wealth which is the glory of the sylvan recesses of other lands. The trees, those, that is, which have a value for timber, run up in narrow tapering stems to a height of from 70 feet to 100 feet without a limb; and then there is a small head, with thin, long leaves widely scattered, and affording little shade. But many of these forest giants are impressive from their very size. The giant tree of Western Australia is the Karri. The bark is smooth, yellow-white in appearance, and peels off every year, giving the stem a clean appearance. On an average these trees grow to 200 feet in height, 4 feet in diameter, 3 feet to 4 feet from the ground, and about 120 feet to 150 feet to the first branch.
Trees of the size indicated are what one usually meets with in the Karri forests, but much larger specimens are, of course, run against now and again. For instance, on the Warren River, it is not unusual to meet with trees which go 300 feet in extreme height, over 180 feet in height to the first limb, and from 20 feet to 30 feet in circumference at the base. It is certainly a matter of local record that some years ago a resident on the Warren River lived and partially raised a small family in the hollow of one of these fallen monarchs. It appears that the tree was hollow and fell, and was afterwards further worked out and lined by the enterprising settler as a dwelling for his family, until such time as he was in a position to build the modern edifice which now stands not far from the site or remains of the primitive habitation. The old tree was destroyed and effaced from the place by a recent bush fire. This specimen was said to be over 300 feet in length, and some 12 feet in diameter at the base. Whilst on this subject, I may mention that the tallest trees in Australia, and, as it is stated, in the world, grow in the colony of Victoria. There were local traditions of the existence of trees in Gippsland 500 feet high, which would have quite eclipsed the giant Wellingtonias of the Yosemite; but these were based on mere guesses. Officers of the Survey Department made a search some years ago, and careful measurements of the tallest trees to be found, and the greatest height of a living tree was found to be 330 feet. A prostrate tree nearly 350 feet in length was discovered. The Jarrah tree of Western Australia, which is by far the most valuable for commercial purposes, and of which immense forests exist, is not nearly so picturesque in appearance as the Karri. The trees are rugged in appearance, and the general effect, taken in mass, is sombre. In the best forests the trees run from 50 feet to 60 feet in height to the first branch. There is a large and growing export of this timber to Europe, and the industry promises to be one of the most successful that has been established.
At Jarrahdale, which is about thirty miles from Perth, on the South-Western Railway, one company has five sawmills working night and day to execute the orders from England and elsewhere. Recent flotations of these Jarrah and Karri companies have been to some extent over-capitalised. But amalgamation and other measures are in a fair way to put this matter right; and it certainly seems to be the case that the chief difficulty in connection with the trade is to secure enough vessels to ship the timber in. Jarrah is unrivalled for piles, etc., in water or wet ground, and for wood paving. The French, for some reason best known to themselves, prefer karri for this latter purpose, but it is not highly esteemed in Western Australia, and on the deck of Port Melbourne pier, which is partly laid with it, it did not seem to me to have worn well. Jarrah resists the attacks of white ants, for which reason it is much used, especially in the goldfields country, for railway sleepers.
With the inrush of population caused by the gold discoveries agriculture has advanced rapidly. The mines have been developed principally by new arrivals from the other colonies and from Europe, but the local population has reaped a harvest in the increased demand for vegetable and cereal products. Fruit-growing has been undertaken on a considerable scale, and with every prospect of success. The pearl fishing industry in the north is an important source of employment This great colony stretches from temperate to tropical latitudes. It was in the north of Western Australia that Grien, otherwise "De Rougemont," laid the scene of his romantic adventures. I can vouch for it that no credence was given in the colonies to his stories; and as the cable messages came from London announcing one marvellous fabrication after another the whole continent laughed in derision. As soon as the man's portrait was published he was recognised at once.
It was only in 1890 that constitutional government was granted to Western Australia. The history of the colony before 1890 has yet to be written, and will indeed, recent as most of it is, take some writing. From the mutinies, wrecks and maroonings of the early Dutch navigators on the Abrolhos and the like, to the rescue of Fenian prisoners from Fremantle by the American ship Catalpa in 1876, and even to the doings of the late Mr Deeming at Southern Cross, it is full of startling episodes, though they are mostly tinged with that sordidness which is somehow a characteristic of Australia—the Whitechapel of the colonies. Originally considered a dependency of the Dutch East India Company, and, like New Zealand, nearly annexed by the French in the early decades of this century, the colony was planted, at the instance of Captain Stirling of New South Wales, and Mr Peel, an adventurous capitalist related to the statesman, in 1829. The plan of their syndicate was to settle 10,000 emigrants in the country, who were to grow beef and pork for the Royal Navy, horses for the Honourable East India Company, and cotton and tobacco for the world at large, each on his two hundred acres of land. In return the syndicate was to have a proportionate grant of two million acres for itself. The plan miscarried; the colony languished; even to this day bacon, beef and horses are imported, and cotton and tobacco are unknown crops; and in 1840 a fresh start was attempted, in strict conformity this time with the principles of the unspeakable Wakefield. The failure of the settlement of Australind, settled on his kid-glove-colony system, is an even better proof than the Adelaide fiasco of the folly of transplanting ready-made polities, and of believing that supply will find its own demand. It is an example, also, of how London Boards of Directors can wreck their colonial properties by listening to irresponsible advisers who have "been there." In 1849 the despairing colonists fell back, for twenty years or so, on convict labour; and when, in 1870, Responsible Government, of a sort, was granted. Lord Carnarvon demurred to making it Representative, on the ground that, of 8000 adult males in the settlement, 5000 or 6000 had been transported. However, from this time the colony began to progress. Throughout the 'seventies, the Forrests and others were adding vast stretches of back country to its available assets. The picturesque figure of Sir John Forrest will be well remembered in this country, where he was a distinguished visitor on the occasion of the Queen's Jubilee. Sir John is a man of simple and straightforward speech, of fine physique, and of great courage. He first became known throughout Australia as a daring explorer of the great central unknown land, when, in 1870, he and his brother, Mr Alexander Forrest, journeyed from Perth to Adelaide, occupying about eight months in the expedition, travelling through a great deal of unexplored territory, and examining the whole country between Esperance Bay and the South Australian border. The party was accompanied by two aboriginals, one of whom claimed, on his return, that he, and not his white leader, should have been the central figure of the public reception at Adelaide. "Me take 'em through," he said. However, Sir John was rewarded by the Government with £75, and "Billy" had to rest content with a mere £12, 10s. 0d.
Four years afterwards, the explorer led another, and a remarkably successful, expedition into the central parts of the colony, penetrating that immense tract of country from which flow the Murchison, Gascoyne, Ashburton, De Grey, Fitzroy, and other rivers falling into the sea on the western and northern shores of the continent. He had the disadvantage of travelling with horses instead of camels; but he persevered, in spite of immense difficulties, in a waterless country. He discovered a large area of rich grazing lands, and gave a full and most valuable report of the country traversed. The hardships and dangers still to be encountered in this work of interior exploration are shown by the fact that two years ago one branch of an expedition, which made a diversion from the main body, perished in the desert; and it was only after months of search that the bodies were found.
Sir John Forrest was the first Premier of the colony, and he still holds the position, though, for various reasons, every one of his colleagues has been changed. He has been most energetic in pushing forward railways into the interior of the country, so as to serve the gold fields; Menzies, as we have seen, having been reached last year, and great extensions, to Leonora on the north, and to Norseman on the south, being on the Government programme for this session. One of the prime necessities of the goldfields is an efficient water supply. When this is provided, hundreds of mines that are now idle, owing to the ores being of too low a grade to pay the heavy expenses of treatment, will prove to be able to work at an excellent profit, A great scheme, for which an expenditure of £2,500,000 has been authorised, has been devised by the engineer-in-chief, Mr O'Connor, and approved by other engineers of high standing. This scheme includes the construction of a reservoir to impound the waters of the Helena River; and its pumping to a height in the Coolgardie district, and distribution thence by gravitation. The preliminary works are being carried out; but, as faults have been found in the strata where the reservoir has been started, and as it is no easy matter, even with the aid of the most powerful pumps, to make twenty-five million gallons of water daily flow uphill for several hundred miles, more than two and a half millions sterling will, probably, be required in the end.
In the period, then, of less than nine years since Representative Government—a period the latter part of which has seen the rise of the population from forty to one hundred and seventy thousand, more than half of the manhood of which is settled in the desert of the lately unknown interior, where great mining plants, telephones, electric lights, and palace hotels have replaced the mia-mias of a few wandering blacks; and which has seen the expansion of the revenue from £400,000 to nearly £3,000,000 (£2,478,000 for the present financial year; being £275,935 less than in the preceding year), and of trade from £2,000,000 to over £10,000,000; the energies of the Government have been chiefly occupied in pressing matters of administration, in providing for the necessities of the new-comers, for means of transit to their homes, and for water for their mines; in a policy of works, that is, which has been denounced by those who have benefited from it as a policy of sop. Hence Western Australia has not yet had time to devote itself to those experiments in democratic goverment which I shall have occasion to notice in my references to the other colonies. Considerable opposition was offered in the Imperial Parliament to granting the demand of the colony for self-government, and a long agitation was required before that boon was granted. An objection, which seemed natural on the face of it, was taken to handing over, to what was practically a mere handful of people, a million square miles of Territory. But territory is of little value without population to develop it; and, under the direct government of the Crown, Western Australia was making little if any advance. Wisely, the power of self-goverment was granted. Nominally, the executive power is vested in the Governor, who acts upon the advice of a Cabinet composed of six responsible Ministers. The constitutional rule, throughout Australia, as in England, is that the Crown does not act without the advice of the Cabinet; and it does not change the Cabinet unless the representatives of the people express a want of confidence in it.
Sir Gerard Smith, K.C.M.G., the present Governor, was appointed in 1895, and has proved himself to be a fairly popular representative of her Majesty. He is a courteous and kindly gentleman; and a pleasantly fluent speaker. The social duties of an Australian Governor are most arduous and exacting; though not, in ordinary times, obviously important. He is expected to preside at all functions, and to visit nearly all the provincial towns on the occasions of the holding of annual agricultural shows or races; which things involve a great deal of travelling, and a great deal of public speaking. When Lord Hopetoun was Governor of Victoria, he complained that the one crumpled rose leaf of his life in that colony was the fact that he was expected, on all occasions, to "turn on the tap," meaning the oratorical tap. Sir Gerard Smith performs this part of his functions very agreeably and acceptably; and if he has had to learn that it is not within the scope of his commission (as he supposed before he went out), to attend to the drainage of Coolgardie, he is probably, on consideration, all the better pleased. At the same time, it was fortunate for the colony, and particularly fortunate for its Premier, who had his trade to pick up, that the difficult period of transition, after self-government was granted, fell under the administration 'bf the late Sir William Robinson, who was possibly the best and certainly the most able of our old school of colonial Governors.
Western Australia, despite its rapid growth, is suffering, locally, from a severe depression, the reaction from the recent boom. From a variety of other circumstances, it is scarcely the place at present for the new settler. It only remains, therefore, to repeat that the output of gold has increased from 207,000 ounces, or less than £800,000, in 1894, to 1,050,183 ounces, or £3,990,697, in 1898; and £2,632,927 for the first six months of 1899; that most of the dividends come to England (wherefore the colonists will probably try in the future, like Victoria and Queensland, to keep their good things to themselves); and to add that, if some mines have been mutilated or mismanaged, that is perhaps largely because, while in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia, the consumption per head per annum of liquor is the equivalent, in proof alcohol, of just about 2 gallons, and in Tasmania of 1½, in Western Australia it amounts to over 3.
It seems unlikely, on the whole, that this colony, whose history is entirely different from that of the other side of Australia, and whose population and economic conditions are so different, will join the Federal Commonwealth at once, or without holding out at least for some pledge in regard to the completion of the Trans-Continental Railway. It is the object of the great harbour works at Fremantle, and the settled desire of Sir John Forrest, his Ministers, and everyone interested in Perth, to make Fremantle the first and last port of call for the European mail steamers. The construction of this railway would be a reversion to the earlier policy of the colony, expressed by a Select Committee of the Western Australian Parliament in 1884, and revived by Dr Boyd in 1886; from which the construction of Anthony Hordern's Albany line was a departure. It is not likely to be attained for a long time under the Commonwealth, unless a distinct arrangement is made before federation is concluded, as Adelaide would probably object; and by the proposed constitution her objection would be fatal. Again, it is the desire of the Minister of Agriculture and the older settlers not to take any definite step till the local agriculturists have tightened their hold on the local market, which would mean a delay of four or five years. Sir John Forrest, on the other hand, is pledged to refer the question to the people; and though it appears that every effort will be made, even by enfranchising the women of the coastal districts for the occasion, to counterbalance the preponderant adult male vote of the goldfields, yet it seems possible that in a Referendum the voice of the Outlanders, who cannot be expected as yet to be over-jealous of the special advancement of this colony in particular, will carry the day. But I will recur to this question in a subsequent chapter. The draft Commonwealth Bill has been submitted to the criticism of a Select Committee of the local Parliament, and will go to the people with the Committee's amendments, if at all. In Western Australia, alone of the Australian colonies, politicians are unpaid. They are therefore unusually independent of their constituents. And the Government as a whole, in spite of Sir John Forrest's pledges, is clearly hostile to Federation.
- ↑ I have since ascertained that the output for the whole of 1898 was one million and fifty thousand ounces, valued at close on £4,000,000 sterling. But see Appendix I.
- ↑ The official returns for January—June 1899 give 692,875 ounces: value, £2,632,927 (compare £1,788,636 for corresponding period of last year). August returns give 145,000 ounces, or £552,000; the second largest monthly export on record.