The History of Australia and New Zealand from 1606 to 1890

For, till the country was surveyed, nothing could be done in the way of agriculture; and, even after the surveys were completed, owing to a regulation that those whose grants exceeded a square mile should be allowed the first choice, all the sections nearest to the town were obtained by officials and wealthy speculators, who had no intention of using them. Many of these persons held a district almost as large as an English county, and, therefore, the lands remaining for selection by farmers and small purchasers were generally far in the interior. The sections were pointed out on the maps, but the places themselves had never been trodden by a white man’s foot, and were held by tribes of hostile savages. Some, indeed, tried to settle upon these distant regions, but they were lonely and isolated, and many of them perished, either from disease and hunger, or by the spears of the natives. Yet there were very few who made any attempt at agriculture, and the costly ploughs and implements that had been imported lay rusting on the beach. The horses and cattle died off, the sheep that had been introduced at great expense were almost all killed through feeding on a poisonous plant, which grew in patches over the country; and the men themselves were forced to loiter at Perth, consuming their provisions and chafing at their ruinous inaction.

4. Mr. Peel.—There was one gentleman who had spent fifty thousand pounds in bringing with him to the colony everything that could be required for farming and sheep-breeding on a magnificent scale. He brought with him three hundred labourers; but the land was by no means so fertile as he had imagined, and he had scarcely commenced his farming operations when he found that his only escape from ruin was to enter, single- handed, on the self-dependent life of the ordinary settler.

5. Gloomy Prospects.—Matters grew worse and worse, and those of the disappointed colonists who had sufficient prudence to start before their means were all exhausted either returned to Europe or sought the other colonies, where several achieved success—notably the brothers Henty, who settled at Launceston and established at Portland Bay the whaling station already mentioned. The gloomy reports of those who reached England prevented any further accession of immigrants, and in 1835 it was rumoured, though erroneously, that the British Government intended to abandon the place.

In the following year (1836) the colony of South Australia was founded; and a great extent of territory previously marked as belonging to West Australia was assigned to the new settlement. These two colonies, during their early years, experienced trials and difficulties of the same kind; but while South Australia, in a short time, emerged to a career of brilliant prosperity through sturdy determination to make the land productive, West Australia for forty years never enjoyed more than a transitory gleam of success.

6. Introduction of Convicts.—This little improvement consisted of a message received from Earl Grey in 1848 asking the settlers if they were willing to accept convicts in their midst. The other colonies had refused them, but it was thought not unlikely that West Australia might be glad to get them. Opinions were divided as to the reply which ought to be given: while some were averse to the idea, others believed that the money sent out by the British Government to maintain the convicts and soldiers would originate a trade which might give to the colony new life and fresh prospects. These arguments prevailed, and in 1849 the first shipload of convicts arrived. From time to time new gangs were received, and the place began to be much more populous than before. The shopkeepers in Perth became rich, and the farmer squatters of the surrounding districts found a ready market for their produce. Yet this success was only partial; and there was nothing which might be said to constitute general prosperity. In the little town of Fremantle, the few and scattered houses had still a rural aspect, and the streets echoed to the sound of no commercial bustle. In Perth the main street was still a grassy walk, shaded by avenues of trees, and even in the business quarter the houses stood each in the midst of its spacious garden.

7. Evils of Convictism.—West Australia had now to suffer the consequences of having become a penal settlement. Many of the convicts, on being liberated, took up their abode in the colony; but their dispositions were seldom either amiable or virtuous, and from the vices of these men the whole population began to lose character in the eyes of other countries. A large number of the prisoners were no sooner liberated than they set off for the goldfields in the eastern colonies, which thus began to share in the evils of convictism. These colonies were not inclined to suffer long in this manner; and, to defend themselves, they refused admission to any person who came from West Australia, unless he could show that he had never been a convict. Thus the colony at Swan River was branded, and held to be contaminated; no free immigrants sought its shores, and many of its best inhabitants departed.

This stigma continued to rest on West Australia until the year 1868, when the transportation of criminals from Great Britain altogether ceased, and the colony no longer received its periodical supply of convicts. Since that time it has, in a great measure, retrieved its character; it is now doing what it can to attract free immigrants, and offers large tracts of pastoral land at low rentals, while the farming classes are attracted by free selection at only ten shillings an acre, with ten years in which to pay it. 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 depot 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. There is every indication, however, that its progress in the near future will be rapid. Up to 1870 it formed what was called a Crown colony: the people had no voice in their own government; their affairs were managed for them by the officers of the English Government. At that date, however, when transportation was abolished, the colony was promoted to the partial management of its own affairs, and the people began periodically to elect a Legislative Council. In 1890 it was still further promoted, being raised to the full dignity of an independent colony, having, like the other colonies of Australia, a Parliament of two Houses, with power to make and unmake its own laws as it pleases. Perth is now rapidly increasing, and the colony is on the eve of its palmy days.

CHAPTER XVI. QUEENSLAND, 1823-1890.

1. Moreton Bay.—When Captain Cook, in 1770, sailed into the wide opening of Moreton Bay, several of his friends on board observed the sea to be paler than usual, and formed the opinion that, if a careful search were made along the shores, it would be found that a large river fell into the sea somewhere in the neighbourhood. Cook attached so little weight to this idea that he did not stay to make any examination; and when, about twenty years later, Captain Flinders surveyed the same bay, he saw no trace of a river, though he made special search for one.

But the reports of both these travellers were subsequently found to be erroneous; for, in 1823, when Governor Brisbane sent the discoverer Oxley, in the Mermaid, to select a place for a new convict station in the northern district of New South Wales, Moreton Bay was found to receive the waters of a large and important river. His success was, at least in part, due to accident. Among the blacks, on the shores of the bay, was a naked man, who was seen to be white. This man was taken on board. He had sailed in an open boat from Sydney, with three others, about a year before, but had been driven by gales out to sea and far to the north. They had landed and had been well received by the blacks. The rest had started to walk along the shore to Sydney, but one man, named Pamphlett, had remained with the natives; and it was he who now was rescued by Oxley, to whom he gave the information that, when roving inland with the tribe among whom he was living, he had seen a fine river of fresh water. Under the guidance of Pamphlett, Oxley left his little vessel in the bay, and with a boat entered upon the broad current of the stream. Before sunset he had ascended about twenty miles, and had been delighted by the richness of the scenery and the magnificence of the timber. On the following day he proceeded thirty miles farther up, and throughout the whole distance found the stream to be broad and of sufficient depth to be navigable for vessels of considerable size. Oxley was justly proud of his discovery, and wished to penetrate still farther into the forests that lay beyond; but his boat’s crew had been so exhausted by their long row under a burning sun that he could go no farther, and found it necessary to turn and glide with the current down to his vessel, which he reached late on the fourth night. To the stream he had thus discovered he gave the name of the Brisbane River.

2. Convict Station.—On his return he recommended this district as a suitable position for the new convict station, and during the following year (1824) he was sent to form the settlement. With a small