along the route, and great teams of bullocks were employed to carry the necessary provisions and materials to the stations; and yet, in spite of every precaution, the result was a failure. Meanwhile the cable had been laid, and the first message sent from Port Darwin to England announced that the overland telegraph was not nearly finished. The 1st of January, 1872, being now close at hand, Mr. Todd was hastily sent to complete the work. But the time agreed upon had expired before he had even made a commencement, and the company threatened to sue the South Australian Government for damages, on account of the losses sustained by its failure to perform its share of the contract. For the next eight months the work was energetically carried forward; Mr. Todd rode all along the line to see that its construction was satisfactory throughout. He was at Central Mount Stuart in the month of August, when the two ends of the wire were joined, and the first telegraphic message flashed across the Australian Continent. But, meantime, a flaw had occurred in the submarine cable, and it was not until October that communication was established with England. On the second day of that month, the Lord Mayor of London, standing at one end of the line, sent his hearty congratulations through twelve thousand five hundred miles of wire to the Mayor of Adelaide, who conversed with him at the other extremity. The whole work was undertaken and accomplished within two years; and already not only South Australia, but all the colonies, are reaping the greatest benefits from this enterprising effort. Another undertaking of a similar character has been completed by the efforts of both South and West Australia; along the barren coast on which Eyre so nearly perished there stretches a long line of posts, which carries a telegraph wire from Perth to Adelaide.
A period of depression began in South Australia after 1882. For a time everything was against the colony. Long droughts killed its sheep and ruined its crops; while the copper mines were found to be worked out. But fortune began to smile again after a few years of dull times, and when in 1887 an exhibition was held in Adelaide to commemorate the jubilee of the colony, it was also the commemoration of the return of brighter prospects. In the growth of wheat and fruits as well as in the making of wine South Australia has great openings for future prosperity.
CHAPTER XXI.
NEW SOUTH WALES, 1860-1890.
1. The Land Act.—Sir John Young became Governor of New South Wales in 1861. He was a man of great talent; but, at this stage of the colony’s history, the ability of the Governor made very little difference in the general progress of affairs. The political power was now chiefly in the hands of responsible Ministers, and without their advice the Governor could do nothing. The Ministry of the period—headed by Charles Cowper and John Robertson—prepared a bill to alter the regulations for the sale of land, and to give to the poor man an opportunity of obtaining a small farm on easy terms. Any person who declared his readiness to live on his land, and to cultivate it, was to be allowed to select a portion, not exceeding a certain size, in any part of the colony which he thought most convenient. The land was not to be given gratuitously; but, although the selector was to pay for it at the rate of one pound per acre, yet he was not expected to give more than a quarter of the price on taking possession. Three years afterwards he had the option of either paying at once for the remaining three-quarters, or, if this were beyond his means, of continuing to hold the land at a yearly rental of one shilling an acre. This was an excellent scheme for the poorer class of farmers; but it was not looked upon with favour by the squatters, whose runs were only rented from the State, and were, therefore, liable, under this new Act, to be invaded by selectors, who would pick out all the more fertile portions, break up the runs in an awkward manner, and cause many annoyances.
Hence, though the Legislative Assembly passed the bill, the Upper House, whose members were mostly squatters, very promptly rejected it; and upon this there arose a struggle, the Ministry being determined to carry the bill, and the Council quite as resolute never to pass it. Acting on the advice of his Ministers, Sir John Young entreated the Upper House to give way; but it was deaf to all persuasions, and the Ministers determined to coerce it by adopting extreme measures. Its members had been nominated by a previous Governor for a period of five years, as a preliminary trial before the nominations for life; the term of their appointment was now drawing to a close, and Sir John Young, by waiting some little time, might easily have appointed a new Council of his own way of thinking. But the Ministers were impatient to have their measure passed, and, instead of waiting, they advised the Governor to nominate twenty-one new members of Council, who, being all supporters of the bill, would give them a majority in the Upper House; so that, on the very last night of its existence, it would be obliged to pass the measure and make it law. But when the opponents of the bill saw the trick which was being played upon them, they rose from their seats and resigned in a body. The President himself vacated his chair; and as no business could then be carried on, the Land Bill was delayed until the Council came to an end, and the Ministers thus found themselves outwitted. They were able, somewhat later, to effect their purpose; but this little episode in responsible government caused considerable stir at the time, and Sir John subsequently received a rebuke from the Colonial Secretary for his share in it.
2. Prince Alfred.—In 1868 Lord Belmore became Governor of New South Wales, and during his term of office all the colonies passed through a period of excitement on the occasion of a visit from the Queen’s second son, Prince Alfred. He was the first of the Royal Family who had ever visited Australia, and the people gave to him a hearty and enthusiastic reception. As he entered the cities flower-decked arches spanned the streets; crowds of people gathered by day to welcome him, and at night the houses and public buildings were brilliantly illuminated in his honour. But during the height of the festivities at Sydney a circumstance occurred which cast a gloom over the whole of Australia. The Prince had accepted an invitation to a picnic at Clontarf, and was walking quietly on the sands to view the various sports of the holiday-makers, when a young man named O’Farrell rushed forward and discharged a pistol at him. The ball entered his back, and he fell dangerously wounded. For a day or two his life trembled in the balance, and the colonists awaited the result with the greatest excitement, until it was made known that the crisis was past. No reason was alleged for the crime except a blind dislike to the Royal Family; and O’Farrell was subsequently tried and executed.
3. Railway Construction.—New South Wales has three main lines of railway with many branches. One starts from Sydney, and passes through Goulburn to Albury on its way to Melbourne; one goes north to Newcastle, then through the New England district, and so to Brisbane; and the third runs from Sydney over the Blue Mountains to Bathurst, and away to Bourke, on the Darling River. Those rugged heights, which so long opposed the westward progress of the early colonists, have proved no insuperable barrier to the engineer; and the locomotive now slowly puffs up the steep inclines and drags its long line of heavily-laden trucks where Macquarie’s road, with so much trouble, was carried in 1815. The first difficulty which had to be encountered was at a long valley named Knapsack Gully. Here the rails had to be laid on a great viaduct, where the trains run above the tops of the tallest trees. The engineers had next to undertake the formidable task of conducting the line up a steep and rocky incline, seven hundred feet in height. This was effected by cutting a “zigzag” in the rock; the trains run first to the left, rising upon a slight incline; then, reversing, they go to the right, still mounting slightly upwards; then, again, to the left; and so on till the summit is reached. By these means the short distance is rendered long, but the abrupt steepness of the hill is reduced to a gentle inclination. The trains afterwards run along the top of the ridge, gradually rising, till, at the highest point, they are three thousand five hundred feet above the level of the Sydney station. The passengers look down from the mountain tops on the forest-clad valleys far below; they speed along vast embankments or dash through passages cut in the solid rock, whose sides tower above them to the height of an ordinary steeple. In some places long tunnels were bored, so that the trains now enter a hill at one side and emerge from the other.
One of these tunnels was thought to be unsafe; the immense mass of rock above it seemed likely to crush downwards upon the passage, and the engineers thought that their best course would be to remove the hill from above it. Three and a half tons of gunpowder were placed at intervals in the tunnel, and connected by wires with a
