South Australia and Western Australia

SOUTH AUSTRALIA AND WESTERN AUSTRALIA
BY ANTHONY TROLLOPE
BEING A PORTION OF THE WORK ENTITLED “AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND,” BY THE SAME AUTHOR
LONDON CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY 1874
LONDON: PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO., CITY ROAD.
South Australia has a peculiar history of its own, differing very much from those of the other Australian colonies, though similar in some degree to that of New Zealand, which was founded after South Australia, and with aspirations of the same nature. New South Wales was taken up by Great Britain as a convict depôt, and grew as such till the free inhabitants who had followed and surrounded the convicts became numerous and strong enough to declare that they would have no more such neighbours sent among them. Van Diemen’s Land, which is now Tasmania, and Moreton Bay, which is now Queensland, were occupied as convict dependencies to the parent establishment. Moreton Bay was still part of New South Wales when New South Wales refused to be any longer regarded as an English prison, and Van Diemen’s Land did for herself that which New South Wales had done before. Even Port Phillip, which is now Victoria, was first occupied by convicts sent thither from the parent colony,—though it is right to say that the convict system never took root there, and that the attempt never reached fulfilment. On the same principle New South Wales sent an offshoot convict depôt to King George’s Sound, which is now a part of Western Australia,—an unhappy colony which, in its sore distress, was destined to save itself from utter destruction by delivering itself to the custody of compelled immigrants, who could be made to come thither and work when others would not come. In this way all the now existing Australian colonies, except South Australia, have either owed their origin to convicts, or have been at one period of their existence fostered by convict labour; but South Australia has never been blessed—or cursed—with the custody of a single British exile.