On board the Lady Augusta steamer,
Goolwa, October 14, 1853.
Address of the Legislative Council to his Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor.
To His Excellency Sir Henry Edward Fox Young, Knight, Lieutenant-Governor of Her Majesty’s Province of South Australia, &c. &c.
May it please your Excellency—
The Legislative Council has experienced sincere gratification in the announcement made to it by your Excellency, of the arrival, at the Goolwa, of the first river-borne wool, the produce of the vast basin of the Murray.
The opening up of the navigation of the Murray has long been anxiously desired; and your Excellency’s earnest and undeviating exertions to promote that important object well deserve the warmest thanks of this Council and of the Colonists of South Australia.
Your Excellency’s personal superintendence of the first practical experiment—which has resulted in demonstrating that that great river is navigable by steam, for commercial purposes, for at least fourteen hundred and fifty miles of its course—must necessarily connect the name of your Excellency with that successful enterprise; and the Council think that so great a public service should be appropriately acknowledged.
The Council, therefore, requests your Excellency to cause three Gold Medals to be engraved, with suitable device and inscriptions—commemorating the auspicious opening up of the steam navigation and commerce of the Murray, and the first arrival at the Goolwa of river-borne wool. And the Council requests that—as the Lieutenant-Governor of South Australia, whose personal exertions promoted this great enterprise, and in whose administration it originated and has been successfully accomplished—your Excellency would be pleased to receive one of the said Medals.