Governor Hindmarsh.
5. Early Failures.—The Wakefield system could not possibly realise the hopeful anticipations which had been formed of it; for the foundation of a new colony and the reclaiming of the lonely forest wilds are not to be accomplished by merely looking on at the exertions of hired servants. Ladies and gentlemen who had, in England, paid for land they had never seen, were, on their arrival, greatly disgusted at the sight of the toils before them. They had to pull their luggage through the dismal swamp, for there were neither porters nor cabs in waiting; they had to settle down in canvas tents, on a grassy plain, which was called a city, but where a few painted boards here and there, fastened to the trunks of gum trees, were the only indications of streets. Then, when they went out to see their estates, and beheld great stretches of rude and unpromising wilderness—when they considered how many years must pass away before there could possibly arise the terraces and gardens, the orchards and grassy lawns, which make an English country-house delightful—their courage failed them, and, instead of going forth upon the land, they clustered together in Adelaide. Every one wished to settle down in the city, and as it was expected that, with the growth of population, the value of town allotments would rapidly increase, the idea became prevalent that to buy land in the city and keep it for sale in future years would be a profitable investment. But there were so many who entertained the same astute design that, when they all came to put it in practice, there was little gain to any one; and the only result was that Adelaide was turned into a scene of reckless speculation and gambling in land.
6. Governor Gawler.—Meantime poorer emigrants were arriving in expectation of obtaining employment from their wealthier predecessors, who had been able to pay the high price demanded for land. They found that those whom they expected to be their employers had abandoned the idea of going out into the country to cultivate the soil. There was, therefore, nothing for them to do; they had no money with which to speculate in town allotments, they had no land on which to commence farming for themselves, and they were in a wretched plight. Provisions had rapidly increased in price, so that flour rose from £20 to £80 per ton; no food was being produced from the land, and nothing whatever was being done to develop the resources of the colony, whilst the money which the settlers had brought with them was rapidly being spent in importing shiploads of provisions from other countries.
In order to give employment to those of the settlers who were really destitute, Governor Gawler commenced a series of Government works. He constructed a good road between Adelaide and its port. He formed wharves, and reclaimed the unwholesome swamp; he built a Custom House, with warehouses and many other costly buildings, the Government House alone costing £20,000. Now, these were all in themselves very desirable things; but it was difficult to see how they were to be paid for. Colonel Gawler spent nearly the whole of his own private fortune in paying the wages of the unfortunate persons he employed, but that could not long support so great a concourse of people. He persuaded merchants in England to send out provisions and clothing for the famished people; but the only means he had of paying for these goods was by drafts on the British Treasury, which were accepted at first as equivalent to money, for it was believed that, whenever they were presented in London, payment would immediately be made by the British Government. But this was a serious mistake: though the first series of drafts were paid readily enough, yet when the authorities in England found that others, for larger and larger amounts, continued to pour in, they refused to pay, and reminded the colony that, by the terms of its charter, it was to be entirely self-supporting. A series of drafts, to the amount of £69,000, were therefore dishonoured; and the merchants, finding the drafts to be worth no more than so much paper, demanded their money from the Governor; but he had nothing with which to pay, and the colony had to be declared insolvent, having debts to the amount of about £400,000 which it could not meet.
7. The Collapse.—Matters were now in a very gloomy condition. Most of the colonists became anxious to return to England, and therefore sought to sell their land. But when nearly all wished to sell, and scarcely any wished to buy, the price went down to a trifle, and men who had invested fortunes in town allotments, realised no more than enough to pay their passage home. In the meantime the English merchants declined to send out any further supplies, and those who had not the means of leaving Adelaide seemed in great danger of starving. But as land could now be bought very cheaply, many industrious people of the poorer class settled down to clear the country for farming. This was what should have been done at the very beginning; for no colony can be prosperous, or look for anything but bankruptcy, until it commences to produce grain, or wool, or minerals, or some other commodity with which it can purchase from other lands the goods which they produce. The lands of South Australia are admirably adapted for the growth of wheat; and, after a time, success attended the efforts of the farmers, who thus laid the foundations of future prosperity.
Proclamation Tree, Glenelg.
(The colony of S. Australia proclaimed a British dependency,
28th December, 1836.)
Another industry was also added about this time. The young squatters of New South Wales, attracted by the high prices given for sheep in the early days of Adelaide, had been daring enough, in spite of the blacks and of the toilsome journey, to drive their flocks overland; and the new-comers soon gave quite a wool-growing tone to the community. These “overlanders,” as they were called, affected a bandit style of dress; in their scarlet shirts and broad-brimmed hats, their belts filled with pistols, and their horses gaily caparisoned, they caused a sensation in the streets in Adelaide, which rang all evening with their merriment and dissipation. But as they brought about fifty thousand sheep into the colony during the course of only a year or so, they were of essential benefit to it. Many of them settled down and taught the new arrivals how to manage flocks and prepare the wool, and thus they assisted in raising Adelaide from the state of despondency and distress into which it had sunk.
8. Recall of Governor Gawler.—The British Government eventually decided to lend the colony a sufficient sum of money to pay its debts; but it was resolved to make certain changes. The eleven commissioners were abolished, Captain George Grey, a young officer, was appointed Governor; and one day in May, 1841, he walked into the Government House at Adelaide, presented his commission to Governor Gawler, and at once took the control of affairs into his own hands. This summary mode of dismissing Governor Gawler must now be regarded as somewhat harsh; for he had laboured hard and spent his money freely in trying to benefit the colony, and the mistakes which were made during his administration were not so much due to his incapacity as to the impracticable nature of the theory on which the colony had been founded. In 1841 he sailed for England, deeply regretted by many who had experienced his kindness and generosity in their time of trouble.