At the smelting works of Wallaroo men were earning higher wages than in the mines;—something like an average of £2 10s. a week;—but their hours of labour were longer. The miners work day and night, by shifts of eight hours each. The smelters work also throughout the twenty-four hours,—but they work only in two sets. I should think that twelve hours by a furnace must be worse than eight below ground. The smelters, however, probably do not keep at it during the whole time. The smelters I found had, almost to a man, come from Wales, whereas so many of the miners were Cornish men as to give to Moonta and Wallaroo the air of Cornish towns.
Coal for the smelting is brought from Newcastle, in New South Wales; but the inferior ore is sent to other smelting works at Newcastle,—so that the ships which bring the coal may go back with freights. The copper therefore is sent to the European markets, not only from Port Wallaroo, but also from Newcastle.
When I was in the colony in April, 1872, copper, which in April, 1871, had been worth only £74 per ton, rose to £105,—so that the happy owners of mines in a working condition were revelling in a success not inferior to that of the squatters. Copper and wool were both so high that the fortune of the colony was supposed to be made. I found that there were no less than 70 “reputed” mines in the colony at the close of the year 1870, of which 38 were reported to have been then at work. But sundry even of these 38 were not supposed to be remunerative. Many of the 70 so-called “reputed” mines are mere mining claims, which are held under government as possible future speculations. Those which are distant from the sea and distant also from railways cannot be worked with a profit, let the ore be ever so rich. The cost of the carriage destroys the wealth of the copper. At present when men talk of the mining wealth of South Australia they allude to Wallaroo and Moonta.
I have said that these places are joined together by a railway,—but they are not joined to any other place by rail. The traveller to Wallaroo is forced to go from Adelaide either by coach or by steamer round the Gulfs. I was taken there by one of the great copper-mining authorities of the colony, and we elected to go by coach, in order that I might see something of the country. The coach was a mail-coach, with four horses, running regularly on the road every day;—but on our return journey we were absolutely lost in the bush,—coach, coachman, horses, mails, passengers, and all. The man was trying a new track, and took us so far away from the old track that no one knew where we were. At last we found ourselves on the seashore. Of course it will be understood that there was no vestige of a road or pathway. Travellers are often “bushed” in Australia. They wander off their paths and are lost amidst the forests. In this instance the whole mail-coach was “bushed.” When we came upon the sea, and no one could say what sea it was, I felt that the adventure was almost more than interesting.
CHAPTER VI.
THE NORTHERN TERRITORY.—TELEGRAPH AND RAILWAY.
There are not a few in the colonies who declare that South Australia, as a name for the colony which uses it, is a misnomer. Nearly the whole of Victoria is south of nearly the whole of South Australia. Adelaide is considerably to the north of Melbourne, and but very little to the south of Sydney. Consequently those foolish English people at home are actually making the stupidest mistakes! Letters have been addressed to Melbourne, New South Wales, South Australia. The story is very current, and is often told to show the want of geographical education under which the old country suffers. I have not, however, been able to trace the address to later years, and at any time between 1837 and 1851 the details as given by the letter-writer were only too correct. Melbourne did belong to New South Wales, and certainly was in the most southern district of Australia. But if the name South Australia was bad, or falsely describing the colony, when first given, it is infinitely worse now. Then the proposed confines of the young settlement lay around Spencer Gulf, and Gulf St. Vincent, and Encounter Bay, which armlets of the sea break up into the land from the eastern extremity of the Great Australian Bight,—as the curve in the sea line of the southern coast of the continent is called. The new colonists had settled themselves, or, when the name was chosen, were proposing to settle themselves, at the centre of the south coast, and the name was fair enough. But since those days South Australia has extended herself northwards till she has made good her claim up to a line far north of that which divides Queensland from New South Wales, and now she is supposed to run right through the continent up to the Gulf of Carpentaria and the Indian Ocean, so that she thoroughly divides the vast desert tracts of Western Australia from the three eastern colonies, Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria. As far as area is concerned, she is at present as much northern as southern. In some of our maps the northern half of these territories is separated by a line from the southern, as though it were a separate colony;—but it has had no name of its own yet given to it; its lands are at the disposition of the government of South Australia; its very few inhabitants are subject to South Australian laws; and it is in fact a part of South Australia. It contains over 500,000 square miles; but, with the exception of one or two very small settlements on the coast, it has no white population. The aborigines who wander through it have been little disturbed, and nothing was known of it till the great enterprise of running a telegraph wire through it from south to north had been conceived and commenced. Now the northern territory has come into fashion, men talk about it in the colonies, and it is becoming necessary that even here in England the fact should be recognised that there is such a land, which will probably before long demand to be instituted as a separate colony.
The telegraph posts and wires by which the Australian colonies are now connected with Great Britain are already an established fact. This line enters the Australian continent from Java, at a point on the northern coast called Port Darwin. At Port Darwin there is a small settlement called Palmerston, around which land had been sold to the extent of 500,000 acres when I was in the colony, and this has been selected as the landing-place of European news. The colonisation of the northern territory is thus begun,—and there can be little doubt but that a town, and then a settlement, and then a colony, will form themselves.
When the scheme of the telegraph was first put on foot the colony of South Australia undertook to make the entire line across the continent,—the submarine line to Java and the line thence on to Singapore and home to Europe being in other hands. It was an immense undertaking for a community so small in number, and one as to which many doubted the power of the colony to complete it. But it has been completed. I had heard, before I left England in 1871, that an undertaking had been given by the government of South Australia to finish the work by January 1, 1872. This certainly was not done, but very great efforts were made to accomplish it, and the failure was caused by the violence of nature rather than by any want of energy. Unexpected and prolonged rains interfered with the operations and greatly retarded them. The world is used to the breaking of such promises in regard to time, and hardly ever expects that a contractor for a large work shall be punctual within a month or two. The world may well excuse this breach of contract, for surely no contractor ever had a harder job of work on hand. The delay would not be worth mention here, were it not that the leading South Australians of the day, headed by the governor, had been so anxious to show that they could really do all that they had undertaken to perform, and were equally disappointed at their own partial failure.
The distance of the line to be made was about 1,800 miles, and the work had to be done through a country unknown, without water, into which every article needed by the men had to be carried over deserts, across unbridged rivers, through unexplored forests, amidst hostile tribes of savages,—in one of the hottest regions of the world. I speak here of the lack of water, and I have said above that the works were hindered by rain. I hope my gentle readers will not think that I am piling up excuses which obliterate each other. There is room for deviation of temperature in a distance of 1,800 miles,—and Australia generally, though subject specially to drought, is subject to floods also. And the same gentle readers should remember,—when they bethink themselves how easy it is to stick up a few poles in this or another thickly inhabited country, and how small is the operation of erecting a line of telegraph wires as compared with that of constructing a railway or even a road,—how great had hitherto been the difficulty experienced by explorers in simply making their way across the continent, and in carrying provisions for themselves as they journeyed. Burke and Wills perished in the attempt, and the line to be taken was through the very country in which Burke and Wills had been lost. The dangers would of course not be similar. The army of workmen sent to put up the posts and to stretch the wires was accompanied by an army of purveyors. Men could never be without food or without water. But it was necessary that everything should be carried. For the northern portion of the work it was necessary that all stores should be sent round by ships, and then taken up rivers which had not hitherto been surveyed. If the gentle reader will think only of the amount of wire required for 1,800 miles of telegraph communication, and of the circumstances of its carriage, he will, I think, recognise the magnitude of the enterprise.
The colony divided the work, the government undertaking about 800 miles in the centre, which portion of the ground was considered to be most difficult to reach. The remaining distances, consisting of 500 miles in the south and 500 miles in the north, were let out to contractors. The southern part, which was comparatively easy as being accessible from Adelaide, was finished in time, as was also the middle distance which the government had kept in its own hands. But the difficulties at the northern end were so great that they who had undertaken the work failed to accomplish it, and it was at last completed by government,—if I remember rightly, somewhat more than six months after the date fixed. The line did not come into immediate working order, owing to some temporary fault beyond the Australian borders.