South Australia and Western Australia

by Anthony Trollope

The wages of mechanics are about the same here as in the other colonies: masons, carpenters, and blacksmiths earning about 7s. a day throughout the colony.

There are so-called public schools throughout the colony, supported by government, and free to necessitous persons. They who can pay are made to pay, at rates ranging from 6d. to 1s. a week; but the greater part of the expense of the schools is borne by the colonial revenues. The sum so expended is between £3,000 and £4,000 a year. In 1871, there were 1,730 scholars at these schools, a number which seems to be too small for the population. I find, however, that in the year previous to that, namely, 1870, out of the whole population, there were only 3,945 above the age of five who could neither read nor write.

In Western Australia the State still takes charge of the religion of the people, and pays £3,560 per annum for its ecclesiastical establishment. Of this by far the lion’s share goes to the Church of England. There are fourteen so-called chaplains stationed in different districts of the colony, and the theory I believe is, that they are appointed to look after the souls of the convicts. They do, in fact, act as parish clergymen. They receive from the government £200 per annum each, and their income is subsidized to a small degree by the public who attend their churches. Small payments are also made to the Roman Catholic and Wesleyan Churches. But all this will soon be altered. The payments from imperial funds will doubtless be discontinued as the convict establishment dies out, and all ecclesiastical payment will be brought to an end by representative government here, as has been or as is being done in the other colonies. I fear that, when it is so, the difficulty of maintaining clergymen in Western Australia will be very great.

CHAPTER IV.
FUTURE PROSPECTS.

I fear that it will seem that in what I have said I have given a verdict against Western Australia. I have intended rather to show how great may be the difficulties attending the establishment of a young colony, which in its early years finds no special or unexpected aid from remarkable circumstances. The same struggles with equal hardship and similar doubts have no doubt been made before, and nothing has been said of them. The stragglers have lived through and fought their way to prosperity, and but little has been heard of the details of the fight. When the Puritans were landed on the shores of Massachusetts men did not rush about the world and write books. It may probably be that they too, at their first starting, had but few glimpses of the glory of the coming Yankee world. It was perhaps only by hard fighting with adverse circumstances that they could get corn, and labour, and money. But they went on, and the glories of Yankeedom are now patent to the whole earth.

It is to the gold that has been found in Eastern Australia that the eastern colonies have owed their rapid rise and great name;—and in a great measure, the want of reputation under which Western Australia labours is due to the golden achievements of her sisters. She would not have been thought to have done so badly, had not those sisters done so well. This cannot be pleaded as being entirely sufficient to account for the effect, because we know that South Australia has not done much with gold, and South Australia holds up her head. I have not yet spoken of South Australia, but, when doing so, I will endeavour to show how and why she has prospered.

And then, in another way, the gold-diggings of the eastern colonies have been detrimental not only to the reputation, but to the very existence of Western Australia. Men have constantly gone after the gold. It became almost useless to land emigrants on the western shore. Tidings came of this rush and of that rush, and the new-comers disappeared, soon turning up, as new chums again, in the golden land. I have expressed my opinion more than once that the majority of those who have rushed after gold have done themselves but little good;—but they enriched the colony to which their labour was given, and from which they drew their supplies. Gradually this evil of “rushing” is dying out. The amount of Australian gold produced may go on increasing year by year for many years. They who profess to understand the matter think that it will do so. But the gold will come from quartz-crushing,—from that eating up and digesting of the very bowels of the mountains by heavy machinery, which I have endeavoured to describe elsewhere,—and not by the washing of alluvial soil. It is the latter pursuit which has produced the rushes, whereas the former produces steady industry with a fixed rate of wages. The shifting of labour from colony to colony will, I think, from this cause, become less common than it has been, and agricultural work will hold its own against mining work,—in Australia as in other countries. It is a mining country, and there will be many miners;—but it will not occur to every man that he should be a miner.

In speaking of the future of Western Australia I shall not receive the thanks or sympathies of many of its inhabitants, if I express an opinion that that future is to be independent of gold. The idea is deep-rooted that there should be gold and must be gold,—that Providence cannot have been so unjust as not to have put gold there. Why not in the west as well as in the east? And then the stranger is told of mica, and slate, and quartz, and boulders,—and of the very confident opinion which Mr. Hargreaves expressed. I know nothing of mica, and slate, and quartz, and boulders,—and very little of Mr. Hargreaves. But I know that no gold worthy of the name has been found yet; and that the finding of gold in infinitesimal quantities has been common in many countries. Doubtless gold may turn up in Western Australia, but I trust that the colony will be too wise to wait for it. Should it come, let the favour be accepted from the gods;—but I do not think that men should live expecting it.

In the meantime what other measures may serve to turn the tide, and produce some life and action? The land is good, and if properly tilled will produce all that is necessary for man’s life. And the land that will do so, though widely scattered, is abundant. I need hardly say that at home in England there are still among us millions of half-starved people,—half-starved certainly according to the dietary of the poorest even in this poor colony,—to whom the realisation of rural life in Western Australia would seem to be an earthly paradise if it could be understood,—to whom it would be a paradise if it could be reached. I have spoken in anything but flattering terms of the colony and its labourers. I have not depicted the present normal Western Australian carter as a very picturesque fellow. But, bad as he is, he can always get enough to eat and drink, and, if he will behave himself well, can always have a comfortable home.

But they who will come now will not be unpicturesque with the lineaments of the gaol, as he has been, and the more that may come the less probability will there be of mistaken suspicions. Living is cheaper than in England, as meat is 4d. instead of 10d. a pound, and wages are higher;—for in no agricultural county in England do they rule so high throughout the year as 18s. a week. In the colony 18s. a week are the lowest that I have known to be given without rations. And the rural labourer in Western Australia is more independent than in England. How, indeed, could he possibly be less so! He is better clothed, has a better chance of educating his children, and certainly lives a freer and more manly life.