South Australia and Western Australia

by Anthony Trollope

But how shall the rural labourer out of Sussex, Suffolk, Essex, or Cambridgeshire get to Western Australia? If there were no pecuniary difficulty in the journey,—if every labourer were empowered by Act of Parliament to go to some parish officer and demand to be sent across the ocean,—it is probable that a very large fleet of transport ships would soon be required, and that English farmers would find it difficult to get in their seed. This can never be the case, but something towards it is done. The colonies assist intending immigrants, and the mother country too assists, or, in some cases, pays the entire expense of emigrants. We sent out those ill-born and ill-bred women who were wanted as convicts’ wives,—and who, when received, were found to be mere Irish. But it is ill bringing a man out who will not stay when he is brought. If you, my philanthropical reader, send out some favoured tenant or parishioner, your object is fairly achieved whether the man make himself happy in Western Australia or Victoria. But it is by no means so with the colony, when the colony pays. When a colony has paid for three or four hundred immigrants, and finds after a few months that they have all disappeared, and gone to more fortunate lands, the colony not unnaturally becomes disgusted. Then it is that the colony feels that nothing will do but gold. And the mother country is affected somewhat in the same way, though less bitterly. It is said now that England has promised a certain number of free emigrants to Western Australia, and that she has not kept her word. But the mother country says that, as regards Western Australia, it is useless to send her emigrants unless she can keep them. In speaking of the continuance of the obligation on the part of England, Lord Granville, in July, 1869, wrote as follows:—“It has already been laid down as a condition of that continuance that the immigration should be wanted, and such as the colony can provide for; but it is clear from the census returns that the large proportion of these persons who reach Western Australia do not remain in it. There is therefore the strongest primâ facie evidence that the immigration is not wanted.” The men are tempted away; and do the colony, for whose benefit they were sent, no good by their short sojourn. Then why send them? Renewed petitions for emigrants, emigrants to be sent out at the expense of the government, were made; but the Secretary of State was firm. Nominated emigrants would remain,—emigrants nominated by friends in the colony. So pleaded the governor, with an anxiety which showed that at any rate his heart was in the matter. But the Secretary of State was still hard. “Her Majesty’s Government are fully aware,” he said in 1870, “that nominated emigrants are more likely to remain in the colony than others; but unfortunately they have no evidence before them that either one or the other class do in fact remain.”

How shall men and women be got who will remain:—who will come to the place in order that they may live upon the land, and not simply making it a stepping-stone to some rush for gold? It can only be done by making the land attractive; and the great attraction offered by land is ownership. Let a man understand that he can have land of his own and live upon it, owing rent to no one and service to no one, subject to no bondage, with no one to order his coming in and his going out, with no tasks laid on his shoulders by another, that he can be altogether free from the dominion of a master, and you open up to his mental eyes a view of life that is full of attraction. This new home, that is so unlike the home that he is to leave, is indeed far across the waters, in another world, away from the comrades and circumstances of his life amidst which he feels that, though wretched, he is secure. He feels that if he go he can never return; and he hears vague, unsatisfactory, even contradictory accounts of the new land. He knows that he is groping his way, and that, should he go, he will at last take a leap in the dark. Even with those among us who have many friends, the nature of whose life has taught us where to look for information, who can not only write but express in writing what we mean, who can not only read but know where to find the books that will teach us that we want to learn, there is felt to be much difficulty when the question arises whether we shall remove ourselves and our household gods to the new home that we call a colony, or whether we shall send a son to push his fortunes in the new country. To digest what we have learned and bring it all together so that we may act upon it safely is no easy task. What must it be to the working man whom some newspaper has reached, or some advertisement to emigrants; and who, in addition to this, has heard the vague surmises of his neighbour? He goes to the parson, or to the squire, or perhaps to his employer,—and is recommended to remain. The adviser hardly dares to say otherwise, and is probably himself impregnated with the patriotic idea that there is no place for an Englishman like England. For members of parliament, and men with £5,000 a year, or with prosperous shops in Cheapside,—for some even whose fortune is less brilliant than that,—England is a very comfortable home. No land can beat it. But for Englishmen in general, that is, for the bulk of the working population of the country, it is I think by no means the best place. A large proportion of our labouring classes cannot even get enough to eat. A still larger proportion are doomed so to work that they can think of nothing but a sufficiency of food. In all the Australian colonies, if a man will work the food comes easily, and he can turn his mind elsewhere. I do not assert that there is no poverty,—no distress. Even in Western Australia the government is obliged to maintain an establishment for paupers. But poverty is not the rule, and a man who will work and can work may be independent.

Success in emigration depends much on the fashion of the thing, and this peculiar exodus,—to Western Australia namely,—is not at present fashionable. If in the course of the next two or three years two or three thousand new-comers were to land upon its shores and stay there, the thing would be done. And the two or three thousand would find plenty and happy homes. But solitary immigrants to the colony feel that they become mixed with the convict population. At the present moment great encouragement has been offered to new-comers,—to men who on arriving with a few pounds in their pockets will be willing to work with their own hands, but who will so work on their own lands.

I do not know how far, in what I have written of the other colonies, I may have been able to make my English reader understand the nature and position of a “free-selecter.” I found it very difficult to understand myself, or to come to a conclusion whether he should be regarded as the normal British emigrant,—manly, industrious, independent, and courageous,—or a mere sheep-stealer. There was one other alternative, hardly more attractive than the last. He need not be a mere sheep-stealer, though probably he would do a little in that line; but might have free-selected with the first great object of making his presence so unbearable to the squatter on whose run he had perched himself, that the squatter would be obliged to buy him out. I certainly found that the manly, independent, and courageous free-selecter was not the free-selecter of whom the squatters talked to me in Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria. The squatters did not carry me with them altogether; but it certainly is the case that free-selecters in these colonies often do steal sheep, and often do make themselves disagreeable. A man desirous of free-selecting,—say in Queensland and New South Wales, for the game has nearly been played out within the smaller and more valuable confines of Victoria,—has the whole world of the colony open to him, and very little to divert his course. He searches and inquires, and, actuated by good or bad motives, settles down on some bit of land which he thinks will grow corn, and where he is sure to be hated by the squatter whom he is invading. The colonial governments offer him every possible encouragement as to money,—land at 15s. an acre, land at 10s. an acre, and especially land with deferred payments,—with payments taking the shape of rent, perhaps 1s. 6d. or 1s. an acre per annum,—the land becoming his own at the end of a term of years, the yearly deferred payments having been taken as the price of it. But the governments have done little or nothing to assist the free-selecter in placing himself. A part of the charm of the thing in the eyes of the free-selecter has been the power of choosing his land. We can understand that there is a pleasure in going well on to the run of some great squatter, pegging out some 40, 80, or 160 acres, and saying, “By your leave, sir, I mean to have this.” We can understand that there is pleasure in doing it, and great pain in enduring it. My sympathies have been chiefly with the free-selecter, not believing that he is always a sheep-stealer, and feeling that the land should be open to him. Pastoral autocrats with acres by the hundreds of thousands,—acres which are not their own,—cannot fill up a country. They are the precursors of population, and, as the population comes, should make way for it. But might it not be arranged that the free-selecters should be invited to come and take up their lands in some manner less objectionable than that which has hitherto prevailed?

When I was in Western Australia new land regulations were issued and proclaimed, having just received the sanction of the Colonial Office at home; and these regulations go a long way towards effecting a remedy for those evils attaching to free-selection which I have attempted to describe,—and they will remedy another evil which, in Western Australia especially, is very detrimental to the selecting farmer. They will bring the agricultural occupiers of the land together. Men are invited to occupy lands chosen for “special occupation.” By this arrangement the skill and experience of the land officers of the colony will be used on behalf of the selecter, who will not only be enabled to place himself on soil capable of bearing corn, but will find himself surrounded by others, occupied as he is in producing corn. In this way rural communities may be formed which shall not be sheep-stealing communities. The locality having been chosen in the first place, not by the new-comer, but by the government, sheep-stealing will not at any rate have been the object when the choice was made,—nor the idea that a squatter if harassed sufficiently may at last be induced to buy his neighbour out. Communities will be formed, and communities will make markets. I have sometimes thought that free-selecters like to take their land up far away in the bush, at long distances each from another. There is a wild independence in the doing so which charms. But no decision can be more detrimental to the man’s material interest. When so located he is driven to consume all that he grows, and then,—unless he steal sheep,—he can consume nothing else. That which is most to be desired by him is that gradually a township should be formed round his homestead.

Immigrants and others are invited by these new regulations to take up land selected for special occupation, and great boons are offered to those who will do so. In the first place the payment of the price of the land is deferred. Hitherto in this colony it has always been necessary that the price of the land should be paid down. The land, as has been explained elsewhere, has been purchased at various prices, ranging from 5s. to 20s. an acre,—but there has been no deferred payment. At last 10s. an acre was the settled price,—and so it remains. The ordinary free-selecter may go where he will beyond the limits of town, suburban, or mineral lands, and, if no purchaser have been before him, may purchase any amount of land in blocks of not less than 40 acres, at 10s. an acre. But when purchasing after this fashion he must pay his money down. If he will take up land selected for special occupation, he need not pay his money down. He need only pay 1s. an acre per annum, such payment being required in advance. He must then fence the whole of his land and till a quarter of it during the ten years over which the payment is deferred.—and if he do thus the land becomes his own.

There are other stipulations which the intending emigrant should understand. The purchaser cannot purchase in this manner less than 100 acres. It is considered that he cannot crop all the land yearly, and that less than 100 acres will not afford a man subsistence. Nor can he take up more than 500 acres. In addition to the use of the land which will be his own at the end of the ten years, and will be in his own hands during the previous occupancy, the selecter will be entitled to run cattle and sheep upon commonages, or neighbouring lands not fitted for agricultural purposes. It is stipulated that the common land shall in no case exceed 200 per cent. of the land fitted for agricultural purposes,—so that the commonage for 2,000 agricultural acres, or acres fit for agriculture, shall not exceed 4,000 acres. It is not stipulated that the commonage shall amount to any fixed number of acres. It is understood, however, that it will suffice,—not of course for the produce of wool,—but for meat and milk.

In writing for the information of future emigrants, it is very difficult to make the exact truth clearly intelligible. The new regulations speak of land fitted for agricultural purposes, and in what I have written above I have spoken of “agricultural” land. The emigrant who comes out to take up lands selected for special occupation in Western Australia, must not expect that he will find ploughed fields. He will find forest land, covered more or less thickly with timber,—what all the world in Australia knows as bush,—and it will be his first work to clear that portion of his holding from which he intends to get his first crop. But the land will have been chosen as being fitted, when cleared, for agricultural purposes. The thickness, and what I may call obduracy, of timber is very various. It may be presumed that the land chosen will not be heavily timbered. I was told that the average price of clearing bush in Western Australia was about £4 an acre. A man contracting to do such work would expect to make 25s. a week. If this be so, a man knowing what he was about would clear an acre in three weeks.

But, to my thinking, the best part of the offer made still remains to be told. Any emigrant taking up land in the colony selected for special occupation within six months of his landing,—the time named should I think have been prolonged to at least twelve months,—and who can show that he has fulfilled the above conditions with regard to improvements, is entitled to the value of his passage-money out, provided that passage-money does not exceed £15; and he will have the same allowance made to him for every adult he brings with him,—the money to be credited to him in the payments made for his land. The offer in fact amounts to this,—that thirty acres will be allowed free for every adult whom the immigrant may bring with him to settle on the land, provided that the passage out has cost £15,—which is I presume the usual price of sending an adult to Western Australia. I am also assured, certainly on good authority, that half the allowance will be made for non-adults; but there is no proviso in the bill itself to this effect.

The result of all this any intending emigrant can calculate for himself. A man with a wife and one adult and one non-adult child would in fact get his one hundred acres for nothing. If his family were larger, he would get more land;—but he should bear in mind that he has to fence it all and till a quarter of it within ten years, and that in this way a larger acreage may become an increased burden to him rather than an increased property.