King Edward's realm: Story of the making of the Empire

by C. S. Dawe

10. Arthur's next care was to relieve the colony of the blacks, between whom and the whites a deadly feud existed. His desire was to collect all the natives and confine them to one district. He assembled all the settlers to aid his troops in driving the poor savages out of their haunts. He placed his men at intervals, so as to form a line stretching across the island, with orders to advance and either catch the blacks or coop them up in a corner of the island. After two months of marching, at an expense of £30,000, the whole operation resulted in the capture of a man and a boy. But kindness succeeded where force failed. They were persuaded by George Robinson, who had proved himself their friend, to withdraw to Flinders Island in Bass Strait. There, to his grief, they rapidly dwindled, and in the course of a few years became extinct.

11. Both natives and convicts have long disappeared from Tasmania, and the colonist can now live there in peace and quietness, in a land of natural beauty with an agreeable climate. It is not a country where a fortune can be rapidly made, but where food is plentiful and labour well paid.

(5) PIONEER WORK IN AUSTRALIA.

1. The chief source of wealth in Australia is, and always has been, its excellent wool. The founder of the wool industry was Captain McArthur, whose quick eye saw from the first that the country was best adapted to sheep-farming. He also saw that the value of sheep in this far-away country, with its scanty population, would depend upon their wool rather than their flesh. He accordingly introduced some Spanish merino sheep, and succeeded in producing a breed of animals that thrived well on the grasses of the country and grew wool of the finest quality. MacArthur, therefore, is entitled to the credit of having laid the foundation of Australian prosperity. With the same stroke of business, he did a great service to the mother-country. The war then raging with France and Spain—just before their defeat at Trafalgar—had cut off from English looms the supplies of Spanish wool on which they had hitherto relied. Thus the colony that had been chiefly valued by the Home Government as a dumping-ground for criminals, rose high in their estimation as a country to which our woollen manufacturers would be able to turn for their much-needed wool.

2. Sheep-farming is an industry that demands great stretches of suitable land for sheep-runs. The sheep-farmers of New South Wales, soon found it difficult to get enough elbow-room. You may think this strange, considering the vast expanse of Australia. But in the early days of the colony, the settlers occupied merely a narrow strip between the mountains and the sea. The Blue Mountains, which rose at the back of Sydney, seemed to hem them in, and to cut them off from the unknown country beyond.

3. For the first quarter of a century, few serious efforts were made to cross the range. The early governors, indeed, discouraged all such attempts; for they were afraid of its being made too easy for the convicts to escape, since they were not kept in prison, but put out to farm-labour. But with the coming of Macquarie, as governor, in 1810, all this was changed. He made it his chief business to prepare the colony as a suitable place for free settlers from home, and for such convicts as had served out their time and became free men. He at once set to work to rebuild Sydney, to make roads and bridges, to clear the forests, and to improve the public property in various ways.

4. Seeing the importance of enlarging his domains, he encouraged the free settlers to range as far afield as possible, and induced Blaxland and two others to face the perils of the mountains, and try to find a way to the interior. All previous explorers had failed because they tried to find passes, as is usually done, by following the valleys. But in the Blue Mountains the valleys end in perpendicular cliffs, which say, as plainly as a man can speak, No road this way. Blaxland and his companions determined to try the ridges, keeping as high as possible all the time. For several days they pushed through a wild and barren land, cutting every afternoon the track along which their horses, with their packs of provisions, would travel the next morning. On the seventeenth day they stood on the last summit, and saw with great joy the grassy plains that lay beyond.

5. On their return the delighted governor sent off another party to follow the same route and to explore still farther. They reported, on coming back, that the new country was "equal to every demand which this colony may have for extension of tillage and pasture lands for a century to come." The convicts were forthwith set to work to make a road across the Blue Mountains. This difficult undertaking was finished in two years, and in 1815, two months before the Battle of Waterloo brought peace to Europe, the road was ready for traffic.

6. News of the bright prospects of the colony reached England in the nick of time, when the end of the long war with France threw thousands of soldiers, sailors, and workmen out of employment. A stream of emigrants soon began to flow into Australia and to clamour for gifts of land. From this time the colony began to prosper. The work of exploration went steadily on. Little by little it became clear that behind the mountain-range that skirts the east and south-east coasts, there stretched far into the interior vast plains capable of feeding countless flocks, where now millions of sheep furnish wool for the looms of our manufacturers.

7. Many years passed before any explorer came upon an important river. There is, in fact, but one really fine river in Australia, and that is the Murray, which was discovered, in 1830, by Captain Sturt. Sailing down the Murrumbidgee, he found the river take a sudden turn to the south. "We were carried," he writes, "at a fearful rate down between its glowing and contracted banks.... At last we found we were approaching a junction, and all of a sudden we were hurried into a broad and noble river." It was the Murray, and Sturt endeavoured to follow the river to its mouth, which proved to be a distance of a thousand miles.