“You ask the government to do everything. I am surprised that you do not demand that we furnish milk for your babies.”
Queensland, the northern half of which lies just south of the Equator, is sometimes called the “Banana State,” because of the success of settlers in growing that fruit in the newly cleared lands.
The farmer who owned the hill now known as Mount Morgan sold it to prospectors for five dollars an acre. It has since yielded gold worth $125,000,000 besides vast quantities of copper.
In the Anakie gold fields of western Queensland mining sapphires is a well established industry, with an output worth about one hundred thousand dollars a year. The lemon or orange tinted stones are the most prized.
CHAPTER IV
A CROWN OF GOLD AND A CROSS OF CACTUS
QUEENSLAND is one of the gold states of Australia. It is especially noted for Mount Morgan, perhaps the richest gold mine of the world. This mountain is twenty-four miles from the city of Rockhampton, on the coast north of Brisbane. It has already produced more than one hundred and twenty-five million dollars’ worth of gold, and paid more than fifty million dollars in dividends. The original fourteen owners invested only a few hundred pounds.