LUNATIC ASYLUM, W.A.
Returning to Pinjarrah, I drove out to a fine orange grove. Some idea of its character can be gained from the fact that some well-known fruiterers of Perth bought four trees from the owner at £100 per tree, and, after ripening and picking, made £50 profit per tree. The Drakesbrook Experimental Government Farm is about 12 miles off, and I there saw enormous cucumbers, pumpkins, and other vegetables.
Seven miles farther on are Millar’s Yarloop Mills. The export from these mills is very large; 21 sailing ships and 15 steamers were employed to take away the timber to various places last year. The settlement presents a busy appearance. When the train stopped over 100 men came from the mills to get their newspapers and see if there was any one they knew in the train. I left the train and looked for an hotel to put up at, but there is none; however, I obtained comfortable quarters at a private house. There are several mills connected with Yarloop, among them Iron Pot, so called from a conical hill near to it. Hoffman & Waterhouse’s Mills are 13 miles away, and are connected by telephone with the head mill. The office is very handsomely built of jarrah lined with polished wood, tongued and grooved. Much of the wood of Western Australia is suitable for small manufacturing purposes, such as making picture-frames, walking-sticks and knife-handles, while the jam-wood, with its aromatic perfume, is the very thing for pipe-making. I am sure a large trade could be worked up in that business.
Some beautiful artistic work in jarrah carving has lately been done by Mr. Howitt, of Perth, and was shown at the Paris Exhibition. One piece especially, a font, is most exquisitely carved. Besides these jarrah carvings, Mr. Howitt has made some panels from the following Australian woods—karri, tuart, redgum, sandal-wood, raspberry jam, banksia, she oak, prickly pear, York gum, blackbutt, wandoo and morrell; each of the panels is decorated with a carving of the tree’s foliage. I also saw at Robertson & Moffat’s furnishing warehouse, before leaving Perth, a handsome dinner-waggon made from seventeen kinds of Western Australian woods, with which, besides the before-mentioned woods, salmon gum, gimblet, castor-oil, swamp gum, and curly jarrah were most artistically introduced in the mosaic part, and with the handsomely carved typical swan on the top made a very effective piece of furniture.
The Chamber of Commerce, Prague, Bohemia, have recently written to Mr. Ulrich, of Fremantle, asking for specimens and samples of Western Australian woods to be sent to that place with a view to future business; and when the beauty and excellence of the woods become more generally known I think they will be put to more artistic uses than wood-paving. Outdoor enjoyments are yearly coming into more favour, and the demand for outdoor chairs, seats, and tables must increase. The jarrah-wood never shrinks, and being of a beautiful dark red colour does not require paint. The timber resources of the colony are marvellous, and it is estimated that it would take fully a century to exhaust the now matured trees, while fresh ones would be growing all the time.
The Harvey agricultural area, 9 miles from Yarloop, comprises 43,000 acres; of this 19,803 acres have been surveyed into 155 plots. The land is splendid for fruit and vegetables, and there are a good many selections, 10,000 acres having already been taken up. The soil is rather heavy, and expensive to clear and drain. The Korijekup Estate is managed by Mr. Asche, and is well under cultivation, the oranges grown there being especially fine. There are good paddocks for horses to run in, and the next time our family steed is sent out to grass it will be to Korijekup. There are about 12 homesteads on the estate, occupied by different families. The pasture lands are very good, and the soil well adapted for strawberry and gooseberry growing. There are about 10 acres of these delicious fruits under cultivation. The manager’s house and men’s quarters are near the river, the latter a substantially built structure of slabs, made 60 years ago by convict labour for Sir James Stirling, to whom the land was originally granted (in lieu of payment of salary). In the winter time there are a great many trappers about, who gain a good living by trapping the native bear and opossum, for the skins of which they get 9s. per dozen in Perth. The grey skins, when edged with black, make beautiful rugs for a cold climate, but the winters in Western Australia are so mild that things of that kind are not required. In the early days the old coach-road to Perth from Bunbury passed near Korijekup, and where there were formerly only halting-places many flourishing farms now stand. The land about there is very suitable for dairying, the grass being green all the year round; the soil is brown loam, interspersed with rich black swamps, and suitable for intense culture.
Another 15 miles brought me to Collie Station, where I took the branch train to the Collie coalfields. Until recently these fields have been somewhat neglected, but are now coming into great favour, the coal got there having been proved to be of excellent quality, and now being extensively used. The Government have decided to use it on the railways, and many of the shipping merchants trading to different places have also signified their intention of using it. The Smelting Works at Fremantle are following suit; householders are consuming it largely, and I can state from my own experience that it is excellent coal, which never goes out, but burns to the last bit, just leaving clean brown dust behind. It will in time be a mine of wealth to Western Australia and constitute a great industry, making work for thousands of coal-miners, for the deposits of coal are almost limitless. Bores have been used in different parts of the field, and have proved the existence of enormous bodies of coal. The Collie coal-mine has recently been bought from the Collie Company by Mr. Zeb Lane, for the British Westralia Syndicate, and is now called the Collie Proprietary Coalfields of Western Australia.
Collie is a very pleasant little town, with some hotels, several stores, and many snug and pretty dwellings. One usually thinks of a coal-mining town as an uninteresting, grimy place, but Collie is nothing of the kind. In the midst of a magnificent jarrah forest, at an elevation of 600 feet above sea-level, this place has, I imagine, a brilliant future before it. The air is delightfully bracing; the sea breeze blows in from the coast, and in the near future, when the gardens now being planted by the men on their residential plots have come to maturity, the miners will be able, after their work underground, to sit under their own vine or fig-tree and enjoy the pipe of peace. This is not a mere form of words, but will be solid fact, for the ground is so good that, beside containing coal underneath, it will grow all kinds of products on its fertile flats and valleys.