South Australia has a goodly number of schools for higher education, and it also has a university which is well attended. The majority of those who can afford it send their children to private schools rather than to the government ones, believing, and no doubt correctly, that the educational facilities are greater in the private institutions than in the public ones.
CHAPTER VII.
ADELAIDE TO MELBOURNE—THE RABBIT PEST—DANGEROUS EXOTICS.
The distance from Adelaide to Melbourne is about six hundred miles. Our friends found that the journey was made very leisurely, the trains averaging not more then eighteen or twenty miles an hour. For quite a distance out of Adelaide the train ascends an incline as far as Mount Lofty station, where the hill or mountain of that name is situated. On the way up the last of the incline our friends watched with a great deal of interest the plains stretching out below them, and the city which they had just left lying at their feet like a section of carpet laid off into ornamental squares. Beyond Mount Lofty station the route descended into the valley of the Murray River, whose waters could be seen winding like a thread through the yellow soil.
“This is the longest river in Australia, is it not?” queried Ned.
“Yes,” replied the doctor, “it is the longest and largest river, and, as you have already learned, it is the only one that remains a real river throughout the year. Its mouth is not many miles from Adelaide, and a considerable part of its course is through South Australia.”
“I wonder they didn’t establish the capital city at the mouth of the Murray,” remarked Harry; “they would have had the advantage of a navigable stream, which they have not in the present location.”
“Yes, that is quite true,” Dr. Whitney replied; “and they would have illustrated the saying of a philosopher, that great rivers nearly always run past large cities, but there was a practical difficulty in the way, of which you are not aware.”