‘What! penal servitude?’ I gasped. ‘I never thought of that.’
And so it came to pass. I was sentenced to seven years’ penal servitude for ‘breaking out of prison.’ Thus I became a convict.
WESTERN AUSTRALIA AS A SETTLEMENT.
In an address, some time ago, at the Royal Institute, Sir F. Napier Broome, governor of Western Australia, spoke of the colony of Western Australia as one of the few remaining parts of the British empire in which there was still ample, almost boundless scope for enterprise and settlement. We are likely to hear a good deal about the possibilities of the country for British emigrants, in the near future. According to the contract signed by Mr Hordern for a railway of two hundred and twenty miles between Albany and Beverley, the contractor engages to introduce within seven years five thousand adults to the country. The contractor receives twelve thousand acres of land for every mile of railway completed, as payment from the government. This important railway, connecting Beverley with Albany, at the head of King George’s Sound, gives through-communication from this port of call of the Peninsular and Oriental Company’s steamers, to Perth and Freemantle, saving the rough passage round Cape Leeuwin in a coasting steamer, or the no less rough overland journey by coach.
In the light of this and other enterprises of a like kind, a few notes from Governor Broome’s address may be instructive and interesting at this time. Founded in 1829, and therefore fifty-six years old, the colony of Western Australia had, until lately, made but slow progress. At this day, only thirty-two thousand settlers are thinly scattered over the occupied portion of her vast expanse. The most pressing want of the colony, the one great need, is more people, of the right sort of course; not only more hands to labour, but more capitalists to employ them. The development of valuable industries lying ready to hand is hampered at every turn by this want of population. In round figures, the extent of Western Australia is a million square miles, the chief centres of settlement being in the south-west corner. It is the largest of the Australian colonies, and about eight times bigger than the United Kingdom. In the whole of the tract north of the Murchison River there are only seven hundred white people, scattered in four or five very small townships, and on the sheep-runs into which the occupied country is parcelled. The flocks in this northern territory are almost entirely shepherded by aboriginal natives. In the southern districts, there are some thirty towns and villages, ranging from Perth, the capital, with its six thousand inhabitants; Freemantle, the chief port, with five thousand inhabitants, to such hamlets as Beverley and Kojonup, with their ten or twelve houses apiece. Of the total territory, two thousand seven hundred square miles have been sold or granted away. Of the land still owned by the Crown, two hundred and fifty thousand square miles have been leased for sheep and cattle runs; and the colonists own a million and a half of sheep, seventy thousand cattle, and thirty-five thousand horses. There is a considerable export trade in horses to India, the Straits, and Mauritius. About seven hundred and fifty thousand square miles of Western Australia are still unutilised, and in great part unexplored.
The principal industry is wool-growing, the northern districts being particularly favourable to stock of all kinds. There are waterless areas, as elsewhere in Australia, and districts in which water is salt, or scarce; but boring for water and the storage of water, which had as yet scarcely been attempted, would give a value to what were now worthless tracts. No part of the world could boast finer or more easily grown grapes. The south-west corner of the colony is rich in timber. A very good opening exists for immigrants at Albany. The Peninsular and Oriental Company’s steamers touch at Albany once a week on their way to or from Ceylon, this being their first and last port of call in Australia.
The Hon. John Forrest, Commissioner of Crown Lands and Surveyor-general for the colony, has published a concise pamphlet giving notes and statistics about the colony, from which it appears that the legislature has voted twenty thousand pounds for the encouragement of emigration. Free passages are granted from London by the Crown agents, under certain conditions, and three hundred and fifty-seven immigrants were introduced last year, at a cost of four thousand eight hundred and sixty pounds.
We understand that the land regulations of the colony are liberal, and specially adapted to induce settlement. The conditions for settlement in Western Australia may be learned from the Emigration Agency of Western Australia, Crown Agent’s Office, London, S.W.
Printed and Published by W. & R. Chambers, 47 Paternoster Row, London, and 339 High Street, Edinburgh.