Difficulties of travel or such monotony of scenery or occupation.
Although I am leaving this country, probably for good, I would not wish
it to be thought that I have no faith in it, for the late developments
and marvellous returns from the goldfields should convert the most
sceptical. Nor have the other sources of wealth to the Colony failed to
impress their importance on me. . . Every one is glad to return to his
home, and I am no exception; but however happy I am at the prospect of
again seeing my native land, yet I cannot say goodbye to the numerous
friends I have been fortunate in making in this Colony without sincere
feelings of regret. Every day the Old Country, which we are all proud to
call Home, and the New are learning to understand each other better, and
the bond of friendship between them is ever strengthening. If I have been
able to promote these feelings in however small a degree, and have been
able to show that the Home-born is still able, and willing, to take his
share in the pioneer work of this continent of Australia, as his fathers
were before him, then I have not worked in vain."
APPENDIX
The foregoing pages would, I fear, give the reader a very bad impression
of the Colony of West Australia, until it was fully understood that my
experiences relate solely to the interior and to that part of the
interior the borders of which can only be reached by a journey of some
four hundred miles by train from the coast - that part of the Colony, in
fact, which lies to the East of longitude 121 degrees.
Now West Australia is so large that, despite the desert nature of so much
of it, there still remain many thousand square miles of country suitable
for settlement and rich in mineral wealth.
The settled portions show a picture the reverse of that I have been
compelled to exhibit in the course of my travels.
The Colony altogether covers no less an area than 975,920 square miles, a
little over eight times the area of Great Britain and Ireland. It
occupies the whole of the continent West of the he 129th east meridian.
In 1826 a party of soldiers and convicts formed the first settlement at
King George's Sound. Three years later a settlement was established on
the banks of the Swan River. From this modest beginning the progress of
the settlement, which at first was slow in the extreme, came with a rush
on the discovery of gold. The population of the Colony now exceeds
150,000 souls, and there can be no doubt that this population will be
substantially added to annually, when the advantages which the country
possesses, over and beyond its auriferous districts, come to be more
generally known and recognised.
