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1. The Land Act.—Sir John Young became Governor of New South Wales in
1861. He was a man of great talent; but, at this stage of the colony’s history,
the ability of the Governor made very little difference in the general progress
of affairs. The political power was now chiefly in the hands of responsible
Ministers, and without their advice the Governor could do nothing. The Ministry
of the period—headed by Charles Cowper and John Robertson—prepared a bill to
alter the regulations for the sale of land, and to give to the poor man an
opportunity of obtaining a small farm on easy terms. Any person who declared his readiness to live on his land, and to cultivate it, was to be
allowed to select a portion, not exceeding a certain size, in any part of the
colony which he thought most convenient. The land was not to be given
gratuitously; but, although the selector was to pay for it at the rate of one
pound per acre, yet he was not expected to give more than a quarter of the
price on taking possession. Three years afterwards he had the option of either
paying at once for the remaining three-quarters, or, if this were beyond his
means, of continuing to hold the land at a yearly rental of one shilling an
acre. This was an excellent scheme for the poorer class of farmers; but it was
not looked upon with favour by the squatters, whose runs were only rented from
the State, and were, therefore, liable, under this new Act, to be invaded by
selectors, who would pick out all the more fertile portions, break up the runs
in an awkward manner, and cause many annoyances.
Hence, though the Legislative Assembly passed the bill, the Upper House,
whose members were mostly squatters, very promptly rejected it; and upon this
there arose a struggle, the Ministry being determined to carry the bill, and
the Council quite as resolute never to pass it. Acting on the advice of his
Ministers, Sir John Young entreated the Upper House to give way; but it was
deaf to all persuasions, and the Ministers determined to coerce it by adopting
extreme measures. Its members had been nominated by a previous Governor for a
period of five years, as a preliminary trial before the nominations for life;
the term of their appointment was now drawing to a close, and Sir John Young,
by waiting some little time, might easily have appointed a new Council of his
own way of thinking. But the Ministers were impatient to have their measure
passed, and, instead of waiting, they advised the Governor to nominate
twenty-one new members of Council, who, being all supporters of the bill, would
give them a majority in the Upper House; so that, on the very last night of its
existence, it would be obliged to pass the measure and make it law. But when
the opponents of the bill saw the trick which was being played upon them, they
rose from their seats and resigned in a body. The President himself vacated his
chair; and as no business could then be carried on, the Land Bill was delayed
until the Council came to an end, and the Ministers thus found themselves
outwitted. They were able, somewhat later, to effect their purpose; but this little episode in responsible government caused
considerable stir at the time, and Sir John subsequently received a rebuke from
the Colonial Secretary for his share in it.
2. Prince Alfred.—In 1868 Lord Belmore
became Governor of New South Wales, and during his term of office all the
colonies passed through a period of excitement on the occasion of a visit from
the Queen’s second son, Prince Alfred. He was the first of the Royal Family who
had ever visited Australia, and the people gave to him a hearty and
enthusiastic reception. As he entered the cities flower-decked arches spanned
the streets; crowds of people gathered by day to welcome him, and at night the
houses and public buildings were brilliantly illuminated in his honour. But
during the height of the festivities at Sydney a circumstance occurred which
cast a gloom over the whole of Australia. The Prince had accepted an invitation
to a picnic at Clontarf, and was walking quietly on the sands to view the
various sports of the holiday-makers, when a young man named O’Farrell rushed
forward and discharged a pistol at him. The ball entered his back, and he fell
dangerously wounded. For a day or two his life trembled in the balance, and the
colonists awaited the result with the greatest excitement, until it was made
known that the crisis was past. No reason was alleged for the crime except a
blind dislike to the Royal Family; and O’Farrell was subsequently tried and
executed.
3. Railway Construction.—New South Wales
has three main lines of railway with many branches. One starts from Sydney, and
passes through Goulburn to Albury on its way to Melbourne; one goes north to
Newcastle, then through the New England district, and so to Brisbane; and the
third runs from Sydney over the Blue Mountains to Bathurst, and away to Bourke,
on the Darling River. Those rugged heights, which so long opposed the westward
progress of the early colonists, have proved no insuperable barrier to the
engineer; and the locomotive now slowly puffs up the steep inclines and drags
its long line of heavily-laden trucks where Macquarie’s road, with so much
trouble, was carried in 1815. The first difficulty which had to be encountered
was at a long valley named Knapsack Gully. Here the rails had to be laid on a
great viaduct, where the trains run above the tops of the tallest trees. The
engineers had next to undertake the formidable task of
conducting the line up a steep and rocky incline, seven hundred feet in height.
This was effected by cutting a “zigzag” in the rock; the trains run first to
the left, rising upon a slight incline; then, reversing, they go to the right,
still mounting slightly upwards; then, again, to the left; and so on till the
summit is reached. By these means the short distance is rendered long, but the
abrupt steepness of the hill is reduced to a gentle inclination. The trains
afterwards run along the top of the ridge, gradually rising, till, at the highest
point, they are three thousand five hundred feet above the level of the Sydney
station. The passengers look down from the mountain tops on the forest-clad
valleys far below; they speed along vast embankments or dash through passages
cut in the solid rock, whose sides tower above them to the height of an
ordinary steeple. In some places long tunnels were bored, so that the trains
now enter a hill at one side and emerge from the other.
One of these tunnels was thought to be unsafe; the immense mass of rock
above it seemed likely to crush downwards upon the passage, and the engineers
thought that their best course would be to remove the hill from above it. Three
and a half tons of gunpowder were placed at intervals in the tunnel, and
connected by wires with a galvanic battery placed a long distance off. The
operation of firing the mine was made a public occasion, and Lady Belmore
agreed to go up to the mountains and perform the ceremony of removing the hill.
When all was ready, she touched the knob which brought the two ends of the wire
together. A dull and rumbling sound was heard, the solid rock heaved slowly
upward, and then settled back to its place, broken in a thousand pieces, and
covered with rolling clouds of dust and smoke. All that the workmen had then to
do was to carry away the immense pile of stone, and the course was clear for
laying the rails.
When the line reached the other side of the Blue Mountains there were
great difficulties in the descent, and here the engineers had to lay out
zigzags of greater extent than the former. By these the trains now descend
easily and safely from the tops of the mountains down into the Lithgow Valley
far below.
By the southern railway to Albury, crowds of people are daily whirled in
a few hours to places which, forty years ago, were reached by Sturt, and Hume,
and Mitchell, only after weeks of patient toil, through unknown lands that were
far removed from civilisation.
4. Sydney Exhibition.—So on every
hand the colony made progress. Her railways expanded in scores of branches; her
telegraph lines stretched out their arms in every direction; her sheep
increased so that now there are nearly sixty millions of them; her wheat and
maize extended to more than half a million of acres; her orangeries and
vineyards and orchards, her mines of coal and tin, and her varied and extensive
manufactures, make her people, now numbering a million, one of the most
prosperous on the face of the earth. Her pride was pardonable when, in 1879,
she held an international exhibition to compare her industries side by side
with those of other lands, so as to show how much she had done and to discover
how much she had yet to learn. A frail, but wonderfully pretty building rapidly
arose on the brow of the hill between Sydney Cove and Farm Cove; and that
place, the scene of so much squalor and misery a hundred years before, became
gay with all that decorative art could do, and busy with daily throngs of
gratified visitors. The place had a most distinguished appearance; seen from
the harbour, its dome and fluttering flags rose up from among the luxuriant
foliage of the Botanic Gardens, as if boldly to proclaim that New South Wales
had completed the period of her infancy and was prepared to take her place
among the nations as one grown to full and comely proportions. When the
building had served its purpose, the people were too fond and too proud of it
to dismantle and destroy it, but unfortunately it was not long after swept away
by an accidental fire.
In 1885, the colony was stirred by a great wave of enthusiasm when it
was known that its Government had sent to England the offer of a regiment of
soldiers to fight in the Soudan side by side with British troops. The offer was
accepted, and some seven or eight hundred soldiers, well equipped and full of
high hopes, sailed for Africa. The war was too soon over for them to have any
chance of displaying what an Australian force may be like upon a battle-field.
There were many persons who held that the whole expedition was a mistake. But
it had one good effect; for it showed that, for the present at least, the
Australian colonies are proud of their mother-country; that their eyes are
fondly turned to her, to follow all her destinies in that great career which
she has to accomplish as the leading nation of the earth; and that if ever she
needed their help, assistance would flow spontaneously from the fulness of
loving hearts. The idea of this expedition and its execution belonged
principally to C. B. Dalley. But the great leader of New South Wales during the
last quarter of a century, and the most zealous worker for its welfare and prosperity, has been the veteran statesman Sir Henry Parkes.
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