Chapter VI: South Australia

CONFIGURATION--THE LAKE COUNTRY--HEAT IN
SUMMER--FRUIT--GLENELG--ADELAIDE--MOUNT LOFTY RANGE--PARKS AND
BUILDINGS--MOSQUITO PLAIN CAVES--CAMELS--THE OVERLAND TELEGRAPH
LINE--PEAKE STATION--THE NORTHERN TERRITORY--EARLY
MISFORTUNES--PRESENT PROSPECTS--INSECT
LIFE--ALLIGATORS--BUFFALOES.

OVERLAND TELEGRAPH PARTY.]

South Australia should rather be called Central Australia, for it lies half-way between the western and the eastern seaboard, and the colony runs right through the continent from north to south. It is an enormous tract, 2,000 miles in length and 700 in breadth. The total area is 903,000 square miles, of which at present barely a tenth is in occupation, though exploration has already made known the existence of millions of acres of magnificent pasture-land ready for settlement. In the colonies, when you speak of South Australia, you are understood to mean the district of which Adelaide is the centre. If you referred to the inland portion, you would speak of the 'far north;' and again, if you meant the Port Darwin--Gulf of Carpentaria country--you would use the term 'Northern Territory.' The original South Australia is first to be noticed.

No part of Australia is more strongly marked with Australian peculiarities than this. The Murray is the only river, and this stream brings down the waters of the ranges of the south-eastern colonies; the other streams are merely courses in which, under favourable conditions, water may be looked for, and not otherwise. The ranges are few in number, and are of no great elevation. But the grass plains and the scrub plains are immense. Gazing round from an eminence, the impression produced by the equal height of the vegetation, and the dull glaucous colour of the foliage, is that you are looking upon the open rolling illimitable ocean. South Australia contains whole principalities of the ordinary park-like bush of Australia; the eucalypts standing in grass without any undergrowth, either singly or in clumps, as though planted by a landscape gardener. If an expert were whisked during his sleep--like another Bedreddin Hassan--and dropped from Europe, Asia, Africa or America anywhere in these regions, he would exclaim the moment he opened his eyes--''Tis Australia.' A glance at the map would lead to the conclusion that the colony is well supplied with lakes. On paper, Lake Torrens, Lake Eyre, Lake Gardiner, Lake Amadeus, cover large areas, but unfortunately an antipodean meaning must be attached to the term; for the most part these lakes are either muddy reed-covered swamps, or salt marshes unfitted for navigation in winter, and evaporating into vast glittering clay pans in summer. The level of several of these extensive depressions is believed to be below that of the sea, and the cutting of a canal to unite them to Spencer's Gulf, the deepest indentation on the southern coast, has been suggested, and will probably some day be carried into effect, and then there may be changes worked in the climate.

At present, however, South Australia is decidedly hot during its summer months of December, January and February. The thermometer runs up to 110 and 112 and 116 degrees. 'But then,' says the typical South Australian, taking you by the buttonhole, 'it is a dry heat, and really you do not feel it; there is no enervating aqueous vapour about;' and there certainly is not. No complaints of wet and sloppy weather are ever to be heard. On the contrary, when the south-easter brings a heavy bursting bank of cloud with it, there is a general rubbing of hands and utterance of congratulatory remarks. 'Splendid rain to-day,' is the usual phrase; and 'How far north does it extend?' is the current query. But, admitting that the South Australian summer is hot, it must be added that the climate during the other eight months is delightful. One enthusiast declares that the pure soft balmy air is such as one would expect to blow over 'the plains of heaven;' and at any rate there is first-class medical testimony that for people with weak lungs there are few more hopeful resorts. The 'far north' is subject to droughts and to floods, and the Northern Territory has a weather system of its own. As the description of its climate suggests, South Australia is a grand fruit country. Grapes, peaches, apricots and oranges, grow practically without cultivation, and attain perfection in the open air. In the season there are few tables in Adelaide on which piles of grapes and plates of apricots and peaches are not to be regularly found. The fruit can be purchased in the market at a penny a pound, so that at current wages there is no occasion for the poorest of the working classes to stint in these luscious products of the soil.

Adelaide, the metropolis of South Australia, called after the wife of William IV., was founded in 1836. To-day, with its suburbs, it contains about 170,000 inhabitants. On the 28th of December, 1836, Captain Hindmarsh, who had served under Nelson at the Nile, landed from H.M.S. Buffalo at Holdfast Bay, in St. Vincent's Gulf, and beneath the shade of a patriarchal gum-tree, and in presence of a few officials, read his commission as the first Governor of South Australia. The anniversary of that event is observed as a public holiday by all classes in the community, while the old gum-tree has become a source of solicitude, and is reverently cared for by the municipal authorities of Glenelg--a fashionable watering-place which has grown up within sight of Governor Hindmarsh's landing-place.

And indeed this Glenelg is a fitting entrance to the fair city of Adelaide, with which it is connected by two lines of railway. Facing the dazzling white beach are the seaside residences of squatting kings, wealthy merchants, and other successful colonists; while the bay itself is studded with yachts and other pleasure craft, with perchance a man-of-war, or two or three mail steamers, at anchor in the offing, for all the ocean-borne mails are either landed or shipped at Glenelg. During the summer evenings the sands and long jetty are thronged with visitors from the capital, who have come down to enjoy the fresh cool breezes, or to listen to the various bands of music.

Adelaide itself is laid out on a gently sloping ground, from 96 to 176 feet above the sea-level, on both sides of the Torrens, which is spanned by three large handsome bridges. The part out north is called North Adelaide, to distinguish it from 'the City,' which lies on the other side of the river. The streets are all unusually broad, even for Australian cities, and run at right angles, many of them being bordered with rows of trees, the shade of which is very refreshing in the hot summer days. One of the features of the place is the number and extent of its beautiful public squares and park lands. In this respect it transcends even Melbourne. The squares in each quarter of the city are reserves of several acres in extent, embellished with flowers, trees, and fountains; while the parks are extensive reservations, surrounding the city on every side, separating it from the suburbs.

Adelaide, with ordinary care, can never be other than a healthy city. Moreover, it can never extend its boundaries. This fact accounts for the high prices obtained for city property. Land originally bought for eight or ten shillings an acre has recently changed hands at L1000 a foot. Its surroundings are the charms of the city. On the west is the sea. Four or five miles to the east is the thickly wooded Mount Lofty range, so called from the highest peak, 2400 feet above the sea-level, which, trending away to the southward, closes in on that side the undulating plain on which the city is built. To the northward the range takes a more easterly direction for twenty or forty miles. These hills, which are reached from Adelaide by railways and tram-lines, and excellent carriage-roads, are a favourite summer resort of those citizens who can afford to avail themselves of the coolness and seclusion which they offer.

The buildings in Adelaide show well. A very white freestone has entered largely into the more recent erections; and, as there are comparatively few large factories in the city, and no shipping nearer than Port Adelaide, they lose but little of their pristine freshness by smoke and grime. Then the unpleasant effect produced by the sight of a hovel adjoining a palatial bank or pile of warehouses several storeys high, is of rare occurrence, while the broad streets offer the most advantageous conditions for the display of the various architectural styles employed. The town has been called 'the city of churches;' and the number of ecclesiastical edifices which it contains places its pretensions to that distinction beyond question. The Anglican Cathedral of St. Peter is a large and imposing building, a portion of which is still uncompleted, occupying an elevated position in the southern portion of North Adelaide. The Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. Francis Xavier is in the south, and recalls the early days of the colony, when the prophecies of its future importance were few in number. All the other great religious bodies are also creditably represented.

Nearly all the Government departments are in the vicinity of Victoria Square, an ornamental reserve, through which King William Street, one of the most handsome thoroughfares in Australia, has been carried. No traveller should leave Adelaide without spending some hours in the Botanical Garden. To omit that lovely resort would be an error indeed.

South Australia contains a little over 300,000 inhabitants. Its chief industries are agricultural, pastoral, and mining. Very early in its history it became the granary of the colonies, and, although it can no longer claim that distinction, it is still one of the few places in the world where the visitor can travel over three hundred miles in the same direction between fields of waving yellow corn. Despite the small returns from wheat-growing, the area under cultivation is enlarged every year, and is now not less than two million acres. More attention is being paid to scientific farming, thanks to the influence of the recently established Agricultural College at Roseworthy, thirty miles north of Adelaide, experimental farms in various parts of the colony, and the lectures delivered in the chief agricultural centres. The yield is so dependent on the rainfall that the average for the colony rarely exceeds ten bushels per acre, and occasionally falls below three. The subject of irrigation has lately been warmly taken up by the agricultural community, and the next few years will see not only a more rational system of farming, but the adoption of means to render that community less dependent on the uncertain rainfall. At the London Exhibition a splendid sample of wheat grown at Mount Barker--a beautifully situated township amongst the hills, twenty miles south-east of Adelaide--obtained the highest award.

Of the show places of South Australia none are more interesting than the curious caves of the Mosquito Plains. They have been described at length by the naturalist Tennison Woods, in his _Geological Observations of South Australia_: 'In the midst of a sandy, swampy country, a series of caves is found, whose internal beauty is at strange variance with the wildness of the scenery around. The entrance is merely a round hole on the top of a hill, which leads to a small sloping path under a shelf of rock. Descending this for about twenty-five feet, one gets a first glimpse of the magnificence enshrined below. The observer finds himself at the entrance of a large oblong square chamber, low, but perfectly lighted by an aperture at the opposite end; and all around, above and below, the eye is bewildered by a profusion of ornaments and decorations of Nature's own devising. It resembles an immense Gothic cathedral, and the numbers of half-finished stalagmites, which rise from the ground like kneeling or prostrate forms, seem worshippers in that silent and solemn place. At the farther end is an immense stalactite, which appears like a support to the whole roof; not the least beautiful part of it being that it is tinted by almost every variety of colour, one side being of a delicate azure, with passages of blue, green, and pink intermingled; and again it is snowy white, finally merging into a golden yellow. The second cave or chamber is so thickly studded with stalactites that it seems like a carefully arranged scene, which, from the interminable variety of form and magic effect of light and shade, might easily be taken to represent some fairy palace. Very soon the cavern becomes as dark as night, and further exploration to the numerous chambers and fissures beyond has to be made by the assistance of torches. On leaving the last chamber, we return to the light; a narrow passage, richly wreathed with limestone, is observed on the right hand going out. Proceeding a little way down, a large vaulted chamber is reached, so perfectly dark and obscure that even torches can do but faint justice to its beauty. Here, above all other portions of the caves, has Nature been prodigal of the fantastic ornament with which the whole place abounds. There are pillars so finely formed, and covered with such delicate trellis-work, there are droppings of lime making such scroll-work, that the eye is bewildered with the extent and variety of the adornment. It is like a palace of ice with frozen cascades and fountains all round.'

A special feature of the settlers' life in the 'far north' is the increasing use of camels. At Beltana a camel-breeding establishment has been in existence for nearly twenty years. Sir Thomas Elder introduced the animals first from Afghanistan, and, as they are found to be well adapted for work in Central Australia, they are now largely used. They are broken in to draw drays, or to trot with a buggy behind them; and the 'belle of Beltana' uses one for a hack. Nearly a thousand camels have been provided from this establishment for hauling stores and for doing the every-day work of bullock and horses. The ordinary team is composed of six camels. A team of eight will drag a dray with three tons of goods through the heaviest sand. The animals wear large leather collars, and their harness is in other respects very similar to that used for horse teams. No great difficulty has been experienced in training the camel to this novel sort of work. But the Australian bushman would not hesitate about putting a hippopotamus into harness.

For pluck in public works South Australia has a character of her own. One of her great enterprises was the construction of the 'Overland Telegraph Line' from Adelaide on the one side to Port Darwin on the other side of the continent, to meet the cable laid from Singapore to that place, and thus to establish direct communication with Great Britain. Two years were spent in this arduous undertaking. The country was awkward; materials and stores had to be transported across the desert as the work went on. For months the parties were stopped by floods; some perished from thirst, and the blacks harassed others. When at last the line was up it was found that the white ants had destroyed the poles in the Northern Territory, and they had to be replaced with iron columns. One contractor and one officer after another gave up in despair, and at last Mr. Charles Todd, Superintendent of Telegraphs, who was responsible for the scheme, had to leave his city office; and, though he had no bush experience, his zeal and his intelligence were rewarded with success. An engraving is given on page 98 of Mr. Todd and three of his most energetic colleagues in the work: Messrs. Paterson, Mitchell, and Little. The work was begun in 1870, and on August 22, 1872, the first message was sent over the 1700 miles of wire. It was feared that the blacks would never let the line stand, but, though they have 'stuck up' the stations occasionally and killed operators, they have never interfered with the wires. While the line was being constructed the operators gave every black who visited them the opportunity of enjoying a gratuitous electric shock. The peculiar sensation vividly affected their nerves and their imagination, and thus a wholesome awe was engendered of what they called 'the white-fellow's devil.' The illustration given on this page represents Peake Telegraph Station, situated over seven hundred miles north of Adelaide. The large building in the centre is the telegraph station and Government buildings; to the right is a cattle station. The hills in the background are mostly of a stony character common to Central Australia, with a slight growth of bushes here and there. Round about the station there are large numbers of blacks camped, and the officers have to go about heavily armed. The station at Barrow Creek, farther north, was 'stuck up' by the blacks a few years ago, and two of the officers killed. At every station there are usually two operators and four line repairers. As the adjacent station is 150 or 200 miles away, and there are no nearer neighbours, the little garrisons lead a lonely life. Whenever a breakage occurs two men start from either station between which the fault exists; each party takes, besides a supply of wire, a field instrument, and at every thirty miles a 'shackle' is put down, and the party communicates with its own station, and so each proceeds until one or the other finds and repairs the defect. Communication being restored, the news is conveyed to the other party, and both take up their instruments and retrace their steps without having seen each other.

At the Barrow Creek station, a party of the employes were surprised in 1875 by the blacks, when they had left the building to indulge in a bathe. They had to run for their lives through a volley of spears to regain the shelter of their loop-holed home. Mr. Stapleton and a line repairer were mortally wounded, and two others were badly hurt. Mr. Stapleton was found to be sinking rapidly. The news was flashed to Adelaide. In one room of the city stood the doctor and Mrs. Stapleton, listening to the 'click, click' of the messages. A thousand miles away in the desert, in a lonely hut beleaguered by the blacks, lay the dying man with an instrument brought to his bedside. He received the doctor's message that his case was hopeless. He heard his wife's adieus, and he telegraphed an eternal farewell. It is easy to believe that the affecting spectacle moved those around the group in Adelaide to tears.

South Australia's next great feat is to run a railway across the continent. Already the line is completed a distance of nearly four hundred miles northwards towards Strangeways Springs. Camels imported by Mr. H. J. Scott are used to carry stores, rations and water to the men employed in advance, whilst, from the other end, the Palmerston and Pine Creek line, 150 miles in length, is in the hands of the contractors. It is hoped that within the next ten years the transcontinental railway will be completed, thereby uniting Australia and the east.

When John McDouall Stuart at last crossed the continent from sea to sea and from north to south, there was great enthusiasm in Adelaide. The explorer received L5000 from Parliament, and the colony obtained permission to push its bounds up to the Indian Ocean, thus annexing a nice little tract of 531,402 square miles. Thus, in the year 1863, was the Northern Territory acquired. It was resolved at once to form a settlement in the new country. The Imperial Government from time to time had endeavoured to colonise North Australia, settlements being formed in turn at Melville Island, Raffles Bay, and Port Essington; but each place in turn was abandoned. Undeterred by these failures, the South Australian authorities sold land, marked out a township, appointed an official staff, and invited colonisation. And then South Australia went through its painful experience. The owners of land warrants complained that they had been 'sold' as well as the land; the expected colonists did not put in an appearance; while the members of the staff were quarrelling, the blacks made a raid and stole and destroyed nearly all the stores, and finally many of the Government officers took to open boats and escaped after a hazardous sea voyage to Western Australia. For years and years the Northern Territory was a source of expense and anxiety to the good people of Adelaide; but a colonist--and least of all a South Australian colonist--never despairs. The party that counselled abandonment was looked upon with scorn, and after every disaster a new staff was sent up to Port Darwin, and more and more attractive land offers were made. But the Adelaide Government was taught the lesson all larger and more important Governments have yet to acquire: namely, that you cannot force colonisation, that the one condition of success is a natural growth. Times have changed recently. The overlanders, having accounted for Queensland, pushed into the Northern Territory, and consequent upon their favourable reports runs have been taken up in all directions, and in immense areas, and in all probability the Northern Territory is on the eve of a great development. In the last two or three years tens of thousands of cattle have been moved from Queensland and New South Wales into the new country, and at the Roper and Macarthy rivers bush townships have been established, and the town of Palmerston (Port Darwin) has witnessed a large increase in private and substantial buildings. Prospectors have opened up gold, copper and tin mines. The gold export is now L75,000 per annum, and copper mines are being energetically worked; and a railway which is about to be constructed to the present mineral centre is expected to effect a revolution, as the want of carriage has hitherto checked mining progress.

Residents in the Northern Territory speak hopefully about the climate. That the white man cannot perform the same amount of constant work in tropical Australia that he can in his own climes and countries is admitted, but still, it is contended, he can work and be healthy and happy. There is an absence amongst the population of the enervation so conspicuous in India, Java, Singapore, and Ceylon. Artisans ply their callings on the eight hours system, as elsewhere in Australia, without special precautions against the sun. The climate is, in fact, more Australian than it is tropical. But at Port Darwin itself there is much to remind the traveller that he is in the tropics, and is nearer to the equator than to Capricorn. Mingled with the characteristic flora of Australia are the palms, bamboos, rattan canes, and wild nutmeg-trees, and other flora of the adjacent Spice Islands. The ground, the vegetation, and the atmosphere are alive with insect life. Linnaeus has eleven orders of insects, but, as one settler facetiously remarks, had the eminent naturalist in question visited the Northern Territory, he might have classified one hundred and eleven orders. Fire-flies flit about; beetles display their metallic brilliancy; radiant moths and butterflies fleck the gloom. The observant man admires and marvels; but not always does the view charm, for myriads of mosquitoes and sand-flies have at him, and the bung-fly, attacking the eyelid, will cause a swelling that will close up the eye for several days. Ants are found literally in legions. In the houses some amusement is to be derived from watching the ant-eating lizard, who is allowed to run up and down the walls without molestation, and is, indeed, welcomed as a highly useful domestic animal. In the bush surprise is excited by the enormous ant-hills. Some are twenty-five feet in height, and six or eight feet in diameter; but usually they are from six to twelve feet high, and about four feet in diameter; and along a belt of country extending perhaps one hundred miles, they may stand apart but fifty or a hundred feet. To level these cunningly devised cellular structures, occasionally, would prove far more costly than levelling the ground of timber. In other places the 'meridional' ant-hill is met with. These edifices are from three to six feet high, and more. They are broad at the base, and taper to a point at the summit. The form therefore is that of a long wedge, and the peculiarity is that all the summit lines are true north and south, as though laid down by a surveyor.

In the rivers the traveller is introduced to the alligator. Many are the tales of horror and of escape related in connection with these saurians. One member of the original exploring party of the South Australian Government, a man named Reid, fell asleep in a boat on the Roper river, with his leg hanging carelessly over the side of the craft. An alligator seized the limb and dragged the man out of the boat, his screams too late calling attention to his fate. The alligator is found right down the Queensland coast. While writing, the following telegram appears in the _Argus_ (Melbourne, March 10, 1886): 'A girl named Margaret Gordon, the daughter of a dairyman on Cattle Creek, thirty miles from Townsville, has been devoured by an alligator. She went with a servant-girl to the creek for water, when a large alligator rushed at her and carried her off. The occurrence was witnessed by the girl's father, who was unable to render any assistance.'

The one trace left of the early settlements of Raffles Bay and Port Essington is that herds of buffaloes are to be met with in the districts in question, and also some Timor ponies. Both animals were introduced from Timor, and when the settlements were abandoned males and females were left to run wild. The buffaloes have spread along the north coast, nearly, if not quite, to the Gulf of Carpentaria, and to the south as far as the bottom of Van Diemen's Gulf. They are generally found congregated in herds of twenty to fifty, under the guidance of a single full-grown male, oftentimes of enormous size. But stragglers are often met with far beyond these limits. The young males are turned out of the herd by the patriarch as soon as they approach maturity, becoming wanderers for life unless they can re-establish themselves, or gain a footing in other herds; and this can only be done by killing or driving off the leading bull. Of course many are doomed to a solitary life, and roam far from the haunts of their fellows. There is no danger of the buffaloes mixing with the herds of the settlers, as the antagonism between these cattle races is pronounced and insurmountable.