Town Life in Australia eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 251 pages of information about Town Life in Australia.

Town Life in Australia eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 251 pages of information about Town Life in Australia.
of the change will probably be similar, though the selector will be less considered, and there is not much totally unused land needing pastoral occupation.  In Victoria the selections are now being increased in size to one square mile, and I think changes will gradually be made which will make the large freeholders find it to their advantage to sell.  In Victoria and New South Wales there is a quantity of freehold property used for pasture which is well fitted for agriculture.  South Australia, on the contrary, has pretty well reached the margin of cultivation, and must seek to improve her wheat-yield, not so much by enlargement of the area cultivated, as by improvement in the cultivation of the area already under crop.

Victoria has completely abandoned Government immigration, but New South Wales, South Australia, and Queensland each grant free or assisted passages to immigrants of a certain class.  For the last three or four years the immigration policy has been slackened, but there is every sign that another push is going o be made in this direction by South Australia, which had almost entirely stopped free passages, and by Queensland.  Beyond question, one of the chief needs of Australia at the present moment is a steady stream of immigration, and this can only be obtained by more strenuous efforts on the part of the Colonial Governments to make the position and prospects of the country better known at home.  Immigration raises the revenue and helps to pay off the interest on our debt.  It reduces the expenditure proportionately to the population.  It gives more employment, since the new-comers must be housed and clothed and live; and it supplies more labour, enabling fresh country and new industries to be opened up.  Population is the chief element of wealth and progress in a young country like this.

The contract which the Queensland Government has just signed for the construction of a railway from Charleville and Point Parker marks the beginning of an era of transcontinental railways constructed by English companies upon the land-grant system.  The next will probably join Albany (King George’s Sound) to Perth, and the third will traverse the continent from north to south, i.e. from Port Darwin to Port Augusta, and practically to Adelaide.  The advantages of the land-grant system are yet insufficiently appreciated in Australia, but in this system I believe there lies an enormous source of wealth.  The Colonial Governments cannot possibly afford to construct these lines themselves; but if the contracts are made with discretion, the advantages which the companies will reap, though sufficient, will be as nothing compared with the enormous increase in the value of the remaining land, and the addition to the productive power of the colony.  The railways from capital to capital will, of course, be constructed by the Governments of each colony.  Sydney is already united to Melbourne, and in four years’ time Adelaide will also be connected.  Brisbane,

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Town Life in Australia from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.