New South Wales 1860-1890
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.
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.
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.
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.