# The Three Colonies of Australia/Part 2/Chapter 25

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London: Ingram, Cooke and co., pages 283–293
CHAPTER XXV.
SOUTH AUSTRALIA.
THE River Glenelg, flowing into the sea, marks the natural boundary—between the province of Victoria and that of South Australia, thence embracing a seaboard of about fifteen hundred miles, into which no river navigable by vessels of burden flows, and only two ports have as yet been found capable of safely accommodating ships of burden. As a compensation, inland journeys may be performed with little obstruction, on horseback or by drays, for hundreds of miles.
The first important indentation in to the line of the coast is Encounter ​Bay; but there are coasting ports at Rivoli Bay and Guichen Bay, at which wool has been shipped. Hopes were once confidently entertained of finding an entrance from the sea to the River Murray, but it has unfortunately proved that this, the noblest stream in Australia, ends in the Lake Alexandrina, and is divided from the ocean by a barrier of land and a surf-beaten sea margin.
Cape Jervis forms the apex of the county of Hindmarsh, which is for the most part occupied by industrious settlers, although the promontory itself is rather barren, and only known for its shore whale fishery. On rounding this cape, Kingscote Harbour and Nepean Bay appear on the opposite shores of Kangaroo Island—excellent harbours, and one of them well supplied with water. Unfortunately they lead to nothing. The buildings erected by the South Australian Company in 1837 were permitted to fall into decay. Recently a few stock stations have been taken up on the island, and about one hundred persons are resident there.
The kangaroos and the emus, so numerous in Flinders' time, have disappeared; and the large white eagles that stooped upon his men, mistaking them for kangaroos, have become rare.
Entering St. Vincent's Gulf, and passing Holdfast Bay, where Governor Hindmarsh disembarked, and Mrs. Hindmarsh's piano was floated ashore through the surf—for it is no harbour at all, but a dangerous open roadstead—passing a number of seaside villages, Port Adelaide is reached. By dint of dredging, and with the advantage of quays, this has become a safe and convenient harbour; and, with the aid of the intended railroad, will afford the city of Adelaide nearly as much convenience as if it had been planted on a navigable river, or on a deep harbour;—that was impossible, since no site exists in South Australia combining a good harbour, agricultural land, and fresh water. No other port presents itself in St. Vincent's Gulf, unless we except Port Wakefield, to which vessels from Swansea with cargoes of coal for smelting copper have recently been consigned. It has been proposed to construct a tramway between this port and the Burra Burra mines, and an attempt would have been made to execute this project if the gold diggings had not temporarily withdrawn all English speculation from South Australia.
The whole sea face of York Peninsula and Spencer's Gulf is unfavourable to the formation of a port and town, until we arrive at Port Lincoln, on the western arm of Spencer's Gulf, where a natural harbour could receive the largest squadron that ever went to sea—a landlocked estuary, protected at its mouth by Boston Island, with three ​arms or bays, Spalding Cove, Port Lincoln proper, and Boston Bay. But these harbours, viewed with so much admiration by seamen, are silent; no busy population labours on the shores, a few scattered flocks and herds are all that the mainland supports; and the allotments, which were competed for so eagerly in the years of land, mania, are left to nature and a few wandering cattle.
On entering Port Lincoln, a white obelisk, on the summit of a hill, may be seen, which bears the following inscription by Sir John and Lady Franklin:—
THIS PLACE, FROM WHICH THE GULP AND ITS SHORES WERE FIRST SURVEYED, ON 26 FEB., 1802, BY MATTHEW FLINDERS, R.N., COMMANDER OF H.M.S. "INVESTIGATOR," AND THE DISCOVERER OF THE COUNTRY NOW CALLED SOUTH AUSTRALIA, WAS, ON 12 JANUARY, 1841, WITH THE SANCTION OF LIEUT.-COL. GAWLER, K.H., THEN GOVERNOR OF THE COUNTRY, SET APART FOR, AND IN THE FIRST YEAR OF THE GOVERNMENT OF CAPTAIN G. GREY, ADORNED WITH, THIS MONUMENT, TO THE PERPETUAL MEMORY OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS NAVIGATOR, HIS HONOURED COMMANDER, BY JOHN FRANKLIN, CAPTAIN, R.N., K.C.H., R.R., LIEUT.-GOVERNOR OF VAN DIEMEN'S LAND.
To pursue the coast line of the province of Victoria to 132 of E. longitude, where it ends in a desert, would be useless, as no rivers or harbours break the line of this almost uninhabited coast.
Equally absurd would it be to state—as South Australian advocates who do not know the value of truth frequently do—that South Australia contains an area of 300,000 square miles, or nearly twenty millions of acres, without adding that a very large proportion of this vast space is occupied by stony deserts and lakes of mud. Nevertheless, enough of land remains admirably fertile and well watered to support a large population, much larger than is likely to occupy it for a long series of years. In the most inhospitable regions, copper, lead, silver, and iron have been found; and there is no reason to doubt that gold will eventually be discovered.
The district in a north-westerly direction, between Port Lincoln and Streaky Bay, has been but imperfectly explored, and, with the ​exception of a few detached squatters' stations, settlement has not extended beyond the peninsula formed between the River Murray and St. Vincent's Gulf, the furthest inland township being founded by the Burra Burra mine, ninety miles from the capital.
South Australia is intersected by three mountain ranges,—Mount Lofty, Mount Barker, and Wakefield.
The Mount Lofty range runs from north-west, and after attaining a height of about 2,000 feet, twelve miles east of Adelaide, falls to the south-west, terminating in low cliffs on the seashore near Ockaparinga.
From these hills Adelaide, in the valley of the Torrens, presents a singular scene—a green oasis in the midst of a bed of sand, running like a riband along the sea by which it has been upheaved.
Capital farms occupy the foot of Mount Lofty, with a sure market in Adelaide. A steep road leads across the hills or mountains; on the other side rich but not extensive valleys are found; in one of these, twenty-four miles from Adelaide, is Hansdorf, one of three German settlements to which South Australia owes much in vine culture and sheep management. Beyond, parallel with Mount Lofty, is the Mount Barker range, the summit being 800 feet above the level of the surrounding country, which is about 1,600 feet above the level of the sea. The summit forms table-land, on which there are some good cattle and sheep stations. This is the range which divides the waters that flow on the one side into the Murray and Lake Alexandrina, and on the other into Spencer's Gulf.
To the north of Adelaide a long tract of level, well- watered country extends, which, at about one hundred miles' distance, opens into a series of high, open downs.
The River Torrens, which formed so prominent a feature in early puffs and pictures of the colony, is not a river at all, but, like many of the misnamed rivers of Australia, simply a watercourse, which during the rainy season rushes along furiously, ending in a marsh; but when the rains cease, the "river" becomes a mere chain of pools, unreplenished with mountain springs, which shrink daily with the heat, like a farmyard rain-filled pond, such as are common on the wolds of Lincolnshire. Colonel Light saw the Torrens when full of water, and that and the beauty of the valley decided his choice. Fortunately water is to be obtained in Adelaide, by sinking wells, at a very moderate expense; and the same advantage is found on farms, and in the slopes of the neighbouring hills. But in this instance of the Torrens, as in many others, the injudicious puffs of speculators reacted and threw undeserved discredit on the solid advantages of a very fine colony.
​The one great river of Australia is the Murray, which, rising in the Australian Alps, where its sources were discovered by Count Strzelecki near Mount Kosciusko, in Victoria, receives the waters of the Murrumbidgee, the Lachlan, and the Darling, and presents, at certain times of the year, so full and flowing a stream that the early colonists expected to draw down its waters the commerce of the squatting districts of Yass and Albury, in New South Wales; for they calculated that the cheapness of an unbroken water communication would draw away the dray traffic, which was then, and is now, carried to Sydney. But the uncertain supply of water, and the obstacles arising from rocks and snags, have hitherto defeated this project.
The Murrumbidgee rises in the dividing range of mountains in the Maneroo district, two hundred and fifty miles S.W. of the city of Sydney, then flows onwards for five hundred miles, until it unites with the Lachlan at a point where the brave Sturt took a boat and descended to the sea in thirty-six days, when he discovered South Australia, returning in forty days—thus earning the title of the father of South Australia.
The early course of the Murrumbidgee is between hills steeply sloping, covered with herbage and creeping vines, down to the water's edge. " As I sat in a boat," writes a lady to the author, " I could see above me small, very small cattle, in single file now lost in the foliage, now reappearing, as by zigzag well-worn paths they descended to the water to drink. So lofty and steep were the cliffs that I fancied they would fall down upon me. At length they made their appearance at the edge of the stream, drinking beneath bowers of overhanging creepers—a huge bull and a mob of portly cows."
The space encircled between this river and the Murray (the Murray was formerly named the Hume by its discoverers, Hovel and Hume) is one of the fine squatting grounds of New South Wales. Higher up the stream the hills disappear, and long alluvial flats succeed. The Murrumbidgee spreads and loses some of its waters in the marshes of the Lachlan.
It is the peculiar character of the Murray, the Darling, and the Murrumbidgee, that after receiving the waters of the Maranoa, the Balorme, the Gwydir, the Namoi, the Castlereagh, the Macquarie, and the Bogan, they flow hundreds of miles without receiving any tributaries.
The navigation of the River Murray has been the subject of a commission appointed by Sir Henry Young, the present Governor of South Australia; and, although the financial calculations of the commission have been questioned by a committee of the South Australian Legislative Council, it is presumed their facts may be relied on. They are ​quoted from the abstract of a gentleman (Mr. White) who was endeavouring to obtain steamers to open the navigation of this river:—
"In August, 1850, the Legislative Council of that province voted '£4,000 to be equally divided between the two first iron steamers of not less than forty-horse power, and not exceeding two feet draught of water when loaded, that shall successfully navigate the waters of the River Murray from the Goolwa to the junction of the Darling, computed to be about five hundred and fifty-one miles.'
"1st. The natural seamouth of the Murray cannot be entered, owing to the great surf that is constantly breaking on the Encounter Bay coast, and consequently any vessels intended to navigate the river would have to be constructed on the shores of the Lake Alexandrina.
"2nd. This lake, into which the river empties itself previous to its passage to the sea, is about thirty miles long by ten broad, and from six to eighteen fathoms deep, and fresh water is found about the middle.
"3rd. The river preserves an uniform width of about three hundred yards to the junction of the Darling, which latter river is about one hundred yards wide, and the width of the Murray is not materially altered onwards to the junction cf the Murrumbidgee and the Lachlan. The soundings that have been made from the Lake to the Darling, in the months of September and October, give an average depth of two fathoms, or rather, this may be said to be the shallowest.
"The Murray is subject, like all the other streams in the country, to annual floods. It begins to rise towards the end of June, and continues rising until the end of January, generally from ten to twelve feet.
"The only impediments that occur are in the shape of snags or fallen trees, which in some places would have to be removed; but for this the assistance of the natives could be obtained, and up to the junction of the Darling they present no serious obstacle. This point being the limit of the province, the river beyond has not been surveyed; but from those who have descended it so far as the town of Albury (a distance of only three hundred and sixty miles from Sydney) it has been ascertained that, before steam-vessels of the smallest size could navigate it, the snags would have to be removed, though a canoe, drawing eleven inches of water, went the entire distance at a time when the river was lower than has been known within the memory of the 'white man.' From a point in the channel of the Goolwa, which is a stream issuing from the lake, and also one of the mouths of the Murray, it is proposed to lay down a railroad of seven miles in length to a point in Encounter Bay where a safe anchorage may be effected. In the event of any unforeseen difficulties occurring in the construction of Port Elliot, it would be necessary to make a road from Morundee to the city of Adelaide (a distance of about sixty miles), which road would pass through some of the richest districts of South Australia.
"With reference to the country of the Lower Murray, the estimate of the traffic is about 2,000 tons annually, made up of ores from the mines, green, dairy, and other produce.
"On either side of the river to the Darling there are extensive cattle-runs, all of which are taken up.
"Proceeding up the river from this point, we enter upon the province of Victoria, and the extensive sheep-runs of the Lachlan, the Lower Darling, and the Murrumbidgee, which in June, 1860, according to the New South Wales ​statistical and other authentic accounts, were stocked by 1,155,774 sheep, 306,861 horned cattle, 10,093 horses, and 1,872 pigs. There is in Australia an annual increase of 40 per cent, on sheep, and 25 per cent, on cattle. According to the commissioners' report, the increase by the close of 1852, allowing for sales, &c., will have amounted to, say, 2,500,000 sheep, 500,000 cattle, the former yielding about 3,384 tons wool, washed and unwashed; and if a quarter of the annual increase were boiled down, say 250,000 sheep, averaging 28 lbs. tallow, 3,125 tons; and 31,000 cattle, averaging 154 lbs. tallow, 2,130 tons. Total annual freights, 8,603 tons, independent of hides, skins, and other matters, at present thrown aside on account of the great cost of transport.
"For return cargo it is estimated that no less than 5,000 rations would offer, say 1,450 tons, with at least an equal quantity of slops, iron, paling, and other goods, say 2,900 tons. The produce from those remote districts is at present conveyed to Melbourne and Geelong in bullock-drays, travelling about ten miles a day, occupying many weeks in its transit to the port."
In our opinion speculations involving so trifling an amount of capital as a couple of small iron steam-boats should be undertaken and managed by colonists or the provincial government, and would be, if worth doing at all.
The navigation of the Murray is an enterprise, if feasible, within the means of a party of colonists, although the clearing of the river is a national and provincial work, to which this country might be called upon to contribute; but the less absentees have to do with small colonial speculations the better for their finances and the credit of the colony.
In the Murray scrub—a beautiful but barren belt of shrubs and plants from fifteen to twenty miles in breadth, which runs parallel to the river for many miles between Lake Alexandrina and the Great Bend in lat. 34 S.—a great number of the rare birds and animals of Australia are to be seen; amongst others, the leipoa, or mound-building bird, improperly named by the colonists the wild turkey, is found in great numbers; and the satin, or bower bird, which builds a bower for its mate so curiously arched and adorned with shells and shining stones, that when Mr. Gould first discovered one he took it for the playground of some aboriginal child. The leipoa, which was first brought before the attention of the scientific world by Mr. Gould, realises the ancient fable of the ostrich, and buries its eggs, to be hatched by the fermentation of a mound of decomposed leaves and earth.
Mr. Gould observes in his great work, from which all our objects of natural history have been, by permission, copied:—
"This family of birds (Tallegalla, Leipoa, and Megapodius) forms part of a great family of birds inhabiting Australia, New Guinea, the Celebes, and the Philippine Islands, whose habits and economy differ from those of every other group of birds which now exists upon the ​surface of our globe. In their structure they are most nearly allied to the Gallinaceæ, while in some of their actions and in their mode of flight they much resemble the Rallidæ: the small size of their brain, coupled with the extraordinary means employed for the incubation of their eggs, indicates an extremely low degree of organisation. Three species inhabiting Australia, viz., Leipoa ocellatta, Tallegalla, and Megapodius tumulus, although referable to distinct genera, have many habits in common, particularly in their mode of incubation, each and all depositing their eggs in mounds of earth and leaves, which, becoming heated either by fermentation of the vegetable matter, or by the sun's rays, form a kind of natural hatching apparatus, from which the young at length emerge, fully feathered, capable of sustaining life by their own unaided efforts.
The male bird of the leipoa (according to a letter to Mr. Gould from Sir George Grey, the present Governor of New Zealand) weighs about four pounds and a half; they never fly if they can help it, and roost on trees at night. The mounds are from twelve to thirteen feet in circumference at the base, and from two to three feet in height. To construct the mound a nearly circular hole of about eighteen inches in diameter is scratched in the ground to the depth of seven or eight inches, and filled with dead leaves, dead grass, and similar materials; over this layer a mound of sand, mixed with dry grass, &c., is thrown; and, finally, the whole assumes the form of a dome. When an egg is to be deposited, the top is laid open, and a hole scraped in the centre to within two or three inches of the bottom of the layer of dead leaves; the egg is placed in the sand just at the edge of the hole, in a vertical position, with the smaller end downwards; the sand is then thrown in again until the mound assumes its original form. "Egg after egg is thus deposited up to eight, arranged on the same plane in a circle, with a few inches of sand between each. The cock assists the hen in opening and covering up the mound. The native name on the Murray River is marrah-ko; in Western Australia the name of the bird is ngow—ngoweer, meaning a tuft of feathers."
The Megapodius, of which we give an engraving, was found by Mr. John M'Gillivray, during a survey of Endeavour Straits, to construct a much larger mound, 24 feet in its utmost height, and 150 feet in circumference at the base.
South Australia has been divided into counties, which are more recognised as distinctive boundaries than in the other colonies, were the first colonisation was effected by sheep.
MEGAPODIUS, OR MOUND-BUILDING BIRD.
Hindmarsh; 3. Gawler; 4. Light; 5. Sturt; 6. Eyre; 7. Stanley; 8. Flinders; 9. Russell; 10. Robe; 11. Grey.
The county of Adelaide is that in which cultivation is most extensively carried on, the other districts being chiefly occupied for grazing, as the difficulty of getting crops to market prevents sellers from raising more than for their own consumption. But in every favourable situation vineyards are making great progress.
Port Adelaide has a population of 2,000, who find occupation in the extensive movements of a large export and import trade. The primitive appearance of the Mangrove Creek, through which the disconsolate first colonists waded, has disappeared.
A road of seven miles, through sterile, sandy ground, leads to the city, which is traversed by conveyances of all kinds, from the heavy dray to the omnibus and smart dog-cart. Crossing the Torrens by a wooden bridge, one of four which is occasionally swept away by the torrents, after performing a sinecure duty for many months, the city of Adelaide appears in the midst of trees, often full of most rare and curious birds, which migrate periodically from the colder to the hotter climates, in a warm, pretty, and dusty valley. Adelaide, although very unlike a city according to European notions, presents a much more pleasing appearance than Melbourne, which is crowded into a narrow valley, without squares, park, or boulevard. In the park lands surrounding and intersecting the straggling streets of the former, which are as picturesque as Wiesbaden or Cheltenham, although less finished, ​Colonel Gawler encouraged the blacks to camp by frequent feasts of flour and mutton, and there strangers had an opportunity of seeing, sometimes to their amusement, oftener to their surprise, their peculiar customs, habits and sports. Many pretty cottages are to be found in,the suburbs, as neat and highly finished as in England.
South Adelaide is considered the commercial quarter of the town, and contains the principal streets, one of which is 130 feet wide, and Government House, which stands in the centre of a domain of ten acres.
Hindley-street is the Regent-street of Adelaide, and has the distinction of being paved. For want of this luxury of civilisation, coupled with the nature of the soil, Adelaide is terribly afflicted with dust, at all times a nuisance, which is indeed common to all Australian towns. Sydney has at certain times of the year its brickfielders. In addition to the park lands, which occupy a breadth of half a mile round the two divisions of the city, a cemetery and a racecourse are among its out-of-door ornaments.
In the surrounding suburbs many pretty villages have been founded, both inland and on the shore. The system of selling land regularly in eighty-acre lots has, in some degree, neutralised the disadvantage of the large absentee proprietorships and the special surveys, which have monopolised so much of the limited extent of agricultural land.
There is one point in which the South Australians possess an unquestionable superiority over the other two colonies, and that is their local literature. With the exception of the Sydney Morning Herald, which is the Times of the southern hemisphere, the newspapers and periodicals are very superior in style of getting up and in matter to those of New South Wales and Port Phillip. This superiority is especially marked in the South Australian almanacs, which contain a fund of useful information on the statistics, the agriculture, the horticulture, and the mining progress of that colony.
Before the check occasioned by the gold discoveries, sheep stations had been formed as far north as Mount Brown, toward the Darling, near the eastern boundary. The whole of York Peninsula had been occupied, and, in the country westward of Spencer's Gulf, flockmasters had penetrated to Anxious Bay, on the Australian Bight; and townships had been founded at Rivoli Bay, in the county of Grey, and Guichen Bay, in the county of Robe, whence a coasting trade had been opened.
CASCADE AT GREENHILL CREEK, SOUTH ADELAIDE.
​was further reduced; but high prices at the end of the year increased cultivation to 36,000 acres in 1847. And thus, according to price, cultivation ebbed and flowed, constantly making more progress as small settlers became landholders, and became more steady. As a general rule it may be asserted that miners are situated in barren districts, and obliged to draw their grain and vegetables from some considerable distance. The system of eighty-acre lots enables colonists of the cultivating class to plant themselves upon land at the most convenient distance for supplying the mines. These same cottage farmers also derived great advantage from contracts for conveying ore from the mine to the port, and coals and wood to the smelting establishments, in their bullock-drays.
In 1850 the whole original scheme of the colony had disappeared: cultivation was entirely in the hands of the working classes; the capitalists and educated were engaged either as squatters, in commerce, or in mining speculations. The remains of the old ideas were only to be found in a little grandiloquent speechmaking, and, better still, in some very beautiful gardens. There were a few fortunate purchasers of town lots in the main streets who made and retained very handsome fortunes.
BONDED MYRMICOBIUS, OR ANT-EATER
Footnotes