Atlas Page 91
By Sir T. Cockburn-Campbell

THE construction of railways on ail extensive scale was at that time beyond the colony’s resources; but Mr. Weld determined that during his tenure of office the people whose progress he was so anxious to promote should have their first taste of the convenience of the iron road. The hopes of the colony were then largely fixed upon the rich mining districts of Northampton, lying some thirty miles northward of the town of Geraldton. At Northampton were lead deposits of marvellous richness, copper also in considerable quantity, but distance from port and cost of carriage over sandy roads prevented the working of the former ore to profit, notwithstanding the high prices it then fetched. Governor Weld was of opinion that by means of a light line of railway, connecting the lead mines with their natural outlet at Champion Bay, such an impetus might be given to the mining industry as would largely add to the wealth and population of the colony. By the aid of his Legislature —then two-thirds elective —which gave him its unanimous support, he induced the Colonial Office to consent to the raising of a loan for carrying out this work. Unfortunately, however, even before the railway was completed the price of lead fell to, and has since remained at, so low a figure that the money spent on giving cheap facilities of carriage produced comparatively little result. The contractor also involved the government in costly difficulties and disputes; but notwithstanding these disheartening first experiences, West Australians were now bent on continuing to build railways, and scarcely had they finished with the "unhappy" Northampton line than they entered upon the construction of another, which, starting from Fremantle and passing through Perth and Guildford, crosses the Darling Range and taps the rich arable lands "over the hills." Loans for carrying out this undertaking, which was completed in three sections, each of twenty miles, were raised in 1879, 1881, and 1883. York, a straggling village-town, charmingly situated between grass-clothed hills on the banks of the river Avon, was the original terminus of the "Eastern Railway," which has since, however, been extended in a southerly direction to the small town of Beverley. Short branch roads connect the villages of Newcastle and of Northam with the main trunk line, and bring every centre of population in the eastern farming areas into direct railway communication with the capital and port. Much was expected from this enterprise —a rapid increase of settlement and extension of agricultural industry. As yet, however, there is but little sign of either, partly because the growth of cereals does not prove a highly profitable pursuit, partly because the best of the lands are in the hands of the original grantees or of their heirs, unwilling or too poor personally to bring them into cultivation, and disinclined to part with them to others at liberal rates. While the "Eastern Railway" was being built, the government of Western Australia, on the motion of the Legislative Council, made it known that the colony was open to receive offers for railway construction on the land-grant system. By this means it was hoped that, while much-needed transit facilities would be obtained without adding to an already comparatively large indebtedness, immigration and settlement would be promoted and outside capital embarked in developing the resources of the country. Various negotiations having- been entered upon and broken off, a contract was eventually signed between Sir Frederick Broome and the late Mr. Anthony Hordern for the construction of a line from Beverley to Albany, the present active-minded governor actively sustaining the forward policy of his predecessor. Under the terms of his contract, payment was to be made at the rate of twelve thousand acres for every mile of completed road, and this concession having been made over to a syndicate of London capitalists, they expect to finish the line by the end of 1888. Another land-grant railway contract has also been concluded to connect the city of Perth with Geraldton, via Gingin, the Victoria Plains, and the Irwin and Greenough Flats. Work upon the line was commenced eighteen months ago, but is temporarily suspended, the original syndicate having become involved in financial embarrassments which have necessitated a transfer of the contract to a wealthier association. Besides these railways, three lines tap the timber forests of the Darling Ranges from various points on the southern coast —one connecting Rockingham with the Jarrahdale Company’s works, a second having its base at Bunbury, and a third running to the small shipping port of Lockville, near the Vasse. Taken altogether, the railways constructed, in course of construction, and those about to be constructed in Western Australia cover distances of over seven hundred miles.

IT has been said already that to the fact of the early settlers never having attempted to establish themselves outside the short hundred-mile-wide strip of coast land lying between Champion Bay and Albany, may in a great measure be attributed the slow progress of the colony during the first decades of its existence. Various explorations had been undertaken to the northward and eastward of this restricted area, but without any resultant extension of colonising enterprise, until the expedition of Mr. F. T. Gregory to Nickol Bay in 1861, which proved an important turning point in Western Australian history. While Gregory opened out the rich pastoral country now known as the "Nor’-west," Pemberton Walcott, his second in command, discovered on the coasts of the new district those pearl-shell beds, the working of which has so largely contributed to assure its fortunes and to further its prosperity. Mr. Walter Padbury, who as a youth had emigrated to Swan River during the first years of its settlement, and had risen to wealth and position by his enterprise, his sagacity and thrift, was the first to ship stock to the new country. His sheep were landed in 1863 at Butcher’s Inlet, where was subsequently built the town of Cossack, and thence were travelled eastward till they reached magnificent pastures, now included in the splendid station known as the De Grey. Mr. Padbury’s reports were so encouraging that other West Australian stock-owners soon followed his spirited example, amongst them such well-known colonists as the late Mr. Wellard, Mr. W. S. Hall, the Messrs. Burgess, and Mr. Withnell. Victorian speculators were also about this time attracted to Nickol Bay, and Messrs. Mount, Orkney, and Smith sent a shipment of stock in charge of Messrs. L. L. Mount and McKay, followed soon afterwards by other vessels, despatched by the Portland Bay Squatting Company, and bringing to the northern settlement men who have since made their mark in Western Australian colonisation, and some of them even in its politics. Amongst these may be mentioned Messrs. A. E. Anderson, McKenzie, Grant, John Edgar, and the brothers Richardson.

MEANWHILE, Nickol Bay was not the only northern portion of the territory which began to prove attractive to hardy pioneers. Tempted by the glowing description’s of the explorers Panter and Martin, an association of West Australian colonists, having at their head the late Sir F. P. Barlee, determined upon occupying Roebuck Bay, a harbour lying eighty miles to the southward of the present town of Derby. Earl in 1864 the first shipment of this company’s stock was despatched in charge of a fine young colonist named Harding, who was accompanied by Mr. Panter with police for the protection of the settlement. Shortly after their arrival, these two young men, with a constable named Goldwire, started on an expedition to examine the country in the neighbourhood of the bay. Failing to return at the time they were expected, a search was made for them, but at last reluctantly abandoned owing to attacks of ophthalmia from which the party suffered. Little hope was entertained of the safety of the missing men, and upon a second stock-laden vessel arriving from Fremantle she was speedily sent back to report their disappearance. Upon receipt of the melancholy intelligence, Mr. Maitland Brown —a gallant young native of the colony, who, when a mere boy, by a wonderful feat of pluck and of endurance had saved the life of his leader, Mr. F. T. Gregory, during an exploring expedition —volunteered to head a search party and discover the fate of the three friends. This offer was accepted, his exertions being crowned with sad success. The bodies were found lying side by side, their skulls fractured and their limbs broken, massacred apparently in sleep by natives. The savages swarmed in the neighbourhood, and offered a fierce resistance to the party when returning with the remains of the murdered men. The fate of the company’s first manager cast a gloom over the settlement; the sheep also would not thrive so near the coast, and eventually, in 1867, the station was abandoned and the remaining stock sent down to Butcher’s Inlet. Following close upon this attempt to settle Roebuck Bay came the disastrous expedition to Camden Harbour, a locality beyond the Fitzroy between Collier Bay and Prince Regent’s Inlet, visited in the early days of West Australian colonisation by Sir George, then Captain Grey, and again in 1862 by Dr. Martin. These explorers both wrote in raptures of the country around Camden Harbour, which Dr. Martin in particular described as the finest in Australia. Acting upon their information a Victorian, Mr. William Harvey, conceived the idea of forming a company to settle the land of so much promise, and in 1864 a party of eighty-four persons —consisting of painters, plumbers, slaters, saddlers, a doctor, a clergyman, but with scarcely anyone experienced in stock, and not a shoemaker, blacksmith, or carpenter amongst them —sailed in three vessels from Hobson’s Bay for this distant destination. Shortly after reaching it they were joined by the late Mr. R. J. Schol as resident magistrate, with whom came a staff of surveyors, police, and pensioners. Difficulties and disappointments dogged the footsteps of these unfortunate pioneers. Want of water was encountered in the first place, then want of feed, the coarse, rank grass of a trap soil, heated by tropical suns, proving innutritious and wholly unsuitable for sheep. To a poison plant, also, quantities of their stock fell victims, while fever and sun-stroke carried off several of the men. Their troubles were crowned by the dangerous hostility of the natives, and, thoroughly disheartened by a succession of misfortunes, the settlement in 1865 was finally abandoned, some of the shareholders of the company returning to Melbourne, and others proceeding south to Nickol Bay —amongst the latter being Messrs. E. T. Hooley and Alexander McRae, who subsequently proved themselves useful and excellent colonists. Within the tract of country known as the "Nor’-west," lying between the De Grey and the Ashburton, were therefore grouped by the end of 1867 the original pioneers of the district, some later arrivals, and the remnants of the Roebuck Bay and Camden Harbour expeditions. To these must also be added the members of a company formed in Melbourne in 1865 to settle A. C. Gregory’s recently discovered Denison Plains, amongst them being Mr. C. E. Broadhurst and Mr. W. H. Venn, who determined to join the settlement at Nickol Bay rather than accept the risks of a journey to their original destination. The Nor’-westers had their troubles like most other pioneers. The price of wool fell, during the first few years of their struggle, to an unremunerative figure, while the cost of maintaining stations at so great a distance from sources of supply was a heavy drain upon their limited means. A few, and amongst these Mr. Walter Padbury, their van-courier, withdrew from the new district, which at one time seemed threatened with collapse. The price, however, of the settlers’ staple product subsequently rising and good seasons supervening, fortune smiled again on Nickol Bay, which has since then, but for occasional destructive hurricanes, been almost uniformly prosperous, ranking as one of the finest of the pastoral areas of the colony. It was not for some years, not till well on in the seventies, that the country between this flourishing pastoral settlement and the home districts attracted much attention. But gradually the fine sheep lands it contains were leased by adventurous young squatters, who dotted the banks of the Gascoyne, the Lyons, the Upper Murchison, and the Ashburton with their homesteads and their stations, till now, from Champion Bay to the De Grey, the overlander passes through a continuous succession of well-established pastoral properties.

IT has already been stated that while Mr. F. T. Gregory was engaged in that exploratory expedition which resulted in the occupation of Nickol Bay, the late Mr. Pemberton Walcott, a member of his party, discovered those pearl-shell beds which subsequently became the basis of an extensive and profitable industry. At first the value of Walcott’s find does not seem to have been fully appreciated, though beach-combing to a small extent was early carried on. A man named Tays, an American sailor was the principal pioneer of an industry in which the labour of the natives was eventually utilised to the great advantage of both blacks and whites. This man, and after his death by drowning, his partner Seubert and others gathered the shells at first in shallow water, or at low tide. When the beach beds became exhausted they encouraged the natives to wade into greater depths and "bob under" for the shell. By this means the blacks were gradually taught to dive, and in 1868 a first experiment in boat-diving was made with much success, while in the following year this practice was generally established. Landsmen, who had the chief command of native labour, were soon drawn into the business. The blacks of the Nor’-west were a fine, strong, and numerous race.

At Nickol Bay, save in one case of treachery —sternly punished —they gave but little trouble, though farther south on the Ashburton, and later again on the Gascoyne, they remained hostile and dangerous for years. What proved their safeguard was the need of the settlers for their services. Only by means of cheap black labour were many of the latter able to carry on their enterprise. Instead, therefore, of internecine hostilities arising, as so often has elsewhere been the case, it was in the interests of the Nor’-western settlers to gain the confidence and good-will of their sable neighbours, and to attach them to their stations and homesteads. The natives were soon taught to shepherd, to shear, to ride, and even to fence, drive teams, and perform station work for which whites elsewhere are invariably employed. To have kept a crowd of blacks, however, at those seasons of the year when work amongst stock was slack, might have proved too severe a drain upon the resources of the squatters; temporary dismissal, on the other hand after the natives had acquired a taste for white men’s food and luxuries, would have conduced to sheep-spearing and theft, and consequent reprisals. In this difficulty, the pearling was invaluable, bringing constant employment to the blacks, much profit to the whites, and to both peace and mutual satisfaction. The natives employed in pearling by the pastoral firms were almost invariably well treated. They looked upon themselves as the dependents of the white lords of the soil, and, as a rule, became attached to the latter, and always ready to engage with them for the diving seasons in sufficient numbers. But pearlers who were not pastoralists began to appear upon the scene when the profits of the business became known.

These men, having no territorial claims upon the services of the native population, sometimes found a difficulty in procuring the divers they required, and were not always sufficiently particular in the methods they adopted for supplying their wants. "Nigger-hunting" among the wild blacks became not unknown, nor other practices decidedly irregular. Not that the divers thus impressed were treated with inhumanity; on the contrary, they were better fed than when living in their natural state, nor can it be doubted that the civilising influences under which they came, and the taste they acquired for flour, tobacco, and other creature comforts, both extinguished their hostility towards those who could supply them with such luxuries, and inclined them to leave off their wandering, predatory habits. The government, however, laudably desirous of preventing even the suspicion of wrong-doing in the relations between the whites and blacks, early began a course of legislation regulating contracts for native labour, and elaborately protecting the interests of the aborigines. These efforts, how ever well meant, have had in some respects an injurious effect. To guard against the exercise of compulsion over natives by the pearlers was both justifiable and requisite, but the substitution of a complex contract system for the simple patriarchal relations which formerly existed between the squatters and the tribes whose "country" they severally occupied, has been productive of anything but satisfactory results. While the blacks looked upon themselves as dependents of the "master" who had settled upon their lands, while they ate his flour, drank his tea, smoked his tobacco, wore his blankets, and. unhesitatingly obeyed him as a child would do the bidding of its father, fancying in their simplicity that he had authority over them, and quite content that it should be so-all went well.

But when the government stepped in and taught the natives to consider themselves free agents, beyond the control of the squatters unless they bound themselves to him by a special contract, the old peaceful order of things was seriously disturbed, the blacks in too many cases turned insolent and idle, and their relations to the whites, previously all that could have been desired, became correspondingly strained. Certain it is that almost insuperable difficulties have been encountered in the management of the Nor’-west blacks under labour contracts, subject to the interference and decision of magistrates and courts, and that the pearling industry in which hundreds of natives were in former days usefully and happily employed, bids fair ere long to be totally abandoned by West Australian settlers, and to pass into the hands of pearlers from Port Darwin and the Islands, with their Malay crews and their diving dresses, who will denude the coasts of an important source of wealth, and give to the colony little, if anything, in return.

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