TASMANIA - HISTORICAL SKETCH  5 ...

Atlas Page 101
By James Smith

IN the year 1872, Tasmania was brought into telegraphic communication with Great Britain, and therefore with the whole civilised world. Discoveries of gold were made, both in quartz reefs and in alluvial deposits, of the greatest promise. As much as ten ounces per ton was crushed from stone taken in quantities of not less than fifty tons from the former; but the reefs were so "patchy" in their character as to disappoint the legitimate expectations of those who had anticipated uniform and permanent results from their development; and this branch of industry had to be abandoned as disappointing and unprofitable. It was the same with silver ore, the presence of which was detected in the neighbourhood of the Penguin River. Extensive deposits of rich iron ore were met with in the county of Devon and other parts of the island, and British and colonial companies embarked their capital in the erection of smelting works, and in, providing means for the conveyance of the pig ore to the nearest port of shipment; but the iron, although excellent to all appearance, was rendered almost valueless by the simple fact that it contained a small percentage of chromium, which, however valuable in itself as affording one of the most valuable pigments in use among artists, imparts a character of brittleness to cast iron which is necessarily most prejudicial to the use of the material. Some extensive slate quarries were also revealed in the county of Dorset but in the absence of suitable means of transport they were allowed to remain intact. In fact with the single exception of the tin mines, hereafter to be mentioned, all the mining ventures of the Tasmanians have been so unfortunate, for the reasons previously started, and have involved such a sacrifice of the capital embarked in them, that it is small wonder if a spirit of extreme circumspection and distrust has replaced one of speculative enterprise in the minds of those who have accumulated or inherited the means of exploring and developing the mineral resources of the colony.

During he term of office of Governor Du Cane, he applied himself with great assiduity to encourage agriculture and kindred pursuits, to help forward the cause of education, to promote out-door sports, and to discharge those duties which devolve upon a county magnate in the mother country, and which also tend to knit together all classes of society in a British colony. By his influence and example he succeeded in raising the tone and character of public oratory, in which he excelled; land his scrupulous observance of the neutrality and impartiality imposed upon him as a constitutional governor, won for him the confidence and respect of politicians of all shades of opinion, so that when His Excellency quitted Tasmania in November, 1874, he did so amidst gratifying expressions of esteem and regret on the part of its inhabitants.

Mr. F. A Weld assumed the governorship in January, 1879. He had spent nearly a quarter of a century in New Zealand, where he had taken an active interest in politics, and had filled the offices of minister of native affairs and premier; and for a period of six years he had been Governor of Western Australia, so that he brought to the performance of the duties devolving upon him in the island colony a considerable amount of useful experience. Changes of ministry were of almost annual occurrence. Party and personal feeling ran very high, as is usually he case in limited communities; and questions of public policy were too often discussed and decided upon, not so much in reference to their intrinsic merits as from a desire or a determination to put out of office the particular body of men with whom they were identified. A displaced ministry would cherish strong sentiments of resentment against the politicians who had superseded it, and would not be fastidious in its selection of allies to aid it in ejecting its successors; and thus a species of vendetta arose, which had the effect of converting the Legislature into an arena for angry and pertinacious conflicts between the possessors of and the aspirants to power, which obstructed the progress of necessary legislation, and prevented the adoption of anything like a consistent and continuous policy directed to the promotion of the common weal.

Governor Weld lost no time in making himself acquainted with the island, and with what appeared to him to be its pressing wants; and he pointed out to his constitutional advisers. how much benefit would be likely to accrue to the colony by the execution of a well-digested scheme of public works, designed to improve and increase the means of internal communication. They concurred with him, and certain measures were introduced into and sanctioned by the Assembly for this purpose, but they were twice defeated in the Legislative Council. Nor was it until the end of the year 1877, that the third ministry which had held office since the arrival of Governor Weld succeeded in obtaining the assent of both Houses to a bill appropriating one hundred and forty thousand pounds sterling for the formation and construction of roads, bridges, jetties, and telegraph lines in districts previously destitute of or very imperfectly supplied with these means of intercommunication. To a succeeding administration, of which Mr. Giblin was the premier and treasurer, belongs the credit of re-organising the finances of the colony, of re-establishing an equilibrium and between the revenue expenditure, and of instituting a tax on property, as well as upon the dividends from public companies. The main line of railway connecting Hobart Town with Launceston, one hundred and thirty-three miles in length, was opened in the year 1876; and in the same year passed away Truganini, otherwise known as Lalla Rookh, the last of the Tasmanian race. Its only male survivor, William Lanné, or "King Billy," had died in Hobart Town, as, has been previously mentioned, in March, 1869. Truganini was the daughter of a chief, Mangana by name. Her mother had been butchered by the whites; her sister had been captured by sealers, who were accustomed to use the black women as slaves, and to flog them for trifling acts of disobedience; her uncle had been shot by a soldier; and when she herself had been taken prisoner by some sawyers who were cutting timber for the government in Birch’s Bay, they carried her off in a boat. Two of her countrymen were allowed to accompany her. One of them, Parawema, was her affianced husband. In mid-channel, on the way to Bruni Island, they were both thrown overboard. Being good swimmers they followed the boat, and, seizing on the gunwale, endeavoured to clamber in. The ferocious sawyers chopped off their hands with an axe, and the poor wretches disappeared beneath the water, leaving a trail of blood upon its surface. The witness and victim of such atrocious wrongs requited them by benefactions. To quote the words of Mr. Fenton —"Truganini followed Mr. Robinson in all his dangerous excursions through the wildest forests of the island; she acquired a knowledge of the various native dialects, so as to be enabled to communicate more freely with the tribes; she always went in advance of the party, risking her life among the hostile blacks; she saved Robinson’s life at the Arthur River, and she remained faithful until the last great enterprise over the western mountains was accomplished." She was believed to be sixty-five years of age at the time of her death; and her remains were followed to the grave at the Cascades by the head of the government and some of the principal inhabitants of Hobart Town.

In the year 1878 a tramway was constructed from the tin mines which had been discovered by Mr. James Smith at Mount Bischoff in December, 1871, to Emu Bay, and the Legislature recognised the value and importance to the colony of this discovery by bestowing upon Mr. Smith a life pension of two hundred pounds a year. Simultaneously with a remarkable development of the stanniferous resources of the colony, there arose a strong determination in the minds of many enterprising men to prosecute a vigorous and systematic search for gold; and this time it was rewarded by the most gratifying results. One explorer, Samuel Richards by name, established his claim to the reward of three thousand pounds offered by the government to the discoverer of the first payable goldfield in Tasmania; and up to the present time the quartz reefs and alluvial deposits of that island have yielded a rich return, though not perhaps commensurate with the somewhat sanguine anticipations that had been formed. Governor Weld remained in office until May, 1880 when he was called from Tasmania to the Straits Settlements, Lieutenant-General Sir J. H. Lefroy being temporarily appointed to the post thus vacated; with an ad interim administration of the island for half a year by the chief justice, Sir Francis Smith, as Sir J. H. Lefroy did not arrive until the following October. He remained in the colony until December, 1881, and, short as his stay was, it was long enough to enable him to exhibit so many fine qualities of heart and mind as to secure him universal popularity and esteem. His term of office coincided with a period of general prosperity. The revenue returns were highly satisfactory; agriculture was flourishing; mining enterprise had undergone a marked revival; and the census of the population showed it to be one hundred and fifteen thousand arid eight as compared with ninety-nine thousand three hundred and twenty-eight in 1870 and eighty-nine thousand nine hundred and seventy-seven in 1861. In May, 1882, Parliament was dissolved, arid its successor found itself in the fortunate position of having no burning questions to divide it, and with a stable administration at the head of affairs, in which both parties in the Assembly were equally represented It could therefore apply itself to the work of practical legislation, and endeavour to place the finances of the colony on a solid and durable basis. Unfortunately the two Houses came into conflict upon a question of taxation. The Council assumed what the Assembly regarded as an obstructive attitude, and was accused of selfishness and of subordinating the interests of the colony to those of its class. Be this as it may, there can be little doubt that its policy was distasteful to the great bulk of the taxpayers, and was calculated to retard the progress of necessary legislation. On the other hand, it must be credited with a ready acquiescence in the propositions of the Government for a large expenditure on public works, as also upon the introduction of a number of suitable emigrants from the mother country; with an expenditure which appeared to be justified by the buoyancy of the revenue and by the fact that it was exhibiting a steady increase without the imposition of any fresh taxation. By the end of the year 1883, indeed, it had reached the sum of five hundred and fifty-eight thousand eight hundred and fourteen pounds, which was nearly forty per cent above that of the year 1879. Meanwhile an undue inflation of mining enterprise or rather of rash speculation had taken place, which was followed in due time by the inevitable reaction; and the diversion of a considerable amount of capital from the ordinary channels of industry to purely speculative undertakings was accompanied by the inevitable results —the excitement of a gambling spirit in the community, and the dissipation of large sums of money upon altogether unproductive operations. From time to time gold deposits were discovered in the valleys and among the ranges upon both the east and west coasts of the island, but the distribution of the precious metal appeared to be very capricious; and, as often as otherwise, the districts in which it was found were so sequestered and so difficult of access as to offer serious impediments both to systematic research, and to the prosecution of mining industry upon such a scale and with such machinery, and appliances as would be conducive to its permanent success.

The more important legislative measures of 1883 were those authorising the raising of a loan of eight hundred thousand pounds for purposes of railway construction, and the acts defining what lines should be executed. Upon these the Council and the Assembly once more came into collision, but eventually, under the pressure of public opinion, both Houses came to an agreement on the subject; and important additions were made or are in progress of being made to the railway system of the colony. There are nearly four hundred miles in operation, others in course of construction, and others under survey.

The year 1885 was marked by the partial recovery of the colony from the industrial and mercantile depression under which it had laboured during the previous twelve months; and brighter prospects seemed to dawn upon it after the holding of a conference at Hobart on the subject of a reciprocity treaty with Victoria, at which an agreement was arrived at for the free interchange of the natural products of both colonies; but this subsequently failed to receive the ratification of the Victorian Legislature. In the same year the Tasmanian Parliament passed a Defence Act, and measures amending the Constitution and Electoral Acts; one of which slightly increased the number of members in both Houses. The Government also decided upon the enrolment of a reserve force, and the year did not close without a gratifying development of both the gold and tin mining industries, and an extension of the mileage of railways open for traffic within the colony.

If the year 1886 was somewhat barren of legislation, it witnessed the assembling of the first Federal Council of Australia, which was held in the southern capital of the colony on January 25th. This body had been called into existence for the purpose of securing concerted and harmonious action on the part of the whole of the colonies, as well with regard to what may be called their foreign policy, as with respect to a number of matters in which it is believed to be desirable that there shall be a common understanding and uniformity of legislation and practice; these including marriage, divorce, the admission of alien and inferior races, the exclusion of Criminals, a general system of defence, the extradition of fugitive offenders, quarantine, fisheries, copyright, and so forth. New South Wales and South Australia declined to take part in the Federal Council, but Tasmania, Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia, and Fiji, were each represented in it, and the city of Hobart was selected as the place of convocation. By virtue of the powers vested in the Council by the legislatures of the respective colonies just named, it passed four acts; the first to shorten the language used in its own enactments; the second, to facilitate the proof throughout the federation of its own acts, of those of the various Parliaments, of judicial and official documents, and of the signatures of certain public officers; the third, to authorise the service of civil process out of the jurisdiction of the colony in which it was issued; and the fourth, to make provision for the enforcement within the federation of judgments of the Supreme Courts of the federated colonies. The Council then adjourned until January, 1888.

A dissolution of Parliament, followed by a general election, took place in the same year. On October 28, Major Sir G. C. Strahan, who had held office as Governor since 1881, was obliged to quit the colony on account of ill-health, and was succeeded by the acting Chief Justice, the Hon. W. R. Giblin, the first native of Tasmania who had attained to that honour. The statistics for 1886 showed a steady expansion both of commerce and revenue, combined with increasing deposits in the various banks and building societies, a higher marriage rate, betokening greater popular prosperity, and a marked increase in the sale and settlement of the Crown lands of the colony.