South Australia and Western Australia
9781465678478
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
South Australia has a peculiar history of its own, differing very much from those of the other Australian colonies, though similar in some degree to that of New Zealand, which was founded after South Australia, and with aspirations of the same nature. New South Wales was taken up by Great Britain as a convict depôt, and grew as such till the free inhabitants who had followed and surrounded the convicts became numerous and strong enough to declare that they would have no more such neighbours sent among them. Van Diemen’s Land, which is now Tasmania, and Moreton Bay, which is now Queensland, were occupied as convict dependencies to the parent establishment. Moreton Bay was still part of New South Wales when New South Wales refused to be any longer regarded as an English prison, and Van Diemen’s Land did for herself that which New South Wales had done before. Even Port Phillip, which is now Victoria, was first occupied by convicts sent thither from the parent colony,—though it is right to say that the convict system never took root there, and that the attempt never reached fulfilment. On the same principle New South Wales sent an offshoot convict depôt to King George’s Sound, which is now a part of Western Australia,—an unhappy colony which, in its sore distress, was destined to save itself from utter destruction by delivering itself to the custody of compelled immigrants, who could be made to come thither and work when others would not come. In this way all the now existing Australian colonies, except South Australia, have either owed their origin to convicts, or have been at one period of their existence fostered by convict labour; but South Australia has never been blessed—or cursed—with the custody of a single British exile. In 1829, when Australian exploration was yet young, Captain Sturt, who had already travelled westwards from Sydney till he found and named the Darling River, and had done much towards investigating the difficult problem of the central Australian waters, received a commission from the government of New South Wales to make his way across to the Murrumbidgee River, and to discover by following its course what became of it. It was then believed by many, and among others by Captain Sturt himself, that the great waters of the continent, which had been reached but of which the estuaries were not known, ran into some huge central lake or internal sea. With the view of proving or of disproving this surmise, Captain Sturt with a few companions started on his journey, carrying with him a boat in detached pieces, in which he proposed to solve the mystery of the river. For, it must be understood, none of those maritime explorers who had surveyed, or partially surveyed, the eastern, southern, or western coasts of the continent had discovered any river mouth by which it was supposed that these waters could escape to the sea. Sturt was very zealous and ambitious to make for himself a great name among Australian explorers,—as he has done. In his account of a subsequent journey,—made into the interior after he had found that the river did not conduct him thither,—he thus describes his own feelings:—“Let any man lay the map of Australia before him and regard the blank upon its surface, and then let me ask if it would not be an honourable achievement to be the first to place foot upon its centre.” This he did, subsequently, in 1845; but in 1829-1830 he and his companions made their way down the Murrumbidgee till that large river joined a still greater stream, which he first called the Murray. The upper part of this river had been crossed by Hovell and Hume in 1826, and had then been called the Hume. But the name given by Sturt is the one by which it will hereafter be known. He followed it till it was joined by another large river, which he rightly presumed to be that Darling which he had himself discovered on a former journey. Still going on he came to the “Great Bend” which the Murray makes.
