562 PBOCEEDINGS OF SECTION H. 



The training of the young engineer, whether civil, mining, 

 mechanical or electrical, and the architect, lies very much in 

 parallel lines — practical experience in the shops being essential, 

 although with the architect it is perhaps only optional. The well 

 equipped engineering schools, and the opportunities of study under 

 professors of reputation has, I know, indelibly stamped the 

 student just entering his active professional career with the hall 

 mark of competency, and the reputation of our schools has opened 

 many a door of lucrative employment elsewhere to Australian 

 trained engineers. It is perhaps the pity of it that so many have 

 to find their opportunities abroad ; the development of Aus- 

 tralasia and its greater engineering projects being necessarily in 

 the hands of the Government. Still, with all the advantages of 

 the university school and the technical college, the young engineer 

 only begins to learn when he faces the difficulties of actual prac- 

 tice, and when his reputation and success depend upon his own 

 judgment and action under some critical circumstances in his 

 . career. 



Then there is the training of the land surveyor and of the 

 hydrographer to be considered; the opportunity for which is 

 obviously the Government service. And here again the technical 

 training must be of the best, as it is the Basis of their subsequent 

 work on land and sea. 



Future Prospects. 



When one looks round at this only very partially developed 

 continent, and glances at the great works in engineering and 

 architecture that have been already evolved out of a short cen- 

 tury's efforts only, one can only be struck with the prospect of 

 the enormous field of enterprise yet before the profession. If 

 only British capital is induced, as it will yet be, to come here, in 

 its millions, as it does without stint to Canada, the Argentine, 

 South Africa, and the East, then the progress will be phenomenal. 

 The skill is here, as witness the great railway systems, the mining 

 and other industrial plants, the sewerage of the cities, water 

 conservation and supply and irrigation works, the harbors, docks 

 and ship building, the rolling of steel rails and boiler plates, the 

 manufacture of Portland cement and the extraction of shale oils, 

 the designing and erection of such notable buildings as the Par- 

 liament Houses of Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Perth, 

 the new education offices at Adelaide (the work of my old friend, 

 Owen Smyth), the great library and town hall additions in Mel- 

 bourne, the grouped public buildings of Brisbane, the gothic fanes 

 of Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane, and the principal buildings 

 in New Zealand. 



