AUSTRALIAN PICTURES. 



proceeds until one or the other finds and repairs the defect. Communication 

 being restored, the news is conveyed to the other party, and both take up 

 their instruments and retrace their steps without having seen each other. 



At the Barrow Creek station, a party of the employes were surprised 

 in 1875 by the blacks, when they had left the building to indulge in a 

 bathe. They had to run for their lives through a volley of spears to regain 

 the shelter of their loop-holed home. Mr. Stapleton and a line repairer 

 were mortally wounded, and two others were badly hurt. Mr. Stapleton 

 was found to be sinking rapidly. The news was flashed to Adelaide. In 

 one room of the city stood the doctor and Mrs. Stapleton, listening to the 

 1 click, click ' of the messages. A thousand miles away in the desert, in a 

 lonely hut beleagured by the blacks, lay the dying man with an instrument 

 brought to his bedside. He received the doctor's message that his case was 

 hopeless. He heard his wife's adieus, and he telegraphed an eternal fare- 

 well. It is easy to believe that the affecting spectacle moved those around 

 the group in Adelaide to tears. 



South Australia's next great feat is to run a railway across the con- 

 tinent. Already the line is completed a distance of nearly four hundred 

 miles northwards towards Strangeways Springs. Camels imported by Mr. 

 H. J. Scott are used to carry stores, rations and water to the men em- 

 ployed in advance, whilst, from the other end, the Palmerston and Pine 

 Creek line, 150 miles in length, is in the hands of the contractors. It is 

 hoped that within the next ten years the transcontinental railway will be 

 completed, thereby uniting Australia and the east. 



When John McDouall Stuart at last crossed the continent from sea to 

 sea and from north to south, there was great enthusiasm in Adelaide. The 

 explorer received ^5000 from Parliament, and the colony obtained per- 

 mission to push its bounds up to the Indian Ocean, thus annexing a nice 

 little tract of 531,402 square miles. Thus, in the year 1863, was the Northern 

 Territory acquired. It was resolved at once to form a settlement in the 

 new country. The Imperial Government from time to time had endeavoured 

 to colonise North Australia, settlements being formed in turn at Melville 

 Island, Raffles Bay, and Port Essington ; but each place in turn was aban- 

 doned. Undeterred by these failures, the South Australian authorities sold 

 land, marked out a township, appointed an official staff, and invited coloni- 

 sation. And then South Australia went through its painful experience. 

 The owners of land warrants complained that they had been ' sold ' as well 

 as the land ; the expected colonists did not put in an appearance ; while 

 the members of the staff were quarrelling, the blacks made a raid and stole 

 and destroyed nearly all the stores, and finally many of the Government 

 officers took to open boats and escaped after a hazardous sea voyage to 

 Western Australia. For years and years the Northern Territory was a 

 source of expense and anxiety to the good people of Adelaide ; but a 



