AUSTRALIAN PICTURES. 



for over 100,000 square miles of territory, it should have a very prosperous 

 career before it. 



The towns named are the most important on the coast-line of sub- 

 tropical Queensland. There are also the thriving little towns of Bundaberg, 

 at the mouth of the Burnett river, the outlet for a rich tract of agricultural 

 land, and Gladstone, a few miles to the south of the mouth of the Fitzroy. 

 The last-named township is next after Brisbane the oldest settlement in 

 Queensland, but it has never prospered. Hidden away at the head of a great 

 land-locked sheet of deep water — probably after Sydney the finest natural 

 harbour on the east coast of Australia — it slumbers peacefully without any 

 visible trade : a bush village, supported by the stockmen employed on the 

 neighbouring cattle stations, and occasionally galvanised into life by a pro- 

 mising discovery among the rich but fragmentary and erratic mineral lodes 

 found in the volcanic country in its vicinity. These constitute all the coast 

 towns worth mentioning. 



Inland, on the line of trunk railway running westward from Brisbane, are 

 Ipswich and Toowoomba, both agricultural centres, but the latter the more 

 important of the two, with a population of eight or nine thousand people. 

 Just beyond Toowoomba, a branch of the railway curving to the south runs 

 to Warwick, another pretty country town of some four thousand people, 

 surrounded by rich soil and thriving farmers, and enjoying, from its elevation, 

 a pleasantly cool climate. Continuing, the branch railway reaches Stanthorpe, 

 near the border, mentioned elsewhere, and the line is being continued to 

 effect a junction with the New South Wales railway system. After leaving 

 Toowoomba, the main line continues in a nearly direct line westward, passing 

 through Dalby, a rather stagnant little bush town of some two thousand 

 people, set down in the midst of vast plains more suited by reason of the 

 climate for pasture than agriculture. These plains may be regarded as the 

 limit of the Darling Downs. Beyond them the railway runs through a desolate 

 tract of scrub — not the fertile jungle of the coast districts, but an arid tract 

 closely filled with stunted trees, hard and gnarled by their long struggle for 

 existence. Emerging from this belt, the railway reaches another open tract, 

 consisting of the true pastoral downs country, and runs into the pleasant little 

 town of Roma, where from three to four thousand persons find employment in 

 supplying the wants of the surrounding pastoral region. Still continuing, the 

 railway is being pushed on westward towards the great pastoral area of the 

 interior — the fertile wilderness which Burke and Wills first traversed, and 

 where they died, which now is being filled by millions of sheep, and adding 

 rapidly to the wealth of the colony. There are bush townships in the track 

 of the advancing railway which will no doubt become towns, but as yet they 

 are in no way noticeable. The same may be said of the townships reached 

 by the Central Trunk Railway running westward from Rockhampton and its 

 branches. The country through which it runs has not a climate very suitable 



