140 AUSTRALIAN PICTURES. 



Writing of Western Australia, Sir F. Napier Broome, C.M.G., says: 

 ' Many of the farmsteads I visited in the country districts are such as their 

 owners may well be proud of. They represent years of arduous toil, and of 

 courageous struggle with many difficulties. I find in some of them the grey- 

 haired, sturdy early settlers of the colony, still strong and hale, after nearly 

 a half-century of colonisation, now able, I was rejoiced to see, to rest from 

 their labours, and to enjoy growing comforts and easier circumstances, while 

 the farm or the sheep station was looked to by the stalwart sons. Wherever 

 I went, I perceived that Western Australia, though not a country of richness, 

 was nevertheless a land in which an honest worker of shrewd wit has rarely 

 failed to gather round him, as years went on, the possessions which constitute 

 a modest competence, and perhaps something more, enjoyed amidst the 

 affections and the ties of a home in which he can take life easily in the 

 evening of his days, and from which he can see his children marry and go 

 forth to such other homes of their own. I did not find the feverish, brand- 

 new, shifting and disjointed communities of a wealthy colony, but I found a 

 people amongst whom ties of kindred are numerous and much thought of, 

 who have dwelt side by side with each other all their lives, and who have 

 preserved among themselves a unity and friendly feeling most pleasant to 

 encounter, and social characteristics natural and agreeable in their unaffected- 

 ness, simplicity and heartiness. Each little township resembles an English 

 village rather than the colonial assortment of stray atoms one is familiar with 

 elsewhere. The more one sees and knows of Western Australia and its people, 

 the more they win on one.' 



The most important circumstance in connection with the Western 

 Australia of to-day is the discovery that the north-western corner contains 

 fine pasture-land, permanent rivers, and good harbours. Explorers from 

 the east have visited the place, and have reported favourably upon its 

 prospects, and now there is a good deal of bond fide squatting enterprise 

 being displayed. Companies have been formed, and syndicates and flocks 

 and herds have been sent from Melbourne and Sydney by sea, and cattle 

 are also being pushed across from Queensland. If these ventures have only 

 half the success which is predicted for them, there is a great future in store 

 for this part of Western Australia. And recent reports from the colony 

 disclose the fact that there is every indication that an extensive gold-field 

 exists in the country between King Sound and Cambridge Gulf. A 'rush' 

 has set in, and there is considerable excitement throughout Australia about 

 the matter. 



