CHAPTER V. 



THE SOUTHERN DIVISION. 



THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT. 



The southern district in these pages will be understood to be a 

 belt of country, eighty miles wide, extending from Beverley to 

 Albany, on the shores of Princess Royal harbor, and through the 

 centre of which belt is laid the Great Southern railway, 243 miles in 

 length. The Great Southern railway was the scheme of Mr. 

 Anthony Hordern, a Sydney merchant, who placed his proposal 

 before the Government of Western Australia in 1882. He asked 

 that in consideration of constructing the line he should be granted a 

 subsidy of 12,000 acres per mile, selected in alternate blocks within 

 40 miles east and west of the railway. Colonel McMurdo and Mr. 

 Joubert made similar offers. The Legislative Council, which was 

 the parliamentary institution in those days of Imperial Government, 

 desiring to know more than had then been ascertained about the 

 character of the country through which it was desired to make the 

 line, sent out a survey party to make a reconnaissance. The 

 members of the party were the Hon. the Surveyor-General, Mr. (now 

 Sir Malcolm) Fraser, the deputy surveyor-general Mr. (now Sir 

 John) Forrest, Mr. C. D. Price, inspecting surveyor, and Mr. H. S. 

 Ranford, whose services and intimate knowledge of the district are 

 commended in the deputy surveyor-general's report. They found 

 that the section of country under review is a plateau having a mean 

 surface level of about icoo feet above the sea. The principal 

 features of this plateau have some interest ; from it flow all the 

 principal storm water channels of the southern part of the colony, 

 including the Swan river, the upper portion of which is called the 

 Avon, and its branches. It is a noticeable fe.ture of the physical 

 geography of this part of the colony that it differs from that of other 

 parts of (he world. The best land is here high up away from the 

 coast, whilst in other countries the rivers have made the lowlands 

 fertile by what they have borne from the highlands. Doubtless, 

 says vSir Malcolm Fraser, the fact of the highest country being near 

 the coast accounts in a great measure for the lesser rainfall and a 

 higher temperature in the interior during summer, as the moisture 

 from the sea becomes precipitated before the clouds reach far from 

 the coast ; both the position and the limits of the principal forests 

 clearly support this supposition. The bed rock of the southern 



