6o miles to the nearest railway station. The people of the Marradong 

 and Williams have for years forcibly represented the undue burden 

 they were carrying, in being outside the pale <>l the railway service ; 

 they linked that the cost of cartage swallowed up the profits of their 

 crops, and that it was more profitable for them to grow sheep than 

 wheat while they were under this disability. The appeal was not 

 lost upon the Government. " One of the principal planks of our 

 platform," said Sir John Forrest in his inaugural address to the Pro- 

 ducer's conference in 1896, " has been, and still is, to give better 

 means of communication to the people of the colony, and especially 

 to those parts of the colony which are capable of agricultural de- 

 velopment." The Premier deplored the fact that every year 

 Western Australia was paying an increasing sum for imported food ; 

 that in 1895 ^400,000 was expended on commodities which the 

 colony ought to gather from her own lands ; he declared it was time 

 more was done by Parliament and by the Government than had 

 been before to lessen the importations. This declaration was made 

 in April ; on the 27th August, in delivering his budget speech, Sir 

 John made it clear that he had meant what he had said, and that 

 he had had the Williams in his mind's eye when he addressed the 

 Conference. In dealing with public works, he announced " We 

 propose to make provision for the survey of a railway line from 

 Pinjarrah to Marradong, in the Williams district. We hope these 

 surveys will be finished before the end of the financial year and 

 that when we next meet it will be possible for us to go on with this 

 work out of current revenue ; but we cannot make any promise 

 with regard to that, as all will depend upon the amount of money 

 required after the surveys are made, and also upon the money then 

 available for the work. At the same time the Government hopes 

 when this House meets after the general election it will be found 

 possible to proceed with the work of construction." At the time of 

 writing (July, 1897) the financial year which closed on June 30 for 

 1896-7 shows a credit balance of more than ^500,000,80 that the 

 Government may be expected to include a Bill to authorise the con- 

 struction of a railway from Pinjarrah to Marradong among its pro- 

 posals for the ensuing session. The scheme will probably receive 

 cordial support, because it will have an important source of revenue 

 in the timber industry as well as in the carriage of produce. For 

 23 miles, beginning u miles from Pinjarrah, the line will pass 

 through the magnificent jarrah forest of Camballing, which 

 has been a revelation to all w r ho have seen it. " When 

 the world learns from the experiments which are being made in the 

 wood-paving of the London streets (writes a special correspondent 

 of the West Australian} \vhat the value of jarrah is ; when public 

 works and building enterprise, and mining requirements, have 

 denuded the other forests of the colony, one of the largest and 

 grandest of them all will make a railway pay of itself alone. If a 

 man wants to see what jarrah timber is, let him see those towering 



