SURVEY OF THE EARLY SEVENTIES 177 



festivities. The railway system was being liberally extended. The 

 North-Eastern line had been completed as far as the Murray, and 

 awaited at Wodonga the junction with that in course of construction 

 from Sydney. The Bendigo line had been pushed on to Echuca ; 

 and Ballaarat had put forth a northern prolongation to Clunes, 

 Maryborough and Dunolly, while in a western direction it had 

 extended to Ararat. Two lines were building in the south : one 

 to connect Geelong with Colac, and another to bring Melbourne in 

 touch with Sale and the well-watered plains of central Gipps Land. 

 The actual cost of construction of these lines was defrayed out 

 of loans, but a considerable amount of incidental expenditure and 

 interest helped to inflate the Treasurer's disbursements. Unlike 

 some of the later railway expansions which covered the land with 

 profitless duplications and ridiculous cockspurs, the 600 miles of 

 iron road which Victoria possessed in 1875 was in the main a 

 sound and useful investment. Most of the lines gave a good profit 

 from the start, and all the others had latent promise in that direction, 

 though the settlers were very ready to complain that the mining 

 towns were unduly favoured in the railway proposals. It could 

 hardly have been otherwise, for mining was still the backbone of 

 the colony's progress. Outside of Melbourne and Geelong, with 

 their suburbs, and the old-established western seaports, the whole 

 colony had but eight towns with populations of over one thousand 

 that did not depend upon the mining industry. These were Colac, 

 Camperdown and Hamilton in the Western District, mainly pas- 

 toral ; Kyneton, Kilmore and Wangaratta, agricultural ; Echuca, the 

 frontier port on the Murray, and Sale, the only town of importance 

 in the huge province of Gipps Land. On the other hand, over forty 

 towns, with populations ranging from one to twenty thousand, had 

 been built up entirely out of the mining industry and were still 

 mainly supported by it. 



The value of the gold produced in 1875 was 4,383,000, but 

 the yield for the ten years ending at that date reached within a 

 trifle of 53,000,000 sterling. Such an enormous production, the 

 benefit of which, under company mining, was spread over a much 

 larger area than in the old digging days, could not fail to help 



materially the prosperity of the people. Some 42,000 miners were 

 VOL. IL 12 



