SOUTH AUSTRALIA, 1836-1841.
1. Edward Gibbon Wakefield.—In 1829 a small book was published in London which attracted a great deal of attention, not only by reason of its charming style and the liveliness of its manner, but also on account of the complete originality of the ideas it contained. It purported to be a letter written from Sydney, and described the annoyances to be endured by a man of taste and fortune if he emigrated to Australia. He could have no intellectual society; he could not enjoy the pleasures of his library or of his picture gallery; he could hope for none of the delights of easy retirement, seeing that he had to go forth on his land, and with his own hands labour for his daily food. For, said Mr. Wakefield, the author of this little book, you cannot long have free servants in this country; if a free man arrives in the colony, though he may for a short time work for you as a servant, yet he is sure to save a little money, and as land is here so excessively cheap, he soon becomes a landed proprietor. He settles down on his farm, and, though he may have a year or two of heavy toil, yet he is almost certain to become both happy and prosperous. Thus, the colony is an excellent place for a poor man, but it is a wretched abode for a man of means and of culture. Wakefield therefore proposed to found in Australia another colony, which should be better adapted to those who had fortunes sufficient to maintain them and yet desired to emigrate to a new country. His scheme for effecting this purpose was to charge a high price for the land, and so to prevent the poorer people from purchasing it; the money received from the sale of land he proposed to employ in bringing out young men and women, as servants and farm labourers, for the service of the wealthier colonists. Now, said Wakefield, on account of the immense natural resources of these colonies, their splendid soil, their magnificent pasture lands, their vast wealth in minerals, and their widespread forests of valuable timber, which stand ready for the axe, a gentleman possessed of only £20,000 will obtain as large an income from it as could be procured from £100,000 in England; yet he will be able to enjoy his learned and cultured leisure, just as he does at home, because all the work will be done for him by the servants he employs. For three or four years this agreeable fallacy made quite a stir in England: famous authors, distinguished soldiers, learned bishops were deceived by it; noblemen, members of Parliament, bankers and merchants, all combined to applaud this novel and excellent idea of Mr. Wakefield
2. South Australian Association.—in 1831 the first effort was made to give a practical turn to these theories, and the southern shores of Australia were selected as a suitable locality for the proposed colony. A company was formed; but when it applied to the British Government for a charter, which would have conceded the complete sovereignty of the whole southern region of Australia, Lord Goderich, the Secretary of State, replied that it was asking a great deal too much, and abruptly closed the negotiation. Two years later the South Australian Association was formed, and as this company asked for nothing beyond the power to sell waste lands and apply the proceeds to assist immigration, the British Government gave its consent, and an Act was passed by the Imperial Parliament to give the association full power to found a colony. This Act directed that commissioners should be appointed to frame laws for the colony, to establish courts, and to nominate its officers; land was to be thrown open for sale at not less than twelve shillings an acre, and even this comparatively high price was to be raised, after a short time, to £1 per acre, in order to keep the land in the hands of the wealthy. It was expressly stated that no convict would be allowed to land in the new settlement, which, it was hoped, would become in every respect a model community. The British Government declined to incur any expense in establishing or in maintaining the colony, which was to be purely self-supporting. Eleven commissioners were appointed, of whom Colonel Torrens was chairman in England, and Mr. Fisher the representative in Australia, where he was to take charge of the sale of lands and supervise the affairs of the colony. At the same time, Captain Hindmarsh was appointed Governor, and Colonel Light was sent out to survey the waste lands preparatory to their being offered for sale.
The First Settlement at Adelaide, 1836.
(Compare with page 167.)
In May, 1835, during the very month in which Batman was wandering for the first time on the banks of the Yarra, these appointments for the foundation of a fourth Australian colony were being published in the English Government Gazette. Thus Victoria and South Australia took their widely different origins at almost the same time; but while the first actual settlers landed at Port Phillip towards the end of 1835, the pioneers of South Australia did not reach that colony until the middle of 1836.
3. Adelaide.—The first emigrants to South Australia landed on Kangaroo Island, of which Flinders had given a most attractive account; but though the place was beautifully wooded, and of the most picturesque aspect, it was found to be in many respects unsuitable for the foundation of a city; and when Colonel Light shortly afterwards arrived with his staff of surveyors, he at once decided to remove the settlement to St. Vincent’s Gulf. Here, about six miles from the shores of the gulf, he selected a broad plain between the sea and the pleasant hills of the Mount Lofty Range; and on the bank of a small stream, which he called the Torrens, he marked out the lines of the infant city. Queen Adelaide was the wife of the reigning King of England, and, as she was exceedingly popular, the colonists, with enthusiasm, adopted her name for their capital. A harbour was found seven miles distant from the city, and on it a town was established, to which the name Port Adelaide was given.
4. Governor Hindmarsh.—In December, 1836, Governor Hindmarsh landed, and beneath a spreading gum tree near the beach he read his commission to a small audience of emigrants and officials; but when he proceeded to examine what had been done, he was filled with disgust and indignation. The only landing-place for vessels was in the midst of a mangrove swamp at the mouth of a muddy little creek; and all goods would have to be carried six or seven miles inland to the city. To a sailor’s eye, it seemed the most reckless folly to make so unusual a choice, and he at once determined to remove the settlement to Encounter Bay; but neither Colonel Light nor Mr. Fisher would permit any change to be made, and a violent quarrel took place. As resident commissioner, Mr. Fisher had powers equal to those of the Governor, and was thus enabled to prolong the contest. Of the settlers, some sided with the Governor; others gave their support to the commissioner, and the colony was quickly divided into two noisy factions. After fourteen months of constant wrangling, the English Government interfered. Mr. Fisher was dismissed and Governor Hindmarsh recalled, while the offices of both were conferred on Colonel Gawler, who arrived in the colony during the year 1838.
Governor Hindmarsh.
5. Early Failures.—The Wakefield system could not possibly realise the hopeful anticipations which had been formed of it; for the foundation of a new colony and the reclaiming of the lonely forest wilds are not to be accomplished by merely looking on at the exertions of hired servants. Ladies and gentlemen who had, in England, paid for land they had never seen, were, on their arrival, greatly disgusted at the sight of the toils before them. They had to pull their luggage through the dismal swamp, for there were neither porters nor cabs in waiting; they had to settle down in canvas tents, on a grassy plain, which was called a city, but where a few painted boards here and there, fastened to the trunks of gum trees, were the only indications of streets. Then, when they went out to see their estates, and beheld great stretches of rude and unpromising wilderness—when they considered how many years must pass away before there could possibly arise the terraces and gardens, the orchards and grassy lawns, which make an English country-house delightful—their courage failed them, and, instead of going forth upon the land, they clustered together in Adelaide. Every one wished to settle down in the city, and as it was expected that, with the growth of population, the value of town allotments would rapidly increase, the idea became prevalent that to buy land in the city and keep it for sale in future years would be a profitable investment. But there were so many w
ho entertained the same astute design that, when they all came to put it in practice, there was little gain to any one; and the only result was that Adelaide was turned into a scene of reckless speculation and gambling in land.
6. Governor Gawler.—Meantime poorer emigrants were arriving in expectation of obtaining employment from their wealthier predecessors, who had been able to pay the high price demanded for land. They found that those whom they expected to be their employers had abandoned the idea of going out into the country to cultivate the soil. There was, therefore, nothing for them to do; they had no money with which to speculate in town allotments, they had no land on which to commence farming for themselves, and they were in a wretched plight. Provisions had rapidly increased in price, so that flour rose from £20 to £80 per ton; no food was being produced from the land, and nothing whatever was being done to develop the resources of the colony, whilst the money which the settlers had brought with them was rapidly being spent in importing shiploads of provisions from other countries.
In order to give employment to those of the settlers who were really destitute, Governor Gawler commenced a series of Government works. He constructed a good road between Adelaide and its port. He formed wharves, and reclaimed the unwholesome swamp; he built a Custom House, with warehouses and many other costly buildings, the Government House alone costing £20,000. Now, these were all in themselves very desirable things; but it was difficult to see how they were to be paid for. Colonel Gawler spent nearly the whole of his own private fortune in paying the wages of the unfortunate persons he employed, but that could not long support so great a concourse of people. He persuaded merchants in England to send out provisions and clothing for the famished people; but the only means he had of paying for these goods was by drafts on the British Treasury, which were accepted at first as equivalent to money, for it was believed that, whenever they were presented in London, payment would immediately be made by the British Government. But this was a serious mistake: though the first series of drafts were paid readily enough, yet when the authorities in England found that others, for larger and larger amounts, continued to pour in, they refused to pay, and reminded the colony that, by the terms of its charter, it was to be entirely self-supporting. A series of drafts, to the amount of £69,000, were therefore dishonoured; and the merchants, finding the drafts to be worth no more than so much paper, demanded their money from the Governor; but he had nothing with which to pay, and the colony had to be declared insolvent, having debts to the amount of about £400,000 which it could not meet.
7. The Collapse.—Matters were now in a very gloomy condition. Most of the colonists became anxious to return to England, and therefore sought to sell their land. But when nearly all wished to sell, and scarcely any wished to buy, the price went down to a trifle, and men who had invested fortunes in town allotments, realised no more than enough to pay their passage home. In the meantime the English merchants declined to send out any further supplies, and those who had not the means of leaving Adelaide seemed in great danger of starving. But as land could now be bought very cheaply, many industrious people of the poorer class settled down to clear the country for farming. This was what should have been done at the very beginning; for no colony can be prosperous, or look for anything but bankruptcy, until it commences to produce grain, or wool, or minerals, or some other commodity with which it can purchase from other lands the goods which they produce. The lands of South Australia are admirably adapted for the growth of wheat; and, after a time, success attended the efforts of the farmers, who thus laid the foundations of future prosperity.
Proclamation Tree, Glenelg.
(The colony of S. Australia proclaimed a British dependency, 28th December, 1836.)
Another industry was also added about this time. The young squatters of New South Wales, attracted by the high prices given for sheep in the early days of Adelaide, had been daring enough, in spite of the blacks and of the toilsome journey, to drive their flocks overland; and the new-comers soon gave quite a wool-growing tone to the community. These “overlanders,” as they were called, affected a bandit style of dress; in their scarlet shirts and broad-brimmed hats, their belts filled with pistols, and their horses gaily caparisoned, they caused a sensation in the streets in Adelaide, which rang all evening with their merriment and dissipation. But as they brought about fifty thousand sheep into the colony during the course of only a year or so, they were of essential benefit to it. Many of them settled down and taught the new arrivals how to manage flocks and prepare the wool, and thus they assisted in raising Adelaide from the state of despondency and distress into which it had sunk.
8. Recall of Governor Gawler.—The British Government eventually decided to lend the colony a sufficient sum of money to pay its debts; but it was resolved to make certain changes. The eleven commissioners were abolished, Captain George Grey, a young officer, was appointed Governor; and one day in May, 1841, he walked into the Government House at Adelaide, presented his commission to Governor Gawler, and at once took the control of affairs into his own hands. This summary mode of dismissing Governor Gawler must now be regarded as somewhat harsh; for he had laboured hard and spent his money freely in trying to benefit the colony, and the mistakes which were made during his administration were not so much due to his incapacity as to the impracticable nature of the theory on which the colony had been founded. In 1841 he sailed for England, deeply regretted by many who had experienced his kindness and generosity in their time of trouble.
CHAPTER X.
NEW SOUTH WALES, 1838-1850.
1. Gipps.—In 1838, when Governor Bourke left Australia to spend the remainder of his life in the retirement of his native county in Ireland, he was succeeded in the government of New South Wales by Sir George Gipps, an officer who had recently gained distinction by his services in settling the affairs of Canada. The new Governor was a man of great ability, generous and well meaning, but of a somewhat arbitrary nature. No Governor has ever laboured more assiduously for the welfare of his people, and yet none has ever been more unpopular than Gipps. During his term of office the colonists were constantly suffering from troubles, due, in most instances, to themselves, but always attributed to others, and, as a rule, to the Governor. It is true that the English Government, though actuated by a sincere desire to benefit and assist the rising community, often aggravated these troubles by its crude and ill-informed efforts to alleviate them. And as Sir George Gipps considered it his chief duty to obey literally and exactly all the orders sent out by his superiors in England, however much he privately disapproved of them, it was natural that he should receive much of the odium and derision attendant on these injudicious attempts; but, on the whole, the troubles of the colony were due, not so much to any fault of the Governor or to any error of the English Government, as to the imprudence of the colonists themselves.
2. Monetary Crisis.—During twelve years of unalloyed prosperity, so many fortunes had been made that the road to wealth seemed securely opened to all who landed in the colony. Thus it became common for new arrivals to regard themselves, on their first landing, as already men of fortune, and, presuming on their anticipated wealth, they often lived in an expensive and extravagant style, very different from the prudent and abstemious life which can alone secure to the young colonist the success he hopes for. In Sydney the most profuse habits prevailed, and in Melbourne it seemed as if prosperity had turned the heads of the inhabitants. The most expensive liquors were the ordinary beverages of waggoners and shepherds; and, on his visit to Port Phillip in 1843, Governor Gipps found the suburbs of Melbourne thickly strewed with champagne bottles, which seemed to him to tell a tale of extravagance and dissipation.
3. Land Laws.—Whilst many of the younger merchants were thus on their way to ruin, and the great bulk of the community were kept impoverished by their habits, the English Government brought matters to a crisis by its injudicious interference with the land laws. The early years of South Australia, and its period of trouble, have
been already described. In 1840 South Australia was on the verge of bankruptcy, and the Wakefield policy of maintaining the land at a high price had not produced the results anticipated. Now, many of the greatest men in England were in favour of the Wakefield theory; and, in particular, the Secretary of State for the Colonies—that is, the member of the British Government whose duty it is to attend to colonial affairs was a warm supporter of the views of Wakefield; so that when the people of South Australia complained that their scheme could not be successful so long as the other colonies charged so low a price for their land, he sympathised with them in their trouble. “Who,” they asked, “will pay one pound an acre for land in South Australia, when, by crossing to Port Phillip, he can obtain land equally good at five shillings an acre?” To prevent the total destruction of South Australia, the Secretary of State ordered the other colonies to charge a higher price for land. New South Wales was to be divided into three districts. (1) The Middle District, round Port Jackson, where land was never to be sold for less than twelve shillings an acre. (2) The Northern District, round Moreton Bay, where the same price was to be charged. (3) The Southern District, round Port Phillip, where the land was of superior quality, and was never to be sold for less than one pound an acre.
A great amount of discontent was caused throughout New South Wales by this order; but South Australia was saved from absolute ruin, and the Secretary of State declined to recall the edict. In vain it was urged that a great part of the land was not worth more than two or three shillings an acre; the answer was that land was worth whatever people were willing to pay for it. For a time it seemed as if this view had been sound, and land was eagerly purchased, even at the advanced prices; in 1840 the amounts received from land sales were three times as great as those received in 1838. But this was mostly the result of speculation, and disastrous effects soon followed; for the prices paid by the purchasers were far above the real value of the land. If a man brought a thousand pounds into the colony and paid it to the Government for a thousand acres of land, he reckoned himself to be still worth a thousand pounds, and the banks would be willing to lend him nearly a thousand pounds on the security of his purchase. But if he endeavoured, after a year or two, to resell it, he would then discover its true value, and find he was in reality possessed of only two or three hundred pounds: every purchaser had found the land to be of less value than he had expected; every one was anxious to sell; and, there being few buyers, most of it was sold at a ruinous price. Men who had borrowed money were unable to pay their debts, and became insolvent. The banks, who had lent them money, were brought to the verge of ruin; and one of the oldest—the Bank of Australia—became bankrupt in 1843, and increased the confusion in monetary affairs. In order to pay their debts, the squatters were now forced to sell their sheep and cattle; but there was scarcely any one willing to buy, and the market being glutted, the prices went down to such an extent that sheep, which two years before had been bought for thirty shillings, were gladly sold for eighteenpence. Indeed, a large flock was sold in Sydney at sixpence per head. Fortunately, it was discovered by Mr. O’Brien, a squatter living at Yass, that about six shillings worth of tallow could be obtained from each sheep by boiling it down; and, if this operation had not been extensively begun by many of the sheep-owners, they would, without doubt, have been completely ruined. So great was the distress that, in 1843, the Governor issued provisions at less than cost price, in order to prevent the starvation of large numbers of the people.
The History of Australia and New Zealand from 1606 to 1890 Page 8
