FUTURE PROSPECTS OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5187, 6 November 1877, Page 3

FUTURE PROSPECTS OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA.

Sir William Jervois, at a public dinner at Willunga, South Australia, on the Bth Oct., in response to the toast of his health, thus referred to the probable future of that colony : “You possess the key to Australia ; you have the country which stretches from north to south—a grand belt dividing Western Australia from the three eastern colonies of Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria. You have already constructed a telegraph line, at great expense and with great effect ; and now you have before you the power to establish a transcontinental railway—(loud applause)—the result of which both to South Australia and to the other colonies of Australia, will be something which it is as yet impossible for us to see. You have it in your own hands to do this. You need not ask Queensland, or New South Wales, or Victoria ; you may do it yourselves, But it is not only for South Australia that I look to the consummation of such a scheme ; it is for the benefit of Queensland, and New South Wales, and Victoria, who, I am happy to say, are, in regard to railway communication, developing their systems so as to fall in with such a proposal. Queensland is now making lines from Brisbane to Rockhampton, and proposes to construct others from Townsville towards the interior. New South Wales has already carried out railways : from Sydney inland ; the Victorian system would become an extension of the grand railway project, and then you would have running through Australia what I may call a landboard to which communications from the country on either side would converge, and while opening up South Australia itself it would also afford communication direct with the other colonies. (Applause.) And then comes in the great'advantage you possess in having at Ihe northern end of your colony one or two splendid ports. I refer especially to Port Darwin, the value of which, I venture to say, has not hitherto been quite appreciated. Port Darwin will become some day the place where all communications from England, India, the Eastern Archipelago, and China will converge. The produce of Australia will go from Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia through to Port Darwin, and thence on to Japan, China, the Eastern Archipelago, and India ; and who shall say there may not also be a railway along the Malay Peninsula—that Government which I have just left—which shall make this the great depot for the produce of those countries to which I just referred? (Loud applause.)