LUCKLESS DARWIN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 March 1939, Page 11

LUCKLESS DARWIN

SMALL OUTPOST OF DEFENCE MIGHTY EMPTY LAND. BURDEN FOR THE WHITE MAN. Last year Darwin celebrated the saddest centenary in Australian history. On September 12, 1839, Lieutenant J. Lort Stokes discovered the harbour, and named it in honour of a naturalist friend destined to become one of the greatest scientists of all time, a Columbus of a new world of thought. Today the town or Darwin is what Port Essington set out to be in 1825 —a little stronghold of defence in a mighty empty land (writes Ernestine Hill in the “Sydney Morning Herald"). All through the century the Northern Territory has been Australia's Old Man of the Sea, a white man’s burden that he will not take up, though he dare,not throw it down—worthless to worry about, too good to give away. When all other States celebrated their coming-of-age in joyous acclamation and honour to the successful pioneers, the Territory, actually third in seniority, preserved a discreet silence. The forlorn hope of the Commonwealth, it was no man's heritage. Then salvation came on wings in an age of miracles. The aeroplane of Ross Smith had been a prophecy and a promise. Australia's gateway on one of the great airways of the world can now face the future with courage, and tell over, without bitterness, the sorrows of the past. The fault of the far north is not that it is niggardly, but that it is prodigal. “Rich to rottenness,” wrote Boyle Travers Finniss, first Administrator for South Australia, wise only in words. Therein lies to truth. The century of colonisation has left scarcely a mark on the smiling defiance of Nature in those regions. Millions, with millions to spend, might flourish, where hundreds, however heroic, have no hope. What has the Territory to offer? At least 10 major rivers, permanent, navigable from 50 to 100 miles, with at least 10,000 square miles of richly arable tropic soils on their banks; a mineral belt of 10,000 square miles, producing gold, silver, lead, copper, wolfram, tantalite, and other metals, spectacularly and spasmodically exploited in the past, but now forgotten; illimitable cattle lands, where million-acre leases are considered closer settlement; 3,000 miles of coasts uncharted; lands as large as kingdoms in Europe still virtually unexplored. MONSOON A CURSE. Those who deplore the thirst and poverty of earth in that country should see it now, when above the fifteenth parallel the dense jungle sweeps all before it, and where it is impossible to travel 10 miles in any direction without being bogged, or, if you are foolhardy, drowned. Mazes of rivers and creeks are in high flood. The impenetrable grasses are 20ft high, the thick scrub inky green. The cattle and the station homesteads are ‘marooned on islands in seas of sparkling rain-water. The earth is foetid with rank growth —that in six months’ time will be arid and burnt red. The north-west monsoon, that gives to the north of Australia from 60 to 90 inches in every year, is a curse instead of a blessing, because we have never attempted' to keep it. Because the Territory'does not conform to the sheep-and-wheat psychology of the south, because it cannot compete with the black labour East, its resources remain a fable, its industries, with the exception of cattle, practically nil. Two-thirds of half a million square miles are still to let. Where white men grow weary, and white ants consume, what. hope of colonisation? But let us remember that in an area, twice the size of France, are 3,000 white men, excluding their women and children —a negligible number. Most of them live in Darwin, paid liberally to stay there. Regarding themselves as exiles, they have no heart to possess and progress. In all the vivid tapestry of Australia's truly phenomenal pioneering, here is the seamy side —the ravelled threads, the loose ends of failure and despair; The amazing flora and fauna of this fantastic country are testimonial enough to its fertility. Everything flourishes—so well that it runs away, with two few to pursue. Pioneers, like the poor, it has Always had with it. Theirs is the saga of the valiant failures, who pave the way to success, but never share it. They pitted their puny strength against Nature, and Nature took all their efforts as a tribute to herself, swept them away in flood and ever-encroaching jungles and scattered them by the wayside to grow among tares. GRAVE OF IDEAS. Darwin was the ' fifth attempt a! settlement. When Australia consisted of New South Wales and Van Dieman’s Land, poor little colonies of the condemned dragging their chains in Arcady, there was the same fear of invasion as we entertain today, and bands of marines and convicts went up to protect and subdue the north. Hopelessly inadequate in point of numbeis. they failed three times—at Melville- Island, at Raffles Bay, at Port Essington. Marooned in. isolation, they starve within their stockades, yellow with fright and fever. Their contribution to the fauna and flora were buffaloes and Timor ponies, and Brahma cattle, oranges, lemons, limes, sugar cane from Rio, mangosteens from China, tamarinds, cocoanuts maize, breadfruit, cotton, vanilla, and indigo. All, with the exception of breadfruit, increased and multiplied and the Territory” plot thickened, but its colonists abandoned hope and flee,. Five States loomed out of the vague of the continent, the far north a complete blank until 1863, when South Australia, thrilled with success, tried the conjuring trick again, and paid for it dearly. The fourth settlement a--Escape Cliffs was another dismal failure, and a mere half-million acres sold in England were never claimed. All that was'added to the general melee was ginger and arrowroot, and some more g buffaloes and cattle and pigs to run wild. Then Goyder established the site of Darwin, to cling to the edge o the precipice for 50 years, and m a changed order to triumph. Today 200 acres of peanuts consume the Territory’s only agricultural ( industry, yet 15 years before the cattlemen came north, agriculture was the happy thought. The settlers planted sugar can, and reaped splendid crops, with no mill to crush it. They planted tobacco, cigar leaf that won first prizein a Paris Exposition, with no curing plant. They planted rice and coffee and millet and blue maize, and no one l

wanted to buy it at the price. The bright ideas of a hundred years are all blowing wild in the wilderness, practically indigenous. Brumbies are galloping in the ranges with the best Clydesdale blood in their veins, the wild hogs in their thousands are of Berkshire pedigree, while the buffaloes-, Brahma cattle, Timor ponies. Angora goats race with them shoulder to shoulder through Gardens of Eden untenanted by white men. Even the quaint and pretty English deer, introduced by the late Dr J. A. Gilruth to the Coburg Peninsula, in 12deg south latitude, are becoming a pest. So far the only failures have been wheat, out of the question; sheep, literraly murdered by rank grasses and tick; and horses, which, like the white man. develop walkabout disease. The fine fanfare of . optimism of the Commonwealth Government when -. it adopted the Territory in 1911, and its utter rout by 1920, are too recent and too poignant a story to dwell upon. Still the wilderness wins. Railways end in nothingness. Mines are idle; exports practically nil. Even the cattle industry is at a standstill. White men have come and gone, and none have made wealth. The 25,000 blacks who still remain have lost their country. Yet who has gained it? Central Australia is normal, habitable, according to our light.s North Australia is the only country of its latitudes in the world where a consistent attempt at white colonisation

has been made for 114 years—so far a disheartening experiment. But I believe that it may be achieved. Only when the powers that be recognise the stranger in our midst, and give to this country the wide perspective and the understanding it demands, will it realise its destiny as one of the most productive and beautiful States of Australia.