Page:History of West Australia.djvu/401



Great as is the wealth of Western Australia in its magnificent timber forests, its wide areas of agricultural and pastoral ]ands, its exports of wool and pearls, it must be acknowledged that all these, extensive and valuable as they are, are dwarfed into comparative insignificance when ranged beside the immense mineral resources. Even the older inhabitants of the colony begin to acknowledge that the future of the country is bound up in the economic and profitable development of its wonderful riches in mineral; and such being the case it is gratifying to be able to point to the fact, now proven beyond all question, that the mining industry bids fair to rival, if not altogether excel, all that has yet been discovered on the Australian Continent. It is the custom to speak of Western Australia as exclusively a gold country; but although it is likely to achieve pre-eminence from the magnitude of this source of prosperity, the perusal of this paper will demonstrate that the colony does not wholly depend upon the future of this one industry for its prosperity. All the base metals are represented in the mineralogy of Western Australia; its carboniferous products seem to offer fair prospects of large profit; while indications are not lacking that at some period not very remote, the western half of Australia may become celebrated for its production of the precious gems. It will be the effort of the writer to sketch the present conditions and future prospects of this great group of industries in the pages following.

of course, must be afforded the pride of precedence. Speaking generally of the auriferous regions of Western Australia, it may be said that there exists one great gold belt, which, commencing some few miles to the south of the present Dundas Goldfield, stretches away into the far north. This enormous zone, probably the largest expanse of auriferous country in the world, is about 1,400 miles long, with an average width of 150 miles, giving a total area of about 210,000 square miles known and proved to be highly metalliferous. On this belt are situated the Kimberley (47,600 square miles), Pilbarra (32,000 square miles), Ashburton (8,218 square miles), Murchison (21,000 square miles), Yalgoo (18,300 square miles), Yilgarn (14,300 square miles), Coolgardie (11,800 square miles), East Coolgardie (800 square miles), North-East Coolgardie (21,000 square miles), Dundas (17,500 square miles), East Murchison (60,500 square miles), and North Coolgardie Goldfields (37,200 square miles)—all of which are now in fair state of development, and in a position to afford the observer some reliable evidence on which to base his estimates of the future value of the colony's auriferous resources. It may also be mentioned that a small goldfield has been discovered and proclaimed at North Dandalup, a settlement about forty miles south of Perth; that the Broad Arrow has recently been proclaimed a separate goldfield, though for the purposes of this essay it is placed with the area of North-East Coolgardie; and that the original discovery of gold in the colony took place as early as 1868, at a place called Peterwangey, in the Victoria Plains district, which is now outside the limits of any of the proclaimed fields. Taking the various fields in the historical sequence of their discovery, we may first deal briefly with

the interest attaching to which is purely reminiscent, but which is of value as showing how long a time was occupied in spasmodic and semi-fruitless search before the vast goldfields of the colony became known to the world at large. In the year above mentioned, a shepherd employed by a neighbouring squatter discovered auriferous quartz at Peterwangey, which is situated near the Irwin River, in country consisting for the most part of crystalline schists and conglomerates, intersected by small and mostly barren quartz lodes. No profit was ever realised from this discovery, and the area was never systematically worked; nevertheless it has the distinction of being the forerunner of all the Western Australian finds.

comes next in chronological order, having been found in 1883-4 by Mr. Hardman, then Government Geologist of the colony. The finding of Kimberley led to a great "rush," but the remote and inaccessible portion of the gold-bearing country practically prohibited the introduction of capital, and from that day to this very little has been done in the direction of developing what is usually considered a very valuable mining district. The Kimberley district differs in the matter of physiography and climate very materially from the rest of the goldfields. Some of the finest pastoral land in the colony occurs within its limits; it has mountains, running rivers deep gorges, splendid picturesque scenery, and tropical jungles, being, in brief, very similar to the portions of Queensland and the Northern Territory situated in the same latitude. The principal mines and diggings are near the boundary of the Territory, about 212 miles from the Sea of Arafura, which washes the northern coast, and 304 miles from the Indian Ocean, which forms its western boundary. The official centre is called Hall's Creek which is connected by road