Page:History of West Australia.djvu/418



HE historical portion of this work sets out in as clear language as we could command the very considerable land resources of Western Australia. The outside world has implicitly believed the general report that this colony possesses few, if any, advantages of soil and climate. Such people are ignorant of the fact that while there are large areas of poor land, desert tracts that suffer by intermittent rain-falls, there are also several districts containing very large areas of soil capable of producing the best agricultural, horticultural, and fruit products, and fitted and destined to contribute by export to the requirements, in cereals, fruits, and wines, of other countries. In the far north there are areas of pastoral lands equal in fertility to the best portions of Queensland and New South Wales. They may be visited by spasmodic droughts, but as a rule not more so than the mother-colony. Moreover, in point of healthiness for sheep, cattle, or horses northern country is unsurpassed. For man also this is remarkably true, considering the heat of a tropical sun. In the south-west there are splendid tracts of wheat land. As to the horticulturists, if they strive more strenuously to acclimatise foreign plant life, they shall hybridise new varieties in consonance with the surroundings. This has already been largely done in the eastern colonies, and now that prosperity and general activity seem to have permanently settled on this colony, we shall yet witness a production of fruits, wools, and cereals that the world shall hear of. But this is not the place to dilate on the land resources of Western Australia, except so far as to show what an important office the Minister for Lands has to fill.

This position is held by the Hon. Alexander Robert Richardson, M.L.A. By reason of his knowledge of most industries relating to the soil in Western Australia, Mr. Richardson is well fitted to supervise such an important colonial department. He enterprisingly went into undeveloped districts of the far north and settled among the blacks. He experienced the dangers and hardships inseparable from the life of a pioneer who would render habitable the waste lands of the earth. It was therefore but in the natural order of things that a man of his observant mind should place his large and varied experience at the disposal of the Government of the colony. Mr. Richardson should be intimately acquainted with the agricultural, pastoral, and horticultural resources of Western Australia, and with his knowledge of the advanced methods of the eastern colonies, his occupancy of the high office may be viewed with hope and confidence. Western Australia is not likely to fall into the errors of the other Australian colonies in their illiberal land laws. They strove to make as much as possible out of the sale or rental of Crown Lands, and instead of stimulating, crippled, what is always the backbone of a country's prosperity. The present is the moment when universal interest is taken in this colony, and, given encouragement to settle capital and labour on the land, the strong basis of a permanent good will be laid.

In the convict days in Tasmania the Rev. Thomas Elliott Richardson, the father of the Hon. A. R. Richardson, after his term of a student's life at the Glasgow University, in which he obtained the degree of M.A., officiated as clergyman under the Presbyterian denomination. He there had many varied experiences, and late in the forties returned to his native land. Before this, however, he married in Tasmania. His wife, Jane Anderson, had accompanied her father, a yeoman farmer of Fifeshire, to Western Australia not many years after it was settled. While still a girl, in 1839, she went with her father to Tasmania, where she subsequently met her future husband. The Rev. Mr. Richardson and his young wife, some three or four years after marriage, decided to take a trip to the old country, which, with two young children, was then a difficult and important undertaking. They did not remain long at home, but voyaged again to the Southern Hemisphere, on this occasion landing in Melbourne. Later on they went to Portland, where the pastor was given a charge. In those far-off days, when Victoria was chiefly an unsettled and uninhabited country, the life of a pastor in a country district somewhat resembled that of an explorer. He had to make long and dangerous horseback journeys in the bush, possessing neither roads nor bridges, and ofttimes had to swim swollen rivers to reach lonely and isolated homesteads and stations. The Rev. Mr. Richardson followed the life of a pastor for many years in Victoria amid general respect. Eventually his religious opinions underwent such a change that he resigned his position as a minister in the Presbyterian Church. He afterwards purchased a newspaper in Portland known as the Portland Guardian, which he edited for many years. The old newspaper still exists.