Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/348



THE NORTHERN TERRITORY

The Northern Territory is one of Australia's many problems. How can the immense tract of rich and fertile country with its tropical northern area be cultivated, and its great resources developed, without the importation of coloured labour? The native black population, though they are useful and efficient with stock, are found to be unadapted for agriculture, and incapable of the steady methodical work essential to its success. The immigration of Chinese, who formerly were the market gardeners of the neighbourhood of Port Darwin, supplying the small resident white population with fruit and vegetables, has now been discouraged, and we saw the plantations they had cultivated falling back into, and becoming merged with the wilderness of the bush. It is still an open question whether white men can perform manual labour under the tropical suns of the coastal belt. Yet the future of Port Darwin must be assured if it is eventually to become our nearest and most