Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/53

Rh on improvements, or making deductions from the original cost on depreciations. To be eligible as a tenant a man's income must be under £400 a year, and he pays a small deposit. The most expensive houses vary from £600 to £700. The tenant's weekly payments, which may be spread over a period of thirty years, eventually make the house his own; but his payments may vary in accordance with his means, and he can make his house his own at any point by paying off the balance. No wonder that with such inducements to linger in the neighbourhood of a town, men should shrink from the harder, more vigorous life up-country. Yet it is "up-country" men that Australia wants, to clear, sow, and till her rich, fertile soil; with enterprise and energy to win certain fortune, and courage to face the initial hardships and loneliness, which bring their own reward.

With all her natural advantages Western Australia's development is only a matter of the last twenty years. Like most of the rest of the continent, she has an inhospitable and forbidding coast. The Dutch knew of the existence of a southern land or, "Terra Australis," before the end of the sixteenth century, and Dutch captains sailing from the Cape to Java and the East Indies not infrequently found themselves within sight of a desolate and unknown coast, which they