Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/132

 but huge edifice, rears its white bulk against the sky-line. On a slightly lower level, a handsome Anglican cathedral, just completed, is one of the ornaments of the city, and close by, the town hall, with a tower of most decidedly ecclesiastical character, indicates the wealth and importance of the civic government. Adjoining the town hall, and covering fully an acre of land, is a handsome block of buildings, devoted to the various Government departments, including the Treasury, Railways, Lands and Survey, Public Works, and Post Office. The latter has a handsome rectangular hall for the transaction of business, which is of really magnificent proportions, wherein daily bulletins are displayed relating to shipping, telegraphic weather reports, mail movements, and kindred subjects, after the manner adopted in Adelaide.

"The city is laid out on those rigidly straight lines which seem to find so much favour with Australian surveyors. Taking St. George's Terrace, which extends for about a mile parallel with the river, and about twenty to thirty feet above its level, as the base line, the usual chessboard arrangement is followed. The central block of St. George's Terrace contains all the banks, the Weld Club, and the offices of the principal public companies. East and west of this block it is planted with handsome avenues of Cape lilac, and occupied by private houses, chiefly those of the older residents and prominent citizens. Government House, a pleasant and picturesque building, erected about twenty years ago, in the Tudor style, with gardens run­ning down to the water's edge, is on this terrace. Adjoining it, on the city side, the old Government offices are now temporarily doing duty as the Chamber of the Legislative Council, pending the erection of a Parliament House. The Legislative Assembly meets in a hall adjoining the new Government build­ings, formerly used by the old Council in the days preceding representative government. So far as legislative work is concerned the present accommodation is all that is required, but the signs of rapid development in the colony, and its expanding revenue indicate that a House of Parliament, on the palatial scale which even the most democratic colony in Australia seems to consider necessary, is a project of the near future.