Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/60

 is a mere nucleus of the town that is to be. The weather board store, hotel, school, and blacksmith's shop are of the regulation pattern of the "bush township," with all the present crudeness and future potentialities of the type. Despite its go-aheadism, too, I noticed on the hotel verandah a more perfect specimen of the torpid young rustic than, I dare be bound, could be produced in the most antiquated Sleepy Hollow in Old Eng­land, for when the Australian, especially the young Australian, does "loaf" he "loafs" with a vengeance. Nowhere is this sample of bush humanity to be seen to more advantage than at a roadside railway station, where, if anything so objectless could be credited with an object, he is trying to put himself forward as the antipodes of all that the train advent typifies in the way of movement and progress.

If anything could justify the land grant railway system from the attacks of its opponents the progress made by Katanning in the less than two years of its existence ought to do it; and though at present it is the high-water mark of what has been achieved in this line in Western Australia, there is no reason why Katannings should not be indefinitely multiplied along the course, not only of the Great Southern and Midland Railways, but of the various lines which the Government is on the eve of constructing. The Company have been lucky in securing coad­jutors such as the Messrs. Piesse (relatives of the famous Bond­ street scent manufacturer of that name), who have started a store, ironfoundry, and roller mills in the infant township, the result being that, with the railway facilities afforded for trans­port to the port of Albany, the conditions of settlement have been revolutionised throughout the district, which boasts a large area of good red loamy soil, previously very imperfectly tilled and persistently over-cropped. Mr. F. C. Piesse, the Member for the district, is a firm believer in the desirability of some scheme of colonisation being adopted on the lines I have suggested, but which will have to be worked out by experts. Could a score or so of colonists of the same type as this gentleman and his brother be scattered about the colony at suitable intervals, and be backed up by a suitable immigration, there would not be much doubt as to its future prosperity. The fact that the