Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/61

 colony has produced men like the Piesses effectually gives the lie to the idea too common amongst a certain class of the old residents that no good thing can come out of Western Australia, either in the shape of men or material.

The next three stations and town-sites combined on the Great Southern line are Wagin, 148 miles, Narrogin, 180 miles, and Pingelly, 211 miles from Albany. Of these embryo townships no more need be said than that they are centres of a fine agricultural and wheat-growing country, as much as thirty bushels of wheat to the acre having been taken off a small farm at Pingelly.

Another thirty miles of easy travelling through similar country brings the passenger to Beverley, to which I have already alluded as the junction of the Great Southern and Government Railway lines. Here passengers between Perth and Albany are compelled to pass the night in rough bush quarters, both going and returning—a primitive arrangement which might suit the old slow pace in Western Australia, but is hardly in keeping with the go-ahead notions now coming into vogue. It may be added, for the information of would-be settlers, that the rainfall on the Company's territory averages thirty-six inches at Albany, diminishing to seventeen inches at Beverley. So regular is the supply of moisture, and so reliable the climate, that from eighteen to twenty bushels of wheat to the acre can be reliably counted on. It is needless, however, to multiply details, but I think I have said enough to put those in the old country who desire a change of condition on inquiry. The curtain has at length been lifted on this long-buried Land of Promise, and those who have the pluck to throw in their lot with the renascence of Western Australia may, I honestly think, do so with the reasonable hope of reaping the harvest of a steadily rising tide in its development and prosperity. Every day brings news of fresh discoveries of the precious metal, and if even the greater number of the fields prove failures, sufficient permanent finds are likely to eventuate to furnish fresh con­suming centres for even the largest accession of producers which the coming years are likely to witness in Western Australia.