FIVE THOUSAND MILES

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 141, 12 December 1923, Page 5

FIVE THOUSAND MILES

EMPIRE'S LONGEST RAILWAY

ROMANCE OF AUSTRALIAN TRANSPORT.

(PROM OUR OWN CORRESPWDEHT.)

SYDNEY, 6th December. With the opening of the Mackay to Proserpine railway, in North Queensland, last Saturday, the last link was forged in a chain of railways nearly 5000 miles in length.

There is now complete railway communication from Dajarra, near the border of the Northern Territory, via Townsvine and Brisbane, to Perth,, in Western Australia, a distance of nearly 5000 miles. This vast stretch of "line begins at Dajarra, runs to the coast "-line, and passes through Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and across Australia to the capital of the West. When one contemplates the work and the distance spanned, the achievement seems more likb romance than actual fact.

Several generations back the idea of such a gigantic undertaking was dragged from the misty mid-region of dreamland by the wizardry of science, and after years of labour, intellectual, and manual, the great idea, of a national way through all the States on the mainland has been accomplished. One may now gaze from a Queensland railway carriage on the Pacific, and at the end of the long journey to the west look out upon the Indian Ocean. The bullock teams and coaches with their limited speed and more limited carrying capacities seem as toys compared with the modern railway system whereon huge cargoes of primary produce and crowds of passengers can be borne speedily from one end of the continent to the other. When the conception of an all-round Australia railway service emerged from the visionary stage, it was taken in hand by suvveyors and engineers, and then Governments made available many millions of money to defray' construction cost. Thousands of Australian workmen swung picks and shovels in making the permanent way. and through many ages their work will stand as a monument to the Aspiring genius and.executive ability of the Australian people. This forms the Empire's longest "railway. * The cross-Canada route of the National Railway from the Pacific to the Atlantic is approximately 4000 miles, and traverses each of the nine provinces.