NORTHERN AUSTRALIA

Evening Star, Issue 17958, 3 May 1922, Page 7

NORTHERN AUSTRALIA

FORMER LABOR ADMINISTRATOR'S OPINION. A WHITE MAN’S COUNTRY. Press Association—By Telegraph— Copyright. SYDNEY, May 2. In {he course ofTiis evidence before the Commonwealth Works Committee Mr David Lindsay, who was formerly Labor Administrator in the Northern Territory, declared that the territory was a white man’s country. A white man could _do a decent day’s work there. The aborigines could do much better than they were considered capable of doing. He regarded them as one of tho best assets of the Territory. They were intelligent and were easily taught anything, but the blade fellow had never had a chance in any part of Australia to make good Ho suggested that tho natives in the Territory, whom ho estimated numbered 20,000, should ho placed on Melville Island under tho control of married whites, no outsiders being admitted. There _ they could ho taught agriculture, stockriding, and other vocations, and thereby be made valuable citizens. A LOVELY LAND. ’THE IGNORANCE OF THE SOUTH:. The following article was written by Mr N. Francis, who lives at Cooktown • A writer in a recent issue of a prominent London newspaper utters the truism that Northern Australia is the Achilles’ heel of the white races, adding that they can “neither colonise nor defend it. ’ I. who know Northern Australia, cm phaticnllv differ from the last statement. That it lias not been colonised is no proof that it cannot ho done, and, if properly approached, as such a problem should have been long ere this, there is absolutely no difficulty of colonisation that cannot bo overcome.

With an adequate population the North of Australia would speedily he put in a state of defence. It is as an empty, fertile country of indyhl natural wealth that it is so to those of our neighbors who are cramped for room. It is quoted that the groat meat works, erected at enormous cost by Vcstey’s at Port Darwin, have closed down, and the semi-socialistic “ Batcheter’s Farm” planted there by the Government has totally failed—through labor troubles. Labor is so scarce in the north that it has become unreasonable, crazy. Had there been a population to draw from for labor at Port Darwin the workmen would never hare become so outrageously greedy and selfish as literally to kill the gooso that laid the golden eggs. Everyone knows this, every newspaper acknowledges it. Therefore, it is mere folly to take tho failure of these enterprises as a proof that Northern Australia cannot be colonised.

A fixed idea is abroad that it is unfit for white settlement. Labor has encouraged this fallacy—an excuse, for higher wages and a lower standard of efficiency; but it is, none the less, a most absurd and harmful falsehood.

In my own particular district, that of Cape York, 90 per cent, of tho people are British or of British descent, and tho children of the third generation (Australian) are, broadly speaking, of splendid physique, healthy, and viril. Fully 80 per cent, of our young men fought in the Great War, and (ho old ones wanted to go—l mean the men over 50. In every country there arc degenerates in the to urns, and there you will find onrs ; not in the wide, lonely lands that stretch north of Cairns, and where there is now the small nucleus of a. splendid white population. But for years we have been neglected by successive Governments. ’We have no railways, no telephones, shocking roads, and the. boat service is held un by periodical strikes. Therefore most of our young people (lock southward, oven from here, and the population decreases,' - From 20dcg north we. have coastal terri. tory (it must he understood that I speak of the fertile coastal lands) equal iu areata Spain. Austria-Hungary, Rumania, and the whole of the Balkan Peninsula, capable of supporting mimons of people in comfort and affluence. Here we have- a beautiful climate, one of perpetual summer. Wo can grow abundance of fruit and vegetables, all tropical and semi-tro-pical produce, and much that belongs to temperate, climes. We could supply the looms of Lancashire with cotton, the markets of Great Britain with beef, butter, maize, and tobacco.

Whoever populates tlm north will finally populate Australia. We scattered chips of the old block know this, and will not ho dismissed with a phrase, nor allow our beautiful country to he condemned without rhyme or reason.

Tt is a lovely land, only requiring tho brain and energy of man. Tho soil is rich and productive—well watered, and full of possibilities. We have coal, gold, fin, wolfram, molybdenite, copper, silver, pigments, rare and beautiful limbers, an endless and unknown list of treasure.

Tt is an empty land because all our seaks of government are in the south. There Ins never been sufficient welldirected immigration from the Homeland. Tho class of immigrant wo have had hitherto has been composed largely of people without the pioneering instinct, who have flocked to the already overcrowded southern, towns. Many southern people are ns ignorant regarding Hie North as the Eskimo. What Northern Australia, must havo is a great, immigration of men and women, who will make farms and stations and homes, and who can live for a white without shop windows and picture shows. And we must havo railways. If Australia cannot build them herself, there are othei- means. This is a, White Man’s Land, whose empty spaces can carry and support all the surplus population of the Home countries.