TRANS-CONTINENTAL RAILWAY.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXIII, Issue 16035, 16 September 1912, Page 7

TRANS-CONTINENTAL RAILWAY.

TURNING OF FIRST SOD

A MESSAGE FROM THE KING, United Press Association —By Electrio Telegraph—Copyright.

(Received September 16, 12.35 a.m.) ADELAIDE; September 15.

Port Augusta is en fete for tie turning of the first sod of the transcontinental railway to Kalgoorlie, which is estimated to cost four million pounds. Thero is a great influx of Fedoral and other parliamentarians and distinguished visitors. Accommodation is 'overtaxed and many parliamentarians slept in tents. Lord Denman, in performing tho ceremony, read a message from tho King, expressing a keen senso of the "importance of tins great national enterprise to my people of tho Commonwealth." Another message was from the Imperial Government and was as follows:—"Convinced great undertaking will redound to strategic and commercial advantages of Australia." Felicitous speeches were made by Lord Denman, Sir D. H. Bosanquet, Mr Fisher, Mr O'Malley, Mr Pearce and others.

Mr O'Malley characterised it as ono of the supremo occasions prophetic of Australia's future greatness. It was not in mammoth fighting machines by land and sea or aerial instruments of destruction that Australia placed her hopes, but in unhampered political and social progress.. The great Christian party to which he belonged was determined to afford every person an opportunity to make good. The building of the railway was an outward expression of the Government's inward ambition.