STEADY GROWTH.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20612, 10 January 1929, Page 10

STEADY GROWTH.

AUSTRALIA’S POPULATION.

SLOW APPROACH TO 7,000,000.

(From Oun Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, January 3,

From figures available up to the end of September, the Commonwealth Statistician computes that the population of Australia is 6,310,453, New South Wales having the largest quota—more than 2,000,000 —and Victoria boasting, truly boasting, a population of 1,700,000. Rapid advances in population are now less marked, and- it is considered in official circles that the approach to the 7,000,000 will be very slow. However, official prognostications are not always reliable, and in other quarters it is considered that the advance will continue to be rapid. It is pointed out that it is only 140 years since the first fleet reached Sydney, establishing a white population of 1035; therefore, it must be concluded that the British race has done well with the great island continent.

The long table, which, in the official bulletin, gives the yearly population of Australia and the States since the first colonisation has all the dullness and rigidity of cold type as used by a Government printer, but he who lets his eye rove between the lines, will glimpse all the colour and movement of a scattered people struggling into manhood. It is seen, for instance, that for 17 years New South Wales was Australia. Melbourne ' comment is that Sydney people think that the position is unchanged. The table shows that in 1803 Tasmania came into the picture with a population of- 177. Western Australia followed in 1829 with 1003, then came South Australia in 1830 with 546. On separation from the Mother State in 1851 Victorians numbered 07.489; and, in 1850, when Queensland became entitled to her own supplies of red tape, she had a population of 23,520. With sis States thus established Australia’s population was 1,097,395, made up as follows:—New South Wales, 327,459; Victoria, 521,072; Queensland. 23,520; South Australia, 122,735; Western Australia, 14,837; Tasmania, 87,682. '

Then Victoria had a greater population than New South Wales, a fact that surprises many people nowadays. But it was an accepted thing nearly 40 years ago, for such was the power of gold. It was three years after separation, in 1854—the year of the Eureka Stockade—that Victoria’s population jumped over 40,000 above that of the parent State, a U}, l( ; w as not until 1892 that she yielded the numerical supremacy, after a neck-and-neck race through the eighties.

There has been some discussion lately among scientists as to the number of people which Australia can ultimately support. The United States takes pride m a population of 120,000,000, which provides an enormous home market for primary and secondary industries. Australia, if we are to judge from the consensus of scientific opinion, cannot hope lor a population of that size owin- to the dryness of its interior. The populatiou which the'country can support with the assurance of a comfortable stanaard has been authoritatively estimated at 20,000,000. But quality will count before quantity.