this community. The members' roll is a large one, and it is considered a valuable privilege to be enabled to listen to the lectures of the president, which he has the happy art of making not only clear but entertaining to a lay audience. The good work done by members of the society in cases of accident and emergency has on many occasions brought them under the commendatory notice of the public and the press. The sympathetic nature of Dr. McWilliams is further evidenced by the interest which he has manifested in the little sufferers of the city and suburbs; the children of parents who are not able to afford them change and the best treatment, food, and healthful surroundings during the period of convalescence. On their behalf he was largely instrumental in organising a board of guardians, whose duty it is to provide for the well-being of children who are recovering from serious illness. The board, which has zealously performed its humane office, has won the heartfelt gratitude of a large number of parents whose homes have been darkened by the sickness of their offspring.
In the world of sport it is not surprising, after learning so much of the ardent nature and fondness for fresh air of Dr. McWilliams, to find him in the post of honorary surgeon to the Western Australian Turf Club, president of the Perth Cycling Club, and vice-president of the League of Western Australian Wheelmen. He is an enthusiastic cyclist, and it is a strong rider who can leave him behind on a country run. In commercial interests Dr. McWilliams is favourably known, and he is one of the directors of the Western Australian Brick and Tile Company.
Dr. McWilliams' record of professional and practical work is, it will be admitted, a very full one for a young man of thirty-two years of age. A man of liberal views, and able to perform a prodigious amount of work in various spheres, he has achieved almost at a bound what many men find it necessary to strive during many years of patient labour to accomplish—that is to say, professional standing, and its agreeable accompaniment of a large income. Like Charles Dickens, he puts his whole strength into the task in hand, and when it is done he is able to leave it with a fresh and unclouded mind to take his part in social life. His urbanity, not less than his intellectual powers, and openness of hand towards deserving cases of distress, are matters that his friends would like us to largely descant upon, but we have said enough to show that in its meridian his career, which is now so full of promise, is likely to make for him a more than an Australian reputation.
FLORANCE C. BROADHURST.
WHILE the role a man will play in life is often determined by what may appear to be an accidental circumstance, yet it would be too much to say that the success or failure of a career depends upon luck, which the ne'er-do-well is always bemoaning for leaving him among the shoals and miseries of misfortune. A good start is only half the battle, just as an indifferent player will spoil a good hand at cards, or a ship with a favouring breeze without careful steering may get upon the rocks. And what to a superficial observer may appear to be that very intangible entity called luck, is often the result of intelligent calculation and tireless perseverance in following a certain course of action to the goal of triumph.
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Photo by FLORANCE C. BROADHURST. Greenham & Evans. |
It is comforting for mediocrity to hug the belief that it never had a chance to rise in the world, but after all the majority of failures would if they spoke the truth, confess that "it is not in their stars," but in themselves that they are "underlings". The resourceful worker does not complain that he can find no standing place—he makes his own standing place, as Archimedes was told to do when he said that he could move the world with his lever if he could but find a foot-hold.
The Messrs. Broadhurst, father and son, followed the advice when they became identified with the Abrolhos Islands, and turned them into a gold mine.
Florance C. Broadhurst, son of Mr. Charles Edward Broadhurst, a former member of the Legislative Council of Western Australia, has sprung from a family which is remarkable for its commercial enterprise. Mr. Broadhurst, sen., initiated the pearling industry in Sharks Bay, 1872, and also established fish preserving works at Mandurah, where the delicious sea mullet is packed for the delectation of consumers on the goldfields and in the other colonies. To a man of such resourceful spirit it was natural that a secret of much value should have been recognised at a time when it was somewhat rare to find in Western Australia a capitalist and a trader who would go out of the ordinary grooves in search of wealth. The information was taken from the excellent works of Captain Stokes of H.M.S. Beagle, a man of keen observation who, while he was surveying the coast in 1840, perceived that there were stores of guano, the accumulation of ages, lying unused on the Abrolhos Islands which run fifty miles north and south, and are situated forty-five miles from Geraldton. Mr. Broadhurst
