that befell the one also awaited the other, and apparently from causes that were very similar. It is true that the custom of excessive free grants had ceased to exist, and that the Australind immigrants were "located on sections of one hundred acres each,"[1] but there was a repetition of blighted expectations—of insufficiency of good land—of servants turning refractory—of masters being compelled to betake themselves to field labour, however unfitted they might have been by previous habits of life for such employment. In fact, it was the same old story of people in comfortable circumstances rushing blindfold into discomfort of every imaginable kind, without any succeeding compensation.
Even, the lesser details of the Australind settlement bore a strong resemblance to those of the landing of the Swan River immigrants, such, for instance, as people living in a tent for six months, and then being totally deprived of it in a windy night of July, and of a house door being made out of the packing-case of a piano.
Eventually the settlement collapsed and came to a comparatively quiet end, but its failure helped to fasten on the colony of Swan River more firmly than ever that worst of misfortunes, a bad name, and thenceforward the mention of Western Australia to English ears elicited no other response than a sigh or a silent shrug of the shoulders.
Had the discovery of the mineral districts preceded, instead of having followed, the settling of Australind, there can be little doubt that the "company" would have commenced mining operations amongst the rich veins of
- ↑ 'Report on the Statistics of Western Australia in 1840.' Perth, 1841.
