and numbers. This quick flow of fortune entailed enormous and an altogether disproportionate amount of labour, From mine to mine, from territory to territory, Mr. Woodward hastened. Every goldfield of the colony was personally visited by him. From Esperance to Wyndham his duties required his presence. His geological knowledge of the colony is as extensive as it is interesting. Many parts, he admits, are geologically uninteresting, but the Kimberley and north-west district teem with attractions.
Many considerations finally induced Mr. Woodward to resign his appointment in 1895. Shortly afterwards he joined the firm of Bewick, Morling, and Co., wealthy capitalists, financiers, investors, mining and consulting engineers. He manages for the firm, in conjunction with Mr. Hooper. Their business connection is vast and their capital considerable. Mines are bought and managed for English companies, and theirs is the largest firm of the kind in Western Australia.
Mr. Woodward was created a Justice of the Peace in 1893. He has contributed to the literature of the colony by the publication of his "Handbook of Western Australia." This handbook, euphemistically so christened, is an exhaustive and valuable volume. Its multifarious information on all the scientific aspects of the colony, on the extent and nature of local mineral wealth, and its valuable contributions to geological knowledge render it a highly erudite treatise. Many a reminiscence can Mr. Woodward relate of strange adventures and incidents during his travels. His official capacities were often geological in name only. Telegraph communication and the ever-recurring question of the blacks had to be reported on from time to time. A mixture such as this of elements possessing no affinity to each other was not always pleasing. It is like a pantomimic act, where the same actor appears in successive roles as the hero, the missionary, and the mechanic.
The attainments and scientific skill of Mr. Woodward have won for him admission into various institutes and halls of science. He is a Fellow of the Imperial Institute, Associate Member of the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers, and (1896) president of the Western Australian branch of the same. He is besides a mining member of the Institute of Mines and Metallurgy, London. Theory blended with practice, intuition brought to bear on empiricism, are secrets of success. His services to the colony have been commensurate with his skill. The geological facts and treasures of the colony have been carefully expounded and lucidly narrated by him, and his advent heralded a new regime in the scientific conduct of geological and chemical affairs.
JOHN ERNEST McDONALD.
IN difficult and dangerous enterprises there is a great deal of difference in the degree of merit, which should be ascribed to those who take the lead and those who merely follow. This is especially true of the prospectors of a few years ago and those of to-day. The explorers, who were the first to force their progress through the interior in search of gold, had neither the incentive nor the knowledge of those who came after them to profit by their perils and discoveries. At the outset it was merely an experiment to go and look for new eldorados in the desert; the expense, the heat and burden, and the risk of crossing waterless tracts had to be borne without much of the sustaining presence of hope, without the evidence that has since been forthcoming that there is a very large extent of remarkably rich auriferous area in the interior of the colony, and that any day a great prize might be within the reach of the hand that was strong enough to make the grasp. All might be risked and nothing won, but still day after day the march, through the desert under the pitiless sun was kept up by those sturdy pioneer bands of gold seekers in spite of every obstacle, until some of them, like the subject of this notice, reached the goal for which they were striving.
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Photo by JOHN ERNEST McDONALD. Greenham & Evans. |
John Ernest McDonald, the son of Peter McDonald, of Lancashire, was born in Bury, Lancashire, in 1861. His father was largely interested in the cotton trade, a circumstance that was destined to have an important influence on the fortunes of the son by giving him the opportunity of pushing his way in Australia. Thirty years ago Queensland was attracting a great deal of attention as a new cotton growing country, and Mr. Peter McDonald went to Queensland as the representative of a Manchester Cotton Company, and established a plantation. By one of those strange and sudden vicissitudes of trade which have wrecked so many well laid plans, cotton fell so low in price that it did not pay to grow it in Queensland, and the plantation was abandoned. John was nine years old when his father died. He was educated in Brisbane, and passed examinations as school teacher. But eager for any spirited enterprise outside the ordinary routine, he accepted the offer of his elder brother, Peter James McDonald, to go into partnership with him in sugar growing at
