Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/96

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
70
INTRODUCTORY VIEW.

of the business prospectus. Melbourne is the Australian headquarters of capital and enterprise, and will now, probably, with its large population of colonial youth, be fertile in genial adventure of this kind. For years past such associations have been kept in abeyance by the indifference or opposition of the Home Government. Melbourne enterprise will now enjoy a better chance, having an authority to deal with at Adelaide instead of Downing Street. We recommend the two sisters to a reciprocity of good offices and to mutual usefulness. Only let us no longer neglect that magnificent domain which has now been familiarized to us, and at the cost of so much effort and suffering, by Burke and Wills, Stuart, Landsborough, and McKinlay; no longer leave its bright streams to sparkle in a waste of sunshine, or its luxuriant grass to be annually burnt by the Aborigines, in the wanton riot of superabundance.