Australian Pictures, Drawn with Pen and PencilWilloughby, Howard
History
Australian Pictures, Drawn with Pen and Pencil
Willoughby, Howard
Australia -- Description and travel; Natural history -- Australia
The buildings in Adelaide show well. A very white freestone has entered
largely into the more recent erections; and, as there are comparatively
few large factories in the city, and no shipping nearer than Port
Adelaide, they lose but little of their pristine freshness by smoke and
grime. Then the unpleasant effect produced by the sight of a hovel
adjoining a palatial bank or pile of warehouses several storeys high, is
of rare occurrence, while the broad streets offer the most advantageous
conditions for the display of the various architectural styles employed.
The town has been called 'the city of churches;' and the number of
ecclesiastical edifices which it contains places its pretensions to that
distinction beyond question. The Anglican Cathedral of St. Peter is a
large and imposing building, a portion of which is still uncompleted,
occupying an elevated position in the southern portion of North
Adelaide. The Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. Francis Xavier is in the
south, and recalls the early days of the colony, when the prophecies of
its future importance were few in number. All the other great religious
bodies are also creditably represented.
Nearly all the Government departments are in the vicinity of Victoria
Square, an ornamental reserve, through which King William Street, one of
the most handsome thoroughfares in Australia, has been carried. No
traveller should leave Adelaide without spending some hours in the
Botanical Garden. To omit that lovely resort would be an error indeed.
[Illustration: AN ADELAIDE PUBLIC SCHOOL.]
South Australia contains a little over 300,000 inhabitants. Its chief
industries are agricultural, pastoral, and mining. Very early in its
history it became the granary of the colonies, and, although it can no
longer claim that distinction, it is still one of the few places in the
world where the visitor can travel over three hundred miles in the same
direction between fields of waving yellow corn. Despite the small
returns from wheat-growing, the area under cultivation is enlarged every
year, and is now not less than two million acres. More attention is
being paid to scientific farming, thanks to the influence of the
recently established Agricultural College at Roseworthy, thirty miles
north of Adelaide, experimental farms in various parts of the colony,
and the lectures delivered in the chief agricultural centres. The yield
is so dependent on the rainfall that the average for the colony rarely
exceeds ten bushels per acre, and occasionally falls below three. The
subject of irrigation has lately been warmly taken up by the
agricultural community, and the next few years will see not only a more
rational system of farming, but the adoption of means to render that
community less dependent on the uncertain rainfall. At the London
Exhibition a splendid sample of wheat grown at Mount Barker--a
beautifully situated township amongst the hills, twenty miles south-east
of Adelaide--obtained the highest award.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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