Railway construction in South Australia is noticeable because of the cheapness with which it is carried out in the first place, with an accompanying economy in maintenance. The whole of the work is effected for the most part by the Government department, small contracts for construction only being let on rare occasions. This policy, combined with the application of every modern appliance which can establish reason for its utilisation, has been eminently satisfactory from every point of view. At the present time the tendency is to anticipate the settler, and thus, by the provision of transportation facilities, to attract the farmer into the district. The reverse is generally the method adopted--the farmer establishes himself on the land, and then when there is an agitation for transport the railway is advanced. In this State, however, the railway creates the situation, and in this manner a large area of good agricultural land has been opened up for cultivation. This is the policy which Mr. James J. Hill followed in the western United States, and its soundness in the course of time is demonstrated conclusively from the enormous traffic which flows over his systems. In order that this pioneering may not saddle the South Australian Government with an unremunerative heavy debt, the line in the first instance is of the lightest possible description. As the country traversed develops and more traffic accrues to the road, rendering improvement advisable, the track is overhauled and relaid with heavier metals, the lighter rails being shipped to another point to enable the pioneering process to be continued. This is an elastic system eminently adapted to such a country as South Australia, which is still in its infancy, and where the demand for railway communication is confined almost entirely to agricultural requirements and to the transportation of farming produce, especially in the more remote up-country districts. CHAPTER XV THE IRON HORSE IN AUSTRALASIA II Whereas the Southern Australian and Queensland railways are called upon to meet the demands of agriculture, the roads of Western Australia, on the other hand, have been laid out to satisfy the extensive mining movements along the western shore of the island continent. The engineers, however, have not been called upon to face particularly stern grapples with Nature, owing to the country traversed being, for the most part, of a give-and-take character, and to there being an entire absence of high mountains and wide, rushing rivers. There is only one chain of hills of any magnitude that has to be crossed by the lines. This is the Darling range, which runs parallel with the coast from near Geraldton to the southern extremity of the country.