e occupied much of the attention of
Government. A fine and substantial open-piled jetty at Fremantle, seven
hundred and fifty feet long, has been constructed, and answers all the
purposes for which it was designed; but the larger and extremely
difficult question of the construction of a really safe harbour at or
near Fremantle is yet undecided. Various plans have been proposed, and
great pressure has been put on the Government to commence works hastily
and without engineering advice. At one time one scheme has found favour,
and another at another, and the merits of the rival schemes of our
amateurs have been popularly judged upon the principle of opposing most
strongly anything that was supposed to find favour with the Government.
Last session a strong wish to do SOMETHING caused the Legislature to
advocate a scheme which many persons think would cause the mouth of the
River Swan to silt up, and expose the town of Fremantle to danger, lest
the river in flood should burst out (as no doubt it did formerly) into
the South Bay over the town site. The question, however, is referred to
the Victorian Government engineer, and the Melbourne Government have been
asked to allow him to visit this colony, but I fear that the people will
not accept his decision; and unless the members of the new Legislature
will agree to do so, or, in the event of his not coming, do what I have
long since recommended, namely, ask your Lordship to refer the whole
question to the decision of Sir John Coode, or some other great
authority, and undertake beforehand to abide by it, I see no chance of
anything being carried into effect until the warmth and personal feeling
which, strangely enough, is always evoked by this question, shall be
succeeded by a more reasonable and business-like mood. One of my first
acts on reaching this colony was, in accordance with the previously
expressed wish of the Council and colonists, to send for an engineer of
high repute to report. His report only raised a tempest of objurgations,
and I must frankly confess failure in my efforts to leave Fremantle with
a harbour; and, indeed, I am far from being convinced that anything under
an enormous outlay will avail to give an anchorage and approaches, safe
in all weathers, for large ships, though I, with the Melbourne engineers,
think that the plan of cutting a ship channel into Freshwater Bay, in the
Swan River, advocated by the Reverend Charles Grenfel Nicholay, is worthy
of cons