rt Darwin is no whit behind Sydney Harbour in beauty and
capacity. The navies of the world could ride safely in its waters. A
railway of 150 miles in length, the first section of the great
transcontinental line, which was to extend from Palmerston to Port
Augusta, was built to connect Pine Creek, where there was gold to be
found, with the seaboard. South Australia was more than ever a misnomer
for this State. Victoria lay more to the south than our province, and
now that we stretched far inside the tropics the name seemed
ridiculous. My friend Miss Sinnett suggested Centralia as the
appropriate name for the State, which by this gift was really the
central State; but in the present crisis, when South Australia finds
the task of keeping the Northern Territory white too arduous and too
costly, and is offering it on handsome terms to the Commonwealth,
Centralia might not continue to be appropriate. Our northern possession
has cost South Australia much. The sums of money sunk in prospecting
for gold and other metals have been enormous, and at present there are
more Chinese there than Europeans. In the early days, when the Wrens
were there, Eleanor was surprised when their wonderful Chinese cook
came to her and said, "Missie, I go along a gaol to-morrow. You take Ah
Kei. He do all light till I go out!" The cook had been tried and
condemned for larceny, but he was allowed to retain his situation till
the last hour. Instead of being kept in gaol pending his trial he
earned his wages and did his work. He had no desire to escape. He liked
Palmerston and the bank, and he went back to the latter when released.
He was an incorrigible thief, and got into trouble again; but as a cook
he was superlative.

That decade of the eighties was a most speculative time all over
Australia and New Zealand. I was glad that leaving the English and
Scottish Bank enabled my brother to go into political and official
life, but it also allowed him to speculate far beyond what he could
have done if he had been manager of a bank. Everybody speculated--in
mines, in land, and in leases. I was earning by my pen a very decent
income, and I spent it, sometimes wisely and sometimes foolishly. I
could be liberal to church and to good causes. I was able to keep a
dear little State child at school for two years after the regulation
age, and I was amply repaid by seeing her afterwards an honoured wife
and mother, able to assist her children and their companions wit