CHAPTER XIII
AUSTBALIAN EXTENSION AND ITS EFFECTS
Three great exploits must be credited to the explorers and Extension squatters of the third epoch — (i) The creation and develop- ^"/f ment of Queensland, (ii) the creation of Northern Territory things ; and construction of the South Australian wire, and (iii) the peopling of the Western Australian mining districts. With each of these exploits every Australian State had something to do. Queensland, the first of these creations, was conceived and begotten by Leichhardt, Mitchell and other pioneers of the second epoch ; although politicians helped to endow it with a separate existence. Chief among these men-midwives was that venerable, ardent colonizer Dr. Lang.
Dr. Lang used to divide Eastern Australia into four equal, (i) The analogous, and dissimilar States, namely : (i) Phillipsland, C Q^ug. °^ south of the Murrumbidgee — which he described as ihtg^tedby southernmost river which flows through an avenue of swamp ; ' *' oaks 1 ; (ii) New South Wales south of lat. 30 0 or the southern limit of the Moreton Bay pine 2 ; (iii) Cooksland, south of the tropics and the future home of free-grown cotton ; (iv) a tropical colony of convicts. He endowed each free colony with 500 miles of coast-line, with a capital in the middle of its coast, with a distinctive flora and a distinctive pursuit, and he used to express in emphatic tones his indignation at the tardiness with which statesmen gave effect to what he and Providence had predetermined (1837-47). 3 In 1847-9 ne proceeded to carry out his own decrees, and
1 Casuarina glauca. 2 Araucaria Cunninghami.
" Acc. and Pap. (1837), xix. No. 518, p. 262 ; J. D. Lang, Cooksland, 1847, pp. viii, 28-31.
N 2