To the Eastward of Perth the populous mining towns and many scattered mining camps and settlements extend some five hundred miles towards the interior.  In spite of the discovery of gold and the advance of the Colony in every way, there still remains more than half the province unoccupied.

How scattered the population of the settled country is may be judged from the fact that the average population is one individual to every six square miles.  The vast, almost unknown, interior well merits its designation of “Desert,” and I suppose that in few parts of the world have travellers had greater difficulties to overcome than in the arid, sun-dried wilderness of interior Australia.  The many attempts to penetrate beyond the head-waters of the coastal rivers date from the earliest days of the Swan River Settlement.  But in every case travellers, bold and enduring, were forced back by the impassable nature of the sandy deserts—­impassable to all except camels.  Roe, Hunt, Austin, and the Gregorys made more than one effort to solve the mysteries of the interior.  Numerous attempts were made to cross the Colony from West to East or vice versa, with the double object of ascertaining whether the nature of the country rendered it suitable for settlement, and of establishing some means of communication with the sister colonies to the East.

The first who succeeded in travelling overland from South to West Australia was Eyre, afterwards made governor of Jamaica.  He started in 1841, and his route hugged the coast-line along the shores of the Great Australian Bight, and is now closely followed by the telegraph line.  In spite of almost insurmountable obstacles in the form of waterless regions, almost bare of vegetation, in spite of mutiny in the camp, and the murder of his white companion by one of the black-boys, the loss of his horses, in spite of starvation and thirst, this gallant man battled his way across, finishing his journey on foot with one companion only, a faithful black-boy.  Lucky it was that this district is blessed with a plentiful dew in the cool weather, otherwise Eyre’s horses could never have lasted as long as they did.  This journey was successfully accomplished again in 1879 by Forrest (now Sir John Forrest, Premier of West Australia) who, keeping somewhat to the north of Eyre’s track, had comparatively little difficulty in finding water.

Some 150 miles to the northward, the Colony was traversed from East to West by Giles in 1876, who found it to be a flat, sandy wilderness of scrub, alternating with open limestone plains, covered with saltbush and grass.*