(including one helicopter) over a route network of 46,000 miles and carrying over 2,000,000 passengers a year. The ATI airlines group consists of six airlines with a fleet of more than 105 aircraft, covering about 59,000 miles, carrying more than two million passengers a year. Connellan Airways Pty. Limited operates a fleet of 18 aircraft over a network of 11,251 miles; East-West Airlines Ltd. operates a fleet of about five aircraft over a network of 3,960 miles and Papuan Airlines Pty. Ltd. operate nine aircraft over a network of 1,945 miles in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea.

Australia has 561,000 miles of highways and roads. Road transport, freight and passenger, is a major industry. Apart from the freight and passenger carrying services, Australian highways and roads carry a heavy traffic of private automobiles: the ratio of automobiles to population is approximately 1:21.

The various Government Railway Systems operating at 30th June 1968 had 25,146 route-miles of track open for traffic as follows: New South Wales, 6,061 miles of 4 feet 8 inches gauge; Victoria, 4,216 miles comprising 4,005 miles of 5 feet 3 inches gauge, 202 miles of 4 feet 8 inches gauge, and 9 miles of 2 feet 6 inches gauge; Queensland, 5,825 miles comprising 5,726 miles of 3 feet 6 inches gauge, 69 miles of 4 feet 8 inches gauge from Brisbane to the New South Wales border, and 30 miles of 2 feet gauge line; South Australia, 2,481 miles comprising 1,652 miles of 5 feet 3 inches gauge and 829 miles of 3 feet 6 inches gauge; Western Australia, 3,815 miles comprising 3,502 miles of 3 feet 6 inches gauge and 313 miles of 4 feet 8 inches gauge and Tasmania, 500 miles of 3 feet 6 inches gauge. The Commonwealth Railways System comprises four separate railways. The Trans-Australian Railwy, 1,108 miles of 4 feet 8 inches gauge between Port Pirie (South Australia) and Kalgoorlie (Western Australia). This railway was completed in 1970. The Central Australia Railway, 217 miles of 4 feet 8 inches gauge between Port Augusta and Maree (South Australia) and 605 miles of 3 feet 6 inches gauge between Maree and Alice Springs (Northern Territory); the North Australia Railway, 317 miles of 3 feet 6 inches gauge between Darwin and Birdum (Northern Territory) and the Australian Capital Territory Railway, 5 miles of 4 feet 8 inches gauge between Queanbeyan (New South Wales) and Canberra (Australian Capital Territory). Under various Commonwealth-State Standardisation Agreements approximately 1,100 route-miles of standard (4 feet 8 inches) gauge track have been completed since 1956.

At 30th June 1968 there were 88 national broadcasting stations and 114 commercial stations; with 39 national stations providing television facilities and 42 commercial television stations. More television stations are being developed with the aim of bringing this medium to more than 95 per cent of the population.

A wide range of primary and secondary industry products is produced in Australia. The main primary products are wool, wheat and flour, meat, dairy products, sugar, fruit and a number of minerals including lead, zinc, copper, coal, iron ore, gold and bauxite. Secondary industry production is diverse and includes engineering products, motor vehicles, chemicals, textiles, domestic appliances, newsprint and petroleum products.

Total expenditure of the Federal Government in 1967-68 was $6,558 m. and receipts were $5,962 m. Consolidated Revenue Funds of the States for 1967-68 totalled revenue $2,463.3 m. and expenditure $2,468-6 m.

Australia has under way a programme of about 400 major national develop

ment works at an estimated cost on completion of $2,441,000,000. The types of project and their estimated cost are as follows: water conservation, supply, irrigation and drainage (73) $536,000,000; electricity generation (15) $918,000,000; electricity transmission (65) $85,000,000; gas (4) $3,000,000; railways (32) $195,000,000; roads and bridges (98) $251,000,000; ports (63) £302,000,000; airports (13) $40,000,000; telecommunications (35) $69,000,000. These are in addition to the $800,000,000 Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme in southern New South Wales, which is now over three-quarters complete, ahead of schedule, and on which some $665,000,000 to 30th June 1968 had already been expended. Latest estimated completion date for the undertaking, which began in 1949, is 1974. The Snowy Scheme will provide about 6,800,000 acre feet of storage in 15 large dams with 100 miles of tunnels, more than 80 miles of aqueducts and seven power stations in addition to making 2,000,000 acre feet of irrigation water available each year. The planned capacity of the Snowy Hydro-electric Scheme is 3,740,000 Kw of which 1,610,000 are already available.

Some of the larger single development projects under construction are the Munmorah and Liddell power stations in New South Wales, the Hazelwood power station in Victoria and the Ord River Irrigation Project in Western Australia. Munmorah will cost $140,000,000, Hazelwood $232,000,000 and Liddell, with a capacity of 2,000,000 Kw, $200,000,000. At present there are plans for the expenditure of about $48,000,000 on the Ord River Project.

Australia Day, 26th January, commemorates the landing and commencement of settlement at Sydney Cove by Governor Philip on 26th January 1788. It is celebrated as a public holiday throughout Australia.

HISTORY

The first known landing by a European on the shores of Australia was by William Jansz who, in the service of the Dutch, came ashore on the west coast of Cape York Peninsula in 1606 in the belief that it was part of New Guinea. At about the same time Louis de Torres, a Spaniard from Peru, passed through the straits which now bear his name. A few years later the Dutch discovered that it was quicker and healthier to approach Java by sailing with the westerly trade winds, 3,000 miles eastwards from the Cape and then turning north. It was not long before one of their Captains, Dirk Hartog, overshot his turning point and sighted the west coast of Australia at Shark Bay. Thenceforth a number of ships touched on the coast, which was found to be barren and inhospitable. The Dutch named it New Holland.

In 1642 the Dutch sent Abel Tasman to explore further. Picking up the westerlies south of Mauritius, he sailed past the south coast without sighting it and landed on what is now Tasmania, which he named Van Diemen's Land after the Governor-General in Batavia. Continuing eastwards, he discovered New Zealand before returning to Java round the north of New Guinea. A further voyage in the following year to the north coast confirmed the Dutch East India Company's view that no profit was to be obtained from the new land, and further exploration was abandoned. The British Admiralty were equally unimpressed by reports of the voyages of Dampier to the west and north-west in 1688 and 1699.

For seventy years no further exploration took place, but at the end of that period a growing interest in Pacific exploration led the British Admiralty

to send an expedition under James Cook, with the scientist Sir Joseph Banks, to look for the fabled southern Continent, the Terra Australis, in the south Pacific. Failing to find this, Cook charted the shores of New Zealand and then made a landfall at Botany Bay. Sailing north along the coast, he took possession of the land as New South Wales. The British Government at first doubted the value of the new land, but later, on favourable reports by Sir Joseph Banks of its fertility, decided that it would be a suitable place to which to send convicts who could no longer be sent to the American colonies. On 18th January 1788 Governor Philip and the first party of convicts arrived at Botany Bay but, after a few days, moved to Sydney Cove in Port Jackson. A secondary settlement was made at Norfolk Island.

The land was found to be less fertile than Sir Joseph Banks had reported, and at first there was a danger of starvation. Once the settlements were reasonably secure, exploration continued and further settlements were established. Bass in 1798 and Flinders in 1803 completed the exploration of the south and southeast coast and the latter confirmed that New Holland and New South Wales formed part of one continent. It is believed to have been Flinders who first used the term Australia to describe this continent. Three strategic settlements were established on Sydney's lines of communications in 1803 and 1804, two of which developed into Hobart and Launceston in Van Diemen's Land, and were used for the worst convicts. In 1824 to 1828, because of fears of French landings, three other settlements were made in the north and south-east and at Albany in the south-west. The latter alone survived. Another station was established in 1824 at Moreton Bay, on the Brisbane River.

Meanwhile free settlers had begun to change the Colony's character. Some of these were former members of the New South Wales Corps, which arrived in 1790; others were persons attracted by cheap or free land. Another section of the population was formed of freed convicts. Initially, although some of the larger farmers made a success of growing for the local market, the Colony produced little or nothing for export. This was changed when Captain John Macarthur demonstrated that the Colony was very suitable for sheep rearing and that the wool would find a ready market in Britain. The discovery by Lawson, Blaxland and Wentworth of a way through the Blue Mountains, which had previously confined settlement to the coast, allowed rapid expansion of this industry. Many exploring expeditions followed, and although these opened up the country they also revealed its aridity. From then on settlement was a voluntary movement, often carried on without the approval of the government, which wished to limit expenditure. Examples of this were the settlements of Henty at Portland and Batman at Port Phillip in 1834 and 1835. Although the Government at first disapproved, Captain Lonsdale was put in charge in 1836 and Melbourne was officially named in 1837. Swelled by settlers who had come overland from the east coast, the settlements became the District of Port Phillip and, in 1851, the Colony of Victoria.

Meanwhile opportunity in Australia and distress in Britain led to the formation of companies to exploit new areas. In 1829 a settlement was started at Swan River on the west coast under Governor Stirling, and although many at first found life there too difficult the settlement later developed and, when incorporated with Albany in 1831, became the second Australian Colony, Western Australia. The next voluntary settlement was due to the activities of Edward Gibbon Wakefield whose Letter from Sydney (which he had never visited) drew attention

to his new scheme for financing settlement by the sale of land. The South Australia Company was formed in 1836 and a settlement was made at Adelaide. Land for the new Colony, South Australia, was taken from New South Wales whose boundaries in the west had been extended up to the boundary of Western Australia in 1835. Land speculation and a division of authority between the Governor and the Land Commissioners led to the appointment of Captain (later Sir George) Grey as Governor in 1841 and to his assumption of the powers of the Land Commissioners in 1842. His vigorous and economical administration, the development of sheep farming and agriculture and the opening of copper mines at Burra in 1843, set the new Colony on a firm basis.

During the 'hungry forties' immigration to all the Australian Colonies quickened until by 1850 the convicts accounted for less than 15 per cent of the population. Local agitation forced the Government to abandon the transportation of convicts to New South Wales in 1840, and frustrated attempts to introduce convicts into Victoria. When transportation to Van Diemen's Land stopped in 1853, Western Australia remained the only Colony to which convicts continued to be sent until the system's final abolition in 1868. Van Diemen's Land, which had been separated from New South Wales in 1825, was, on 1st January 1856, formally renamed Tasmania.

The settlement founded at Moreton Bay was abandoned in 1839, but news of the fertility of the land attracted settlers, and, after the founding of the town of Gladstone in 1853, settlement was rapid. On 6th June 1859 the territory from Point Danger north to Cape York was separated from the Colony of New South Wales to become the sixth Colony in Australia under the name of Queensland. The western boundary was moved further west in 1862.

With the creation of Queensland, the whole of Australia was divided up among the six colonies with the exception of that part to the north of South Australia. In theory this was part of New South Wales, but when the explorations of Stuart showed that much of it could be settled, it was put under the administration of South Australia, under the name of the Northern Territory, and remained under that administration until 1911, when it was transferred to the Commonwealth Government.

So long as Port Jackson remained a penal settlement, it was ruled autocratically by the Governor. To begin with he had the New South Wales Corps to enable him to keep order, but the Corps eventually took up trade, and attempts by the Governor to keep the Corps under control led to their deposing Governor Bligh in 1808. Bligh was later reinstated, the Corps disbanded and replaced by regular troops. As the proportion of free settlers increased, so did agitation for limitation of the Governor's powers. In 1823 a start was made in the process of introducing democratic institutions by the passing of the New South Wales Judicature Act setting up a nominated Legislative Council with advisory functions. Enlarged in 1828, the Council became partly elective in 1842. Similar Councils were set up over the years in the other Colonies. The changed ideas in Britain resulting from the Durham Report, and the agitation by the District of Port Phillip for full colony status, led in 1850 to the Australian Colonies Government Act, which created the Colony of Victoria and set up partly elective Legislative Councils in all the five Colonies and, furthermore, permitted them to make amendments to their own constitutions. Led by William Charles Wentworth, the Colonies one by one brought in new constitutions on the Westminster model, New South Wales obtaining responsible government in 1855, Tasmania and Victoria

in 1856, South Australia in 1857, Queensland, on separation from New South Wales, in 1860, and finally Western Australia in 1890. In each of the Colonies there was established a bi-cameral legislature, the Upper House being elective except in New South Wales and Queensland, where its members were nominated by the Crown. The ballot was early introduced, together with the payment of members of the lower house and the grant of universal adult male franchise; and towards the end of the century the vote was extended in South Australia to women also.

Meanwhile the economy of Australia had been further strengthened by the discovery of gold and other minerals-the discovery of gold, in particular, leading to a great inrush of population, not all of whom were of British stock, and to a great movement of population within Australia, a movement which tended to disrupt other industries. By 1891 this country, whose exploration had hardly been completed, had already over three million inhabitants, living in the six self-governing Colonies. The export of wheat to Europe and Britain began in about 1870, Australia rapidly becoming one of the leading wheatproducing countries. The invention of refrigeration led to an export trade in dairy products and mutton. The basis of a railway system was laid.

As communications improved, and as the population increased and land was opened up, it slowly became realised that the community of interest between the colonies justified some closer union. When the proposals to confer self-government on the Colonies were being discussed in 1849, there had been proposals that there should be a General Assembly for the whole of Australia, whose members should be elected by the Colonial Parliaments. But the idea was then unpopular, and was dropped. However it soon became clear that some form of consultation was required, and this was provided on an ad hoc basis by inter-colonial conferences. In 1883 Henry Parkes of New South Wales suggested that there should be a Federal Council, and the British Parliament passed a bill in 1885 giving power to the six Colonies, and to Fiji and New Zealand, to pass acts to enable each of them to send representatives to a central Council. This Council first met in 1886, New Zealand never sending representatives and Fiji only sending representatives on the first occasion. More important, Parkes and his government in New South Wales did not take part. Later Parkes began to press for a Federation of the six Colonies, and the first Australian Convention of Members of Parliaments was held in Sydney in 1891 and prepared a draft. But again Parkes withdrew his support. Thenceforth it was the people who took the lead. From 1893 there was a great public movement for Federation, leading to a Convention in 1897-98 attended by 10 persons from each Colony, other than Queensland. Except in the case of Western Australia, whose representatives were chosen by Parliament, these representatives were elected by the people. The Convention drafted a Federal Constitution under which each self-governing Colony voluntarily surrendered to the Federal Government certain of its powers, ensuring at the same time that the Federal Government was in itself a democratic Government of the type which they themselves had developed on the British model. For this new Federation they adopted the name of the Commonwealth, a name suggested by Parkes in 1891, a name with a long history in British political thought beginning long before the time of Cromwell. A Commonwealth Bill, based on the proposals of the Convention, was prepared and agreed not only by the Parliaments but by an affirmative vote of all the peoples in the Colonies; and in July an Act to constitute the

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