Sir John Forrest the STATESMAN

F. K. CROWLEY Sir John Forrest THE STATESMAN Sir John Forrest-surveyor, explorer and politician-was prominent in Australian public life for more than forty years. As a young man he led three expeditions which contributed significantly to the geographical and botanical knowledge of the inland desert country of Western Australia. As a public servant, he established and ex tended trigonometrical land surveying in his colony, and devised land laws to suit the needs of both pastoralists and farmers. In middle age, as the first premier of Western Australia, he carried out an integrated policy of public works and land settlement which met both the short-term needs of gold-miners and the long-term needs of agriculturists. In his last years of public service, as a minister in several national Australian governments, he was one of the first politicians to wrestle with the complexities of federal-state financial relations. He also took part in the negoti ations which established the two-party political system in federal politics, and in the nation-wide controversy over military conscription for overseas service. Forrest was the first professional politician in Western Australia, and also the most successful and influential public man in his home state during the whole of his career. He spent eighteen years in colonial politics (1883-1901), all in executive office, and eighteen years in national politics (1901-18), almost half of those as a cabinet minister. As a surveyor and civil servant he was never denied a promotion, and as a state and federal politician he never lost his seat at an election. He was well rewarded by public esteem, titular and other honours and awards, high official salaries, and by business opportunities which made him a wealthy man. When asked to name his most significant contributions to Western Australia's development, he liked to mention his Homestead Act and Agricultural Bank and the construction of the Coolgardie Water Scheme, Fremantle Harbour, and the east-west Trans continental Railway. Had he been asked to name his failures and disappointments, he would reluctantly have mentioned that his efforts on their behalf were not ade quately appreciated by the Eastern Goldfields' population of the 1890s; that too many of his federal electors were ungrateful for his previous efforts as their state premier; that his colleagues in the federal Liberal Party did not elect him their 78 80 WESTRALIAN PORTRAITS leader, and thereby enable him to become prime minister of Australia; and that he had no sons or daughters. Nor had he received, before his death, the official docu ment which would have legally confirmed the recommendation that he be made a peer of the United Kingdom. By then, however, it was 1918, and the administrative style and personal-loyalty politics which had done so much to bring him success and public acclaim were no longer suited to the new political conditions. When he died, he was one of the last surviving heroes of Australian exploration, and one of the last of the founding fathers of Australian federation. John Forrest was born on 22 August 1847 at Preston Point, Bunbury, on the south-west coast of Western Australia. He was the fourth child and third son of the ten children of William and Margaret Forrest. William Forrest was a millwright and engineer from Bernie, near Stonehaven, Kincardineshire, Scotland; Margaret For rest came from a Dundee shopkeeping family that was related to the Black Camp bells of Ayrshire. They had emigrated to Western Australia in December 1842 as servants to Dr John Ferguson, a medical practitioner who took part in the abortive Australind Settlement. In 1846 William Forrest completed his engagement and settled at Picton in the Bunbury district as a farmer and millwright, where he and his family shared in the general improvement of the colony following the importation of nearly 10 000 British convicts in the years 1850-68. As John Forrest and his eight brothers grew up, they were taught to help with the household and other tasks of a self-contained mixed farm, and John early became a splendid rider. In due course, the boys were enrolled at the government school in Bunbury, and in 1860 John followed his eldest brother William to Bishop Hale's School in Perth. This was a select little private school which offered a secondary educatioc with a strong Anglican flavour and which, before it closed in 1876, had created the core of the Establishment which dominated the public life of Western Australia during the last two decades of the nineteenth century. John did well at school, particularly in arithmetic, and in November 1863, at the age of sixteen, was apprenticed to T. C. Carey, the assistant surveyor at Bunbury. He successfully completed his training in December 1865 and was appointed a temporary government surveyor. Thereafter, until 1890, he was on the staff of the Surveyor-General's Office. John Forrest worked as a road and land surveyor in most parts of the south western districts, and in March 1869 was offered appointment as second-in command and navigator to the eminent Melbourne botanist, Dr Ferdinand von Mueller, who was preparing to lead an expedition from Perth in search of clues to the fate of the long-lost Leichhardt expedition. When von Mueller could not manage the trip, Forrest was chosen to succeed him. From 15 April 1869 until 6 August 1869 he successfully led a party of six men and sixteen horses over a distance of 3200 km, mostly through the uncharted and unknown wilderness in the vicinity of Lake Moore and Lake Barlee, and inland almost as far as what was to be the site of Laver ton. He found no trace of Leichhardt, and no good pastoral land. Hmvever, he had systematically surveyed his route using the most up-to-date methods of stellar obser vation, and he had brought back interesting specimens for botanists and geologists. Late in the same year the governor of Western Australia, Frederick Weld, decided SIR JOHN FORREST 81 that an expedition should be mounted to make a proper survey of the route between Western Australia and South Australia taken thirty years earlier by Edward John Eyre, who had made a hasty trip on foot along the coast from the Head of the Great Australian Bight to Albany on King George Sound. Since then, nobody had come to Western Australia overland. John Forrest was appointed leader of the party, which consisted of six men and sixteen horses; they left Perth on 30 March 1870 and reached Adelaide on 27 August 1870. The tangible results of this expedition were not great, but it was the first west-to-east crossing of Western Australia by land, and it showed that a telegraph-line could readily be erected along the coastline. This was done, and the line, completed in December 1877, put Perth into telegraphic contact with London. But Forrest and his companions found only one new pastoral region, in the vicinity of the Hampton Range, which was far distant from civilization and practically waterless. However, the expedition brought widespread publicity to its leader and to his brother Alexander, and also confirmed John Forrest's own con fidence in his ability, and in his style of command. His objectives were boldly con ceived, but cautiously executed. He was rarely compelled to advance without any knowledge of what lay ahead, or to advance only because it was impossible to retreat. As a surveyor skilled in terrestrial navigation, he could not get lost, and his occasional gamble in the daily search for drinking-water and feed for his horses was always calculated well in advance. He never indulged in the spectacular or tragic gambles that brought fame, but seldom success, to other Australian explorers. In 1871 the newly appointed surveyor-general, Malcolm Fraser, reorganized the Survey Department, and appointed John Forrest government surveyor for the nor thern district. During the next three years Forrest made trigonometrical surveys which fixed boundaries and opened up new areas for pastoral settlement. He was then nominated to lead an expedition from Champion Bay eastwards across the cen tral desert country and after carrying out the necessary preparations set out from Geraldton with six men and twenty horses on 1 April 1874. Moving by careful stages from water-hole to water-hole, he made a methodical, step-by-step crossing of the western interior, arriving at Peake Hill on the north-south Overland Telegraph Line on 30 September 1874. They had experienced several hairbreadth escapes from death by thirst, and some violent encounters with hostile Aborigines. They had walked half the 1880 km from the west coast because of the lack of green food and poor condition of the horses. Only four horses survived. Adelaide was reached on 3 November 1874 and having arrived there for the second time overland, they were given a public reception resembling a Roman triumph. Forrest had led the first west to-east expedition through the western centre of Australia. But he readily confessed that the practical results of this journey, too, had not been great, for most of the country traversed was never likely to be settled. Forrest's reputation spread rapidly throughcJt Australia along the telegraph-lines erected during the previous ten years, and press accounts of his courage and en durance attracted the attention of politicians and scientists in Britain. In 1875 he obtained leave to visit London, and was acclaimed as 'The Young Explorer' by a generation that fed on the glories of Antarctic, Arctic and African exploration. He 82 WESTRALIAN PORTRAITS made a good impression; his leave was extended, and he was allowed to select a free grant of 2025 ha of crown land when he got home.

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