Volume 14 Australasia - dana ward's homepage

;408 AUSTRALASIA.development o£ the colonies, is produced in the largest quantities in New Soutt.Wales.Here also coal mining, and several other less important industries are farmore developed than elsewhere, and the claim to the hegemony among thesurroimding j^olitical groups seems strengthened even by priority in point of time.Victoria, Queensland, Tasmania, and New Zealand were, moreover, to a greatextent founded by settlers from New South Wales, and the very spot alreadyindicated by Cook has thus become the true centre of the Australasian colonialworld.The site chosen in 1788 as the first convict station at the antipodes of GreatFig. 17.5.—Botany Bay.Scale 1 : 160,000.enBritain still remains unoccupied by a town of any si^^e. The shores of BofftiujBay, whose name was long applied to the aggregate of the British possessions inAustralia, are dotted round only by a few small watering places and scatteredvillas, which already form part of the environs of Sydney. The approach to theharbour is indicated by the monument to Cook, who discovered this bay in 1770farther north stands the statue of Laperouse, who sailed in 1788 from this spot onthe last expedition, from which he never returned. The names of Banks andSolander given to the two headlands facing each other on either side of the channelalso perpetuate the memory of illustrious pioneers in the work of Australiandiscovery. If the inlet described in glowing colours by these first explorers has