Ends of The Earth by Mary Gaunt — Read

They talk about the West Coast now; but, my word, they ought to have seen it before they found gold and silver and tin there, and the Government of Tasmania was just beginning to wake up to the fact that there was unexplored, unexploited land there that possibly might, some day, be valuable.

Well, I was chief surveyor at Scarf, on the West Coast. Scarf wasn't a town, it wasn't even a township. I don't know that you'd even have dignified it by the name of hamlet. It was in my day just two or three shacks set at the head of what in Norway would be called a fiord, and in Tasmania we didn't give any particular name to at all. A little steamer came in about once a fortnight and tied up to the frail little pier, and brought stores round from Hobart, and if it was very rough--well she didn't come, and we made out as best we could without. We were the Government Surveyor and his party, I being the surveyor in charge, with a couple of young assistants and a few men under me, chainmen, storemen, a cook and a couple of boys. We were the aristocracy of the place, and the rest of the society was made up of the few settlers dotted about inland. I suppose now that the land was being surveyed for their benefit, but neither I nor they thought so then. Our chief use in their eyes was as lenders of tools. Hammers and axes were greatly in request. I've known a man walk ten miles to borrow an adze, and every man who had an axe sharpened it on the Government grindstone. As I say, they didn't care a mite about the opening up of the country, but they did take a very great interest in the Government tools.