Sessional_Paper_1887-1888 — Page 345

(7)

32. The continuation of the Praya along the foreshore in front of the Naval Yard and Military Cantonments has been attempted by every Governor since the days of Sir RICHARD MACDONNELL. Each Governor has failed and these failures are deplored in the Colony as public calamities. It is felt that a great and populous city like Victoria should not continue to be subjected year after year to such a grievous hindrance to its progress and prosperity as arises from the inability of the Imperial Departments in London to make any concession to the Colony in the matter of this Praya junction.

33. The connexion of Eastern and Western Victoria by a marine embankment has, however, with each successive year become a matter of so much greater im- portance to the commercial prosperity of the Colony and not only to its prosperity but to the health of its people, that it is to be hoped Her Majesty's Govern- ment will not remain much longer inactive in the matter. Our present over- crowding, if it continues, must eventually culminate in some terrible epidemic that will move all England. We must find more building room for the population or else shut out the yearly influx from China. The people cannot be driven to build in the Eastern town for it is severed from the Western Districts where mostly lie the avocations of the trader and the work of the labourer, and where the ship- ping are anchored, but if the Eastern town could be joined by a marine embank- ment to the Western town and thus enable a tramway to be laid along the entire sea-board, the people might be induced to settle in the Eastern town by these faci- lities of communication, and the Government would thus be able to avert those dangers to the Public Health which are clearly looming in the distance.

34. It is well known that the War Office is in great want of further building room for barracks. The Praya junction project supplies this military want in the most complete manner by the formation of nine acres of immensely valuable build- ing land. The value of these nine acres of reclamation at current rates is $1,568,160. The War Office will not contribute towards the building of the Praya junction or towards the reclamation, but at the same time the War Office has stated that it desires to keep all the land which the Colonial Government will reclaim at the cost of the local ratepayers. In other words the War Office contemplates receiving land to the extent of over one million and a half of dollars, but will not assist in any way towards the realization of the work that is to benefit it to this extent. If the War Office will not contribute its share of the cost of the Praya junction, then the least it might do, would be to let the Colony retain for auction sale as much of the land reclaimed as would at all events reimburse the cost of building the Praya embankment opposite the Cantonments.

35. The case is different with the Naval Authorities. The Lords of the Ad- miralty have said "the interposition of a Marine embankment between the Royal Naval Yard and the sea will detract from the efficiency of the Naval Establishments, and we are not therefore favourable to the scheme; under any circumstance we will not contribute anything towards its realization." This objection however has now been met on the part of the Colonial Government by offering to carry the marine embankment on a series of overhead arches along the Naval Yard frontage so that access to and from the beach would not be in any way obstructed. The proposition met with the approval of Sir WILLIAM DOWELL, when he was Com- mander-in-Chief in the China Station, and was I believe recommended by him to the Admiralty, but I am not sure that it was accepted by my Lords Commissioners. The attitude of indifference, if not disfavour, to the Praya junction scheme adopted by the Admiralty is however readily intelligible, for Naval interests will derive no marked financial benefit from the scheme, but what is not easy to understand is that the War Office should not have appreciated the advantage of co-operating in a scheme which enables it to become possessed of building land to the extent of nine acres fitted for barrack sites and bearing a market value of over a million and a half of dollars, a sum to be easily obtained should the Military Department ever wish to realize. I say nothing of the advantage to the Arsenal of deep water for the landing and embarking of military stores, or of the sanitary boon which the conversion of the present noxious mud foreshore along the Cantonments into a healthy sea-frontage would prove to the Garrison.

36. When the question of the Praya junction between Western and Eastern Victoria has been settled with the War Office, and communication established be- tween the two towns the larger question of sea-reclamations along the entire Eastern

Page 345Page 346