good old founder of The Adelaide Register, Robert Thomas, when he came
to the land described in his own paper as "flowing with milk and
honey." Dropped anchor at Holdfast Bay. "When I saw the place at which
we were to land I felt inclined to go and cut my throat." When we sat
down on a log in Light square, waiting till my father brought
the key of the wooden house In Gilles street, in spite of the dignity
of my 14 years just attained, I had a good cry. There had been such a
drought that they had a dearth, almost a famine. People like ourselves
with 80 acre land orders were frightened to attempt cultivation in an
unknown climate, with seed wheat at 25/ a bushel or more, and stuck to
the town. We lived a month in Gilles street, then we bought a large
marquee, and pitched it on Brownhill Creek, above where Mitcham now
stands, bought 15 cows and a pony and cart, and sold the milk in town
at 1/ a quart. But how little milk the cows gave in those days! After
seven months' encamping, in which the family lived chiefly on rice--the
only cheap food, of which we bought a ton--we came with our herd
to West terrace, Adelaide. My father got the position of Town Clerk at
150 pounds a year twelve months after our arrival, and kept it till the
muncipal corporation was ended, as the City of Adelaide was too poor to
maintain the machinery; but 75 pounds was the rent of the house and yards.
We sold the cows, and my brothers went farming, and we took cheaper
quarters in Halifax street.

The Town Clerkship, however, was the means of giving me a lesson in
electoral methods. Into the Municipal Bill, drawn up under the
superintendence of Rowland Hill (afterward the great post office
reformer, but then the Secretary of the Colonization Commissioner for
South Australia), he had introduced a clause providing for proportional
representation at the option of the ratepayers. The twentieth part of
the Adelaide ratepayers by uniting their votes upon one man instead of