CHAP. I] ORIGIN AND HISTORY 35 
of the Colony which was called Queensland, had to govern 
for six months without any legislature, but he had as his 
Colonial Secretary, Mr. (afterwards Sir Robert) Herbert, 
who accompanied him from England, and he with his two 
other chief officers, the Attorney-General and the Colonial 
Treasurer, presented themselves for election for the Assembly 
and were duly appointed, thus giving the Governor the 
advantage of experienced officers in the Ministry. The 
Legislative Council was nominated by the Governor of New 
South Wales, but he wisely accepted the advice of the 
Governor of Queensland, and thus a curiously inconvenient 
arrangement resulted without injury to the new Colony. 
Western Australia still stood outside the system in this 
as in many other ways. While the rest of Australia was 
destined to adopt at no distant date a policy of extreme 
Opposition to native immigration, Western Australia looked 
to the east for its connexion, and under its Crown Colony 
administration seemed to have little in common with the 
rest of the continent, from which it was isolated by lands 
deemed to be desert and utterly useless, though in 1911 
that judgement shows signs of being reversed. But the 
desire for responsible government was strengthened by 
the gradual influx of settlers from the west when the gold 
resources of the Colony became known, and in April 1883 
the Administrator was asked to ascertain from the Home 
Government whether responsible government could be 
conceded. The reply of Lord Derby, of July 23, 1883.2 indi- 
cated difficulties in the vast size of the Colony, the small 
Population, and the fact that a demand for responsible 
government would probably mean that the Colony must be 
divided as New South Wales had been divided, since the 
interests of the tropical north and the rest of the Colony 
were divergent. The Governor, in a dispatch of April 9, 
1884.2 was inclined to advise that the grant of responsible 
government should depend on the result of the elections 
of 1885; he suggested that the four nominated unofficial 
‘ Parl, Pap., August 1861. ? Ibid., C. 5743, p. 2. 
* Ibid., pp. 5 seq.