["Topics of the Time", The West Australian Catholic Record, Thursday 14 October 1886]
Topics of the Time.
What with the rumours from Kimberley, the fame of her pearl cross, and the attention attracted by her exhibits at the "Colindries" in London, West Australia is rapidly rising into notice with the outer world. The reflection is a gratifying one to us, as it must be to all those whose memory, like our own, goes back a few years. Time was--and that not so long ago--when West Australia might as well have had no existence, for all that was said about her elsewhere, or even known. Not only was it the home papers which ignored her; she was overlooked too by the whole tribe of dailies and weeklies so plentifully published in the other provinces of the Australian group. A remarkable change has, however, of late come over the scene. West Australia is no longer the forgotten dependency that she used to be. Her affairs seem to have suddenly acquired an interest for everybody. The people of the other side are anxious to learn all they can about her and the other side newspapers take pains to gratify that wish. Nay more, the English public is not without curiosity on the subject of her resources and her undeveloped natural wealth; nor do the great English journals think it beneath them to discuss in their columns the opportunity she offers for the profitable investment of capital and the promising field for labour she presents to those possessed of muscle or brains.
Speaking of that much-talked of wonder, the pearl cross, we may perhaps state that its story reminds us of the saying about no man being a prophet in his own country and goes to show that a marvel in the material order, like a marvel in the intellectual, is ever more valued abroad than at home. The story of the cross furnishes proof too, if indeed proof were needed, of the tendency of tales to improve in travelling. When you want news of yourself, according to the old saw, you must go from home to get it. The following is an account of the cross, appearing in a London paper. Our readers--or we are much mistaken--will find in it some particulars of which they were not aware before.
Mr. Edward W. Streeter, says the Weekly Register, has received the following description of the great Southern Cross Pearl. "I have been so thoroughly engrossed by professional matters that I have been unable before to carry out my promise--that is, to give a history of the wonderful cruciform known as the 'Great Southern Cross Pearl.' I learn from the Hon. Maitland Browne that the pearl was discovered by a man named Clark whilst pearl fishing at Roebourne, in Western Australia, in the schooner Ethel, the owner (a Roman Catholic) being called 'Shiner' Kelly, and more especially young Clark, were filled with amazement and awe. Kelly, thinking it was some Heaven-wrought miracle, and with a certain amount of superstitious dread, buried it, for how long it is not known. The pearl was discovered in 1874, and in 1879 the great Australian explorer Alexander Forrest saw it in Roebourne just before he commenced is journey to Kimberley. The pearl has changed hands many times, each time it has done so the person parting with it making 100 per cent. on the price paid, and it is now the property of a syndicate of gentlemen of position in Western Australia. It was at the solictation[sic] of these gentlemen that I was induced to bring it home."
