THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING BULLETIN.
Sir,-There has been some talk in London about New South Welshmen wishing to change the name of their colony. If it be true Aurora -- Dawn, or Auroria -- Land of Dawn, might be offered as a suggestion for the renaming, just as Italy was called Hesperia, i.e., land of the evening star (Hesperus). New South Wales has then, at any rate, substantial claims to be considered the "Land of Dawn."
(1). It is the furthest east of the continental possessions of the Empire upon which the sun never sets.
(2). As the mother of all the Australian colonies, she is the Dawn-land of the Greater Britain in the Antipodes.
(3). In Australia, first of the continents of the world, there has been no war and no want. This may fairly be called the dawn of the Millennium -- the promise of a new epoch for the world, and in New South Wales as the oldest colony this new dawn of course began.
Douglas B. W. Sladen
First published in The Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton), 22 November 1887
[Thanks to the National Library of Australia's newspaper digitisation project for this piece.]
