Simpson Newland - Other Interests

Other Interests

He resumed his work on the development of a river port on the Murray, he had become a vice-president of the River Murray league in 1902, and the question was kept alive in 1903 and 1904 by holding public meetings. On 28 July 1904 Newland was elected president of the league, and the necessity of developing the Murray was kept steadily before the public for many years. A great step forward was made in 1914, when the Prime Minister of Australia, Sir Joseph Cook, pledged £1,000,000 from the Commonwealth if each of the three states interested would spend a similar amount, which is what occurred.

Newland had many interests. In 1895–1900 and again in 1920–22 he was president of the South Australian branch of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia, and in 1906–23 president of the South Australian Zoological and Acclimatization Society. He deplored the European destruction of the environment and proposed that the Coorong area should be reserved for Aborigines and the land reafforested. In 1922 he was appointed C.M.G. (Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George). He had published a pamphlet in middle life, A Band of Pioneers, Old-Time Memories (2nd ed. 1919), which included an interesting account of the arrival of his family in 1839. This was incorporated in his Memoirs of Simpson Newland, written in the last year of his long life. It was completed on 6 June 1925 and showed him to be still in full command of his mental powers. He died three weeks later, but before he died he knew that it had definitely been decided to complete the north to south railway line; his other dream of a (sea-)port at the mouth of the Murray still awaits fulfilment.