'I take for granted that in reporting on it I am to suppose that the welfare of the Aborigines is the primary consideration with the Board, under which circumstance I shall report against it being a suitable location for them, and principally for the two following reasons: -

1. It is too cold and wet a climate for them to remain in all the year round; and

2. It is too near a white population for the Aborigines to be kept clear of the vices incidental to the two races being in such contiguity.

At any rate, I consider prevention the safer course, and I think this would be best attained by removing the station to a place where the white population was less numerous than in the neighbourhood of Coranderrk. The first objection, on account of the climate, would be met by removing to a more genial one, and probably both requirements might be found somewhere on the banks of the Murray River.

It is here, however, necessary for me to inform the Board that by far the larger proportion of the Aborigines at Coranderrk would prefer remaining there, partly because it is their country, or near it; but probably, also, in a limited degree, for the same reason that the worst part of the white population prefer loafing about towns to going into the country in search of work.'