The diggings—The Government at Melbourne—The sheep-runs—The rabbits—The delights of Sydney. If, by good luck, you were to have a trip to Australia now, you would find, probably, the sea voyage, which takes up five weeks as a rule, a little Very soon it will be possible to leave the steamer at Fremantle and go by train right across the continent to the Eastern cities. Adelaide has the reputation of being a very “good” city. It was founded largely by high-minded colonists from Britain, whose main idea was to seek in the new world a place where poverty and its evils would not exist. To a very large extent they succeeded. There are no slums in Adelaide and no starving children. Everywhere is an air of quiet comfort. THE GARDEN STREETS OF ADELAIDE. PAGE 16. View larger image The fisheries of these rivers are somewhat important, the chief fish caught being the Murray cod. It grows sometimes to a vast size, to the size almost of a shark; but when the cod is so big its flesh is always rank and uneatable by Europeans. Fishing for a cod is not an occupation calling for very much industry. The fisherman baits his line, ties it to a stake fixed on the river bank, and on the stake hangs a bell. Then the fisherman gets under the shadow of a gum-tree and enjoys a quiet life, reading or just lazing. If a cod takes the bait the A cruel practice is followed to keep these fish fresh until a boat or train to the city markets is due: a line is passed through the cod’s lip, and it is tethered to a stake in the water near the bank. Thus it can swim about and keep alive for some time; but the cruelty is great, and efforts are now being made to stop this tethering of codfish. These Australian inland rivers are slow and sluggish, and fish, such as trout, accustomed to clear running waters, will not live in them. But in the smaller mountain streams, which feed the big inland rivers, trout thrive, and as they have been introduced from England and America they provide good sport to anglers. The plain-country through which the big rivers flow is very flat, and is therefore liable to great floods. Australia has the reputation of being a very dry country; as a matter of fact, the rainfall over one-third of its area is greater than that of England. In most places the rainfall is, however, badly distributed. After long spells of very dry weather there will come fierce storms, during which the rain sometimes falls at the rate of an inch an hour. This fact, and the curious physical formation of the continent, about which you already know, makes it very liable to floods. Great floods of the past have been at Brisbane, the I recall well a flood in the Narrabri (N.S.W.) district some seventeen years ago, and its moving perils. The hillocks on which cattle, sheep, and in some cases human beings, had taken refuge were crowded, too, with kangaroos, emus, brolgas (a kind of crane), koalas (known as the native bear), rabbits, and snakes. Mutual hostilities were for a time suspended by the common danger, though the snakes and the rabbits were rarely given the advantages of the truce if there were human beings present. An incident of that flood was that the little township of Terry-hie-hie (these aboriginal names are strange!) was almost wiped out by starvation. Beleaguered by the waters, it was cut off from all communication with the railway and with food-supplies. When the waters fell, the mud left on these black-soil plains was just as formidable a barrier. Attempt after attempt to send After crossing the Murray the train passes through what is known as “the desert”—a stretch of country covered with mallee scrub (the mallee is a kind of small gum-tree); but nowadays they are finding out that this mallee scrub is not hopeless country at all. The scrub is beaten down by having great rollers drawn over it by horses; that in time kills it. Then the roots are dug up for firewood, and the land is sown with wheat. Quite good crops are now being got from the mallee when the rains are favourable, but in dry seasons the wheat scorches off, and the farmer’s labour is wasted. It is proposed now to carry irrigation channels through this and similar country. When that is done there will be no more talk of desert in most parts of Australia. It will be conquered for the use of man just as the American alkali desert is being conquered. Leaving the mallee, the train comes in time to Ballarat, which used to be the great centre of the gold-mining industry. Round here gold was discovered in great lumps lying on the ground or just below the roots of the grass. People rushed from all parts of the world to pick up fortunes when this was heard of. The road from Melbourne was covered with waggons, with horsemen, with diggers Life on the Australian goldfields, though wild, was not unruly. There was never any lynch law, never any “free shooting,” as on the American goldfields. Public order was generally respected, though there were at first no police. The miners, however, kept up Vigilance Committees, the main purpose of which was to check thefts. Anyone proved guilty of theft, or even seriously suspected of pilfering, was simply ordered out of the camp. The Chinese were very early in getting to know of the goldfields in Australia, and rushed there in great numbers. They were not welcomed, and there The objection that the Australians have to the Chinamen and to other coloured races is that they do not wish to have in the country any people with whom the white race cannot intermarry, and they wish all people in Australia to be equal in the eyes of the law and in social consideration. As you travel through Australia, you will probably learn to recognize the wisdom of this, and you will get to like the Australian social idea, which is to carry right through all relations of life the same discipline as governs a good school, giving respect to those who are most worthy of it, by conduct and by capacity, and not by riches or birth. We have stayed long enough at Ballarat. Sharks are quite the most dangerous foes of man in Australia. There have been some heroic incidents arising from attacks by sharks on human beings. An instance: On a New South Wales beach two brothers were bathing, and they had gone outside of the broken surf water. One was attacked by a shark. The other went to his rescue, and actually beat the great fish off, though he lost his arm in doing so. As a rule, however, the shark kills with one bite, attacking Children on the Australian coast are very fond of the water. They learn to swim almost as soon as they can walk. Through exposure to the sun whilst bathing their skin gets a coppery colour, and except for their Anglo-Saxon eyes you would imagine many Australian youngsters to be Arabs. The beaches of Melbourne are not its only attractions. The city itself is a very handsome one, and its great parks are planted with fine English trees. You will see as good oaks and elms and beeches in Fitzroy Gardens, Melbourne, as in any of the parks of old England. Melbourne, too, at present, is the political capital of Australia, and here meet the Australian Parliament. Every young citizen of the Empire should know something of the Commonwealth of Australia and its political institutions, because, as the idea of Empire grows, it is recognized that all people of British race, whether Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders, or South Africans, or residents of the Mother Country, should know the whole Empire. COLLINS STREET, MELBOURNE. PAGE 22. After Australia began to prosper it was found that the continent was too big to be governed by one Parliament in Sydney, so it split up into States, each with a constitution and government of its own. These States were New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, West Australia, and Tasmania. It was soon seen that a mistake had So soon as this was recognized, patriotic men set themselves to put things right, and the result was a Federation of the States, which is called the Commonwealth of Australia. The different States are left to manage for themselves their local affairs, but the big Australian affairs are managed by the Commonwealth Parliament, which at present meets in Melbourne, but one day will meet in a new In this railway trip across the continent you are being introduced to all the main features of Australian life, so that you will have some solid knowledge of the conditions of the country, and can, later on, in chapters which will follow, learn of the Bush, the natives, the birds and beasts and flowers, the games of Australia. Leaving Melbourne, a fast and luxurious train takes you through the farming districts of Victoria, past many smiling towns, growing rich from the industry of men who graze cattle, grow wheat and oats and barley, make butter, or For many, many miles now the train will run through flat, grassed country, on which great flocks of sheep graze. This is the Riverina district, the most notable sheep land in the world. From here, and from similar plains running all along the western and northern borders of New South Wales, comes the fine merino wool, which is necessary for first-class cloth-making. The story of merino wool is one of the romances of modern industry. Before the days of Australia, Spain was looked upon as the only country in the world which could produce fine wool. Spain was not willing that British looms should have any advantage of her production, and the British woollen manufacturing industry, confined This merino wool is purely a product of Australian cleverness in sheep-breeding. The sheep imported have been improved upon again and again, quality and quantity of coat being both considered, until to-day the Australian sheep is the greatest triumph of modern science as applied to the culture of animals, more wonderful and more useful than the thoroughbred race-horse. It is only on the hot plains that the merino sheep flourishes to perfection. If he is brought to cold hill-country in Australia his coat at once begins to coarsen, and his wool is therefore not so good. As you pass the sheep-runs in the train you will probably notice that they are divided into paddocks by fine-mesh wire-netting. That is to keep the rabbits out. The rabbit is accounted rather a desirable little creature in Great Britain. A rabbit-warren on an estate is a source of good sport and good food, and the complaint is sometimes of too few rabbits rather than too many. A boy may keep rabbits as pets with some enjoyment and some profit. In Australia rabbits were first introduced by an The campaign against the rabbit in Australia has had all the excitement and much of the misery of a great war. The march inland of the rabbit was like that of a devastating army. Smiling prosperity was turned into black ruin. Where there had been green pastures and bleating sheep there was a bare and dusty plain and starving stock. At first wholesale poisoning was tried as a remedy for the rabbit plague. It inflicted a check, but had the evil of killing off many of the native birds and animals. There was an idea once of trying to spread But let us tear ourselves away from Sydney, and go on to Brisbane, passing on the way through Kurringai Chase, one of the great National Parks of New South Wales; along the fertile Hawkesbury and Hunter valleys, which grow Indian corn and lucerne, and oranges and melons, and men who are mostly over six feet high; up the New England Mountains, through a country which owes its name to the fact that the high elevation gives it a climate somewhat like that of England; then into Queensland along the rich Darling Down studded with wheat-farms, dairy-farms, and cattle-ranches; and finally to Brisbane, a prospering semi-tropical town which is the capital of the Northern State of Queensland. At Brisbane you will be able to buy fine pineapples for a penny each, and that alone should endear it to your heart. Thus you will have seen a good deal of the Australia of to-day. You might have followed other routes. Coming via Canada, you would reach Brisbane first. Taking a “British India” boat you would have come down the north coast of Queensland and seen something of its wonderful tropical vegetation, its sugar-fields, banana and coffee plantations, This tropical part of Australia really calls for a long book of its own. But as it is hardly the Australia of to-day, though it may be the Australia of the future, we must hurry through its great forests and its rich plains. There are wild buffalo to be found on these plains, and in the rivers that flow through them crocodiles lurk. The crocodile is a very cunning creature. It rests near the surface of the water like a half-submerged log waiting for a horse or an ox or a man to come into the water. Then a rush and a meal. If, instead of coming along the north, you had travelled via South Africa you might have landed first at Hobart and seen the charms of dear little Tasmania, a land of apple-orchards and hop-gardens, looking like the best parts of Kent. But you have been introduced to a good deal of Australia and heard much of its industries and its history. It is time now to talk of savages, and birds, and beasts, and games, and the like. |