For nearly two thousand years the existence of a great Southland, in the ocean of the southern hemisphere, corresponding to the land mass of the Old World in the northern, was a matter of doubt and dispute among geographers. In the sixteenth century, this land begins to appear vaguely on globes and charts; possibly the information was due to the Malays and Arabs, who were skilful sailors and made long voyages in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. It has been thought that the Portuguese, approaching the Malay region from the west, while the Spaniards came from the east, may have been acquainted with the northern coast of the new continent; since they certainly had some knowledge of the northern coast of New Guinea early in the sixteenth century. But our first definite information may be said to date from the beginning of the seventeenth century, when a Spanish exploring expedition, under de Quiros and de Torres, sailed across the Pacific and discovered the New Hebrides group. One of the islands they named la Australia del Espiritu Santo, under the idea that it formed part of the great southern mainland. De Quiros then sailed back to Mexico, but Torres continued his voyage northwestward through the straits which still bear his name, and so to the Spanish Possessions in the Philippines.

But the day of Spain as a sea power was passing away, and it was to the Dutch traders that the western world owed its first real acquaintance with Australia. The early discoveries were often accidental and did not lead to settlement or regular intercourse with the natives. This was due partly to the backward state of the science of navigation, partly to the fact that the voyagers on long expeditions usually lost from half to three-quarters of their crews from disease. The Dutch had the advantage of a local base, as they were already firmly established in the East Indian Islands; so that Australia was really discovered from the Indies.

Trade, not exploration, was the main motive of the Dutch. So, in the early part of the seventeenth century, trading ships were dispatched from Batavia by the Dutch East-India Company to explore the north and west coasts of Australia.

We find all along these coasts the names of the ships still surviving, as in Arnhem Land and Cape Leuwin; those of the captains, as in Dirk Hartog Island, Houtmans Abrolhos, Edels Land and Nuyts Land; while the Gulf of Carpentaria is a memorial to Peter Carpenter, the then Governor of the great trading company.

The most important voyage of all was that of Abel 1 Tasman, in 1642. He started from Mauritius, to discover a passage south of the Australian continent; and after landing in Van Diemen’s Land, now Tasmania, he sailed across the Tasman Sea and up the west coast of New Zealand, and so back to Batavia by way of Tonga and the Fiji islands and the north coast of New Guinea. He left behind him another name, New Holland, for the whole continent.

These names throughout Australasia bear witness to the skill and energy of the Dutch navigators; but they came only as traders, and the west coast of Australia, which they knew best, had little to attract them to permanent settlement. Sand and grass, hostile natives, and dangerous reefs marked by a series of shipwrecks sum up their impression of the new land. Here are 2,3 two views of the coast; it does not seem attractive for sailors. We can quite understand why they made no effort to open up a trade like that of the East Indies, especially as they missed the east coast, the most promising region for European settlement. Here are two charts showing our knowledge of Australia, the first soon after Tasman’s voyage, the second nearly a century later. 4,5

The discovery of the east coast was to come more than a century later; it was made by an Englishman, at a time when England was looking for new outlets, both for trade and settlement, as an offset to her losses in the continent of North America. It is true that Dampier visited the west coast towards the end of the seventeenth century, and wrote an account of the animals, natives, and plants; but he does not seem to have been much more favourably impressed than the Dutch, and nothing came of his visit.

But in the eighteenth century England and France were the great rivals in colonisation, and voyages of discovery and plans of annexation became the order of the day. It was a revival, in a less forcible though more scientific form, of the old rivalry with Spain and Portugal in the sixteenth century. State influence was behind the explorers, as it had been in the days of Drake and his freebooters. Captain Cook sailed in a ship belonging to the Royal Navy, and not in a trader. In our own country his memory is still kept green in the little port of Whitby where he served his apprenticeship to the sea, and where the ships were built in which he made his great voyages of discovery; in the Antipodes it is for ever associated with the beginnings of a great and growing Empire. Here we 6,7 see his statue in Sydney, and here is a picture of his ship, the Endeavour, approaching New Zealand.

Cook came westward, across the Pacific, with an expedition in 1769, to observe the Transit of Venus at Tahiti, and then sailed south-west to New Zealand. 8 He sighted land at Poverty Bay and sailed south as far as Cape Turnagain; then he went right round the North Island and through Cook Strait, until the Cape was again sighted, scattering English names and charting the coast as he passed. Next he circumnavigated the South Island, steering outside Stewart Island, which he imagined to be a peninsula; and so to Cape Farewell, in the north-west corner of South Island. He had obtained a fairly accurate idea of the nature of the coast, and had proved that New Zealand was not connected with the supposed Antarctic continent.

From Cape Farewell he struck westward, and sighted the mainland of Australia at Point Hicks, on April 19th, 1770, but failed to discover Bass Strait. From Point Hicks Cook sailed along the whole of the east coast to Cape York, giving to the bays and capes as he passed them the names of his crew, of British admirals, officials and politicians of all kinds at home. At various landing places he came into collision with the aborigines, and at Endeavour River he stayed for two months to repair his vessel which had been damaged through striking on the rocks. Finally, before sailing westward through Torres Strait, he landed on Possession Island and formally claimed the whole region discovered for the British Crown.

When, in 1798, Flinders and Bass proved that Van Diemen’s Land was an island, the rough work of discovery was complete. Australia, New Zealand and many of the smaller islands were known and charted, and the discoveries of the Spaniards and Dutch were linked up, by the aid of a great deal of miscellaneous exploration carried out by the French navigators who followed us in the South of Australia, in New Zealand, and in the islands of the Pacific.

The navigators, French and English, were in the habit of formally annexing the country wherever they landed; but annexation of this kind was of little value without effective occupation. This was to come later, during the course of the next half century. From 1800 onwards, we may say that the different parts of this vast region begin to have a separate and individual history and development, though behind all are the conditions common to most of the area, conditions which distinguish it sharply from the rest of the world even to-day, in spite of minor differences between its separate parts. There is ample room for variation, since the continent of Australia is about three-quarters the size of Europe, or seven times the area of Germany and France together; and it includes nearly every type of temperate and tropical climate.

Whether we look at the animals, plants, or aborigines of Australia, we are at once struck with the fact that they belong to an entirely different order of life from that which we find in the other great continents. The whole region seems, from a very early age, to have been cut off effectively from the rest of the world, and to have developed along lines peculiar to itself; though since the advent of the white man we have the artificial introduction of European and other plants and animals, which bid fair in many cases to oust the native products, just as the white man has displaced the original inhabitants.

The first animal which we naturally think of in connexion with Australia is the kangaroo. His family 9 is large and varied, from the giant standing six feet high, and dangerous to attack, to the dwarf measured 10 by a few inches. He is a creature of the wide open plains, living on grass, though in Queensland and New Guinea are to be found some which climb the tall gum trees and feed on their shoots. An ancestor of the present kangaroo, whose remains have been discovered, was a formidable monster standing twelve feet high.

The kangaroo is merely the best known representative of a very large group, the marsupials or pouched animals. Closely allied to the kangaroo is the wombat, a clumsy badger-like animal which feeds on leaves and burrows in the ground; he is quite harmless, though, like the kangaroo, he had a huge ancestor who seems to have been as large as a rhinoceros. The bandicoots, ratlike burrowing animals, are his cousins many times removed.

Next we have a group which looks very different but is really closely allied to the kangaroo: the phalangers, or opossums, as they are commonly called. The 11 name is adopted from America but is applied in Australia to the wrong group, as we shall see later. Nothing is more misleading than the names given by white settlers, ignorant of botany or biology, to native plants or animals, generally on the ground of some fancied and superficial resemblance. The so-called opossums are found all over Australia and New Guinea and in many of the islands of the Pacific; but owing to the value of their fur they are becoming scarce in many districts. They live in trees, and some of the family have their legs connected by a membrane, so that they can glide from one branch to another. Hence the name flying squirrel; though they do not fly and have no connexion with the squirrel which we know. Here is another of the same group, the koala, or native bear; though he again has nothing to do with bears. He is a sleepy-looking 12 animal, with no tail, and is not given to leaping or gliding; though his claws are useful for 13 climbing the gum trees in which he lives. He is quite harmless, and a child can play with him, as we see here.

Other members of the same great family are far from harmless: among them are the dasyures, or native cats, with dark bodies mostly spotted with white. Some smaller members of this family are called weasels and mice. To this family belongs also the Tasmanian Devil, 14 whose portrait we have here; he is very fierce though small. A larger animal, the size of a retriever, is the so-called Tasmanian wolf; he is carnivorous, while most 15 of the marsupials are vegetarian. It is rather doubtful whether he should be classed with the rest or go by himself.

The only existing allies of the marsupials of Australia are to be found in the opossums and some other less known animals of South America; but the opossum of South America resembles less his Australian namesake than the other group, the dasyures. In Europe and Asia the marsupials existed, but only in very remote geological ages, as their remains prove. It has been argued from the existence of the opossum family in America that at some time there must have been a land connexion between Australia and South America, either by way of the islands of the Pacific or by an Antarctic continent. But the isolation of Australia must have been very ancient, since it has given time for the development of the enormous differences which we have seen among the individuals of the same family.

Even these strange animals, old as they are, are not the most primitive to be found in Australia. The ornithorhynchus or duck-billed platypus lives in a 16 burrow by the river; it has teeth when young, but seems to lose these as it grows up. It is said to lay eggs like a reptile, though it is a true mammal. We are not surprised to learn that when the first stuffed specimen of this strange beast reached Europe it was thought to be a fraud, put together to deceive the ignorant and unwary. Another of these egg-laying animals is the echidna, or spiny ant-eater, which has a kind of beak for burrowing and a long sticky tongue to capture its prey. It has sharp spines and rolls itself into a ball like a hedgehog when attacked. In addition to these curious animals there are rats and mice and the dingo, or native dog, of a type more familiar 17 to us. It is thought possible by some that the dingo, being so different from the other native animals, was introduced by man at some very early date.

The typical Australian animals disappear as we travel away through the islands to the north, and the boundary line between Australia and Asia is usually drawn through the strait between Bali and Lombok, and then on between Celebes and Borneo; though it is much disputed whether Celebes belongs to the one region or the other. The division is only a narrow water strait, and we can understand that Asiatic birds would have no difficulty in crossing. On the other hand, as there is no great land mass to the south, there are no crowds of seasonal migrants from cooler regions, such as we find in the warmer countries of the northern hemisphere; so that the existing Australian birds are for the most part allied to the bright-coloured 18 inhabitants of the tropics to the north. Some are peculiar to the region, such as the lyre birds with their 19 wonderful tails, the emu, and the brush birds which bury their eggs in a mound of earth, leaving them to be hatched by the heat of the sun. Other birds, as the honey-eaters, though common in Australia, are found also in the neighbouring islands of the Pacific. Unfortunately, not content with the flowers of the 20 gum trees, these birds now attack the fruit in the orchards and are becoming a nuisance in some districts. Finally we have the kukuburra or laughing-jackass, 21 one of the most popular and best known of all Australian birds. It belongs to the kingfisher tribe and is said to be a great destroyer of small snakes. Nor must 22 we forget the black swan, one of the most striking and beautiful of all, and still to be found in large numbers in the lakes of Gippsland and in West Australia.

Then we have lizards, snakes, and strange fish of all kinds, some peculiar to Australia, others, like the animals, allied to species found in Asia or South America. All the evidence afforded by the animal life of the continent points to a very remote connexion with the other continents, followed by a very long period of isolation during which the families of animals developed wide differences among themselves, together with special peculiarities suited to the conditions in which they lived.

Now let us turn for a moment from the animal to the plant life of Australia. In the tropical parts of Queensland there are many plants which belong to the Malayan region as a whole; this we might expect. We may see palms growing even at Brisbane; while 23 further north they form a dense forest, thoroughly tropical in appearance, with its creepers and undergrowth, as we see in these two pictures. But further 24 south we meet more species peculiar to Australia, in the vegetable no less than in the animal world. 25 The typical Australian plants are those specially adapted to resist hot sunshine with drought, and often sudden changes of temperature. All over the continent the gum trees give a special mark to the landscape 26 of the forest. The leaves hang vertically, so as not to give a large exposure of surface to the hot sun, and are collected in dense clusters for the same purpose of protection; so that we miss much of the spreading shade of our English trees. The leaves, too, are alike on both sides, and the colour is more uniform than in our own trees, nor do they change colour and fall in autumn, but decay gradually on the stalk. The bark of many of the gums hangs in strips, thus spoiling the appearance of the huge trunk, for huge it is, rising to four hundred feet in some species. Owing to the character of the foliage the forests are more open than our own, except in the wetter parts where there is a dense undergrowth of fern and creeper. These districts are always near the coast. As we travel away from the coast the forest thins out, except along the watercourses, and becomes 27 smaller and more stunted. In place of trees with leaves we find thorny scrub of various kinds, such as the 28 mulga, whose leaves are replaced by woody spikes still more resistant to drought. Finally we reach the salt-bush 29 and spinifex and wiry grasses of the desert interior. Often there is little but bare rock as in the 30 pictures before us. The watercourses themselves may dry up in the hot season, leaving a desolate expanse 31 of sand and stones, but the line of trees still marks the presence of moisture below. 32

The huge gum trees are, as a rule, the main feature in the forest landscape, but this is varied by curiosities like the grass tree and the bottle tree; while in the moister regions, as in the forests of Gippsland, we find 33 beautiful tree ferns of every kind. Here are specimens of grass trees and gums. Everywhere we 34 find the acacia and the wattle with its sweet scent, the banksia shooting up into great trees, and the 35 beautiful waratah; everywhere, too, where the rainfall is sufficient, flowers of the same order as those with which we are familiar in Europe grow in great profusion.

So we see that there is great variety of vegetation in Australia, though the only native plants of much use to man are the gum trees, which we value for their dense hard woods. All else that is of value, both among plants and animals, has been introduced by the settlers, and many of the native types seem doomed to extinction.

We may now be able to understand why this country of strange plants and animals had no attraction for the Dutch trader, especially in the drier west; in fact, it could have no trade until it had been settled by Europeans bringing with them European crops and animals. In India and Malaya there was already a basis for trade in some of the natural products of the region; while the natives were sufficiently advanced in civilisation to make commercial intercourse possible. It was far otherwise in Australia. The aborigines, as we found them, were as primitive as the plants and animals. They are not black, but a dark-brown people, and their hair is waved and silky, not curly like that of the negro. They are different also from the negro in the shape and build of the head and face. There are various theories as to their origin, but the nearest correspondence seems to be in some of the ancient hill tribes of India and the Veddas of Ceylon. At any rate they are quite different from the Malays, and equally also from the now extinct Tasmanians. The Tasmanians had woolly hair, and perhaps represented the remnants of an earlier and even less developed race than the invaders from the north.

The native Australian, as the first European discoverers found him, was not an attractive being. He was looked on as little better than a wild beast and treated as such. This was partly due to ignorance of his language and customs. His mode of life was fitted by long adaptation to the peculiar conditions of his surroundings. He had developed no agriculture in his new home; not without reason, if we think of the agricultural possibilities of the country in the hands of a rude and backward people. He was equally without any of the useful animals, and had no means of procuring them. So he was reduced to the nomad life and to the utilisation of the wild roots and plants of the country and such small game as he could kill with his rude weapons. He was necessarily a hunter, with a temporary shelter for his home, often an overhanging 36 rock as in this picture; and civilisation does not grow up in such conditions. Here we see some natives 37 fishing, and here again are some armed men scouting in the bush. 38

The hostility of the native to the European colonists often arose from their interference with his natural food supply, or to their careless ignorance of his semi-religious ideas or customs, such as the tabu.

His only possible clothes were the skins of animals, and his weapons and tools all belonged to the Stone Age. The axe, knife, and hammer were in universal use, and long journeys were made to obtain the right kind of stone. This involved a certain amount of intercourse among the tribes. For weapons of offence the native had the club, and the spear tipped with bone or stone; while some tribes used a special spear-thrower. The boomerang was a curved bar of heavy wood, often five or six feet long, which was used for killing or stunning at a short distance. The smaller boomerang, which returns to the thrower, was merely a toy and used in sport; here we see it in use. The stone implements are 39 all similar to those which are dug up in Europe, the relics of the Neolithic Age of man. One of the chief uses of the axe was to cut notches for climbing trees, in search of honey among other things; though they had 40 another method which we see here.

The natives were divided into tribes and sub-tribes, and had some form of tribal government, under headmen. In the south-east of the continent these chiefs had considerable authority and were sometimes treated by us as representing the tribe. Here is one of them, though he does not look imposing in his European dress. 41 They had an elaborate social system and curious marriage customs about which the learned still dispute. They had a strong belief in spirits of various kinds, though it could hardly be called a religion, and a whole series of tales and legends handed down orally, some of them showing considerable power of imagination. 42 They even had the beginnings of some ideas of art and ornament, as we can judge from the crude paintings 43 shown here.

The most interesting of their social customs was the corroboree, a great gathering for feasting and dancing, 44 often combined with some religious or social ceremony. Such meetings represented the only real social intercourse of the people and tribes, except messages by ambassadors who were sacred everywhere.

On the whole, then, they were not so low in the scale of civilisation as the early observers imagined. Even the language, with its many dialects, due to the absence of writing and the nomad life of the people, is elaborate and inflected like those of Europe.

The native life in its original form is decaying, and survives chiefly in the interior and the west. Wherever white occupation has extended, the native is dying out; in fact, in some parts he survives only on the Government 45 Reservations. Here are some of these survivors in Victoria. Here again, in Queensland, we see the 46 native converted to European clothes, though he does not seem very comfortable in them. In this district, 47 as in South and Western Australia, and the Northern Territory, they still exist in considerable number; but it is probable that there are less than 100,000 in all in the Commonwealth. In the census of 1911 an attempt was made to count them, and some 20,000 were found to be living in or near white settlements; only a vague estimate was possible in the case of the tribes of the interior, who still live their nomadic life in the more inaccessible parts of the country. But the area untouched by the white man grows smaller every year, and unless the native can change his character greatly, he is likely to die out in the north and west as in the south-east. In 1911 there were only about two thousand in New South Wales, hardly any in Victoria, and none at all in Tasmania. It was inevitable that the Australian native should be displaced from his hunting grounds. An area about equal to that of the United States could not be left in the sole occupation of a few thousand savages. Now, instead of the savage with his primitive tribal system, we have a white race, purely British in origin, with industry and agriculture of the most advanced type, and an elaborate political constitution of federated States. It is the utilisation, by the white man, of the resources of this vast area which we must study.

We have seen something of the coast of this area; let us now try for a moment to picture it as a whole. The map shows us an oblong block, which lies east and 48 west, on either side of the Tropic of Capricorn. On the north, two peninsulas, Arnhem Land and Cape York, project towards the Equator; between them is the Gulf of Carpentaria, the only deep indentation in the whole continent. On the south, Victoria, continued by Tasmania, stretches into the cool waters of the Southern Ocean. A coastal plain, broad in the north, narrow elsewhere, fringes a plateau which occupies the greater part of the oblong. The plain is narrowest in the east, and the plateau edge most marked, so that it resembles a series of mountain ranges. Rivers, short for the most part, plunge down the seaward edge of the plateau. The only large area of lowland is in the south-east, drained by a group of long rivers and shared by four of the Australian States. Some of these rivers lose themselves in the salt lakes and marshes of the inland basin of Lake Eyre; the rest, gathered up by the Murray, reach the sea at the one point where the plateau rim disappears. The tropical lowlands, the temperate coast-plains, the plateau and the long inward slopes of the Murray system are the main features which we shall find recurring in the geography of the various States.

So far we have dealt only with Australia. New Zealand shows to some extent the peculiarities which mark Australia off from the rest of the world, but on the whole the differences between these two sections of Australasia are more noticeable than the likeness. We might anticipate this, since the dominant fact in the development of the peculiar plant life of Australia is drought; in the case of New Zealand it is moisture. 49 Again, New Zealand has no snakes, and lacks the peculiar animals which we have seen in Australia. In fact, its only native animals are a bat and a rat, the latter perhaps introduced by the Maoris. To compensate for this it has a large group of birds peculiar to itself, including the wingless birds, which may have lost their wings since they had no need for flight from enemies on the ground. The best known of these birds is the kiwi; here we see him in his natural haunts. 50 Again, there is the takahe, which was at one time thought to be extinct; but one or two specimens have been found, and there may be others still existing. Here is one of these stuffed. Finally there is the 51 gigantic moa, which probably existed at the time of Captain Cook’s voyage. Now we can only see its skeleton, 52 but naturalists have attempted to re-construct the whole bird, as we see here. One link New Zealand 53 possesses with a very remote geological past; this is the curious tuatara or three-eyed lizard. He belongs 54 to an extinct group of reptiles which lived in Europe many ages ago and is now only represented in the fossils which we dig up. So we see that in its animal life New Zealand differs from Australia and from the rest of the world; we shall find also a strong contrast between the native races of the two countries in their character and origin, their relations with the white settlers, and their influence on the history and development of the land which they possessed before our arrival.