I
AUSTRALIAN LIFE
IN TOWN &
COUNTRY
B.C. BULEY
*
>. v , -,. ;
r -*
OUR ASIATIC NEIGHBOURS
Indian Life, By Herbert Compton
Japanese Life, By George W. Knox
Chinese Life. By E Bard
Philippine Life, By James A, Le
Roy
Australian Life,
OUR ASIATIC
NEIGHBOURS
AUSTRALIAN LIFE IN TOWN AND
COUNTRY
HYDRAULIC MINING, THE WALLON BORE, MOREE DISTRICT. DEPTH 3695
FEET, FLOW 800,000 GALS., TEMP. 114 F.
Si Si AUSTRALIAN
LIFE IN TOWN
AND COUNTRY
0$
BY E. C. BULKY
ILLUSTRATED
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
Gbe "Knickerbocker press
1905
COPYRIGHT, 1905
BY
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
TTbc fmtcfcerbocfter preaa, flew tforfc
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
COUNTRY AND CLIMATE i
CHAPTER II
SQUATTERS AND STATIONS 14
CHAPTER III
STATION WORK 28
CHAPTER IV
ON A SELECTION 42
CHAPTER V
THE NEVER-NEVER LAND 55
CHAPTER VI
ON THE WALLABY TRACK 69
CHAPTER VII
IN TIME OF DROUGHT 81
V
vi Contents
CHAPTER VIII
PAGE
URBAN AUSTRALIA 95
CHAPTER IX
I/IFE IN THE CITIES I08
CHAPTER X
STATE SOCIALISM AND THE LABOUR PARTY . 122
CHAPTER XI
GOLDEN AUSTRALIA 134
CHAPTER XII
FARM AND FACTORY 145
CHAPTER XIII
THE AUSTRALIAN WOMAN 157
CHAPTER XIV
HOME AND SOCIAL LIFE 169
CHAPTER XV
THE AUSTRALIAN AT PLAY 182
CHAPTER XVI
THE ABORIGINES 195
CHAPTER XVII
A WHITE AUSTRALIA , 208
Contents vii
CHAPTER XVIII
PAGB
EDUCATION, LITERATURE, AND ART . . . 220
CHAPTER XIX
NATIONAL LIFE IN AUSTRALIA . . . .232
CHAPTER XX
THE AUSTRALIAN 245
CHAPTER XXI
INDUSTRIAL PIONEERS 258
CHAPTER XXII
AUSTRALIA'S DESTINY 270
INDEX 283
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
HYDRAULIC MINING, THE WALLON BORE, MOREE
DISTRICT. DEPTH 3695 FEET, FLOW 800,000
GALS., TEMP. 114 F. . . . Frontispiece
HEAD OF FRESHWATER RIVER, NATIONAL PARK 16
MOUNT VICTORIA PASS, NEW SOUTH WALES . 28
(Courtesy of Marselis C. Parsons, Esq., New York.)
STATE NURSERY NEAR CAIRNS .... 46
A MINER'S HUT, L/ITHGOW VALLEY, NEW SOUTH
WALES 54
BROKEN HILL SILVER MINES, NEW SOUTH WALES 64
ROAD SCENE ON THE CAMBERWARRA MOUNTAIN,
SHOALHAVEN DISTRICT 86
(Courtesy of Marselis C. Parsons, Esq., New York.)
SLUICING FOR GOLD AT FRESHWATER . . . 104
CATTLE CROSSING, NEPEAN TOWERS, NEW SOUTH
WALES 120
(Courtesy of Marselis C. Parsons, Esq., New York.)
HANNAN STREET, LOOKING WEST, KALGOORLIC,
IN 1895 140
x Illustrations
PAGE
HANNAN STREET, KALGOORLIC, IN 1905 . .144
VIEW OF A QUEENSLAND SEAPORT TOWN, TOWNS-
VILLE 156
PLANTING SUGAR-CANE, QUEENSLAND . . .170
AT WORK AMONGST THE CANE . . . .182
VIEW OF HARTLEY VALE 202
(Courtesy of Marselis C. Parsons, Esq., New York.)
SCENE AT A WAYSIDE INN, NEW SOUTH WALES 224
AUSTRALIAN LIFE IN TOWN AND
COUNTRY
AUSTRALIAN LIFE
IN TOWN AND COUNTRY
CHAPTER I
COUNTRY AND CUMATE
IT has often been claimed for the British that
they are a successful colonising people, and
this claim has not been advanced without very
sufficient grounds. Those who assign this char-
acteristic to the race imply that it possesses, above
all things, the faculty of adaptability. If the colo-
nising Briton were not able to suit himself readily
to the necessities and the climatic conditions of
his new environment, he would not be a success
as a colonist. It is further characteristic of the
Briton that, until very recently, he has not been
disposed to exhibit any satisfaction in his colonis-
ing feats. His attitude in the past has been that
of a father of a family of young children, who re-
gards each new arrival as a source of additional
expense and responsibility.
2 Australian Life
In the last quarter of the nineteenth century,
however, a new era was inaugurated, when the
importance of the many colonies Great Britain has
planted in America, Africa, and Australasia was
at last recognised. The problems of colonial life
are now engaging the attention of the most
thoughtful of British statesmen and public offi-
cials, and the study of colonial affairs has already
shown that in each of the great British colonies
different circumstances are producing an entirely
separate type of over-sea Briton.
It is well that this fact should be recognised, if
the fabric of Empire now being created is ever to
be made complete. In a new country, events
move with a rapidity bewildering to those born
and brought up under settled and accepted con-
ditions. Ten years served to convert Australia
from a collection of separate provinces into a na-
tion. Not very long ago it was the custom to
write of the Australian as an exiled Briton, who
jealously maintained British customs and tradi-
tions in his new environment, and always spoke
of the British Isles as "home." Observers who
obtained their information concerning Australia
during visits paid to the chief Australian cities,
or while enjoying the delightful hospitality of
some large and prosperous Australian station,
were induced to regard this as an established state
of affairs, rather than an interesting phase in the
development of a new community. They lost
sight of the fact that a native-born race was grow-
Country and Climate 3
ing up, to whom many of the British customs
would be traditions instead of things remembered
with sentimental pleasure, and that to the suc-
ceeding generation even the traditions would be
lost.
For instance, the Englishman born celebrated
Christmas Day in Australia in the good old-fash-
ioned style, with a smoking hot joint, and an
abundance of rich puddings and pies. His Aus-
tralian-born son in many cases maintained the
custom, although fully alive to the absurdity of
such fare at a season when the thermometer stands
at more than one hundred in the shade. The
present-day Australian may often be found spend-
ing his Christmas Day in some shady fern-tree
gully, clad in the easiest of clothes, and with
everything as cool as it is possible to be made.
The Australian climate renders the English
Christmas festivities practicall}' impossible. In
the same way many other customs carried from
Great Britain to Australia by the pioneers of the
new race have been modified by conditions against
which the first-comers struggled, but which their
grandchildren accept as part of their everyday life.
For this reason, any one seeking to make ac-
quaintance with the Australian life of the present
day must bear in mind that it has essentially
changed during the past twenty years, and that
in another quarter of a century it will probably
have advanced yet another stage in its evolution.
The chief factors conducing to this evolution are
4 Australian Life
the nature of the Australian continent itself, its
isolation in the Southern seas, its climate, and the
peculiar conditions under which it was colonised.
It is necessary to conceive of Australia not as
a colony containing a population equal to little
more than one half the number of inhabitants of
the city of London, but as an immense continent,
three million square miles in extent. Compared
to other continents, which have their coast lines
indented by huge gulfs, and which push great
peninsulas out into the ocean, Australia is a sin-
gularly solid piece of land. As a matter of fact, its
coast line is smaller in proportion to its area than
that of any other continent. The physical con-
tour of the continent is remarkable for the same
monotony. Its surface is, broadly speaking, a
graduated system of immense plateaux and plains.
The one striking feature in Australian orography
is a strip of highland running from north to
south along the eastern coast. These highlands,
which separate the coastal plains and valleys from
the immense level interior of the continent, bear
the general name of the Dividing Range. In the
south-eastern corner of Australia, this range bends
westward, traversing the whole state of Victoria
and ending near the eastern border of South Aus-
tralia. It is in the south-eastern corner that the
Dividing Range attains its greatest altitude, sev-
eral peaks of the Australian Alps being over seven
thousand feet in height.
The eastern portion of Australia consists, then,
Country and Climate 5
first, of a coastal strip, backed by a mountain
range, beyond which a plateau gradually declines
to the low-lying central plains. The western di-
vision of Australia, a large part of which is still
practically unknown country, may also be de-
scribed as a low plateau, broken here and there by
well-marked mountain ranges of no great height.
Considerable prominence has been given to the
position and character of the Dividing Range, be-
cause of its influence upon the climate of Australia.
The chief rain-bearing winds, blowing from the
eastward and meeting these highlands, provide
trie coastal districts with a plentiful rainfall. Be-
yond them the rainfall is scanty and irregular,
growing less in proportion to the distance from
the eastern coast. Hence the interior of Australia
suffers from dryness. The average rainfall of
more than half the continent is less than twenty
inches a year, and for the greater part of this area
an annual rainfall of ten inches and under is cus-
tomary in ordinary seasons. As the evaporation
caused by the sun's heat is very great in Central
Australia, it is obvious that the normal condition
of the soil there must be one of extreme aridity.
The Dividing Range is naturally the main
watershed of the continent. The rivers flowing
to the eastern coast are necessarily short, but some
of them are of considerable volume and depth.
Of those flowing westward, the most important is
the Murray, which enters the sea through a large
shallow lake in South Australia. This river, with
6 Australian Life
its tributaries, the Darling and the Murrumbid-
gee, forms the most considerable waterway of
Australia, opening up part of the interior to river
vessels of shallow draught. Other rivers flowing
westward, such as the Diamantina and the Bar-
coo, lose themselves in the sands of Central Aus-
tralia, or trickle into the salt lakes of the interior.
In the dry season, they can hardly be termed
rivers, being rather a series of water-holes, con-
nected by a dry stream-bed. But when fed by
the tropical rains of a wet season, these rivers dis-
charge immense volumes of water, sometimes
overflowing their banks and flooding large tracts
of country.
When the contrast between coastal Australia
and the interior is considered, the one district
well watered and possessing rivers navigable, al-
though short, while the other is arid and flat, and
lacks rivers communicating with the sea, it is
not surprising to find that the population remains
in the coastal districts. There are less than four
million people in the whole continent, and more
than four-fifths of them reside within a hundred
miles of the coast. The centres of settlement,
dotted around the coast, are necessarily far apart,
for as the country was settled, it was split into a
number of states for the purpose of government.
Each of these states until the Federation, which
began with the present century was concerned
solely with its own affairs, and in each of them
there grew up one centre of population and trade.
Country and Climate 7
These state capitals are all seaport towns, and
jrom them have been constructed railways, ex-
tending throughout the coastal districts, and in
some cases far into the interior. The coastal dis-
tricts are largely agricultural, and contain smaller
towns which are farming centres. The interior
the " back country," as it is sometimes called is
given up to grazing. The grazing areas, called
"runs" in Australia, vary in size, some of those
in the more remote districts equalling the extent
of one of the smaller English counties.
The Australian, it will be seen, dwells either in
the large state capital, which acts as the sole trade
outlet and inlet to the whole state ; or in the agri-
cultural districts immediately behind the coast ; or
in the back country, given up to grazing. The
Australian of the cities speaks of the rest of his
continent as " the bush." The dwellers in the
agricultural country speak of the district further
inland as the ' ' back country. ' ' Those themselves
in the back country have behind them a land,
partly unknown, and therefore attractive to the
adventurous, which the}' call the ' ' Never- Never
Land."
It has often been declared that the distinctive
characteristic of the bush is its monotony. Flat
or gently undulating land, dotted with trees
nearly all belonging to the same family, and pre-
senting a uniform dark green hue to the eye, ex-
tends for hundreds of miles. The trees are not
so close together as to prevent the grass from
8 Australian Life
flourishing on the plain beneath them, and there
is little or no undergrowth. The best of this
country has been not inaptly compared to the
park land of one of the flatter English counties.
This is a common aspect of the bush, but it is
only one aspect, and the bush has many. There
are Australians to whom the word recalls the
picture of a roaring mountain stream of cold, clear
water. The banks are carpeted knee-deep with
maiden-hair and coral fern, and out of this tender
green rise the velvety brown boles of the tree
ferns, each crowned with its wide circle of broad
fronds. Above the tree ferns trembles the grace-
ful feathery foliage of the sassafras, and higher
than the sassafras grows the myrtle, most shapely
of all Australian trees. From this tangle of
forest and fern, the tall mountain ashes rear their
smooth grey columns, one hundred and fifty feet of
straight timber before the first branch. The air
is sweet with the scent of fragrant meadow plants,
and from the thicket close at hand there comes
the long-drawn note of the whip bird, with its
curious and startling staccato ending. Some-
where in the distance the lyre bird is imitating
all the sounds of the forest, now fluting like a
magpie, and anon warbling like a whole chorus
of wrens. This is the bush in one of its most
gracious aspects.
Fifty miles nearer the coast, the mountain stream
has become a brimming river, winding through
fertile valleys and broad sunlit plains. Its banks
Country and Climate 9
are lined with groves of pleasant wattles, that are
covered in the early spring with a garment of
yellow blossoms, so fragrant that the warm
breezes carry their message to the distant city, and
men there know that winter has now become
spring again. Between the river and the distant
blue hills, the grassy meadows are unbroken by
any tree, save the clumps of lightwoods, with
thick and shining foliage. These cast across the
grass a welcome shadow, in which the sheep and
cattle cluster as the sun grows warm. From the
distance, blue hills beckon invitingly, but viewed
close at hand, they are forbidding and desolate.
The soil is hard and stony, and nourishes only a
coarse, scanty grass, with a few bristling thorny
shrubs here and there. The trees are twisted and
stunted, and their trunks are clad in a rough,
coarse bark that hangs from them in long untidy
strips. There is no pleasant stream to be found
here : one walks for miles only to find the ground
growing harder and stonier, and the undergrowth
scantier and less attractive. A bush fire swept
down this range the summer before last, as the
bare branches of the trees and their blackened
trunks bear witness. Near the trunks there is a
fringe of fresh green foliage, out of which the
skeleton branches protrude most uncompromis-
ingly. It is not cheerful or inviting, but the bush
holds scenes that are sterner still.
There are wastes of sand hummocks, with crest
and hollow as regular as the wave and trough of
io Australian Life
the ocean. Over all these wastes grows nothing
but the stiff spinifex grass, recognised as an unfail-
ing sign of barren land. That country is dreary and
monotonous beyond conception, but not so chilling
as the mysterious dead forests, where the trees
have long ago parted with every sign of leaf or
bark, and stand with white, palsied trunks and
gnarled limbs writhing into all fantastic imagery.
In the daytime, they are gaunt and forbidding,
but seen in the white light of an Australian moon,
when the wailing cry of the curlew is never silent,
they fill the soul with a profound melancholy.
The broad Western plains are more cheerful,
with their clumps of drooping myalls, that glisten
like silver when the wind stirs their leaves. The
grey salt bush that covers the plain is not attrac-
tive to the eye, but it has the merit of being use-
ful. There are other plains, where neither tree,
bush, nor herb covers the nakedness of the red
soil, and where the wind comes heralded by a
cloud of dust that settles on everything, choking
the dry creek-beds, drifting over fences and even
buildings, and smothering the whole world with
its effacing redness. To the Australian, it is all
the bush. The mangrove swamps and dense
tropical forests of the North, the tracts of giant
timber in South-western Australia, the "scrub"
wastes of the interior where nothing can live, all
go to make up the bush .
The occupation of the interior began early in
the nineteenth century, with the arrival of the
Country and Climate n
free settlers. Convict stations had been estab-
lished on the coast, and free men had only been
too glad to escape the convict taint by pushing
across the Dividing Range, where the early ex-
plorers had found passes through the hills to the
good land beyond. The wisdom of Captain Mac-
arthur, who provided the new country with a
breed of sheep bearing the finest wool, was justified
by the reputation gained by Australian merino
wool in the markets of the Motherland. There
was plenty of room for all while the foundations
of the great pastoral industry, Australia's sole re-
source until the middle of the nineteenth century,
were being laid. Then came the discovery of the
gold, which attracted throngs of enterprising and
adventurous men to Australia. In those stirring
times, the coastal cities began to expand: their
harbours were full of shipping, and their streets
were crowded with newcomers. These spread
over the face of the land, passing from one newly
discovered goldfield to another, everywhere form-
ing fresh settlements. When the gold fever
abated, many of them reverted to their original
occupations, while others obtained grants of land
from the Government, and occupied themselves
with farming and pastoral pursuits.
Thus Australia obtained population, but with
the decline of the goldfields came the discovery
that farming did not pay. The farmers suffered
from the want of a large local market, and from
the isolated position of Australia, which at that
12 Australian Life
time rendered the export of farm produce of a
perishable nature almost an impossibility. The
pastoralist, with his wide expanses of grazing
land and inexpensive methods, could pay freights
to the Old World on his wool and tallow and still
flourish. It was not so with the agriculturist,
who found the markets glutted with the perish-
able products of his farm, while wheat-growing
Russia and America possessed advantages of po-
sition which left him unable to compete with
them. In these circumstances, some of the Aus-
tralian States initiated a policy of protective tariffs,
designed to hasten that stage of national develop-
ment when the manufacture of the raw products
of the country should be localised. The immedi-
ate result of this policy was a further accession of
population to the capital cities, where the new
factories were established.
The last phase in Australian development is the
result of the improvement which has taken place
in the arrangement for the transport of perishable
goods in a refrigerated condition. The cold
chamber and the cold-storage depot have turned
the thoughts of Australians to dairying, fruit
growing, and poultry farming, and have created
a new demand for agricultural land.
It is my task to sketch the conditions of Austral-
ian life at this stage in the history of the conti-
nent. I have aready indicated the size and
importance of the Australian capital cities, from
which the visitor to Australia gains the most last-
Country and Climate 13
ing impression of the Antipodes. Those cities
have been frequently described as British cities,
planted in more genial climate and under more
favourable circumstances. There are no essential
differences between the mode of life of a citizen of
Sydney and a citizen of Liverpool, although in
many minor details interesting distinctions may be
observed. But in the bush, a new type of Briton
with distinctive faculties and characteristics has
already been evolved. The men who live on the
land are the typical Australians, and the courage
and endurance with which they face the hardships
and uncertainties of their life provide the brightest
promise for the future of the new nation.
CHAPTER II
SQUATTERS AND STATIONS
THE men who laid the foundations of the pas-
toral industry were trespassers in the eyes of
the law. They wanted the right to run their
stock on large areas of land, transferring them
from place to place as pasturage and water failed.
They could not by any possibility purchase so
much land as they required for this purpose, and
the terms on which they could obtain leasehold
rights were prohibitive. They therefore occupied
the land without possessing any authority to do
so, and thus obtained their name of ' ' squatters. ' '
The importance to the new colony of the wool
they produced preserved them from interference,
and in time, their position was recognised by the
introduction of a system dividing the back coun-
try into " pastoral districts," which might be oc-
cupied on the payment of a reasonable yearly
rental. No fence marked the boundary of the
early squatter's run. The fixing of such a limit
was often a matter of arrangement with the
nearest neighbour, distant a long day's ride on
horseback. Just as often, the squatter was in
Squatters and Stations 15
undisputed possession of a district more than large
enough for his flocks and herds, which were trans-
ferred from one spot to another, wherever abun-
dance of food or water might be found. Bach
flock was in charge of a shepherd, whose duty it
was to keep the sheep within certain limits, and
to guard the lambs from their worst enemy, the
dingo, or wild dog. The shepherd lived the life
of a hermit, probably seeing no human being ex-
cept the man who brought him his stores of tea
and flour from the head station at fixed periods,
and relying for company upon his dogs. There
was no talk of overstocking in those days. In
bad seasons, the stock were moved to new pas-
tures, hitherto untouched, and in good years they
rioted in the superabundant pastures.
Prices for Australian wool ruled high, and the
squatters prospered until the very mention of the
word came to suggest the possession of wealth.
Who has not heard of the wool "kings" of Aus-
tralia ? They had their town mansions standing
in spacious grounds and occupying the most desir-
able situations in the best suburbs of Sydney and
Melbourne. With princely disregard of cost,
they erected dwellings on their runs, designed to
afford their occupiers the maximum of comfort
and to neutralise the more unpleasant conditions of
the Australian climate. They kept racing studs,
drove four-in-hand drags, and entertained chance
visitors with a liberality so open-handed that
Australian hospitality obtained a well-deserved
1 6 Australian Life
reputation in the Old World. There is a true
story told of a young squatter who, to provide
for the comfort of his guests in hot weather, had
two tons of ice packed in new blankets and
despatched from Sydney. On its arrival at the
railway terminus, the ice was transferred to a
teamster's waggon, and a journey of two hundred
miles under a hot sun so reduced its bulk that
only a few small blocks reached their destination;
yet with this return for his very expensive experi-
ment, the squatter professed himself more than
satisfied.
In time, the demand for pastoral holdings
caused boundaries to be strictly defined, and runs
had to be fenced. The increase of his flocks and
the limitation of his runs caused the squatter to
feel the pressure of those dry seasons when stock
dies from want of food and water. The throwing
open of the pastoral districts to the "selector"
struck another blow at the prosperity of the
squatter, as we shall presently see. Then came
the plague of rabbits, devouring the grass, and
leading to legislation which involved the pas-
toralist in heavy expense for rabbit extermination.
Squatting was no longer a sure road to fortune,
but a speculative undertaking, the squatter being
dependent upon the uncertain rainfall and the
fickle climate for his profits. Such is the position
of some of the pastoralists at the present time.
Many of the descendants of the squatting pio-
neers, it is true, have inherited holdings in
HEAD OF FRESHWATER RIVER, NATIONAL PARK.
Squatters and Stations 17
favoured localities where the rainfall is regular
and the pasturage abundant. lyong experience
has shown how these stations can be managed to
the best advantage, and, in many cases, they
yield their owners large incomes even in the worst
seasons.
On one of these stations, pastoral life may be
seen at its best, and I propose to describe a typi-
cal one, situated in the Riverina district of New
South Wales. The "run" consists of a triangle
of land enclosed by two streams, the confluence
of which on their way to the river Darling forms
the apex of a triangle. The third boundary, the
base of the triangle, is a well-made public road.
The run itself is fenced off from the road by a
stout three-railed fence, and is divided into pad-
docks by similar fences, or lighter ones made of
wire stretched through posts. A white gate on
the boundary fence marks the drive leading from
the public road through the run, and a similar
gate at each subdivisional fence points its course
to the homestead. The homestead itself is a sub-
stantial house of stone, built after the fashion of a
bungalow, with only one story, and a broad ve-
randa running around three sides of it. Grape-
vines and passion-flower shade the veranda, and
the front of the house looks over a spacious gar-
den and orchard, with a thick hedge of quince
trees. On the veranda are easy-chairs and
lounges, and a table strewn with the latest Eng-
lish magazines as well as the admirable weekly
1 8 Australian Life
papers that are a feature of Australian journalism.
The windows run down to the floor ; the doorway
is wide and inviting, and opens to a spacious cool-
tiled hall. On one side is a drawing-room, with
grand piano, polished floor, and Persian rugs ;
water-colours are on the walls and large mirrors,
all in the best of modern taste. On the other side
is a dining-room, large and handsomely furnished,
and behind it a cheerful morning-room, with the
newest novels lining the book-shelf and the latest
music on the upright piano. Bedrooms, cool and
airy, open on to the wide veranda, but to see the
kitchen and laundry, it is necessary to pass to a
group of detached buildings in the rear. Here,
too, are the quarters occupied by the bachelors, of
whom more will presently be told, and the school-
room, which also serves as concert-hall and chapel.
One side of the veranda overlooks a large lake
of fresh water, formed by damming the course of
one of the boundary streams. Flocks of wild
swan and ducks feed in it undisturbed, and even
shyer water fowl, such as the ibis and pelican,
may often be observed upon it. From this lake,
an ingeniously contrived windmill raises water to
the level of an elevated platform, on which, pro-
tected by a roof of thick wooden shingles, are a
number of iron tanks. From this reservoir, pipes
conduct the water throughout the house and
garden. From the other side of the house may
be seen the wool-shed, a long building of wood
with a galvanised- iron roof. Except at shearing
Squatters and Stations 19
time, the shed is empty and silent. At one end
are the great wool press and the bins of the wool-
classers, while at the shearing-board that runs
along both sides of the shed may be inspected the
apparatus of the sheep-shearing machine, the in-
vention of Lord Wesley's brother.
A ride around the run reveals signs of careful
management everywhere. Each paddock con-
tains its flocks of carefully graded sheep : in one
are wethers of a certain age, and in another ewes.
The stud flock occupies a domain of its own, and
there is a special paddock for the horses and an-
other for the cows. On the flats near the creek,
a heavy crop of the forage plant Alfalfa is being
grown under irrigation. It will presently be cut
and converted into ensilage as a precaution
against drought.
The permanent staff attached to the station
seems disproportionately small when compared to
its size and the numbers of the flocks it supports.
The owner takes an active interest in his property
and spends a considerable portion of each year
there, bringing his life-long experience to bear
upon the more important details of management.
Should he be absent in town, his place is taken by
one of his sons, who has possibly spent his whole
life on the station, with the exception of a year or
two at a public school in Sydney or Melbourne,
which is held to complete the education begun by
a tutor. The administration of the station is in
the hands of an experienced manager, who, with
20 Australian Life
his wife and family, lives in a pleasant cottage
near the homestead. Under his supervision are
the bachelors, or jackaroos, as they are usually
called in the language of the bush. The jackaroos
on such a station as I am describing are often
young men of education and some position, who,
having chosen the pastoral life as a career, are
gaining the necessary experience. Some of them
are "new chums," born and brought up in Great
Britain, and now making their first acquaintance
with Australian manners and customs. The
jackaroo is the victim of all the practical jokes,
and the central figure in many of the yarns told
in the men's quarters. One of the best-known
jackaroo stories relates to the experiences of two
fresh-complexioned new chums, newly arrived
at an Australian sheep-run with a whole cart-load
of luggage, including a complete armoury of
weapons. They had been much disappointed at
the scarcity of game, both furred and feathered,
and had begun to despair of finding anything to
shoot. Their hopes, however, were revived by a
conversation overheard between a bearded horse-
man and the station cook, as follows :
Cook: "Hullo!"
The Bearded One : "Hullo ! "
Cook : "Anything fresh ? "
The Bearded One: "Nothin' much." (A
paused) "I just saw that (adjective} jackaroo
down by the water-hole again. ' ' (Another paused)
"Well, so long!"
Squatters and Stations 21
Cook: ' 'So long!"
But the new chums had heard enough. They
hastily put their guns together, and crept down
to the water-hole, where they found a young man
of their own type, though not quite so fresh as to
the complexion, sitting on a log holding his head
in his hands, and groaning. The sportsmen
determined to question him.
"Excuse me," said the spokesman, "have you
seen anything of a jackaroo about here ? "
* ' What the blazes has that got to do with you ? ' '
demanded the man on the log, glaring at them.
"Oh, nothing, only we are trying to get a shot
at it."
The jackaroo obtains practical experience of
station life by performing all the multifarious and
unpleasant tasks that come to hand. He learns
to ride, if he has not previously acquired that ac-
complishment, and to work cheerfully all day
under a broiling Australian sun. Under a good
manager, he rapidly obtains a mastery of all the
details connected with the management of flocks,
and, in time, he may himself become manager of
a station, or, if he can control the necessary
capital, may stock a run on his own account.
On a run divided into paddocks after the fash-
ion described above, no shepherds are required,
but there will be one or two boundary riders,
whose business it is to see that there are no gaps
in the fences. Each day the boundary rider visits
a different part of the run, and reports to the
22 Australian Life
manager upon the state of the fences, the amount
of water in the water-holes, and the general con-
dition of that portion of the run. Every station
has its cook, generally a man, and sometimes a
Chinaman. In his kitchen is a large brick oven
for the baking of bread and "brownie," the latter
a station delicacy made by mixing brown sugar
and currants with the bread dough. A large
colonial oven, with wood fire on top and beneath
it, is used for roasting, and no station kitchen is
complete without a mighty frying-pan, for the
preparation of the inevitable fried chops which
are the staple station fare.
Another important person on the station is the
storekeeper, who is usually bookkeeper as well.
The station store is an interesting place, contain-
ing a little of everything, from spare parts of the
sheep- shearing machinery and fencing wire down
to slop-made clothes and tobacco. The store
transactions are sometimes complicated, for they
include the issue of clothing and tobacco to the
hands as part of the wages earned, and also the
issue of flour or tea, according to the bush system
which is explained elsewhere, to the swagmen
who may call. The storekeeper keeps the wages
book, issues groceries and other supplies to the
cook, and exercises a general supervision over the
domestic expenditure. There are usually a few
1 ' station hands ' ' in permanent employment, in ad-
dition to those already enumerated, but not very
many. It is estimated that on a well-managed
Squatters and Stations 23
station one man is employed for every seventy-
five hundred sheep, an estimate which shows
that the pastoral industry provides permanent
work for a very small number of men proportion-
ately to its importance.
The occasional work about a station, such as
the erection of fencing or the digging of water-
tanks, is usually let by contract. The men who
do this work have their own camp, and provide
for themselves without disturbing the economy of
the station, although they may draw stores (such
as groceries, meats, and other supplies) against
the money they earn. For the busy seasons on a
station, such as shearing time, numerous extra
hands are employed, on a system that will pre-
sently be explained.
There are many stations where no sheep are
pastured at all, the whole run being given up to
cattle. The largest of these cattle-runs are to be
found in northern Queensland, where it is no un-
common thing to find a run five thousand square
miles in extent. Here is bred the long-horned
Australian bullock, sullen and dangerous, a wild
beast rather than a domestic animal. A very
different kind of station is this. The homestead
is a wooden building, with a roof of galvanised
iron, very hot in the noonday sun, but cooling
rapidly when evening comes. It stands on a
number of tall piles, and between each pile and
the house is a projecting tin-plate, beyond which
the destructive white ant is unable to climb. Here
24 Australian Life
live the manager and his wife, fifty miles away
from the next station and from any white man,
except the two or three white stockmen employed
on the run. They are assisted in their work by
half a score of blacks, two or three of them
"gins," who can ride or wield a stock whip as
well as their dusky lords. A gin helps the man-
ager's wife with the domestic work, and the whole
company lives on beef and bread from one year's
end to the other. There is no wool-shed here,
only a stock-yard of solid timbers, with a brand-
ing-yard. The cattle roam unchecked, collecting
in mobs by a process of natural selection, and
finding their own food and water. The stockmen
know where each mob can be found for the peri-
odical musterings, when the animals belonging to
other runs, known by the brands they bear, are
drafted out, and the "clean skins" unbranded
stock are made to feel the smart of the branding
iron. Young bullocks are culled from the mob
and sent away to the eastern coasts or down
south, to be fattened for market, and surplus
stock is driven off to the boiling-down works,
where the beasts are converted into tallow and
beef-extract. The life of the cattle-man is one
long round of hardship and danger. No man,
not even those brought up to the life, can account
for the lunatic impulses to which a mob of bul-
locks is subject. Among stockmen, the " looni-
ness " of the bullocks is proverbial, and in spite of
expert horsemanship and the marvellous clever-
Squatters and Stations 25
ness of their stock-horses, horse and man some-
times go down before the mad rush of some beast
seized with a sudden and unaccountable fury.
When camped with cattle at night-time, the men
have to be prepared for sudden stampedes, which
the stockmen account for by stating that bullocks
see ghosts.
The stockman himself, in his characteristic
dress of loose shirt, tight riding-breeches, and
cabbage-tree hat, with the long stock whip coiled
round his shoulders, is one of the most picturesque
figures of the Australian bush. His usefulness is
measured by his horsemanship and his fearless-
ness among cattle, for unless he possesses both
these attributes in the highest degree, his value
as a cattle-man is practically nil.
Station life, however, is not one long round of
work and sleep. On a sheep-station such as I
have described, a day's hard work in the saddle
ends with a refreshing shower bath and a pleasant
family dinner. Sometimes a neighbour drops in,
and after dinner the men smoke on the cool, broad
veranda in the pleasant dusk. The wind sighs
through the big she-oaks, and from the belt of
tall gum trees by the creeks comes the doleful
note of the mopoke. Great flying-foxes flap
silently down to the peach trees in the orchard,
and tiny bats wheel and turn in the clear air,
hawking the plentiful insects. One by one the
stars come out, until the violet sky blazes with
them. Across the lake the curlews are wailing, but
26 Australian Life
in the drawing-room the lamps are lighted, and
the cheerful sound of the piano invites an adjourn-
ment. For an hour or two, possibilities of drought
or flood are forgotten, and but for the bronzed
faces of the men it would be easy to imagine one's
self in a city drawing-room. The evening ends
at an early hour, however, for work starts at day-
break upon an Australian station.
On Sunday, Church service takes place in the
schoolroom, when the owner or his representative
reads the prayers, and possibly a sermon from a
volume of some popular divine. When the bishop
or his representative visits the station, the wool-
shed is converted into a church, and visitors flock
in from every side. Neighbouring selectors bring
in their children for baptism, and the gathering
is at once a representative and a friendly one.
There are gay seasons on a station, too, when
the town mansion is deserted, and the whole
family, with town visitors as well, gathers in the
homestead. A round of dances and picnics is
arranged, and a race meeting, with a race ball to
follow.
The race meeting is quite unlike anything of its
kind in the cities, for it is really a picnic on a
grand scale, with the addition of horse-racing.
The attendance of book-makers is discouraged as
far as possible, and a large proportion of the races
are confined to amateur riders. Among the horses
taking part in the sport may be seen some mag-
nificent specimens of the thoroughbred, but a con-
Squatters and Stations 27
dition is attached to many at the races, excluding
stable- fed horses. Better sport could not be af-
forded than the struggles between these hardy
grass-fed "walers," many of which have never
known the shelter of a roof. No programme is
complete without a race for shearers' horses, with
owners up; and though the costumes of the riders
are unorthodox to city eyes, close finishes and
skilful horsemanship are the rule rather than the
exception.
Station life provides other amusement besides:
long drives through open paddocks and over
rough bush tracks, where the clear air is aromatic
with the scent of the eucalyptus and fragrant with
the perfume of the wattle, wild rides through the
scrub after dingoes and kangaroos, or madder
gallops still after the long-tailed wild horses that
shelter in the fastnesses of the hills. Such diver-
sions only take place during the intervals between
the busy seasons. The real life of an Australian
station can best be observed, however, at these
periods of activity, when numerous extra men are
employed, and the whole machinery of station life
is working at high pressure.
CHAPTER III
STATION WORK
The bell is set a-ringing, and the engine gives a toot,
There 's five and thirty shearers here are shearing for
the loot ;
So stir yourselves, you penners-up, and shove the sheep
along,
The musterers are fetching them, a hundred thousand
strong.
Aud make your collie dogs speak up What would the
buyers say
In London, if wool was late this year from Castle-
reagh ?
The Banjo.
THE busiest time on a sheep-station is the time
of shearing, when the annual stock-taking
takes place, as well as the shearing of the sheep,
and the sorting and despatch of the wool. For
some time before the shearing, extra hands are
employed, for a good deal of preparation is neces-
sary. The machinery of the wool-shed has to be
oiled and set in order, firewood has to be hauled,
and all the water-tanks filled. In the paddocks,
the flocks are being mustered, ready to be driven
to the yards outside the wool-shed. Long before
28
co ^
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I fc
z 2
O rt
2 5
> o
i_ *>
z
Station Work 29
the date fixed for commencing the actual work
of shearing, all is bustle and activity on the
station.
A few days before shearing starts, the shearers
begin to arrive. Some come on horseback, some
on bicycles, and a good many on foot, carrying
their swags after the recognised bush fashion.
The huts set aside for their accommodation are
soon filled to overflowing, and many of them camp
under tents or in the open. The shed overseer,
engineer, wool-classers, cooks, and other helpers
have already been engaged, and the roll of the
applicants for work is called two days before the
shearing starts. Those to be engaged as shearers
are first selected, and sign their agreements in the
presence of the manager, shed overseer, and book-
keeper. Then a number of wool-pressers and
" rouse- abouts" are engaged, the duties of the lat-
ter being elastic in the extreme. Some of them
are "pickers-up," removing the shorn fleeces
from the shearing-board, and keeping it clear for
the shearer. Others are employed in driving the
woolly sheep to the yard and transferring them
to the pens inside the wool-shed, in branding
shorn sheep, in moving them back to the pad-
dock, and in loading the waggons that carry the
wool away. When all the men required have
been engaged, the disappointed ones roll their
swags and go off in search of employment some-
where else.
Shearing usually starts at the end of the week,
30 Australian Life
on Friday or Saturday for preference. The work
done by the shearers in the broken week is re-
garded in the light of an "exercise canter," and
the Saturday afternoon and Sunday spell obviates
the danger of strained wrists and backs which
exists when serious work is begun too suddenly.
Shearing starts at six o'clock, but before day-
break, the engine-driver and cooks are at work,
the former getting up steam to drive the machines,
the latter preparing the coffee and buns with
which the shearers break their fast. At six
o'clock, everybody is in the shed, the pens are
full of sheep, and the shearers, two to each pen,
stand on the board. The engine whistle gives a
shrill toot, the machinery is set in motion, and
each shearer dives into the pen to catch the sheep
he has selected as the easiest to shear. Grasping
his victim by the leg, the shearer drags it out of
the pen, quiets its struggles by a deft application
of his knee, and gets to work with the shears.
The fleece falls off the animal in one great piece,
and in a surprisingly short space of time it is re-
leased, pink and shivering, to make its way along
the race and out into the yards again. The
pickers-up fly to remove the fallen wool, and the
shearer plunges into the pen again in search of
the easiest-cutting animal left there. As the pens
become emptier, the sheep left are harder to shear,
and the last animal of all, called the "cobbler,"
is looked upon as an object to avoid. If a very
undesirable specimen, the manoeuvres of the two
Station Work 31
shearers are amusing, each being anxious that
the " cobbler " shall fall to the other.
Up and down the board walks the shed over-
seer, with an eye upon every man there. He
sees that the "penners-up" do not leave a pen
empty for one moment, that the pickers-up are
keeping the board clear, and above all, that the
shearers are doing their work properly. It is of
the utmost importance that each sheep shall be
shorn closely and evenly, uneven shearing result-
ing in waste "tip" to the wool of the next season.
The shearers, who are paid according to the num-
ber of sheep shorn, will scamp their work if not
properly supervised. The rivalry among them
is very keen, and there is sometimes close compe-
tition for the position of "ringer," as the man
whose total of shorn sheep at the conclusion of
the shearing is the highest, is called. Occasion-
ally a man in his haste and in his anxiety to
shear close will cut a piece of skin from his
sheep, when a boy with a pot of mixed tar and
grease will be called to daub the wound of the
suffering animal. In the old days of hand-shear-
ing, the tar boy's services were more frequently
in requisition than under the modern system of
machine-shearing, now in vogue at all the best-
managed stations.
At eight o'clock, work is suspended for the first
of the many meals the shearer manages to devour
during the course of the day. The shearers' cook
is always a competent man, and supplies his
32 Australian Life
clients with the best fare obtainable, utterly be-
lying the name of "poisoner," usually bestowed
upon him. He has to cater for a very fastidious
company, but he is well paid for his work, and
can afford to ignore a good deal of captious
grumbling. The shearers themselves earn splen-
did wages while at work, the standard rate being
one pound for each hundred sheep shorn. A good
shearer can average a hundred a day taking the
easy work with the hard, and under exceptional
circumstances, tallies as high as three hundred
in a day have been made. This, however, is a
notable piece of work, and the names of the men
who have performed such exceptional feats are
known throughout pastoral Australia, "from the
Gulf to the Bight." Even when living upon all
the luxuries at his command, the shearer's ex-
penditure rarely exceeds one pound per week, so
that the men usually have good cheques to draw
when the shed has "cut out."
Bach fleece is taken by the picker-up to the
table of the wool-roller, who trims it neatly, re-
moving the dirty edges, and rolls it up for the in-
spection of the wool-classer. This expert decides
on the quality of the fleece, and places it in one of
a number of bins, each bearing a distinguishing
letter denoting the quality of the wool it contains.
The bins are from time to time emptied by the
wool-pressers, who bale the wool with the aid of
the big press, marking each bale with the quality
of the wool and the station brand. The bales are
Station Work 33
loaded upon waggons and conveyed to the nearest
railway-station; or to a river-staging, where they
are piled upon a barge, which is towed by a little
.side-wheel steamer down to the river Murray.
The shorn sheep are counted and branded, and
in many cases dipped to prevent their picking up
tick and other parasites. Then they are drafted
into classes and moved to the paddocks, where
they remain until the time comes when another
crop of wool has to be shorn from them. By the
counting of the sheep, the owner is able to com-
pare the numbers of his flock with those ascer-
tained at the previous shearing, and so to estimate
their rate of increase, or, as the case has too often
been of late years, their rate of decrease. The
end of the shearing is usually celebrated by an
entertainment, consisting of athletic sports, races
of the shearers' horses in the afternoon, and a
concert in the wool-shed in the evening. The
concert usually takes the form of a burnt-cork en-
tertainment with a number of highly original and
diverting turns thrown in. Some of the shearers
are masters of most curious accomplishments, such
as axe-swinging and bell-ringing. I once heard
a man play a number of tunes upon a row of
billy-cans of different sizes, each containing a cer-
tain quantity of water, the notes being sounded
by tapping the cans with a small wooden hammer.
An invariable feature of these entertainments is a
collection, the proceeds being devoted to the bene-
fit of the nearest hospital, and the shearer, flush
34 Australian Life
with money at such a time, seldom fails to con-
tribute liberally. When shearing is over, the men
are paid their cheques, and the station reverts to its
normal condition and regular daily round of work.
The busy time on a cattle-station is the general
muster, a time of the greatest excitement and
anxiety. First comes the driving of the various
mobs to the "camp," a work accomplished with
as little whip-cracking and flurry as possible, for
the object in view is to prevent the animals from
becoming excited or unmanageable. When the
cattle are all collected, the work of "cutting out'*
begins. The cattle are packed together, some of
them wild with fear and disturbing the others by
their bellowing and sidelong thrusting of the
horns. Into the mob rides the stockman, intent
on separating from it some particular animal he
has picked out. The well-trained horse forces his
way through the cattle, obedient to every touch
of knee and rein. Soon he has grasped his mas-
ter's purpose and begins to edge the beast singled
out towards the outside of the throng. It is a
dangerous work, but man and horse have confi-
dence in each other, and both are alert and watch-
ful. Now the beast to be cut out is one of a dozen
on the edge of the pack, and with a crack of his
whip and a yell the stockman drives his horse be-
tween them and the mob, separating them from it.
They try to return, and those not required are al-
lowed to do so, but the beast that is to be cut out
finds, wherever he turns, that whip and horse
Station Work 35
are in his way. Soon he is galloping in the direc-
tion the stockman has chosen, and is added to the
mob of cattle to which he rightly belongs. Then
back go man and horse to the press again, to re-
peat the exciting work. After the cutting out is
done, and the beasts have been sorted in mobs
according to their classes, each mob is made to
"string" or move in single file, in order that a
count may be made. L,ast of all comes the brand-
ing of the "clean-skins," an operation performed
with much heating of irons, an overpowering
odour of burning hair and hide, and a frantic bel-
lowing on the part of the persecuted oxen.
If the good qualities of the stock-horse are to
be thoroughly appreciated, he must be seen at
this work of cutting out, or the equally stirring
performance of running wild horses. The ' ' brum-
bies, ' ' as the wild horses are called, are usually to
be found in the hilly districts, and their existence
on a run in any number is soon made apparent by
the amount of pasturage they consume. Then
the run-holder may arrange to clear his run of
them, by calling in a band of men who make the
capture of wild horses their profession. Opera-
tions are begun by building a stout stock-yard in
a position chosen with regard to the known habits
of the horses. On the day appointed for the
"running," there is no lack of volunteers willing
to try the speed of their horses against that of the
brumbies. The position of the mob of wild horses
has been carefully marked, and with equal care
36 Australian Life
plans have been laid for the course along which
they are to be driven. The whole success of the
operation depends upon the carrying out of these
plans. And now the brumbies are off, heading
straight for the roughest part of the range of hills,
while every horseman in pursuit is getting as
much as possible out of his mount. Those best
mounted forge ahead, and ride for the flanks of
the flying mob of "long-tails," where stock-whips
are presently cracking as the men strive to turn
the terrified animals. Now the herd is tearing
down a steep declivity, threading between trees
and boulders. It is the chance of the mounted
men, for even the wild brumbies are not so sure-
footed as these stock-horses. One or two of the
boldest riders are at the foot of the descent be-
fore their quarry, and check them with skilfully
wielded stock-whips. The others press closer
now, and the wild animals are turned, checked
and lashed and harried into a state of exhaustion.
Like a mob of driven cattle, they are forced into
the stock-yard, although at the sight of the fenc-
ing the wildest of them make a last effort for free-
dom, and two or three may probably break the
cordon and escape at the last moment. The value
of the brumby may be judged from the fact that a
good stock-horse, carrying a full-grown man, can
both outpace and outstay him. Some of them are
easily broken to both saddle and harness, but
others remain incorrigible "outlaws," in spite of
the forcible methods of the horse-breaker.
Station Work 37
Most stockmen understand the breaking of
young horses, and on stations where horsebreed-
ing is carried on to any considerable extent, there
are usually one or two men well qualified for such
work. The methods employed are of the rough-
and-ready order, little time being wasted in pre-
paring the unbroken animal for the ordeal of being
mounted. Once in the saddle, it is the rider's ob-
ject to enforce his mastery, applying whip and
spur with relentless energy at any sign of rebel-
lion. I can recall from my own boyhood a picture
of one of these horsebreakers, whom we only knew
as " Sydney Bob" an undersized man, but deep-
chested and strong of arm, and with a weather-
beaten face that expressed strong determination.
In his dress, Sydney Bob was "flash," addicted
to tight cords and neat boots, a brilliant scarlet
handkerchief knotted around his throat, and a
wide-leaved cabbage-tree hat. The particular in-
cident with which he is connected in my mind
was the riding of a young bullock down the main
street of a small township near Ballarat. The
ride was the outcome of a wager, and the feat was
made more dangerous by the fact that the rider
had one arm in a sling, probably as a result of a
fall from some unbroken horse. The bullock was
hemmed in in a small yard of the local sale-yards,
and the first notice he received of the wager of
which he had been made the subject, was to find
a man astride his back. The panels were let
down, and the bullock rushed out into the street
38 Australian Life
with Sydney Bob, facing the wrong way, vigor-
ously twisting his tail with the uninjured hand.
As the maddened beast tore down the street, his
rider could be heard shouting his war-cry of
Blow me, dontcher know me ?
I 'm Sydney Bob, the rider.
From that freak, he escaped without injury,
although I believe he met his death as a result of
one of these mad wagers. In his day, this man
was a notable rider of "buckjumpers," and a well-
known character at horse-sales.
Among the most skilful of horsebreakers are
the rough-riders attached to the Australian police
departments, which annually purchase large
draughts of valuable young horses for the use of
the mounted police. Among a draught I once saw
handled by the police rough-riders, was a buck-
jumper which gave a most extraordinary exhibi-
tion of his accomplishments. He did not look the
part at all; otherwise, he would never have been
purchased for the purpose of a trooper's mount.
This horse allowed himself to be saddled with a
meekness that his experienced rider evidently con-
sidered suspicious, for he was obviously prepared
for the performance which followed. No sooner
had he thrown himself into the saddle than the
horse sprang into the air, ducking his head and
arching his back with a ferocious energy. Four
times he leaped into the air, bucking until it
seemed that the stout girth would break. Find-
Station Work 39
ing these tactics useless, he broke into a mad
gallop, and then, with a sidelong leap, he once
more arched his back like a bent bow. Then he
reared up on his hind legs, threatening to fall
backwards upon his rider. Finally, he did throw
himself upon the ground, but the man's skill
saved him from being crushed, and when the ani-
mal rose to his feet again, it was only to find him-
self still burdened with his hated incubus. He
continued to struggle until he was thoroughly
exhausted and allowed himself to be ridden
around the riding-school. Then the rough-rider
dismounted. "An outlaw," said he, "and a bad
'un at that."
Another familiar figure on the station is the
rabbit- trapper, with his waggon, his wire netting,
and his spring-traps. At one time, when the
trapper received payment from the squatter for
the scalps of his slain rabbits, these men might
earn as much as 20 a week in the badly infested
districts. It is said and there is good reason to
believe it that many of these men deliberately
spared the female rabbits, declining to put an end
to such a lucrative employment by readily help-
ing to stamp the rabbits out. The pastoralists
were helpless in the face of the law; which was
afterwards modified, when the rabbit-trappers' era
of luxury came to a sudden end. At that time,
the commercial value of bunny was practically nil,
but the use of his fur in the manufacture of felt
hats and the improvements made in the transport
40 Australian Life
of frozen meats have given a new lease of life to
the occupation of rabbit- trapping. Many millions
of rabbits are now annually exported from Aus-
tralia, and even more are poisoned for the sake of
their skins. Wherever there is railway commu-
nication, the once-despised rabbit is now regarded
as a source of employment and revenue. In such
districts, the rabbits are being kept well in check,
as the trappers are glad to undertake the work for
the value of their catch. An experienced man,
with a proper outfit of cart, horse, and wire-net-
ting traps, can make from ^3 to ^4 a week,
though he has to thoroughly understand his work
if he is to earn so much.
The fox was introduced into Australia to make
war upon the rabbits, and has made himself thor-
oughly at home there. He prefers poultry to the
rabbit, and has become such a nuisance in the
farming districts that rewards are paid for his
scalp. In one district alone, over thirty thousand
foxes were killed in the year 1901, though these
animals, like the dingoes, show the greatest cun-
ning in avoiding poisoned baits laid for them.
For the scalp of a dingo, as much as twenty shil-
lings will be paid, and the pastoralists are glad to
get rid of the brutes on such terms, for their de-
predations at lambing time cause heavy loss wher-
ever they are at all plentiful. The mistaken
enthusiasts who introduced rabbits and foxes into
Australia can at least point to others as mistaken
as themselves. There is, for instance, the house
Station Work 41
sparrow, a very undesirable emigrant who has
invaded the country districts and proved himself
destructive and a nuisance. He was introduced to
Australia as an insect killer, but careful examina-
tion of his diet shows that only three and a half
per cent, of it consists of insects. The rest is
grain and seeds. This fraud multiplies at an un-
heard-of rate, and persecutes and drives away the
less hardy native birds. Among vegetable pests,
the prickly pear is perhaps the worst, although in
the worst of the great drought it was shown to
have its uses. The Scotch thistle is another im-
ported plant, which has spread itself far and wide,
choking the valuable pastures, and rendering
large grazing areas useless. The dog-rose, or
sweet-briar, has played the same part of unwel-
come guest, and there are further instances that
could be adduced in justification of the coldness
with which Australians now regard any attempt
to acclimatise a new animal or plant, the use of
which is not plainly apparent.
CHAPTER IV
ON A SELECTION
She helped him make a little home,
Where once were gum trees quaint and stark
And blood-woods waved green-feathered foam,
Working from dawn of day till dark,
Till that dark forest formed a frame
For vineyards that the gods might bless ;
And what was savage once became
An Eden in the wilderness.
VICTOR DAI,E;Y.
the origin of the term "selector," we
1 must go back to an Act passed by the New
South Wales Parliament in 1861. Ten years had
passed since the gold discoveries, and many of
the immigrants were clamouring for land for farm-
ing purposes. A L,and Act was accordingly
passed permitting the "selection" of blocks of
land from forty to three hundred acres in extent,
to be purchased from the State by the selector on
a system of instalment payments. The Act even
allowed the selection to be made on areas leased
as pastoral holdings, and soon the squatters found
the selectors occupying the most fertile and best-
42
On a Selection 43
watered patches on their runs. Thus began a
feud between squatter and selector, which is vig-
orously maintained in some places at the present
day. In addition to the three hundred acres he
may obtain by purchase, the selector can "take
up" an additional area of three hundred acres on
leasehold, and may further expand his holding by
selecting in the name of his children under certain
conditions. By these expedients, the selection
can be made to assume very respectable dimen-
sions, and frequently its size hampers the selector
in the struggle upon which he enters to make for
himself and his family a home in the bush.
In the vernacular of the bush, the selector is a
"cockie," and cockie is short for cockatoo farmer.
He is a cockatoo farmer because he works early
and late to clear a patch of ground, and plough it ;
then he sows his seed, only to wake at dawn the
next day and find his field white with cockatoos,
all busily devouring the grain. Those cockatoos
are the only crop he has, "of all his labour and
vexation of his heart wherein he hath laboured
under the sun." If not cockatoos, then rabbits,
or locusts, or drought interfere to deprive him of
the result of his work.
The typical cockie' s hut is remarkable for the
size of its clay fireplace, which is usually the nu-
cleus of the structure. Planning on an ambitious
scale, the cockie builds his fireplace first, from
bricks made of puddled clay dried in the sun. To
this he builds a hut of two or three rooms, with
44 Australian Life
sapling uprights and boarding of shingles from
the splitter's camp. Slabs of bark make the roof,
and the only materials purchased are a couple of
glazed window-sashes and a door. The bare
earth serves as floor, a slab table is knocked to-
gether and a home-made form, and two or three
gin-cases serve for chairs. Beds are made by
stretching canvas or hessian upon sapling frames,
and the house is ready for occupation.
The cockie himself is a young Australian, who
has had several good seasons in the shearing-
sheds, and has been steady enough to save his
cheques. His wife is a bush girl, jolly, fond of
fun and dancing, and equal to any emergency.
Chopping wood, milking cows, riding barebacked
horses, and killing snakes are among her many
accomplishments, all of them of the greatest use
on a selection. Her domestic utensils are in-
teresting. First comes the camp oven, a large
iron pot with three short legs and a close-fitting
lid. The camp oven is placed in the fire, the
ashes are heaped over it, and anything can be
baked in it from a loaf of bread to a leg of mutton.
An iron bar stretches across the fireplace, from
which there hangs by a hook the griddle a plate
of iron on which scones and bannocks can be
rapidly baked. The inevitable frying-pan and
billy-can complete the list, unless a boiler im-
provised out of a large paraffin tin be included.
The same simplicity characterises the rest of the
household equipments, for the bush home is a
On a Selection 45
standing argument in favour of the contention
that many of the supposed necessities of civilisa-
tion are in reality but superfluities. With a
dozen sheep, a few cows, and a patient old horse,
the cockie and his wife settle down to the work
of clearing and fencing their holding, brave and
resolute, and happy if they have but a few pounds
in the bank to keep them in their initial struggles.
So much for the beginnings. Let us now visit
a selection which has been taken up for some
years. There is the same hut, now sadly dilapi-
dated, and with a lean-to added to serve as a
dairy, and another roughly constructed room to
provide sleeping accommodation for the growing
family of children. The selector may be able to
afford a much better habitation, and probably in-
tends to provide one. He will talk of a situation
he has chosen, superior in every way to that he
now occupies. His wife, faded and prematurely
aged with the hard work, or the worry of a large
family, looks forward with a pathetic cheerfulness
to the change. Meanwhile, what is the use of
trying to improve the old house? So the bark
roof continues to leak, and the earthen floor to be-
come mud, while the door will not shut, o;r will
not open. These things are ignored as the selector
talks of the conveniences of the new house he
means to build. A walk around the selection
shows that its owner is master of every imagin-
able makeshift. "Dog leg" fences, made of long
saplings, supported on improvised and shaky
46 Australian Life
trestles, run crookedly between the paddocks,
inviting the stock to break through and stray.
Valuable machinery for harvesting lies unpro-
tected and rusting in dew and rain, waiting for
the shelter-shed its owner is just going to erect.
The women folk have to carry their water from
the creek a quarter of- a mile away, although a
pure and better supply could be obtained by sink-
ing a well near the house. The cultivation pad-
docks bristle with stumps, the standing crop is
fringed with a border of dry grass, which might
safely be burned off on a still day. Some hot
night the north wind will drive a bush fire upon
the selection, and the selector and his family will
have to fight the flames along that fringe of
dry grass, or see their year's work licked up by
the fire. Everything speaks of procrastination
and makeshift; his very occupation of the soil
is regarded by the cockie as only a temporary
permanence.
The day's work on the selection begins at
"piccaninny daylight," when the stars are still
shining in the grey sky, and the birds are utter-
ing their first sleepy calls. Down into the horse-
paddocks goes the eldest boy. Having caught
the quietest horse, he throws a sack across it and
drives the rest up to the yard. He slips a saddle
and bridle on his riding-horse, and at once sets off
to bring in the cows. By this time, the whole bush
is awake. A party of kookaburras, perched on
the big swamp gum tree by the creek, are laugh-
On a Selection 47
ing at some joke of their own, and across the flats
the magpies are fluting and carolling out of sheer
joy. Green parrots dart in shrieking flocks from
tree to tree in search of honey-laden eucalyptus
blossoms. Startled by the hoof- falls, a grey wal-
laby hops through the scrub, making gigantic
leaps in its fright. The boy tears off a twig of
eucalyptus to brush away the tormenting flies,
and with many a yell and shout drives the lowing
cows into the yard.
Then comes the work of milking, in which
every one takes part. When it is finished the
boy has his breakfast, while his father harnesses
a horse to the spring-cart, in which the milk, in
a large tin vessel, is to be conveyed to the butter
factory. The money received for the milk is the
only regular source of income the selection can
boast, and the institution of these butter factories
has done much to make existence possible for the
selector. It would be interesting to trace the
butter from the factory to the big cool-storage
depot in Melbourne or Sydney, and thence to the
refrigerating chamber of an ocean-going steamer,
to appear presently on some English or African
breakfast-table. Meanwhile, having seen the
milk despatched, the cockie sits down to a break-
fast of milkless tea and butterless bread. Presently,
the boy returns with his vessel of " separated"
milk for the consumption of the calves and pigs;
and now it is time for school.
Anxiously the mother watches the children set
48 Australian Life
off along the bush track, each child with its din-
ner and bottle of water in the bag with the school
books. It is four miles to the little school near
the main road, and the mother sighs as she thinks
of the snakes and other dangers of the track.
That is part of the bush training, however, and
helps to make children fearless and resourceful.
She has other things to think of, calves, pigs, and
poultry to feed, and dinner to prepare. Her hus-
band rides off in quest of some straying stock, and
to mend the gap in the field through which they
have escaped. He meets his neighbour, who is
on the same errand, and a long conversation en-
sues regarding the slackness of the Road Board,
the increase of rabbits in the district, and the re-
missness of the local Member of Parliament. The
cockie is an ardent politician, and is only diverted
from his subject by the arrival of the local grazier,
who repeats a long-standing offer for some sheep
which cockie number two has for sale. After the
usual chaffering, the matter is allowed to remain
open, and all three go off to their work.
At midday, dinner is ready, and may consist of
beef salted and boiled, the remnant of a beast
killed some time before. A plentiful allowance of
pumpkin is served with it, for the pumpkin patch
repeats itself every year, the self-sown plants
thriving in a manner only possible where the soil
is very fertile. The scheme for a new house in-
cludes a large vegetable garden, where onions,
tomatoes, and cabbages will grow luxuriantly,
On a Selection 49
but, until then, the pumpkin is the staple vege-
table. Dinner is washed down with plenty of
scalding tea, after which the selector lights his
pipe and goes off to work again. During the
afternoon, a swagman comes to the door, with
the stereotyped question, "Any chance of a
feed, missus?" He is introduced to the wood
heap and a blunt axe, and if he is a genuine
man, and he generally is, he chops a pile of
wood and carries water from the creek while the
inevitable tea is being prepared. A meal is set be-
fore him, and he eats ravenously, chatting between
mouthfuls concerning the state of the country he
has just traversed. A pannikin of flour and a
"bit o' tea" send him on his way satisfied, to
camp for the night in a clump of low timber
further along the track.
And now the shadows are lengthening, and the
selector's wife goes down to the slip rails to wait
for the post-boy, who may have a letter or paper
for her. That bush Mercury comes ambling along
the track on his dusty pony, and, shaking his
head in reply to her questioning look, rides by
with a cheery "Good evening." Shading her
eyes from the setting sun, she sees the children
straggling home from school, and turns back to
the house to get their tea ready. Then the cows
have to be milked once more, and the young stock
tended, which occupies everybody until it is quite
dark. The mother sets about putting the children
to bed, but the eldest boy whistles to his dog, and
50 Australian Life
takes up his old single-barrelled gun, looking
wistfully at his father. The latter "does n't see
why he should n't," and the pair go off amicably
in search of 'possums, the skins of which will be
tanned and converted into a fine serviceable rug.
They are soon back, though, and at an early hour
all are in bed, enjoying a well-earned rest.
The bush folk have few pleasures, but they can-
not be said to take them sadly. They rather
make the best of things. When Christmas time
comes, the boys go off into the ranges and cut
young cherry trees which are not cherry trees
and big fern leaves to decorate the house with a
brave show of green. A great slaughter of poul-
try and sucking pigs takes place, and puddings
are boiled and cakes baked in readiness for the
holiday. Old friends come riding in, and brothers
who were away droving or shearing turn up un-
expectedly, and sleep on shakedowns before the
kitchen fire. There is a good deal of eating and
jollity, and in the evening a visit is paid to a
neighbour's house, where the young people dance
to the strains of a concertina, while the staider
married folk gossip together, the men smoking
their pipes outside and discussing their unfailing
politics.
On Boxing Day, the selection is left to look
after itself, and the whole family drives off to the
"sports " in the spring cart. There is provision-
ing on a liberal scale from the substantial rem-
nants of the Christmas feast, and the family
On a Selection 5 l
picnics happily under some shady gum tree. The
sports provide plenty of excitement, and if the
selector's driving on the homeward way is reck-
less and erratic, well, it is not often he meets so
many old friends on one day. Show Day is an-
other bush holiday very generally observed.
There is much competition at that time in live
stock of all kinds, and prizes may be won by
housewives proud of their home-baked bread or
their home-cured bacon and hams. The country
is looking its best at show time, for shows are
held in the early spring, when there are hopes of
good crops and a plentiful increase of live stock
and poultry. These are the interludes that break
the monotony of the selector's life, and prevent
him from losing touch with old friends, and be-
coming soured by the anxieties, disappointments,
and losses he has so constantly to face.
Each summer brings for him its harassing dread
of bush fires. He watches the grass turn brown
beneath the scorching sun, and counts the days
until his standing crop shall be ready for harvest.
The passing swagman is an object of painful in-
terest, for a carelessly dropped match or a camp
fire left unextinguished may precipitate a disaster.
At last, the wheat is cut and stacked in stooks
about the paddock, and the cockie works fever-
ishly to get it carted away to the thrashing-
machine at work in the nearest township. Then
he breathes more freely, though he has still much
to lose. The earth cracks with the summer heat,
52 Australian Life
week after week brings no rain, and the hot north
wind is charged with a smell of burning greenery.
Then, one evening, when the sun goes down a
fiery crimson ball, a red glare warns him of the
approaching danger. All the live stock, kept
near the house as a precaution against such an
emergency, is quickly driven into the bare yard,
and then the settler and his family cut branches
to beat the fire out. It comes down on them with
incredible rapidity, first a cloud of choking smoke
shot with sparks, and in a moment the dry grass
beneath their feet is crackling into flame. They
beat the fire out with their green branches,
scarcely glancing at the pranks it is playing all
around them. The flames run up the loose hang-
ing bark of a big gum tree, and it bursts into a
sheet of flame, threatening the little homestead
with burning branches falling from above. It
reaches the dry stubble and sweeps across it with
a glad roar. Three weeks ago, the crop would
have met with the same fate, but the settler and
his family have no time to notice these things.
They beat the flames down, walking among them
with singeing clothes and blistering hands. They
are fighting for their home, and the terrified ani-
mals that huddle around it in helpless terror.
Some neighbours, fortunate enough to be out of
the zone of fire, come riding at top speed down
the tracks to their assistance. Just in time, too,
for the dry fencing is all ablaze, and the fire
ring is closing in. Buckets of water are hastily
On a Selection 53
brought, and the branches do their work more
effectually after a drenching. The fight is re-
sumed with new vigour, for the worst of the fire
has passed. It is sweeping through the country
a mile away, leaving in its track a wake of blazing
trees, charred fences, and blackened soil. But the
home is saved and the stock as well, and the set-
tlers, with blackened faces and smoke-reddened
eyes, congratulate one another that it is no worse.
Next day, the selector is able to estimate the ex-
tent of his misfortune. Fences burned every-
where, not a mouthful of feed left on his selection
to keep the stock alive until the rain comes. Ah,
well! it might have been worse. Hp must pay
for pasturing the stocks in somebody's paddock
until the grass shoots again, and he is lucky to
have saved his crop and so to be able to find the
money.
Bush fire is not the only disaster the selector is
called upon to face. The rainy season may swell
the little creek that runs through the selection
until it overflows its banks, and floods the pad-
docks. Then the selector looks across a waste of
waters, and can only hope that they will not cover
the little islands of high ground where his animals
have taken refuge. He may work hard with his
neighbours to carry out the instructions issued by
the Government for the destruction of the eggs
and young of the locusts, only to find his green
crop devoured by a swarm nurtured somewhere
else. Rabbits and other pests, both animal and
54 Australian Life
vegetable, are always with him, and he sows his
seed without any certainty of reaping a harvest.
There is little cause to wonder that this uncer-
tainty has made the selector a fatalist with a creed
of "what is to be will be." His makeshifts, his
procrastinations, are only his preparation for some
final disaster, which may leave him beaten and
penniless, to take up the thread of existence
bravely in some new place. He fights doggedly
on, but he digs no garden, and plants no pleasant
shade trees around his bush home. He has an
ideal of a land where the seasons are regular and
life can be well ordered and arranged without the
necessity of pitting the work of a year against the
caprice of nature. Sometimes, when drought and
hard times press too severely upon him, he sells
out and emigrates to Canada, South Africa, or the
Argentine, in the hope of finding his ideal there.
But he usually struggles on, with the hope of bet-
ter times before him, fighting drought, bush fire,
and the mortgagee with a dogged courage worthy
of all success. The Australian newspaper man
delights to write of the selector as the "backbone
of the country," and, as usual, the newspaper
man is not far away from the truth.
CHAPTER V
THE NEVER-NEVER I,AND
They had told us of pastures wide and green,
To be sought past the sunset's glow,
Of rifts in the ranges by opals lit,
And gold 'neath the river's flow.
And thirst and hunger were banished words,
When they spoke of that unknown West ;
No drought they dread, no flood they feared,
Where the pelican builds her nest.
MARY H. FOOTE.
MORE than one-half of Australia consists of
country still unexplored or only partially
explored. Across the unexplored portions there
are written on the map such words as "great
sandy desert." Year by year, the dimensions of
these map areas are being reduced, and more is
being learned of the nature and resources of those
uninviting wastes from which the early explorers
turned back in despair, or where they laid down
their lives in the vain attempt to fathom secrets
that are still unsolved. The mystery of that un-
known region makes its appeal even to the Aus-
tralian who spends his life in the fringe of settled
55
56 Australian Life
land that lies along the sea-coast. To the bush-
men who have seen it, now fair and smiling, and
decked like a garden with glowing flowers, and
again a forbidding and arid wilderness, the Never-
Never Land, unknown and only partially known,
is a magnet that draws them on to adventure. It
holds fortune, and it holds death.
On the plains of the Never-Never,
That 's where the dead men lie,
wrote Barcroft Boake. For more than fifty years,
the Never-Never Land has held one secret that
many bold men have failed to wrest from it the
fate of Lud wig Leichhardt. In 1848, Leichhardt
set out from the Darling Downs in Queensland,
following the course of the river Barcoo, with the
intention of striking west across Australia in the
direction of Perth. He and his party were swal-
lowed up by the desert, and from that day to this,
their fate remains a mystery. Expeditions were
fitted out in the hope, at least, of tracing them to
their last camp, but in vain. No explorer goes
out at the present day without some faint expecta-
tion of discovering an explanation of their total
disappearance, but not one vestige of the expedi-
tion has been found. And Ludwig Leichhardt is
but one of the many victims of the Never-Never
Land.
If the risks are great, the rewards also are great.
In the year 1892, two prospectors named Bay ley
and Ford, both good bushmen, ventured a little
The Never-Never Land 57
further than their fellows away from the edge of
the known country into the heart of the unknown.
Three months later, the whole world was talking
of the richness of the new Coolgardie goldfields,
and the two bold adventurers were the owners of
the famous mine called Bay ley's Reward, which
produced ore that held more gold than stone. Ten
years later, a big city, lighted by electric light and
connected with the far-distant coast by a long
railway, stood on the ground over which they had
been the first white men to walk. A big slice
was lopped off the western edge of the Never-
Never country by the enterprise and daring of
those two successful prospectors.
It is characteristic of Australian hopefulness
that the pastoralist as well as the prospector has
found his way into the half-known country, and
is pasturing his sheep and bullocks on some of the
most fertile parts of it. The conditions of pas-
toral life in these remote back stations contrast
strangely with the luxury and convenience of the
homes of the squatters who settled in the early
days on well- watered runs near the coast. A
small wooden house, with a glaring roof of gal-
vanised iron, stands in the midst of a wilderness
of scrub. The furniture of the hut it is little
more is of the most primitive description, for the
manager is a bachelor, and so are the jackaroos
and the few station hands. There, from one
rainy season to another, these men are engaged
in their desperate struggle to keep stock alive,
58 Australian Life
always hoping that the next season will bring
better fortune; that is, more rain. They have
water, at least, although it is muddy and yellow,
or has to be boiled and skimmed before they may
drink it. But all around them there is a belt of
bad country, so dry that it is impossible to move
their stock across it, if they wished to. Their
stores come to them once every three months by
camel-train, and the sight of a fresh white face is
a rarity. There is little cause to wonder that,
after a time, this isolated life of hardship has its
effect upon the character of the men who lead it,
and that some of them become morbid and others
hopeless and desperate.
When the long-expected good seasons at last
come, these outback stations begin to justify their
existence. Soon there is plenty of feed every-
where, and the listless sheep and hollow-sided
cattle become round and sleek. Even in the
worst of the bad country there is at last some feed
and water, and now is the chance to send all the
surplus stock to market. This is the busy time
of the drovers. On these stations in the Never-
Never country, the marketable cattle have per-
haps been accumulating for three years, and now
in mobs of a thousand or more they are being
despatched from the far-away Gulf country to the
Southern and Eastern markets. Each mob is in
charge of a band of stockmen, who think nothing
of a three months' journey across the silent central
plain behind their restless herd of cattle. In ad-
The Never-Never Land 59
vance of the mob, the cook drives his cart, ever
on the look-out, as nightfall approaches, for a
suitable place for the camp. Behind the cart, a
few spare horses are led in halters, for the use of
the eight or ten mounted drovers in charge of the
herd of cattle that follows. See them coming, a
thousand great lumbering bullocks, packed in one
dense mob, with the men, tanned and picturesque,
sitting so easily on the clever stock-horses. Every
man has his eyes upon the herd, for they have not
been long upon the route, and are awkward to
drive because they have not yet found their travel-
ling legs. The stock-whips sound from time to
time with a report like the discharge of a rifle, as
some discontented animal makes an attempt to
break away from his fellows. In another month
or so, if all goes well, the bullocks will have be-
come used to travelling, and the necessity for con-
stant vigilance will have ceased to exist.
When the evening comes, the drovers find their
camp pitched and a meal ready for them, but their
day's work is by no means over. The cattle are
rounded up, and after a feed may settle down
quietly, many of them lying down and chewing
the cud. Then some of the drovers "turn in," but
the mob must be watched all night. Those dark
Australian nights are still and silent. In the
clear sky above, now a dark violet blue, myriads
of stars blaze whitely, affording the watchers just
enough light to see the dark forms of the rumi-
nating beasts. Suddenly one of the drovers
60 Australian Life
notices a movement among them, as, startled by
something vague and unascertainable, a dozen of
the animals blunder to their feet. In a very few
moments, the terror has been communicated to
the whole mob, and, with a bellow of fright, the
ringleaders dash away. The men rush for their
horses, giving their sleeping mates warning of the
danger, and by the time the mob is on the move,
the cattlemen are spurring their horses after them.
A wild ride in the dark night begins, when man
and horse dash through the gaps in the mass of
terrified beasts and do their utmost to reach the
head of the flying mob. Should a horse happen
to stumble and fall, neither he nor his rider may
hope to rise again from under the hoofs of the
maddened beasts behind them. There is only one
hope of checking the stampede, and that is to
force through the press and face the leaders with
the stinging stock-whip. Already one or two of
the best-mounted and most experienced drovers
are in the front ranks, and the great whips are
lashing the faces of the foremost beasts, checking
them and throwing them back upon those behind
them. The speed of the mob is slackened, and
more drovers fight their way through to the front.
The bullocks are suddenly brought to a standstill,
and with lowered heads and heaving sides, they
circle round and round as though considering how
they may again break away. An unsuccessful
attempt or two in this direction complete their
subjugation, and the mob goes meekly back to its
The Never-Never Land 61
camping-place, all the more manageable for the
experience.
The Western plains, bare and dusty a few
months before, are now knee deep in waving
grass and trefoil, and day after day the drovers
press their mob forward, ever southward and east-
ward. Long days in the saddle and still nights
of vigil beneath the moon and stars: the life is
exacting, but it has its share of excitement or of
pleasure. Henry Lawson, the Australian poet,
describes it in one vigorous stanza:
The drovers of the great stock routes
The strange Gulf country know,
Where, travelling from the Southern droughts,
The big lean bullocks go ;
And, camped by night, where plains lie wide
Like some old ocean's bed,
The watchmen in the starlight ride
Round fifteen hundred head.
In time, they reach more settled country, and
the farthest terminus of the longest railway line.
Then the mob breaks up, some being trucked
away to the big cities on the coast, and some go-
ing to the refrigerating works to be turned into
chilled beef or extract of meat. The Australian
city dweller, whose business or pleasure takes
him out into the streets in those quiet hours of
the morning when the blackness of night is just
turning to grey, may sometimes see the mob of
cattle on the last stage of its long journey. It is
62 Australian Life
a strange sight for city streets: the wild-eyed bul-
locks, terrified by their novel surroundings, rush-
ing down the empty thoroughfares, with the
dusty stockmen on their patient horses, watchful
as ever, riding behind. A few days later, the
same stockmen, brown-faced and steadfast of gaze,
may be seen in the city theatres and restaurants,
or out on the race-course. But a week or two of
the city is quite enough for them, and they return
to the Western plains with the newest songs stored
in their memories to cheer the long hours of vigil
round the camp-fires.
Along the stock routes, too, may be encountered
large flocks of placid sheep, slowly but surely
making their way across the continent. Each
day sees the men in charge of them only a few
miles nearer their destination, and on arriving at
an area of good country, after travelling where
pasture is scanty, the sheep have to be spelled for
some days to recover their lost condition. A
whole year may elapse during one of these long
journeys, for the drover's route sometimes leads
from one edge of the continent to the other.
Fewer men are required for droving sheep than
for cattle, and the sagacious sheep-dogs save the
anxiety of watchfulness, which is part of the cat-
tleman's life. The drover usually rides on horse-
back behind his flock of sheep, although, of late
years, cycling drovers may occasionally be en-
countered. There are other wayfarers in these
Australian solitudes. A cloud of dust marks the
The Never-Never Land 63
progress of three bullock waggons, laden with
bales ol wool, each drawn by a long team of six-
teen or eighteen bullocks. Beside each team
walks the bullock driver, armed with a long-
handled whip, but he relies less upon this than
upon word of mouth for the direction of his stub-
born team. The Australian theory, that bullocks
cannot be driven without the use of the most vio-
lent and sulphurous language at the command of
the driver, is cherished, I believe, in other parts
of the world as well. The theory may be a fal-
lacious one, but the amateur who has once at-
tempted to drive a team of bullocks will usually
admit that any man who can control them, even
by the use of language that would under other
circumstances stamp him as a blackguard, is en-
titled to something more than mere excuse.
He should be considered worthy of admiration
at least, for the driving of bullocks is an accom-
plishment that few may attain, however gifted
of speech they may be. The bullock driver, like
the poet, is born and not made.
But in the Never-Never country, neither bul-
lock nor horse teams can compare with the camel
for usefulness, and during the decade of dry years,
which concluded in 1903, the "Hooshta-man"
has largely supplanted both bullocks and teamster
in the arid West. The camel-train is both cheaper
and more expeditious. According to an Austral-
ian pastoral paper, published in 1902, the cost of
transport by camel was but little more than half
64 Australian Life
that demanded by the teamsters, while delivery
was effected in one half the time. A train of fifty
camels with Oriental drivers provides a spectacle
more frequently associated with the oldest civil-
isation than with the youngest. Yet on the sandy
plains of the interior, under the cloudless skies
and burning Australian sun, it possesses nothing
of the incongruous. The ungainly beasts sway
along, each secured to its immediate neighbour
by a noose cord, which serves to keep the train in
line. The foremost camel of all, usually the hand'
somest and most serviceable beast in the train, is
gay with gorgeous trappings of silk, decorated
with swinging tassels and glittering coins and
shells. Perched on his back sits the Afghan
driver, in his blue coat and spacious white
trousers and crowned with a huge red turban.
Every camel has its load: sometimes a bale of
wool on either side, or it may be the cumbrous
parts of an instalment of machinery for some gold
mine far away in the solitudes; while with every
train may be found several animals burdened with
small iron tanks of water. The camels themselves
will go without water for five or six days, but
when it is obtainable will drink a surprising
quantity of the fluid without appearing to satisfy
their thirst. The camel is a welcome adjunct to
desert Australia, but the Australians take excep-
tion to the Afghan drivers for many reasons. Up
to the present, however, it has not been made
clear that the white man is able to manage a train
The Never-Never Land 65
of sour-tempered camels, the animals apparently
finding some distinction between the light skins
and dark in favour of the latter. Therefore the
man who cries "Hooshta" in the wilderness is
usually an alien, which is quite enough to make
the average Australian prejudiced against the
camel and all his surroundings.
The introduction of the camel into Australia
was due to some of the more ambitious exploring
ventures in the middle of the last century, and the
finest and most serviceable camels to be seen are
the descendants from this stock. Their worth
was so fully proved during the early days of the
Western Australian goldfields that many animals
were imported with their drivers from India and
Afghanistan, but they have not proved so tract-
able and useful as the stock reared in Australia.
In the Australian interior occur those salt lakes
that, for the greater part of the year, are lakes
only in name and appearance. Seen from a dis-
tance, they are vast sheets of shimmering water,
dotted with islands robed in the freshest green.
A closer examination shows them to be only lake
beds coated with a glittering saline incrustation,
while the fair prospect of island and green forest
disappears. Everywhere in this region, water
may be obtained by digging, but it is as salt as
the sea, or at least so brackish as to be quite un-
drinkable. Not very long ago, as time is counted
in the history of the universe, this land was the
ocean bed, and now when the rays of the sun light
66 Australian Life
these great sand basins, the whiteness of the salt
turns to a shimmering silver, and from a distance
it seems as though the sea were still there silent,
misty, and boundless. The explorers tell tales
of strange mirages of ships under full sail, but in-
verted so that the tip of the masts met the mast
tips of a lower ship, apparently the reflection in
the water of the topmost one. Between these salt
lakes are sand hummocks, where the stiff spinifex
grass grows, in spite of the aridity and saltness of
the soil.
The past twelve years have seen the Australian
losing ground in the Never- Never Land. Runs
have been abandoned, and the discomfited or
ruined run-holder has retreated nearer the coast.
"There is now less of settled Australia than there
was twenty years ago, ' ' wrote a mournful Aus-
tralian, "for the drought has driven in many of
the men who had gone out back." But at the
end of the year 1902 came the break-up of the
drought. Lakes that have been dry for ten years
now hold ten feet of water, and creeks are running
that have season after season been choked with
dust. The past of Australia points to the fact
that a cycle of good seasons is at hand, when
flocks and herds will double themselves in one
year and repeat the process the next, while there
is abundance of rich pasture for all. Then, gain-
ing confidence, the adventurers will return one by
one to the alluring back country, richer for the
experience of the past. Already the enterprising
The Never-Never Land 67
Australians are planning to pierce it with a rail-
way from east to west, and with another from
south to north. They may be driven back for a
time, but they will never rest until the last secret
it holds is wrested from the Never-Never country.
Meanwhile, it is there, and supplies the ele-
ment of mystery and the touch of imagination to
the life of a people that is, in the main, essentially
practical and utilitarian. The city clerk, hurry-
ing to his work through the crowded streets, feels
on his face the fierce north wind that has blown
over a thousand miles of arid sand, and is re-
minded of the solitude and the great emptiness of
the desert on the fringe of which he lives. The
selector's wife, shading her eyes from the sun just
setting over the western ranges, pictures her ab-
sent husband toiling behind the slow-moving
sheep across the level plains far away beyond the
ranges. The bushmen themselves tell wonderful
stories of the treasure hidden away in the far soli-
tudes ''where the pelican builds her nest," and it
inspires the poets and writers with something of
its own mystery and strange beauty. "The
wind," writes one, "comes to you over the great
uninhabited spaces, desolate grey distances, and
you feel somehow or other that it would have a
better story to tell, and a sweeter and more
familiar appeal to your heart, if it had the human
note in it, if its sounds were lightened with a
laugh or saddened with a sigh. . . . All
Australia in its waste places is waiting for live
68 Australian Life
men with the fire of life in them, and a power of
hand and brain to translate what is barren and
unlovely into something that shall be of use to
man, and beautiful as his desire."
There, in a word, is the problem that remains
to be solved by the great Australian statesman.
It is a continent of three million square miles, and
contains less than four million people, and yet the
history of recent years shows how few immigrants
are arriving to fill the empty places. For more
than ten years, immigration has been at a stand-
still, while the surplus millions of the Old World
have been pouring into America and Africa.
Recognising this, the politicians are, at least,
abandoning their cry of "Australia for the Aus-
tralians," and are casting about for means where-
by they may provide Australians for Australia.
CHAPTER VI
ON THK WAU,ABY TRACK
* I AM not ashamed to confess that I have had
I to carry my swag in my time," declared an
Australian Premier not very long ago. Hund-
reds of men occupying positions of wealth and
influence in Australia could truthfully make the
same avowal, for upon the wallaby track, as upon
the high seas, may be found men of all sorts and
conditions. I/ong ago, an Australian public man
denned the swagman as one who goes about look-
ing for work, and praying devoutly that he may
never find it. The epigram has, to a certain ex-
tent, passed into a tradition, although it is mani-
festly unjust to all but a very small proportion
of the men who carry their swags through the
Australian bush.
The existence of the swagman proclaims no-
thing so loudly as the uncertainty and precarious
nature of pastoral employment in Australia. If
there is one thing upon which the farmer and
pastoralist can rely, it is a regular supply of com-
petent men for the busy time of shearing, lamb-
marking, drafting, and harvesting. There is no
69
70 Australian Life
difficulty in obtaining the extra labour required
at these seasons, and no question of paying rail-
way fares or incurring any unnecessary expense.
In any district where there is a prospect of obtain-
ing such work, the man with the swag may be
found, and he is usually a capable and experi-
enced labourer. If he is not, his prospect of ob-
taining work, or of keeping it should he obtain it,
is a very slight one. The system so far as it has
been outlined is absolutely a convenient one for
the pastoralist, who is able to pick and choose
among the many men who continually apply for
work, and to replace an incompetent man at a
day's notice with one thoroughly up to his work.
But the system has engendered an unwritten bush
law, which entails a considerable expense upon
the station-owners, and probably is responsible for
much of the obloquy which has been heaped upon
the "swaggie."
The law in question, the observance of which
has become one of the standing grievances of the
pastoralist, is that every swagman asking for
work shall at least be given food enough to carry
him on to the next station. It need hardly be
said that the hospitality extended to the man with
the swag varies in degree and in kind. Some
station-owners decline to observe the rule at all,
and advertise that all applications for work must
be made to their accredited agent in some neigh-
bouring township. Others expect some work to
be performed in return, such as the cutting of
On the Wallaby Track 71
firewood or the carrying of water. Others give a
ration of flour and of uncooked meat, while the
few adhere to the old order of things by provid-
ing a hut for the men's accommodation, and tea
and sugar and even tobacco as well as flour and
meat. The station-owners whose treatment of
the swagman is based on so liberal a scale argue
that the expense is justified in many ways. On
their runs, lighted matches are not likely to be
dropped in the dry grass, gates are not left open,
nor fences broken down, and in many other ways
the friendly feeling of the swagman saves them
from annoyance and loss.
There is, of course, a class which abuses this
hospitality, loafing from station to station and
sponging upon all who will encourage them.
Many of these ' 'sundowners" have a regular
round, and show some ingenuity in evading the
danger of work; but the normal condition of the
pastoral districts does not encourage their ex-
istence. In Australia, the natural habitat of the
professional idler at the present day is in one of
the big cities, and the sundowner, as a rule, is a
survival or a tradition of a past era.
The man in search of work in the bush has his
own title for himself and for others similarly situ-
ated. He may be a man of some substance, who
rides a good horse, and leads another on which
are packed all the necessities for travel. He
may strap his heavy swag to the handle-bars of
a bicycle, and hanging his other impedimenta
72 Australian Life
picturesquely on the frame of the machine, plug
earnestly over the dusty roads and rugged tracks
of the back country. Or he may sling "bluey"
over his shoulders, and with waterbag in one hand
and billy-can in the other, tramp steadfastly along
the wallaby tracks with a trusted mate. In any
case, he is a "traveller," and does not care to be
referred to by any other term.
Among travellers, the man who rides his own
horse enjoys a deserved prestige. His application
for work is likely to receive first consideration
from managers and owners of stations. When
he wishes to replenish his "tucker-bag," he can
usually approach the station store-keeper with
money in his hand; for he is careful to preserve
his status. From the tucker-bag, a sort of pillow-
slip with the mouth in the middle, which is slung
across the front of the saddle so that a bulging
end hangs down on either side, he gets his bush-
name of "bag-man." The bag-man, who is gen-
erally a shearer first and a handy-man when
shearing is over, probably has a round of stations
where he can rely upon a pen at shearing time,
as well as station work of other kinds.
The old order of bushmen still affect to look
down upon the bush cyclist as an innovation and
a destroyer of time-honoured' customs and prac-
tices. There can be no doubt of the genuine
utility of the bicycle to the bushman, who con-
trives to cover immense distances on his machine,
and to carry with him a quantity of luggage that
On the Wallaby Track 73
would probably surprise the city cyclist. It is on
record that one of these men rode seven hundred
miles in eleven days on a bicycle which, with the
belongings he had fastened upon it, weighed more
than a hundred pounds. No bush track is too
rough for the shearer cyclist, and the impromptu
repairs sometimes effected in an emergency, if
somewhat unorthodox, nevertheless bear testi-
mony to the ingenuity and versatility of the
Australian bushman.
But the real hero of the wallaby track is the
footman, who, with his swag slung over his
shoulder and his billy in his hand, tramps from
one edge of the continent to the other with a pa-
tient courage that is not always recognised. The
man who can camp with a couple of these travel-
lers, sharing their billy of tea and halving with
them his plug of tobacco, may go away enriched
by many a story grimly humorous or charged
with valuable human experience. The man with
the swag faces the hardship of his life with a
brave jest, as the very argot of the wallaby track
will testify. He declares, with a rueful look at
his swag, that he is "waltzing with Matilda,"
calling up by the quaint simile a laughable vision
of some heavy-footed bush girl unskilled in the
dance. The rags that serve him for socks are
" Prince Alberts "; he lodges each night in "the
Moon and Stars Hotel, ground floor." He illus-
trates the uneventfulness of his life and the taci-
turnity it induces by a story which may be heard
74 Australian Life
in some form or other in any part of Australia,
and has been christened "The Great Australian
Joke." One variant of it runs as follows:
Two mates, Bill and Jim, were carrying their
swags through a very inhospitable stretch of
country, and both were completely down on their
luck. One afternoon they passed a dry water-
hole, on the edge of which was the not unusual
adornment of a dead beast. When they had left
it some distance behind them, Bill opened his
mouth for the first time that day, saying, "Jim,
did you see that dead bullock?" About dusk,
they came to a creek, where they camped, lighted
a fire, and made a damper and a billy of tea. A
couple of pipes were smoked, and as blankets
were being unrolled, Jim also spoke, saying, "It
wasn't a bullock, it was a horse." When the
sun rose next day, a scorching hot wind was
blowing, but the travellers had to push on, for the
tucker-bags were nearly empty and they were in
a bad country. As the sun grew more and more
powerful, they felt the necessity for camping and
a rest, but they came to no water, and must needs
tramp wearily on. Suddenly Bill threw his swag
angrily on the ground, and turning fiercely upon
Jim, spoke yet again, saying, "There 's too much
blessed argument about this outfit for me."
The philosophy learned upon the wallaby track
teaches those who walk it to mock at their own
misfortunes, and to meet privation, hardship, and
danger with a jest upon their lips. The traveller
On the Wallaby Track 75
sets out on a long journey with an equipment
that, at the first glance, would appear to be lu-
dicrously inadequate. When unrolled, his swag
consists of nothing more than a pair of coarse blue
blankets, a few spare garments, and some odds
and ends, hardly worth the trouble of carrying.
With a few shillings in his pocket, to be hus-
banded most economically, and enough flour, tea,
and sugar to last him a week, he is ready for the
track.
Of course, the experienced traveller is master
of all sorts of devices to make life on the track
more bearable. There is an art in the very rolling
of the swag, and in the adj ustment of the straps
which secure the ends to that which forms the
loop through which the arm is passed, which
materially lessens the weight of the swagman's
burden. It requires experience to make a light
and palatable damper, just of the right thickness,
and neither doughy nor hardbaked, and the
compounding of billy tea has been reduced to a
science, upon which lengthy essays have been
written. The billy-can, a tin pot with a wire
handle across the top, and usually fitted with a lid,
is the swagman's only cooking utensil. He may
carry two, one fitting inside the other, the larger
one being used for boiling meat, while the
smaller one is at once kettle and teapot. The
praises of billy tea have been sung by all who
have picnicked in the bush, its excellence being
probably due to the infusion of the tea leaves at
76 Australian Life
the very moment when the water is beginning to
boil. At this critical juncture, the bushman
throws in a handful of cheap tea, and a good al-
lowance of moist brown sugar, stirring vigorously
with a twig of eucalyptus. The billy is then set
aside for a moment while the tea leaves settle,
and the brew is drunk scalding hot from quart
pots known as "pannikins."
It sometimes happens that a number of travel-
lers meet at a favourite camping-place, when a
billy-boiling contest may ensue. Many bushmen
are proud of the possession of a billy that is a
quick boiler, that is, old and worn thin, but kept
free from any coating of non-conducting soot.
But billy-boiling contests usually resolve them-
selves into questions of individual skill in the
management of a camp-fire. In the great tragedy
of the bush, the billy-can also plays its part, for
when the traveller has turned by mistake along
the lonely track that leads nowhere, and finds
himself without water or food in the heart of a
pathless waste, he scratches his dying message
upon the billy-can. Sometimes it is his name,
or a few words that tell the whole story of
the tragedy, which is still so usual an event in
the "back country" as to pass almost without
comment.
There are other signs which distinguish the
experienced "traveller," in addition to his work-
manlike swag and the deftness with which he
provides for his own comfort in camp. He gen-
On the Wallaby Track 77
erally knows the country well; possesses a ready
tact in dealing with station-owners, managers,
store-keepers, and cooks, which ensures full
tucker- bags; and adds to his fare by considerable
skill in fishing and trapping. He also knows
where work is likely to be obtained, and it must
be said for him that, having once gained employ-
ment, he is as industrious and versatile a labourer
as could be found anywhere on the face of the
earth. Shearing, fencing, tank-digging, horse-
breaking, and a score of other accomplishments
are at the tips of his fingers, and yet this handy-
man of the bush can only expect partial employ-
ment. Few swagmen are in work for more than
six months out of the twelve.
His real weakness is disclosed when the work
is over, and with a good cheque in his pocket, he
once more rolls his swag and turns his face to the
east and home. He knows by past experience
that his only chance of making that fresh start in
life of which he so often talks is to keep his
cheque intact until he reaches his destination.
But the bush public-house, with the grinning,
obsequious landlord, and the girl smirking behind
the bar, proves an irresistible attraction. Just a
drink or so resolves itself into a day's steady
soaking. The cheque passes into the keeping of
the landlord, and when the bushman finally re-
gains sobriety, after a week's steady spreeing, it
is only to learn that he has spent all his earnings
except a very small balance. With curses upon
78 Australian Life
his own folly, and many resolves not to repeat the
experience next time, he once more faces the
wallaby track, and the heart-breaking search for
work which is so difficult to obtain.
It may be that if it were not for the bush shanty
and the bad liquor sold in it, the number of travel-
lers on the Australian bush tracks would be
lessened by more than half, and the pastoralist,
instead of complaining of the drain upon his
stores, would grumble at the scarcity of experi-
enced labour. The steady swagman usually be-
comes a selector in time, and marries and settles
down in his own bush home. The failure of his
crops may drive him out upon the tracks again,
to knock together a cheque while his wife looks
after the home and the stock. That, however, is
only a temporary expedient, and after the shear-
ing or the fencing contract is over, he will return
to his clearing with money in his pocket and
hopeful for better seasons. Some of the neatest
and most prosperous little homesteads in the Aus-
tralian agricultural districts have been won by
men who began with a cheque earned while they
were carrying their swags in the "back country."
It is the drinking, improvident man who carries
the swag all through his life, and ends on some
wholly forgotten track with the crows blackening
the trees above him. The hardships of the life,
and the constant exposure to weather of all kinds,
must have their effect even upon the hardiest con-
stitutions, and the excesses indulged in play their
On the Wallaby Track 79
part in wrecking the swagman's health. Many
end their days in the country hospitals, which are
so largely supported by collections taken up at
every shearing-shed, and to which the swagman
has usually contributed generously at some time
in his career. Even the old age pension, which
the needy who are past work can obtain in some
of the Australian States, is not for the swagman,
whose wanderings from state to state deprive him
of the right to claim this dole.
In spite of the hardships and disadvantages of
the life, however, the swagman may be found on
every road and track in Australia. He is an ob-
ject of suspicion, and liable at any moment to find
himself accused of some crime of which he may
not even have heard. He is accounted the cause
of all bush fires, and is judged by the worst
specimens of his class and not by the average.
And yet, having once learned the fascination of
the open road, it never loses its charm for him. I
have an old friend, settled now in a pleasant town
on the Victorian coast, with money in the bank,
won by him on the Western Australian goldfields.
To use his own term, he is ' 'an independent man."
But when spring comes, and old Ben gets a whiff
of the bursting wattle, the call of the open road
proves irresistible. He says he must go and have
a look at the country, and accordingly greases his
bluchers and rolls his swag, and with a whistle to
his dog, is off afoot. A month later, he comes
back looking younger, and full of bush tidings.
8o Australian Life
Some "chaps" have bottomed on good wash dirt
over the range from Lonely Gully, where he had
always said the indications were favourable. An
old crony in the Wimmera district has just put in
another acre of vines, and complained that the
parrots, worse than ever this year, have not left
him a single cherry. The farmers in the Mailee
are complaining of the locusts already, and he
(Ben) would like to know whether the Govern-
ment ever will do anything about it; and so on,
with many a yarn of bird and beast observed by
the way, of bush publicans, civil and uncivil,
and of "chaps" hard-up or humping their swag
in deadly earnest. Old Ben likes it all. May he
live many a long year to carry his swag through
the glad bush in the first joyous flush of spring!
CHAPTER VII
IN TIME) OF DROUGHT
THE prosperity of pastoral Australia depends
upon the rainfall, and as the dying autumn
ushers in the rainy season, the squatter waits
with anxiety for the first signs of the change of
seasons. The average annual rainfall of the
greater part of pastoral Australia is no more than
twenty inches, although in some districts a much
greater amount of moisture may be expected.
When the long-expected rains come, there is a
succession of heavy, drenching showers, which
fill the lagoons and water-holes, and convert the
trickling creek beds and dry water-courses into
foaming yellow rivers. Afterwards comes the
sun, causing the grass to shoot up bravely, and
every shrub and herb to sprout vigorously, cover-
ing the whole face of the land in a mantle of
smiling green.
Should the season prove an exceptionally
favourable one, the showers are repeated at in-
tervals during the winter and early spring, and
the pastoralist sees the wattles bloom with the
81
82 Australian Life
happy certainty of a good year. Summer suns
and scorching hot winds may parch every vestige
of grass from the face of the land, but that he ac-
cepts as a matter of course. The stock will live
through it all, and prosper and multiply in a
manner quite astounding.
Sometimes these good seasons follow one an-
other in succession, or are broken only by a year
when the autumn rains are light and unsatisfac-
tory, and the summer sees an unwelcome scarcity
of water. The history of pastoral Australia points
to the fact that just as these good seasons have
moved in cycles, so have they been followed by
a succession of lean years, terminating in a
drought during which the grass has never
sprouted, and the edible shrubs have been eaten
down to the very root by the starving stock. In
times such as these, want of food and want of
water have caused terrible mortality among the
flocks and herds of the Commonwealth.
In 1891, there were one hundred and twenty-
four million sheep in Australia. Then came a
long series of dry years, culminating in the ex-
ceptionally bad ones of 1901 and 1902, by which
time the flocks had shrunk to less than half that
number. These figures are more eloquent of the
terrible animal suffering endured than any writ-
ten words could be. They mean financial loss,
too, and ruined hopes, and the abandonment of
homes created by the unflagging toil of a lifetime.
Here is a brief story, chosen from among a num-
In Time of Drought 83
her told in the Australian newspapers concerning
the havoc wrought by drought:
Ridley Williams had occupied Burbank Station
for thirty years. In the 'eighties, he thought he
was a rich man, for three thousand calves were
being branded each year. Then came the bad
seasons, and in 1902, only two calves were
branded. Just then the rains came, and the grass
sprang as it had not done for years. He looked
round and reflected that it might come right after
all. But he considered it was only annual grass
and light herbage, that the old drought-resisting
plants were gone. He counted the cost of re-
stocking, he counted the risk; then, plucking up
courage, he packed his portmanteau, sent on
what few head of stock were left, and abandoned
Burbank, " improvements and all."
That is the story so far as it goes. The sequel
occurs readily enough to the imagination. Into
the run abandoned by this pioneer, another will
surely step, perhaps to be favoured by good sea-
sons and to achieve a rapid prosperity. Or per-
haps he will but repeat the experience of his
predecessor; for judgment, industry, and business
ability count for nothing against the fickle climate
of Australia.
One day from the life of drought-stricken Aus-
tralia will serve to describe the terrible struggle
with nature that is carried on through so many
bitter years. Sunrise comes with a fiery red glow
and a scorching wind, so dry and blasting that it
84 Australian Life
seems to come from some white-hot furnace.
After a hasty breakfast, washed down by scald-
ing, milkless tea, the pastoralist throws himself
into the saddle, and rides away to the big station
tanks to superintend the work already going on
there. Round the shrunken pool of yellow water
stands a row of sheep, unable from sheer weak-
ness to extricate themselves from the mud into
which they have rushed in their eagerness to
drink. Some are already dead, while men are
busily employed in drawing the survivors from
the trap into which they have fallen. Their
owner looks at the pathetic, bleating animals,
mere skeletons covered by wool and hide, with a
dull wonder that they have lived so long, and a
dead certainty that they cannot live much longer.
He rides on. On all sides are skeletons and
decaying carcasses, with gorged crows flapping
lazily away before him. Not a blade of grass to
be seen anywhere, nothing but the scanty black
green foliage of the gums, and in the distance the
grey, dusty mulga scrub. He heads for the scrub,
crossing the creek-bed, now dry and choked with
dust. Men are cutting down the mulga, the only
food the station now affords to the starving sheep.
It is the last resort, and the animals eat it: not
eagerly, even though they be starving, for it is
tough and uninviting.
His next visit is paid to his stud flock, once the
pride of the station, and still cherished with care,
for it represents the only hope for the future.
In Time of Drought 85
From a deep water-hole, a man is pumping water
into troughs, while another is opening bags of
chaff and spreading their contents about mangers
of hessian, stretched across upright saplings.
This is hand-feeding, and an expensive business,
for the chaff has to be brought many hundreds of
miles by boat and train, and last of all by team or
camel-train. Each sheep costs him sixpence a
week to feed, but as long as he is able to provide
or to borrow the money, it must go on. There
is nothing else to do.
The sun climbs higher in the heavens, and the
feeble sheep creep listlessly into the shade of the
gum trees. Some of the men set about removing
the hides and wool of those that have recently
died. Everything seems at its last gasp, and the
choking wind sweeps across the sun-baked land,
smothering everything with dust and grit. The
very air is foul with the thousands of decaying
carcasses lying around. Weary and dispirited,
the owner of this desolation turns his jaded horse
back to the homestead, to receive what sympathy
and comfort his careworn wife is able to give him.
The sufferings of the domestic animals in
drought time are shared by the wild birds and
animals of Australia, until these are forced to lay
aside their timidity by want of water and food.
At such times, it is interesting to camp by a
water-hole and observe the wild things as they
come to drink. With the very first streak of
dawn comes a mob of kangaroos, betraying their
86 Australian Life
arrival, as they hop along, by the thud of their
great tails. After them come birds: parrots of all
kinds, gorgeous in green and blue and scarlet;
screaming cockatoos, all gleaming white, or
modest in pink and grey; magpies, kookaburras,
crows, and doves in hundreds, with countless
smaller birds. Screaming and chattering, they
fly away as a drove of scudding emus reaches
the edge of the water, peering suspiciously on
this side and on that before lowering their heads
to the water. The imported rabbit is everywhere,
and makes a good fight against the drought, as
against every means devised for his destruction.
But before the sun is well up, the wild animals
have taken their toll of the water-holes, and the
procession of sheep, cattle, and horses begins to
arrive. It is only in very severe years that the
wild birds and animals die by reason of the
drought, but that occurred in 1902. It was no
uncommon thing in that year to find birds dead
of starvation, for, although these could usually
procure water, the supply of insect and other food
was so scanty that they haunted the camps of
men, on the look-out for scraps of food. In 1903,
an Act was passed by the Parliament of New
South Wales making the destruction of kanga-
roos, opossums, and other wild animals illegal
for some years, the reason being that, owing to the
drought, these animals had become so scarce that
their total extermination seemed imminent. The
last effect of this great drought was the destruc-
1
CO fc
* rf
I 2
In Time of Drought 87
tion of areas of forest, the deep-rooted Australian
trees actually perishing for want of moisture.
Never before in the records of the history of the
continent had the effects of the drought been so
far-reaching.
Such an experience, quite without precedent
during the white man's occupation of Australia,
has not been without the educational effect. The
Australian pastoralist has learned, from bitter
experience, a great deal about fighting the
drought that was not previously known. Ex-
periments made with native shrubs and trees have
proved that many of these are of considerable
value as fodder plants when all else fails. Among
the plants so used was the despised prickly pear,
the fleshy leaves being boiled and used as fodder,
and serving to keep much valuable stock from
absolute starvation. In the same way, the hungry
stock learned to devour the bulbous trunks of the
Australian bottle-tree and the leaves and twigs
of a forest tree known as the kurragong.
These, however, were the expedients resorted
to in desperation. The more valuable lesson
gained from the drought was the necessity for
caring for and propagating the priceless drought-
resisting shrubs, such as the saltbush, which are
natural to the saline lowlands of the interior.
Transplanted to California, the value of the salt-
bush was at once recognised there, and measures
for its scientific propagation were taken with the
most successful results. From this example, and
88 Australian Life
from the lessons of the lean years, the Australian
pastoralist has so far profited that considerable
attention is being devoted to the spread of this
plant and others of a kindred nature.
Provision for the storage of the water that falls
during the rainy season has always been of a
primitive nature, for the great evaporation which
takes place under the summer sun discouraged
any elaborate precautions of this kind. Never-
theless, the importance of conserving, as far as
possible, the plentiful supplies that invariably run
to waste in the rainy season is now more fully
recognised than it has ever been. Plans for lock-
ing the more important of the rivers and creeks
have been from time to time proposed, and prac-
tical steps are now being taken to carry into effect
the more feasible of these schemes. The con-
servation of large supplies of water during good
seasons would appear the most obvious precaution
against the dry years that must inevitably follow,
as experience has shown; but, in the past, a good
season has been a sort of fool's paradise, during
which the pastoralists have idly watched the valu-
able water running away to waste.
The improvidence of Australians in this respect
is made strongly apparent by such a curious spec-
tacle as was witnessed in a little town in the
western district of New South Wales when the
great drought broke up in 1903. For many
months, the inhabitants had been supplied with
water carted from a distance, although a dry
In Time of Drought 89
stream-bed choked with dust, and a wooden
bridge spanning it, bore witness that under
normal conditions the settlement could boast of a
river. The breaking of the drought was heralded
by news of heavy rains nearer the coast, and by
the rumour that a head of water was actually
rushing down the upper reaches of the river.
This rumour was confirmed by an excited horse-
man, who rode into the town one breathless
evening, yelling that "she was coming down."
Everybody turned out to witness the sight, lining
the banks of the dry stream-bed and gazing up
the empty channel with anxious eyes. The com-
ing of the water could be heard before it was
actually in sight, a hoarse whispering as the ad-
vancing flood licked around the sun-baked stones,
and stirred among the dead twigs and grasses.
Then an inky pool appeared in the stream-bed,
now stationary and now moving quickly forward.
It broadened as it trickled through the little
town. Behind it came a rush of yellow waters,
laden with debris of all kinds, filling up the hol-
lows and washing away the year's accumulation
of dust or grit. Two hours later, the dry creek-
bed was a roaring torrent, and the excited man
borrowed a fresh horse to convey the glad news
to townships further down the creek.
Most of that water ran uselessly away from the
places where it was wanted, just as it had for ages
past in parched, unthrifty Australia. It would be
strange indeed if the waste of it did not appeal to
QO Australian Life
the drought-stricken bushmen, and if the neces-
sity for storage works were not recognised as a
matter of national importance. Unfortunately
the capital required for the construction of the
necessary storage areas is not at present forth-
coming, and the work of irrigating Australia is
progressing but slowly. It is obvious, however,
that the conservation of water, even if carried out
on the most extensive scale, will not cause the
grass to grow in years when there is no rainfall.
The loss of stock is caused by want of food, and
no scheme of water conservation would be ade-
quate for the irrigation of the vast grazing areas
of Australia. Water conservation can only be
part of a system which will include the growth of
large crops of green fodder by means of irrigation,
and the preservation of this fodder in silo pits.
The many experiments made in this direction
have generally proved successful, the favourite
fodder plants being maize, lucerne, and varieties
of sorghum. I^ike most arid countries, Australia
possesses a soil capable of producing remarkable
crops when irrigated, and the growth of luxuriant
fodder plants is only a question of the proper
application of water. It may confidently be pre-
dicted that the next development of pastoral enter-
prise will be the storage of water, and of large
supplies of fodder, in both a green and dry state.
The most satisfactory advance in the direction
of providing water has been made by the utilisa-
tion of the stores of artesian water, which have
In Time of Drought 9 1
been proved to exist under an immense area of
Central Australia. This underground water sup-
ply is tapped by means of boring, and in some in-
stances the soil has been penetrated to a depth as
great as five thousand feet in order to reach the
subterranean water. Very frequently the water,
when tapped, spouts strongly out, although in
some places it only rises to a certain height in the
bore, and must be raised to the surface by means
of pumps. The boring operations are conducted
both by private individuals and by the govern-
ment of the Australian States, some of which
maintain a staff of specially trained officials for
this work.
The importance of this subterranean water sup-
ply can best be illustrated by the example of one
bore, sunk in a dry and waterless tract of country,
which has now for years yielded a flow of water
averaging six million gallons each day. At Dag-
worth, in Queensland, there is an artesian well
from which water flows at a temperature of 196
Fahrenheit, and many of the Queensland artesian
wells discharge water of a temperature exceeding
100 Fahrenheit. This artesian water has been
proved as valuable for irrigation purposes as any
surface supply, and when it has sufficiently cooled,
the stock drink it just as readily. Boring for
water is still being prosecuted with energy in all
the states except Tasmania and Victoria, and
from the results already obtained the pastoral
districts have reaped incalculable benefit.
92 Australian Life
Perhaps the most bitter reflection of the drought-
stricken station owner arose from the knowledge
that, while his stock was starving, there were
large areas further east where a plentiful supply
of grass was actually wasting. No means existed
for transporting his stock to this supply of food,
for they could not travel through the barren
country that lay between. In the opinion of the
president of the Queensland Pastoralists' Union,
the most practical suggestion for fighting drought
in the future is one for the construction of light
railway lines into the western and northern pas-
toral districts, thus enabling stock to be removed
from the drought-stricken areas.
The recovery of the Australian back country
from a long succession of dry seasons, such as
those which culminated in the disastrous year of
1902, is necessarily slow. The rains that break
the drought cause the grass to spring up bravely,
it is true, but it is a delicate growth and does not
withstand the hot sun for long. The fodder-
plants, eaten down to the very roots in the lean
years, have not had time to recover themselves,
and would probably never do so were it not for
the diminution of the stock upon the land. The
havoc of the drought is not so easily repaired. A
Bulletin writer, in a few vivid words, describes the
bush in its first stage of recovery:
"A new world, seemingly a world of green,
good to look upon, though it was of forced, un-
stable growth, with no vitality. The poor bush
In Time of Drought 93
tries to hide its nakedness in this short-lived life,
but the skeleton bare, gaunt, blackened with
fire, tortured by thirst cannot be so quickly hid-
den. It is hideously apparent, and pitiful to see.
Down in the gullies, on the plains, which a few
months ago danced with white molten heat, now
tinted soft with the crude tints of verdure, lie the
white gleaming bones, sorrowful amongst the
newly sprung grass. The depleted flocks drift
and browse around them menacing landmarks
of the summer to come. ... It will be a bare,
bleak world for this year's lambs. The poor
weakly mothers will be little protection against
the cold of early spring and the devilment of the
crows, who, preening themselves high in the
oaks, or flapping lazily over the paddocks, are
bitter forecasts of the heat- time to come. ' '
The unstable nature of the foundation upon
which the pastoral industry has been reared is
shown by the fact that of the last twenty-five
years of the nineteenth century only nine brought
good seasons. In some of the worst years, the
agricultural districts also suffered, and so severely
was the drought of 1901 and 1902 felt in the
wheat-growing Mallee district of Victoria, that
many farmers actually left their holdings, some
of them turning their backs on Australia in de-
spair. In the Australian cities, which are largely
dependent upon the prosperity of the back coun-
try, the pinch of drought causes an unwelcome
tightness of money, as well as an increase In the
94
Australian Life
price of commodities; while the large floating
population of btishmen experience scarcity of
work consequent upon the diminution of the
flocks. It is no matter for surprise, then, that
the Australian inventor sets himself seriously to
the task of rain-making; or that an Australian
public man declared that "a week's steady rain
was worth more to Australia than all the gold
mines of the West."
CHAPTER VIII
URBAN AUSTRALIA
HPHE size and importance of the Australian
1 cities, when viewed in the light of the total
population of the continent, are a source of sur-
prise to every visitor. The population of Sydney
and Melbourne may be set down, in round num-
bers, as half a million each, thus accounting for
one million of the two and a half million inhabi-
tants of the two most populous states. A better
idea of the wealth and trade of these cities may
be gained by comparing them with other cities of
the Empire. In the value of ratable property,
Sydney is second only to London among Empire
cities, while as a seaport, Sydney takes fourth
place among the ports of the Empire for the actual
value of trade. Melbourne is in everything the
rival of Sydney, and ranks little below that city
in wealth and volume of trade.
In the other Australian States, the same char-
acteristic is noticeable. Each can boast of a
capital city where a large proportion of the state
inhabitants dwell, and this proportion shows a
tendency to increase rather than diminish. The
95
96 Australian Life
causes which have contributed to the growth of
these cities, so huge when compared to the popu-
lation of the country behind them, lie in a variety
of circumstances, the most important being the
great trading activity of the Australian people.
Each capital is the sole trade outlet of a vast and
productive state, and also the channel through
which the imports for the use of a prosperous and
free-spending people must flow. Every railway
constructed leads directly to the capital, and the
capitals monopolise the trade which flows from
one Australian state to another. They provide
facilities that exist nowhere else in the state, and
have therefore attracted to themselves the bulk
of the manufactures fostered by the protective
tariffs adopted by most of the Australian States.
L,ike a snowball, they have grown by growing.
The business and the home life of the people
who live in these cities can better be described
when some of the leading characteristics which
distinguish them have been outlined. They were
all designed to be big cities, with broad straight
streets and spacious public parks. All the incon-
veniences of older cities have been avoided; room
for expansion on all sides has been provided;
everything has been planned on the grand scale.
Melbourne is a typical Australian city. The city
proper is a mile square, every corner is an exact
right angle, and every street is exactly one mile
in length. From the great central railway station,
any part of the city can be reached in a few
Urban Australia 97
minutes by walking, and to that station every
suburb sends frequent trains. The double line
of tramways running along the centre of each
street leaves a way for the traffic on either
side as wide as streets were made in olden
cities. In his square mile of city, the Melbourne
man finds everything Houses of Parliament,
town hall, post-office, museum, theatres, banks,
churches, newspaper offices, Stock Exchange, res-
taurants, libraries, and shops. Beyond the city
area, the suburbs stretch for eight miles in every
direction, but the business of the city, and prac-
tically of the whole state, is transacted in that
square mile of city. The public buildings are on
an ambitious scale. Most of them were planned
at a time when Melbourne possessed a sanguine
statistician, who published a calculation showing
that the population of Australia would be thirty-
three millions in 1951, and one hundred and
eighty-nine millions in 2001 . He based his figures
on the rate at which the population was then in-
creasing, but unfortunately that rate has not been
maintained. Nevertheless, the public buildings
are there in anticipation of the time when the
population of Melbourne shall be as great as that
of lyondon at the present day. The front of the
Parliament House is already complete, and when
the dome has been added, the building will be a
noble one. The governor's residence is a gigantic
palace, and of the public offices, some one has un-
kindly written that they look as if they had been
98 Australian Life
built by the mile. During a land boom, the price
of the city land was put up to such an extravagant
price that several speculators availed themselves
of the presence of an American architect to erect
"sky-scrapers" of twelve and fourteen stories.
The liberal scale upon which banks, insurance
offices, and other buildings have been erected
prevents the tall buildings from looking hope-
lessly out of place; indeed, the city escapes the
criticism of being overbuilt, because everything is
in proportion. The surpassing activity of the
people in this compact city area is part of the
city itself. Wide as the streets are, they hardly
suffice for the traffic of the vehicles that crowd
them. The footpaths are also liberal of dimen-
sion, but they are always thronged in business
hours. Every lamp-post bears a notice request-
ing that "pedestrians keep to the right," and
owing to the general compliance with this re-
quest, there is no confusion between the two
streams of foot-passengers that pour so rapidly
through the city. The first and most lasting im-
pression of Melbourne is a roar of traffic, a con-
tinual clanging of tram-bells, and an eager crowd,
always hurrying.
It would be easy to write at length of the dis-
tinctive features of each Australian city, but it is
my object rather to point out that they all possess
the general characteristics I have indicated.
They have a compact business area, the most
modern and convenient means of travelling, and
Urban Australia 99
every facility for the rapid transaction of business.
The influx of business men from the suburbs be-
gins shortly before nine o'clock. From the big
railway station issues an endless stream of human
beings, as train after train arrives from the sub-
urbs. Every train is crowded, and the ferry-
boats ply busily across the water. The footpaths
show that the stream is setting in one direction
only, towards the heart of the city. The stream
continues to flow until half-past nine, and then
stops. Principals and employees are all in their
places by that hour, and business is in full swing.
Many of the Australian business customs are
practical and convenient. Some warehouses close
their doors for three-quarters of an hour in the
middle of the day, when it is an understood thing
that members of the staff take their luncheon.
During the rest of the day, every employee must
be in his place for the transaction of his business.
The long luncheon hour and the subsequent drag-
ging on of business are not possible; there is not
enough time. The banks shut their doors at
three o'clock, and most offices at five. At six
o'clock the shops put up their shutters, and every
one is at home, or on the way home.
It is a short day, but it is a busy one. When
they say in Australia that a man can "run like a
Melbourne shipping clerk," they intend to pay
tribute to his speed. The Sydney man moves in
a more dignified manner, and the people of
Brisbane are so leisurely, by contrast, that the
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southern states have christened Queensland ' ' the
land of lots o' time." The Brisbane man is usu-
ally sitting still or riding on a train. He wastes
no effort, but the net result of his day's work is
usually a satisfactory one. The principle under-
lying business in Australia is decision. The man
who says " I '11 think it over and write to you "
is a comparative rarity. The average Australian
business man, if he thinks he sees a chance, is
willing to take a risk, for he knows very well that
the offer is not likely to be repeated. He has
another characteristic. He can lock up his office
at five o'clock and leave his business behind him
in the office. When he leaves the city for his resi-
dential suburb, the thread of business is broken,
and will not be taken up again until he steps out
of the train next morning. In the meantime, he
lounges, both mentally and physically.
There is nothing arbitrary in the selection of
residential districts near the big Australian cities;
the best situations are occupied by the best class
of suburbs. The squatter whom we have seen in
his Riverina station also occupies a mansion at
Pott's Point, near Sydney; at Toorak, a Mel-
bourne suburb; or in some corresponding out-
skirt of one of the Australian capitals. The most
striking feature of the big grey house is its wide
colonnaded balcony, and the extent of the grounds
that surround it. There is nothing distinctive
about the interior; ball-room, billiard-room, li-
brary, reception-rooms, all are arranged after the
Urban Australia 101
conventional fashion. The grounds are remark-
able for their thick lawns of stiff buffalo grass,
springy underfoot, but harsh and coarse to the
touch. The luxuriance of foliage and flower is
surprising. The long carriage- drive is bordered
by great clumps of arum lilies and purple iris,
with groves of glossy camellias and ornamental
shrubs and trees drawn from every part of the
world. Glass-houses, conservatory, and stables
are arranged on a scale of luxury and convenience.
From the balcony is obtained a magnificent view
of the harbour and of the compact city area,
bristling with spires and domes and many-storied
buildings. It is a pleasant country house, in the
heart of a big city.
The squatter's presence in town is due to the
session of the State legislature, for he is a mem-
ber of the Upper House, or Legislative Council.
The chief function of this Council is to check the
Socialistic tendency of the Lower House, the
members of which are elected on a basis of man-
hood suffrage. A class vote or a nomination
secured him his seat in the Upper House, where
he sits with men the majority of whom, like
himself, are wealthy and have pastoral interests.
His legislative duties are not exacting, and he
has time to transact business with his city agents,
to renew at the club his associations with his in-
timates, to see his horse run in the Cup, and to
pick up at the stud sales a ram of some celebrated
strain which costs him a thousand guineas.
102 Australian Life
Suppose we accompany him to the city, where
he has a busy day before him. He catches the
train not a hundred yards from his house, and it
is interesting to notice that as it approaches the
city, the car passes through several zones of sub-
urbs, each of a different class. Next to his own
suburb is one of detached villas, each with its own
garden; then comes a region of wooden cottages,
all neat and comfortable; and finally, stucco ter-
races, rather dingy and crowded, and many of
them with cards in the window, proclaiming that
" board and residence" may be obtained within.
Suddenly a corner is turned and the city area is
reached. Alighting at a corner where two police-
men are regulating the throng of traffic in a man-
ner that recalls their London doubles, he walks
rapidly down two blocks and turns into his club.
Half a dozen letters have to be answered, includ-
ing one from his station manager; then he must
see his solicitor, and afterwards the principal of a
wool-broking firm. It is now lunch-time, and he
invariably lunches, when he is in town, at the
same hotel. The room is a public one, and we
will take our seats at one of the tables, for there
are some interesting people here.
The grey-bearded man with whom our squatter
has just shaken hands is editor and proprietor of
a big daily paper. He plays no open part in
politics, but is credited with having made and un-
made each of the many Governments that have
ruled the State during the last twenty years.
Urban Australia 103
Next to him sits a member of the Federal Parlia-
ment, who is still a young man. He is a partner
in a big city firm, has interests in ever}' state of
Australia, was knighted not many years ago, and
fought bitterly and successfully for the employers
in the greatest strike Australia has ever known.
Our friend next greets a brother squatter who is
a Federal Senator and a prominent Orangeman.
He has a political grievance against the Australian
Premier, because of a friendly visit paid by that
gentleman to the Pope on his way back to Aus-
tralia from a visit to L,ondon. Nevertheless, he
is chatting amicably to an Irish barrister, whom
the same Pope has made a knight of St. Gregory,
on account of services rendered to the Church in
Australia. A university professor and the part
owner of one of the richest mines in Australia
complete this party of city magnates, the members
of which represent almost every shade of Aus-
tralian opinion. It is obvious enough that they
do not carry public differences into private life.
The lunch is soon over, for they are all busy
men, and our squatter makes his way by tram to
the building where the State Parliament meets.
Under ordinary circumstances, the House will
adjourn early enough to permit him to attend to
his social obligations afterwards.
The solicitor whom our squatter consulted may
well be taken as a type of the professional class.
He is a rising young man, has married a rela-
tive of his wealthy client, and because he has a
104 Australian Life
taste for yachting, an expensive hobby, it may
be said, has chosen to live in one of the outlying
suburbs by the seashore. His villa faces the bay;
it is his own, but a similar one could be rented
for ;8o, or ^90, a year, inclusive of all rates and
taxes. To that sum must be added the cost of
the season ticket for railway or boat, but for an
outlay of ;ioo a year a charming home can be
obtained. The house is of the bungalow type,
cool, roomy, and convenient, and the garden is a
miracle of brightness. The attraction of the sub-
urb is the beach. A little jetty makes a break-
water for the fleet of tiny centre-board yachts
anchored in its lee, and near it is a bathing place,
enclosed by a wooden palisade to keep the sharks
at bay. The residents can be in the city half an
hour after the train leaves their railway station,
and once home again, they are in a different at-
mosphere, getting the first breath of the cool
evening breeze at the close of the burning summer
days.
Our solicitor's professional work does not take
him into the courts, and has nothing to distin-
guish it from the practice of a similar business
elsewhere. At half- past nine, he is at his office,
and at one, he lunches with a few friends at an
establishment that is deserving of some descrip-
tion. The proprietors are two young ladies, well
known in society, and although they spend their
days in a tearoom, they retain their circle of
friends, among whom are many of their customers.
SLUICING FOR GOLD AT FRESHWATER.
Urban Australia 105
Their adoption of this business was made neces-
sary by the financial crisis which occurred in Aus-
tralia in 1893, when many families were reduced
from wealth to the poorest circumstances in the
course of one disastrous week. The young ladies
who attend upon the customers are educated and
refined, and daintiness is a feature of the furniture
and the fare. Prices are strictly reasonable, and
everything supplied is the very best of its kind.
Our solicitor may not improbably meet the young
lady who brought him his cup of coffee, at the
house of some friend, and such a meeting would
certainly occasion no awkwardness on either side.
About half-past four, he will catch a train home,
in time for a sail in his little yacht before dinner.
One or two evenings each week will probably be
spent at the one club of the suburb, where there
are tennis-lawns and bowling-greens, with a
skittle-alley and the usual billiard and card-
rooms. The members of the club all appear
in easy flannels, and may be stockbrokers, civil
servants of the higher grades, and young pro-
fessional men like himself. The local politics of
the place he leaves to the local tradespeople, and
complains a good deal of the result of his own
neglect. At the same time, municipal affairs will
never assume any great importance in Australian
cities, owing to the fact that many municipal
functions are already undertaken by the state
governments.
When he takes a holiday, he may choose among
io6 Australian Life
a number of desirable resorts. Perhaps the ideal
holiday for an Australian is a visit to New Zea-
land, with a sea voyage of twelve hundred miles,
and a change to a country unlike his own in every
particular. Or he may journey inland and spend
his vacation in the bush, which offers a round of
riding, driving, and shooting. Dotted around the
Australian coast are watering-places which com-
bine the attractions of the seaside with those of
the country, so that the holiday-maker may picnic
in the fastnesses of the fern-tree gullies on one
day, and spend the next in fishing on the schnap-
per-grounds of the open ocean.
It will be apparent from even this slight outline
that the life of the moneyed and professional
classes in an Australian capital city differs but
slightly from that of the same classes in Great
Britain. They have adopted a shorter and more
strenuous business day, and have utilised the ex-
perience of the Old World in obviating many of
the inconveniences unavoidable in the life of cities
which have grown by gradual stages through a
course of centuries. Convenience of travelling
facilities has permitted the growth of the suburbs
outwards, and so given an air of spaciousness to
even the most commonplace of the residential
quarters. The provisions made for parks and
open spaces are liberal, and the Australian citizen
takes an interest and a pride in the many public
gardens and playing-grounds with which his city
has been furnished. For these reasons, and be-
Urban Australia 107
cause ot their propinquity to the sea-coast, all
these big Australian cities are healthy, and can
boast a low death rate. That they continue to
increase in proportion to the population of the
country behind them is not due to these causes so
much as to the fact that they offer to the working
class such advantages as no other cities in the
world can offer. The attraction that city life has
for the humbler classes is evident even in the
Old World, where the contrast between the con-
ditions of town arid country life is not so marked
as in Australia. Here the reasons for flocking
to the cities are obvious enough. To quote the
Bulletin, the most powerful organ representing
the opinion of the Australian working-man: "A
trade, and regular work at that, made at union
wages, is worth more than the average six hun-
dred and forty acres of land available for selection
in any Australian state. It is hard reasoning on
a cash basis, not silly hankering after city life,
that brings the young bushman to town."
CHAPTER IX
LIFE IN THE CITIES
A USTRAIylA has so often been described as
/~\ the paradise of the working-man that the
phrase seems to have lost part of its meaning from
constant repetition. The factors conducing to
the satisfactory condition in which the Australian
artisan finds himself are primarily those he has
established for himself, namely short hours of
labour and high wages. But these conditions
apply elsewhere, and notably in the large Ameri-
can cities, where the working-man is, neverthe-
less, far from being as well off as in Australia.
In the first place, the housing difficulty does not
exist for the Australian workman. There is not
one tenement building in all Australia, for every
family can obtain a comfortable cottage at a mod-
erate rental. A well-built house with five rooms
and a bathroom, within comfortable walking
distance of his work, can be got for about ten
shillings a week, a sum which does not bear so
high a proportion to his weekly earnings as the
seven and sixpence which the British workman
has to pay for two or three rooms in a gloomy
108
Life in the Cities 109
tenement. A garden in front of the cottage, and
a plot of ground of respectable dimensions behind
it, belong as a matter of course to the Australian
workman's dwelling. It has been said that the
workman is able, if he wishes, to live within
comfortable walking distance of his work. The
tendency of the Australian middle class .is still to
occupy the more distant suburbs, so that the sub-
urbs of an Australian city nearest to the actual
city area will usually be found in the occupation
of the humbler classes.
But should the workman choose to rent a cot-
tage a few miles out of the city, he is admirably
served by tram and train, or by a cheap and rapid
ferry-boat service. The convenience and cheap-
ness of the State-owned suburban railway lines
can only be appreciated by those who have ac-
quired a wide experience of profit-earning rail-
ways in other lands. The Australian suburban
lines, as the property of the people, are adminis-
tered in the interests of the traveller rather than
with the object of earning the highest possible
profit. The trains are run frequently and punc-
tually, and a special scale of fares within certain
hours enables the workman to travel at an ex-
pense that is almost nominal. Thus the ten
shillings a week he pays for a cottage near town
will pay the rent of an even more comfortable
dwelling six or seven miles away, as well as the
additional cost of his railway fares. There he
will have a plot of land, perhaps half an acre in
no Australian Life
extent, where he can gratify his tastes for garden-
ing and poultry-keeping to the fullest extent.
The cheapness of food is another circumstance
in favour of the Australian workman. He can
dine, if he wishes, at a cleanly kept restaurant
where a substantial meal of meat and vegetables,
with pudding to follow, can be had for sixpence.
A better served meal, with a small bottle of Aus-
tralian wine added, can easily be got for a shilling,
and this includes all those extras of bread and at-
tendance for which a special charge is made in so
many places. These prices argue cheap meat,
cheap vegetables, and cheap fruit, so that the
frugal housewife can make a little money go a
long way when marketing. Fruit, in season
especially, is cheap. Fresh grapes, peaches,
apricots, pears, and plums can all be bought at
prices ranging from twopence to threepence a
pound, and all of the very finest quality. I have
often seen twenty pounds of ripe tomatoes offered
at the door for a shilling, and a ripe water-melon
a foot in diameter, with flesh pink and crisp and
luscious, for threepence. Sixpence buys three
good pineapples from the hawker's barrow, and
the wine-flavoured passion-fruit may be had at
threepence a dozen. If the Australian workman
does not live well, it is because he does not care
to, or his wife does not know how to buy.
For clothing of all kinds, he has to pay high
prices, and he does not forget while doing so that
he is contributing to the maintenance of the pro-
Life in the Cities 1 1 1
tected industries of the country. To do him jus-
tice, he does not complain of this, for there is no
more staunch adherent than he to the protective
principles which, rightly or wrongly, he connects
with the high scale of wages he is able to earn.
The necessary luxuries of the working-man, tea
and tobacco, are both cheap and of good quality
in Australia. When the Australian tariff was
framed, the Labour representatives in the Com-
monwealth Parliament, by a clever combination
with the Free Trade party, obtained the exemption
of tea from any duty whatever, contending that it
is one of the Australian working-man's necessities.
A comparison between the prices paid by the
British and Australian workman for tobacco is
not easily effected, since the Australian usually
smokes the best American tobacco, which he buys
in the form of a hard plug containing little mois-
ture. I recently obtained in London, after a good
deal of trouble, a plug of this tobacco, for which I
paid two and sixpence. In Australia, the same
article would have cost, at most, but one and six-
pence. There is another luxury that costs less to
the Australian than to the British workman, and
it is to his own credit that it is so. The Austral-
ian contrives to spend a smaller sum upon intoxi-
cating drink, although the public-house prices of
beer and spirits are higher in Australia.
These are some of the material advantages
which the workman enjoys in Australia, and
they have their natural complement in social
ii2 Australian Life
advantages, upon which the better-class workman
sets even a higher value. It is literally true in
Australia, at the present time, that there is no
position of importance in the State to which an
ambitious and able man may not climb. The
careers of the men who were Premiers of the Aus-
tralian States at the time these words were writ-
ten illustrate this fact with special force. The
Premier of one state formerly worked in a flour
mill within a hundred yards of the Parliament
House where meets the Assembly he now leads.
Another Premier can boast that he once carried
his swag in search of employment through the
country districts of his state, and yet another was
at one time an insurance agent. Instances of this
kind could be multiplied to any extent, for they
illustrate the rule rather than the exception. The
Australian workman fully appreciates these possi-
bilities, and the absence of class distinctions they
imply, and shows his appreciation by an inde-
pendence of conduct which is very noticeable. It
cannot justly be said that this independence is
allied to any discourtesy of bearing, but he knows
his own value, and is also fully alive to the im-
portance of the political power he wields.
The ambition of the Australian workman is
usually apparent in the career he marks out for
his children. To them, the learned professions
are open, and he is not slow to take advantage of
the fact that the State-subsidised university is at
his very door. I remember a typical instance of
Life in the Cities 1 1 3
a hard-working tradesman with a large family,
whose second son had shown remarkable ability
when attending the free State school. With
praiseworthy self-denial, this man paid the fees
for the boy's attendance at a secondary school
until he matriculated, and then, with the assist-
ance of his eldest son, also an artisan, entered
him at the university. The boy lived at home
humbly enough, but his parents were careful that
there should be nothing in his dress or in his cir-
cumstances that should mark him among his
fellow students. His university career was suc-
cessful, for he took a surgeon's degree, and he is
now a country doctor with a good practice. He
has been, moreover, able to help his younger
brothers and sisters to follow in his steps. Let
it be said again that this is no exceptional case,
but merely an instance of the possibilities for
advancement open to the working class in Aus-
tralia.
The pleasures of the workman are largely gov-
erned by the climatic conditions of Australia,
which means that he spends a great deal of his
leisure in the open air. There is no lack of space
in the big cities if he has a mind to indulge in
cricket or football; or he can take his place as a
spectator and watch these games played by their
finest exponents. Cycle racing has never lost its
hold on the Australian public, and there are
many other pleasant ways of spending the Satur-
day half-holiday. The number of whole holidays
ii4 Australian Life
observed in Australia is not small, and the Aus-
tralian knows how to enjoy himself on these occa-
sions. Sydney Harbour on Boxing Day or
Anniversary Day (January 26th) presents one of
the finest sights imaginable, with its fleets of gay
excursion steamers all crowded with happy, well-
dressed people. Cheap excursion trains carry
picnic parties away to shady gullies, where the
creeks bubble pleasantly under the tall tree-ferns,
and the air is pure and exhilarating. It is not
far from any big city to the seaside, where there
are broad stretches of clean sand, and fires may
be lighted, and billies boiled in the shady tea-tree
scrub. These are the holiday resorts, not of the
few, but of the many, and it has to be said that
the Australian method of keeping a holiday goes
far to justify the frequency of such occasions.
One of the least agreeable features of the Aus-
tralian holiday is the prominence of the larrikin
"push." The larrikin has his equivalent in most
big cities, and may not differ much in type from
the English Hooligan, the American Tough, or
the French Apache, but there can be no doubt
that he is more in evidence than any of his proto-
types in the Old World. The larrikin pushes, or
gangs, are recruited from youths of the working
class, whose tastes incline in the direction of bru-
tality and conspiracy. The old bait of mystery,
always so attractive to a certain type of degen-
erate, allures many of them to the ranks of the
pushes, some of which claim to possess the organ-
Life in the Cities 115
isation of a crude sort of secret society. One in-
genious Australian writer 1 declares that the code
of rules binding one well-known Sydney push
prohibits drunkenness and unchastity, and that
the common bond among members is one of mur-
der. Bach initiate, before being admitted to full
membership of the society, must take part in the
doing to death of some person who has rendered
himself obnoxious to the push, and must after-
wards sign a confession admitting the full guilt
of the crime, the possession of which document
ensures his fidelity to the gang. These startling
statements were put forward in apparent serious-
ness in Blackwood' s Magazine of July, 1901, but
no convincing evidence in support of them was
adduced.
It is very certain, however, that the secrets of
the pushes, if they have any, are well kept.
Their meetings are quite apparent to any ob-
serving person who cares to look for them, and it
can be proved from the Australian newspapers
that they sometimes deal very roughly with the
policeman who concerns himself too actively in
their ordinary pursuits. Occasionally a battle
between two rival pushes takes place, when sticks
and stones fly about freely, and sometimes an in-
jured larrikin finds his way to the hospital. He
usually professes himself unable to identify his
assailants, and in the absence of positive evidence,
it is difficult to bring the offenders to justice. I
1 Mr. Ambrose Pratt.
n6 Australian Life
have personally known cases where the push has
provided funds for the legal defence of a member
accused of some crime; and I have known of
members of the same push who have been utterly
deserted in their hour of need.
The amusements of the push and it exists
primarily for the sake of amusement are dances,
picnics, and, on special occasions, organised
rowdyism. The young women who figure at the
dances and picnics have the same taste for feathers
and high-heeled shoes that distinguishes the
coster-girl, and the same facility of repartee, dis-
concerting in its allusive obscurity. The male
larrikin at one time favoured a distinctive dress,
consisting of a short coat with a velvet collar,
an open vest, and narrow neck-tie, bell-bottomed
trousers, and a soft felt hat with a broad stiff rim.
Of late years, this costume has gone out of vogue,
and has been replaced by nothing likely to distin-
guish the push member from his fellow-man.
Push dances are remarkable for their solemnity
and observance of push etiquette, and for a weird
dance known as a teetotum, which resembles
dimly the ghost of a waltz fettered in heavy
chains. Push picnics are enlivened by the music
of the mouth organ and the accordion, and by a
free use of stimulants. They not infrequently end
in a free fight.
It is difficult to make any excuse for the exist-
ence of the larrikin and his push, for the oppor-
tunities for rational amusement in the Australian
Life in the Cities 117
cities are in no way restricted. The efforts of the
police to break up the bands are checked, in some
cases, by the unwise leniency of honorary magis-
trates, and by the extreme difficulty in proving
any punishable offence against the ringleaders.
The larrikin, leaning against the dead wall and
spitting idly into the gutter, is an eyesore in the
Australian cities, and an intolerable nuisance as
well. When his worst passions are roused, he is
a positive source of danger, and the perpetrator of
many cowardly crimes, the consequence of which
he too often contrives to escape. His existence
may well be a source of uneasiness to those con-
cerned in the future of the new nation.
The worst slums of the Australian cities are
undoubtedly those quarters given up to the occu-
pation of the coloured aliens, especially the Chi-
nese and Hindoos. The greater part of the laundry
work has lately passed into Chinese hands, and
the Chinese cabinet-maker has also entered into
very serious competition with the Australian
tradesman. These men gravitate to the most
undesirable quarter of the town, and, by herding
together in defiance of all laws of sanitation, ren-
der it still more undesirable. Opium -dens and
gambling-houses are open night and day, and
form an attraction for the most degraded of the
white population of both sexes. Chinatown has
an aspect and an odour all its own; an air of
shabbiness and dinginess pervades the buildings,
and from the open doors come indescribable
n8 Australian Life
whiffs of burning joss-sticks blended with decay-
ing vegetable matter.
Chinatown usually contains at least one Chinese
restaurant, patronised both by Orientals and white
folks. In the inner room, a party of young Bo-
hemians, in faultless evening dress, may be seen
enjoying the novelty of a dinner in Chinatown,
and straining the resources of the establishment
by demands for mysterious dishes and piquant
sauces. In the large outer department, grave
Chinamen empty their bowls of savoury rice with
startling rapidity by a deft manipulation of the
chop-sticks, and a pair of larrikins, trying to imi-
tate them, fail to lift as much as one grain to their
lips with implements so unsatisfactory. Pig-
tailed waiters flit noiselessly hither and thither,
and the watchful proprietor, bland and inscruta-
ble, allows nothing to escape his notice from his
elevated perch near the door. Next door is a
gambling-house, where tickets are marked and
fan-tan is played in an inner room, while not far
away is a stuffy chamber where four or five
Chinamen and as many Europeans are dream-
ing blissfully in an atmosphere tainted with the
smell of burning opium.
The distinctive sights of the Australian streets
include the Chinese vegetable merchant, with his
two heavy baskets of vegetables, balanced on a
bamboo pole, supported on his shoulders. A
group of Hindoo or Syrian hawkers may be seen
passing from house to house, pressing their cheap
Life in the Cities 119
wares in the most imperfect English. More pe-
culiarly Australian is the rabbit-man, with his
stentorian yell of "Wild rabbits, oh!" and his
cart with a frame on which dozens of pairs of
slaughtered bunnies are hanging. One shilling a
pair is the usual price, and the rabbit-man does a
thriving trade in the face of an expiring Australian
prejudice against the rabbit as food. Australian
shops are much the same as shops anywhere else,
but the fishmonger and game-seller sometimes
festoons his shop front with strings of bright-
plumaged parrots, useless as food, but attractive
to the eye. Curious fish are on the marble slabs,
pink schnapper, and hideous flat-head, with sil-
ver barracouta like enormous mackerel, and piles
of tiny garfish. The game includes wild duck,
magpie-geese, and black swan, with a wallaby or
two and tails of the larger kangaroos. The wild
turkey which is really a bustard, and the finest
game bird Australia produces may occasionally
be seen, but it is now very rare and shy. The
game-shop and the fruit-shop serve best to remind
the visitor that he is in an Australian city; none
of the others differ in any particular from the shop
of a British city.
A stroll through a suburban street in the cool
of the evening is quite another affair. Here the
houses are all single-storied bungalows, or villas,
as the Australians prefer to call them, each stand-
ing in its own plot of garden. Glance over the
famous pittosporum hedge, and you may see the
120 Australian Life
lawn sprinkler pleasantly at work under the pep-
per tree that grows in the middle of the grass plot
bordered with masses of bright phlox and thriving
roses and pelargoniums. The bamboo blind,
which has been down all day to keep the sun off
the housefront, is now rolled up, and in an easy-
chair on the veranda reclines pater-familias, clad
in cool flannels. Doors and windows are open to
admit the evening breeze, but before each is a
wire screen to exclude flies and mosquitoes.
From the drawing-room comes the sound of
voices, mingled with the strains of the latest
comic opera. It is a glimpse of the Australian
at home.
There is an air of roominess and privacy about
these suburbs that stands for a good deal of solid
comfort. The citizen swings in his hammock
and smokes his pipe without any consciousness
of being observed from the top floor of some
building close at hand, for a day's march through
the suburbs of an Australian city will fail to re-
veal anything in the shape of ' ' residential man-
sions." The most arduous task of the amateur
gardener is the constant use of the watering-can;
the rest is done by Nature with a lavish hand.
The vine and the fig tree are by no means im-
possible, and a rough erection of wooden laths
makes an ideal fern-house. These things figure
very largely in the life of the average Australian
city dweller, who leaves his city office at five,
changes into easy clothing as soon as he arrives
r ST
Si
< ^
UJ .2
CL ly
o 2
OL t
uj o
I-
Life in the Cities 121
home, dines comfortably about half-past six, and
then potters about his garden until it grows dark.
A few friends may call for a game of cards or a
little music, and a supper follows in which fruit
and light wines or lemon squash are prominent
items. The office or the warehouse claims him at
nine o'clock the next day, when, as we have seen,
he must plunge again into the headlong rush of
Australian business.
CHAPTER X
STATE SOCIALISM AND THE LABOUR PARTY
THE Australian answers truly to Aristotle's
description of man as " a political animal,"
and his interest in politics may be set down as the
inevitable result of the intimate relations existing
between the people and the State. The choice of
his rulers is a matter of the deepest concern to a
man who encounters the results of their adminis-
tration at every turn, and as the tendency in Aus-
tralia is to increase rather than to diminish the
functions of the State, the Australian not un-
reasonably bases his political opinions upon the
events of his everyday life. Those who dwell in
the bush have the State for landlord, and can, in
bad seasons, obtain the remittance or postpone-
ment of the collection of rent. The State owns
the railways which carry their produce to the sea-
ports, and, by an increase or reduction of freights,
may materially affect their prosperity. The State
undertakes the education of their children, estab-
lishing the schools and maintaining the teachers,
while grants of money for the construction of
roads and bridges may also be obtained from the
122
State Socialism 123
State. To the same source, they look for police
protection and postal and telegraphic services,
and for help and supervision in the establishment
of new industries. After bad seasons, the State
supplies them with seed wheat, and sometimes
advances money to tide them over to the next
harvest.
For the artisans and miners, the State does
even more. It regulates the conditions under
which they work and their hours of labour, and
even fixes their rate of wages. It decides in-
dustrial disputes between Labour and Capital,
enforces the closing of shops at certain hours, and
supervises the workshops and factories. It buys
the miner's gold, and opens up markets for the
producer in foreign countries. In one Australian
province, the State has turned publican, and re-
tails beer and spirits of the best quality at the
smallest percentage of profit. When the work-
man falls out of employment, the State accepts
the responsibility of finding work for him; and
when he becomes too old to toil any longer, it
pensions him off. 1
The first result of this condition of affairs is the
existence of a large official class in the employ-
ment of the State. Public servants there are,
of course, in every community, but it is doubt-
ful whether any country maintains so many in
1 The functions ascribed to the State still differ in the
various political divisions of Australia, and these state-
ments hold good only for some of the Australian States.
124 Australian Life
proportion to its population as Australia. The ad-
ministration of the vast areas of public lands, the
maintenance and working of thousands of miles
of public railroads, the education of the children,
and the policing of the country alone involve the
employment of many thousands of civil servants.
Each new function assumed by the State necessi-
tates the creation of a fresh department, and a
further addition to the vast army of the State-
employed.
These people are united by common interests,
their position being defined by legislative enact-
ments which affect them all alike. When all
exercised the franchise, they were able to show
their resentment at measures of retrenchment
and economy in so marked a manner as to cause
political uneasiness, and in one state at least it has
been found necessary to restrict their political
representation to special members whom they may
appoint to represent their interests in Parliament.
As the State is so large an employer of labour,
it is only natural that those seeking employment
should turn first to the State. Short hours, regu-
lar employment in a position which can only be
forfeited by misconduct, and a salary which an-
nually increases by a small sum, are strong in-
ducements to the father who wishes to place his
son in life. As a consequence, there is keen com-
petition for all Government positions, and the
interference of politicians was at one time so fre-
quent as to give rise to something like a scandal,
State Socialism 125
the public service having been over-manned with
nominees of various members of Parliament, who
seldom cared whether the servants they forced
upon the country possessed any special fitness for
the work they were supposed to do. A strong
manifestation of public feeling took place through-
out Australia in consequence of this practice, and
it was abolished, the public service being removed
nominally at least beyond the sphere of politi-
cal influence.
But there is another class which demands, and
frequently obtains, employment from the Govern-
ment. These are the mechanics and artisans of
the cities, who may have been thrown out of work
owing to a temporary slackness in the trades in
which they are customarily employed. Such
dull seasons not infrequently occur in the Aus-
tralian cities, and the out-of-works congregate
upon some spare plot of ground, listening to the
speeches of men whose one cry is that it is the
duty of the Government to provide them with
employment. These meetings of the unemployed
usually end in a march to the Government offices,
where the leading agitators demand interviews
from members of the Ministry and from the Gov-
ernor. Should they obtain the desired interview,
they demand work as a right, referring to the
many public works it will be necessary to con-
struct in the future, and suggesting that some of
these shall be put in hand at once, the cost to be
met, of course, from borrowed money. These
126 Australian Life
unemployed of the cities contrast but poorly with
the unemployed of the bush, who bravely shoul-
der their swags and tramp off in search of the
work they never think of demanding from the
State.
A reference has been made to borrowed moneys,
for it is impossible to avoid some notice of Aus-
tralian financial methods. The railways and
other public works have all been constructed with
money borrowed from the British investor, and
these loans involve the payment of a sum of more
than ,9,000,000 each year in interest alone. At
present, there is no attempt to make the railways
return the interest upon the money they have
cost to build, or any further sum that might go
toward repaying the principal. The policy is
rather adopted of working the railways for the
immediate benefit of the people, and for the pur-
pose of developing the resources of the country.
Each fresh enterprise means an addition to the
debt of the country, and it cannot be disputed that
the people who enjoy the convenience and cheap-
ness of State-owned railways in a land that is far
from being settled are piling up for their descend-
ants a heavy obligation, that must some day be
met. A people holding the advanced opinion that
no man willing and able to work should be refused
employment by the Government ought at least to
avoid the injustice of indulging in philanthropy,
while leaving the bill to be settled at some time
in the difficult future.
State Socialism 127
It is the knowledge that the future of Australia
has been so liberally discounted by the loan policy
that tempers the admiration which is certainly due
to the Australians for their provision for the aged.
There are now many aged couples in Australia
who are living in content in the little home they
have made, and who, under a less humane system,
would be separated and forced into charitable in-
stitutions. Not all the Australian States have
adopted the system of old-age pensions, and it is
true that instances have occurred of these benefits
bestowed upon persons undeserving of them.
These, however, are but faults of administra-
tion, and cannot be urged against the principle
itself.
In the same spirit of humanity, Australia has
experimented with legislation designed for settling
the differences between Capital and Labour, and
preventing the occurrence of strikes. The laws
under notice provide that all such disputes shall
be settled by an Arbitration Court, over which a
judge presides, while representatives of both sides
help in its constitution. It is claimed that these
courts have worked satisfactorily on the whole,
although some grave defects have come to light
in the operation of the Arbitration Acts. This
principle of compulsory arbitration is one of the
foremost doctrines of the political party known
as the Australian Labour party. As this politi-
cal party, now rapidly growing in power in the
Commonwealth, promises to exercise a notable
128 Australian Life
influence upon the conditions of life in Australia,
and as it advocates a wide extension of the prin-
ciples of State socialism, some account of it and
its aims is necessary.
The weapon employed by the Australian work-
man to secure the eight-hour day was Trade
Unionism; and in order to celebrate his victory,
he appropriated an annual holiday. A monu-
ment bearing the inscription, " Eight hours work,
eight hours recreation, eight hours rest," is
erected in the city of Ballarat to the memory of
one Galloway, a protagonist of the cause in that
city. Elsewhere in Australia, men equally un-
known to fame are similarly preserved from ob-
livion, but the Festival of Eight-Hours' Day is the
most striking memorial of the first Labour vic-
tory. From that time forward, the Labour party
trusted in its unions, and fought Capital by means
of strikes and threats of strikes. For a time the
unions carried all before them, and the men
flocked to their banners. Trade was brisk and
work was plentiful, so that the unions were able
to accumulate very considerable funds They
pressed their advantage too heavily, however, and
drove the employers into a combination against
them.
The two opposing forces came into collision in
the year 1891, with results from which Australia
has not yet recovered. The quarrel began with
a maritime strike, which laid up the vessels
plying between the various Australian ports, and
State Socialism 129
soon spread far and wide throughout the conti-
nent. The whole pastoral industry was dislo-
cated by a strike of shearers, and, among other
actions, the Labour leaders alienated public sym-
pathy by calling out the gas stokers, and leaving
the city of Melbourne in darkness. It was a long
battle, and bitterly fought out. The men had
ample funds to draw upon in the beginning, and
showed remarkable courage and resolution in
fighting to the very last. But they were fighting
a losing battle, in which Australian Trade Union-
ism was shattered by a blow from which it was
predicted it would never recover.
It is true that the unions have never recovered
the prestige they lost in the great strike, but the
defeat of the men stiffened the cause of Labour in
Australia as even victory could not have done.
The method of fighting was altered that is all,
and the scene of combat was transferred to the
ballot-box. The Australian workman, remem-
bering that he had a vote, determined to employ
it to the one end of furthering the object of the
Labour party. The representatives of Labour
who contrived to be returned to Parliament
went to work in the same way they consistently
played one political party against another, while
standing aloof from both, ever on the look-out for
some legislative advantage for Labour.
Before the Federation of the Australian States,
the Labourites were continually held in check by
the Upper Houses of State Legislature, composed
130 Australian Life
either of nominee members or members elected on
a very restricted franchise. The Commonwealth,
however, has been provided with a constitution
more democratic than any of the Australian States
possesses, since the broad principle of universal
adult suffrage governs the election of both legis-
lative chambers. The accomplishment of the
Federation furnished the Labour party with an
opportunity, and they were the more readily able
to grasp it, because, with the new era in Aus-
tralian history, they broadened their base and
extended their objects. From its inception, the
Federal Labour party has been devoted to State
Socialism, and has attracted supporters, and espe-
cially leaders, who are Labourites only in one
sense of the word.
The majority of the Labour members of the
Commonwealth Parliament are not workmen, but
professional men barristers, doctors, journalists,
and master printers. The British workman, who
has a profound mistrust of the class immediately
above him, prefers to give his vote to a man of
his own class, or to one whom he describes as a
"real gentleman. ' ' The Australian workmen, on
the other hand, have more than a suspicion that the
disaster of the great strike was brought about by
unskilful leadership. ' ' Lions led by asses, ' ' they
were called at the time, and the phrase sticks.
They have now chosen for their leaders men who
are fighting their way upward in the professional
ranks, and they have no reason to complain of the
State Socialism 13 I
result of their choice. The leaders of the Com-
monwealth Labour party, and its representatives
generally, are equal in ability, education, and
general grasp of political affairs to those with
whom they come politically in contact.
What the party has accomplished, and hopes to
accomplish, can best be gathered by reference to
the programme put forward for the elections at
the end of 1903. The main planks of the plat-
form were: a White Australia, arbitration and
conciliation, old-age pensions, nationalisation of
monopolies, a citizen defence force, restriction of
public borrowing, and navigation laws. The first
of these objects had been gained by the passing
of laws during the term of the first Common-
wealth Parliament, by which coloured aliens are
excluded from Australia. The second and third
objects involve the application to the whole con-
tinent of principles enforced in some of the states,
though not in all. The fourth plank in the
Labour platform is capable of a very wide inter-
pretation. Among the other monopolies it is pro-
posed to place under State management may be
mentioned the sale of intoxicating liquor and to-
bacco. The Labourites also advocate State de-
velopment of the deposits of iron ore in Australia,
and the establishment of a State bank of issue,
and State life and fire insurance departments.
From the mining of iron by the State to the min-
ing of precious metals is an easy step, and the
advocates of private enterprise are able to see in
132 Australian Life
this vaguely worded policy a very disquieting
menace.
The restriction of public borrowing implies an
alternative of heavy direct taxation, if public
works in Australia are to be constructed in the
future as in the past. This taxation, the Labour
party indicates, should take the form of a land
tax, framed in such a way as to press with special
weight upon absentee owners and the proprietors
of unimproved lands. In any case, the members
of the party adhere firmly to the opinion that the
large public debt of Australia should not be further
increased, and by consistently maintaining this
view command the sympathy of many who are
not in accord with their general aims.
Upon this programme, the Labour party went
to the polls for the Commonwealth election of
1903. For many months before the election, the
labour organisations were at work, distributing
propaganda, and selecting suitable candidates.
For the women's vote, exercised for the first time
at that election, the proposal for the regulation of
the liquor trade was a tempting bait, since the
experience of New Zealand and South Australia
has shown that in this subject of all others the
woman rather is most keenly interested. The re-
sult of the election was a remarkable triumph for
the party, which received a notable accession to
the number of its members in both Houses, and
especially in the Senate, or Upper House of Legis-
lature. In the session that followed an unexpected
State Socialism 133
turn of the political wheel gave the Labourites an
opportunity of assuming office. Mr. Watson, the
leader of the party, succeeded in forming a Minis-
try, and the world was afforded the spectacle of a
continent of three million square miles being gov-
erned by representatives of the working-classes.
After a few months' tenure of office, however, the
Labour Ministry had to face a combination of the
opposing parties, which was brought about by the
too Socialistic tendency of its proposed legislation.
The L,abour party was accordingly forced to
vacate the Government benches, but not before its
leaders had shown their possession of considerable
administrative firmness and ability. The Labour
party still remains the only political organisation
in Australia which possesses cohesion and a defi-
nite policy, and to this fact a large measure of its
success may be attributed.
CHAPTER XI
GOLDEN AUSTRALIA
IN order to understand how Australia was
quickened into life as if by niagic, when the
golden discoveries of half a century ago were
made, it is necessary to visit one of the inland
cities called into existence at that period. Of
these, the city of Ballarat is perhaps the most
famous, and it is certainly one of the most inter-
esting illustrations of the transformation effected
in fifty years of Australian history. Standing in
a broad and fertile valley, this trim and well-built
city of forty thousand people to-day bears little
resemblance to any preconceived notion one may
have formed of a mining town. Its principal
street is an avenue two hundred feet wide, with a
double row of tall oaks and eucalyptus trees run-
ning up its centre. In the very heart of the city is
a public square, where white marble statues, that
stand unsoiled in the open air, have been set up
in honour of Shakespeare, Burns, and Moore.
Looking eastward from this square, beyond the
outskirts of the city, the land rises to two great
volcanic hills, clad from foot to crest in forests of
134
Golden Australia 135
dark-leaved eucalyptus. Broad straight streets
intersect the main avenue at regular intervals,
and each of these in its turn is an avenue of euca-
lyptus, oak, and pine. Pleasant villas and neat
cottages line the streets, and everywhere are gar-
dens and trees. On the western boundary of the
city was once a dismal swamp, now converted into
a beautiful lake, fringed with weeping-willows
and surrounded by plantations of ornamental
trees. On the farther shore of the lake is a beau-
tiful pleasure ground, where marble statues gleam
amid fern grottoes and rose bowers, and children
play all day on lawns of soft English grass shaded
by trees drawn from every quarter of the globe.
It is a city of gardens rather than a city of gold.
Sixty years ago, King Billy and his tribe of
aborigines roamed in undisputed possession of the
valley, then covered with virgin bush. Ten years
later, a hundred thousand diggers were living
under canvas on the field, and the roaring days
of Ballarat had begun. Some of those diggers
are still alive in Ballarat, old men who have seen
the city advance through its fifty years of history,
and can point to the spot where some tall build-
ing stands and say, ' ' Here I sank my first shaft,
and there I bottomed on a hatful of nuggets."
Ballarat, these veterans will tell you, has its spots
of historical and romantic interest. Here is the
forge where one picturesque digger had his horse
shod with shoes of gold, and hard by is the hotel
where lucky miners lighted their pipes with
Australian Life
five-pound notes, and adorned the barmaids with
necklaces made of virgin nuggets. The theatre
where Lola Montez sang and danced her way into
the hearts of thousands of red-shirted men not
one woman in the whole house and the stage
where she stood bowing amid a golden shower of
nuggets and specimens; these have been pulled
down, but a monument marks the spot where the
digger and the soldier tried conclusions the site
of the Eureka Stockade.
Twenty years after the gold discoveries, Bal-
larat was a city of wood and canvas. On ' ' The
Corner," not far from the present Square of
Statues, was a busy share mart, where men stood
all day in the open air, buying and selling mining
scrip. The roar of quartz batteries lulled the
children to sleep each night, and between the
shops and houses were reared the "poppet heads ' '
and heaps of tailings that marked the situation of
active mining operations. When a rich discovery
was made, the throng of open-air speculators on
1 ' The Corner ' ' stretched across the wide street,
and undeterred by the fall of night, these gamblers
continued to buy and sell their shares by the
flickering light of an occasional candle. ' c Coined
into sovereigns," your ancient guide will tell you,
"the gold taken out of Ballarat would stretch in a
long line across the continent. But," he will
add, with a mournful shake of his head, " very
little of it has remained in the place. ' '
But Ballarat does not live in the past. The
Golden Australia 137
worked-out mines have been filled up, the un-
sightly "mullock heaps" have been removed,
while woollen mills and factories for the manu-
facture of agricultural machinery have been
erected on the exploited ground. In the outskirts
of the city, mines may still be seen, and any one
curious and adventurous enough may descend
thousands of feet below the surface of the earth to
see the miners working the veins of sparkling
quartz. Here and there, a vacant area of land,
scarred with hundreds of abandoned shafts, re-
mains as witness of the thoroughness with which
the gold district has been explored. But the
golden era of Ballarat is practically at an end,
and the city is now the centre of one of the most
fertile agricultural districts in all Australia.
The miners went to Ballarat and stayed there,
but auriferous Australia is dotted with deserted
mining camps where nothing remains to recall the
glories of the past, except the gravel heaps and
gaping holes the diggers left behind them. A
store, a post-office, a hotel or two, and half a
dozen cottages, with perhaps a noisome little
Chinese camp to prove that the yellow man can
glean a living from the leavings of the white man.
And in its palmy days, the ' ' rush ' ' had been a
human ant-hill, where forty thousand diggers
toiled feverishly all day, and drank, gambled, and
sang through the nights in their fire-lit canvas
tents!
These are the dying goldfields and the dead
138 Australian Life
ones. Over in Western Australia is a golden city
in the desert, not ten years old, but already replete
with all the conveniences of a great modern city.
Here in Kalgoorlie, men live by gold alone, and
talk only of mines and mining shares. Day and
night, the thud of the quartz batteries is never
hushed, and almost every day, a precious freight
of golden bars and cakes is despatched by train
to the capital for coinage. It is a city of big
mines, equipped with all the most modern appli-
ances for extracting the last fraction of gold from
the ore. Kalgoorlie is situated in the arid belt,
and since the operations of these mines require a
plentiful supply of water, a stream has been
dammed and a great reservoir made near the
coast. From this reservoir, the water is pumped
through steel pipes for a distance of more than
two hundred miles to drive the engines and fill
the sluices of the Kalgoorlie mines. It is a won-
derful place, this golden city in the desert. In its
big hotels, bronzed prospectors in evening dress
discuss their future plans over elaborate cham-
pagne dinners. In another month's time, these
men, clad in flannel shirt and soiled moleskins,
and begrimed with the red dust of the dry-blow-
ing machine, will be living on tinned meat and
condensed water. Now they ride on electric
trams and motor-cars, and take their pleasure in
a great theatre or at a race-course where stakes
worth a thousand pounds are decided.
Two hundred miles further inland, a straggling
Golden Australia 139
procession of men is making its way across the
unknown desert to a place which, men say, holds
wealth surpassing the mines of Kalgoorlie. Well
in the front of the procession ride the cyclists,
each with his store of water in a tin cylinder that
is strapped in the diamond frame of his machine.
The cyclist prospector carries food and water only,
leaving the rest of his belongings to be borne by
the slower drays that follow in his track. Next
come the horsemen and camel riders, and men
driving buggies drawn by teams of horses; and
after them the heavy drays and the long-drawn-
out train of footmen. Some of these carry their
swags, some trundle their tools and belongings in
wheelbarrows, and one or two have packed their
necessaries in a barrel, and, fastening the head
securely in, roll it patiently over the track.
These, and the man who is pushing a baby's per-
ambulator, give a touch of comedy to the "rush"
that is making its way to the new find at the
"Back of Beyond."
But the situation holds all the possibilities of
the grimmest of tragedies. If, as too often hap-
pens, these men who tramp so bravely and hope-
fully across that arid plain are only pursuing a
will-o'-the-wisp, a phantom Eldorado that van-
ishes with its first gleam of golden promise, some
of them will never come back. Kvery one of
them knows it, from the youngster who pushes
eagerly forward with shining, hopeful eyes, to the
stern-lipped veteran, grey with the disappoint-
140 Australian Life
ment and hardships of a hundred " rushes." If
they stopped to reckon up the risks, their chance of
"pegging out ' ' a good claim would be a very small
one. Therefore, the prospector must put dangers
behind him, or face them with the pluck and en-
durance that comes from a brave and hopeful
spirit. The whitening bones of camels and horses
are not the only objects that serve to remind the
traveller on these Western plains that if the re-
wards offered are great, the risks are great also.
Wherever the prospector has been, there may be
found the graves of the pioneers just a mound
of sand, with a rough railing of wood, fencing it
from the surrounding desert. Sometimes a wooden
slab or tin plate proclaims the name of the man
who rests there, but very often these graves in
the wilderness are nameless, because the names
of the dead men were not known to the miners
who buried them there.
Their story they could easily have told, for
many of them had been within an ace of enacting
it themselves. A too bold incursion into un-
known wastes, a dried-up water-hole, and an
empty water-bag, and then the awful delirium of
thirst under a fiery sun. And somewhere on the
green Eastern coast, a lonely woman waiting for
a letter that never comes. Every Australian pro-
spector knows that story by heart.
But let us accompany our Argonauts in their
plucky expedition to the rush at " Back of Be-
yond." On arrival there, they learn the good
Golden Australia 14*
news that a big reef has certainly been located,
and that the prospects for alluvial miners are
more than promising. The ground is soon pegged
out in all directions, and the " dry blowers " can
be seen at work all over the field, sifting the
alluvial soil through sieves which allow the dust
and sand to pass but retain the golden nuggets.
From somewhere, apparently from the trackless
wilderness, a grog-seller has arrived with his
barrels and bottles, and is already doing a roaring
business in a tent which a small hand-written
card, pinned on the tent flap, proclaims to be a
hotel. Another man is distilling clear tasteless
water from the salty mixture in the lake, and sell-
ing it at half a crown a gallon. The camp has
passed from the vague realms of rumour and
hearsay into the region of absolute facts.
Work is going on busily everywhere, when the
sound of a tin dish beaten with a stick is heard
the call for a " roll-up." In an instant, work is
at a standstill, and every occupant of the camp
hastens in the direction of the sound, to discover
what matter of common interest is to be settled.
The cause of the " roll-up " is soon made known:
a miner's tent has been robbed, and his chamois-
leather bag of nuggets stolen. The victim nar-
rates the circumstances, and explains his reasons
for suspecting some other member of the camp.
Some of the miners at once seize and search the
accused man while others go to his tent, where
the stolen gold is discovered, hidden in the thief s
i4 2 Australian Life
roll of blankets. In five minutes, judgment is
pronounced the thief must leave the camp within
an hour's time. He must pack his swag and fill
his water-bag, and then take his chance upon the
track, for they have no use for him or his kind at
the Back of Beyond Rush. To the credit of the
prospector, it must be said that the necessity for
this rough-and-ready justice is only occasionally
felt, for the men who have pluck enough to make
their way to these early rushes, have too much
character to commit any offence so repugnant to
the mind of the digger as tent robbery. We will
leave Back of Beyond while its future is still un-
defined. It may be that beneath its red sands it
hides veins of rich ore that will make it another
Kalgoorlie; or six months hence there may be
nothing but a heap of empty meat tins to show
that men had once built golden hopes on the
foundation of its barren sands.
On one of these western mining camps, there
occurred a curious mining dispute between
Capital and Labour. Capital in this instance
was represented by the local publican, who re-
tailed beer to the thirsty miners at the price of
one shilling for a large glass. The miners, of
course, enacted the part of Labour, and demanded
that the price should be reduced by one half, since
gold was becoming scarcer and less easily won.
Secure from competition, the publican held his
ground, and a beer strike was proclaimed by the
men. For some weeks, the conflict went on,
Golden Australia 143
when the publican, who possessed some political
influence, arranged that the Minister of Mines
should visit the fields. On the arrival of that
dignitary, who came in all innocence, the men
held a meeting, and declared an exemption for
three days, in order that the event might be
celebrated in a fitting manner. It need hardly
be said that the exemption was indefinitely pro-
longed, and that nothing more was heard of the
strike. The device of the beer strike, however,
has since then been adopted with success in more
than one remote Australian township, where hu-
manity is dry and liquor over-expensive.
Between these newly made mining camps of the
day before yesterday and the fifty-year-old golden
cities of the Eastern states, the contrast is as strik-
ing as anything afforded by Australia, the land
of contrasts. And yet there is only the history
of a generation between them. The sons of the
men who made the garden cities of the Bast are
helping to make Kalgoorlie to-day. In time,
they too will cover the scarred earth with a mantle
of green, will mend the unsightly wounds, and
smooth away the traces of the ugliness they
caused in their fierce greed for gold. They will
make a pleasant city where life will be well
ordered, and where they may rest after their ad-
ventures, and enjoy the fruits of their labours.
But the adventurous spirit that moved them to
leave the sober streets and waving trees of Bal-
larat, as it moved their fathers to turn their backs
144 Australian Life
on the greener fields of an older land, will not
allow their children to sit still while there remains
new country to be explored. Ten years ago, the
treasures of Kalgoorlie lay hidden and unsus-
pected; and Australia is wide enough and little
enough known to still hold the secrets of other
Ballarats and other Kalgoorlies.
" In there," said an old bushman to me once,
pointing inland, " there 's all the wealth of the
world diamonds and rubies, gold and opals, in
plenty. Not half of them will be found in my
time, nor in yours either. No, nor in the time of
our children, and our children's children. That
would n't do. Australia is the richest country in
the world, but it 's the driest and most desolate."
It is the gold at the foot of the rainbow that
supplies the key to the restlessness of young
Australia.
HANNAN STREET, KALQOORLIC, IN 1905.
CHAPTER XII
FARM AND FACTORY
THE selector, with his six hundred and forty
acres or more of virgin land, is common to
the whole of Australia. Year by year, he adds a
little more to the area of land under cultivation,
eking out his existence in the meantime by a
little stock-raising, dairying, poultry-farming,
and the like. The uses to which the cleared
land is put vary according to the locality and the
nature of the soil, for in a country with so re-
markable a range of climate as Australia pos-
sesses, possibilities of all kinds exist. Between
the Tasmauian gardener who grows apples for
the lyondon markets, small fruits for jam-making,
and root vegetables for the warmer states on the
mainland and the Queensland planter who ex-
periments with cotton, coffee, tobacco, arrowroot,
bananas, and other tropical products there is
little that the soil cannot be made to produce.
The limited nature of the local market and the
position of Australia, precluding until recently the
possibility of exporting produce of a perishable
IO
145
146 Australian Life
kind, have retarded the development of many of
these primary industries. The latter difficulty
has now been partially overcome, with the result
that a fresh stimulus has been given to a number
of these special enterprises.
In every state are wide areas of land suitable
for the growth of cereals, some of it and notably
the Queensland uplands, known as the Darling
Downs, and the wheat belt of South Australia
requiring little or no clearing. Much of the best
wheat land in the south-east of the continent is
covered with a growth of mallee {Eucalyptus
dumosa) a shrub growing from ten to fifteen feet in
height, and with stems set so closely together
that it is impossible for a man to force his way be-
tween them. The clearing of this land is accom-
plished by hitching teams of bullocks or horses to
a large tree trunk, and dragging it over the
thickets after the fashion of a roller. In this
way, the mallee is thrown down and uprooted,
and the cleared ground is roughly broken with
an agricultural implement known as a stump-
jumping plough. Land that carries heavy timber
must be cleared by the painfully slow process of
chopping down each tree, and then ' ' grubbing ' '
out the stump. The fallen timber is burned in
order to dispose of it, although much of it is of
considerable value.
The yield of the continent for the season of
1902-3 was twelve million bushels of wheat, and
for 1903-4 sixty million bushels, showing a differ-
Farm and Factory 147
ence great enough to warrant the general state-
ment that the Australian wheat grower is at the
mercy of a very fickle climate. Sometimes there
is so little rain that the seed does not even germi-
nate, or having sprouted is parched or withered
without reaching maturity. As soon as the
winter rains have made the soil soft enough for
the plough, the ground is prepared and the seed
sown, and the crop is harvested at the end of
spring, that is, before Christmas time, at the very
latest. Agricultural machinery of all kinds is
extensively employed, and one harvesting imple-
ment frequently seen is the "stripper," which
plucks the ears from the crop, leaving the straw
standing. The ashes obtained by burning off the
straw are often the only fertilisers applied to
young ground.
The supply of agricultural labourers varies
according to the season. In a good season, the
greatest difficulty is experienced in harvesting
the crops, owing to the scarcity of labour; but in
a bad year, hundreds of swagmeu may be found
walking from farm to farm in search of work.
These are not only men who are accustomed to
work for wages, for among them may be found
numbers of small selectors whose own crops have
failed, and who have bravely gone out upon the
track in the hope of earning a cheque, and so
helping to keep the little home together. The
agricultural labourer in steady employment earns
from fifteen shillings to a pound a week with
148 Australian Life
board and lodging. There is no act of Parliament
to regulate his hours of labour, which frequently
extend from early dawn till long after sunset.
When it is considered that the climate is a very
trying one, and that the work includes milking,
clearing, burning off a grimy and choking occu-
pation as well as farm work of all kinds, the
conditions of his life must be accounted sufficiently
hard. They serve to account for the presence in
the cities of bands of unemployed clamouring for
Government relief works with pay at the rate
of seven shillings for the eight-hour day, while
the farmers are unable to obtain sufficient labour.
The uncertainty and irregularity of agricultural
employment which I trust I have sufficiently
emphasised and the superior attractions of city
life must also be considered when one is seeking
to account for this state of affairs.
When a few more decades have passed, the
writer of such a book as this will probably find it
necessary to devote a chapter to life on the Aus-
tralian vineyards. On the sunny slopes of the
warmer temperate areas, the vigneron finds a soil
and climate admirably suited to the production
of wine of a very high quality. Among the
pioneer vignerons were many French and German
settlers, who have made their picturesque un-
Australian homes amid the most pleasant sur-
roundings to be found in all the continent. From
the broad vine-covered, brick-paved veranda of
such a house may be obtained the pleasing pro-
Farm and Factory H9
spect of a green vineyard, framed in a setting of
dark bush-clad hills. The vineyard, with its long
orderly lines of vines, each plant standarded and
tied to its own stake, is in marked contrast to the
general air of untidiness that prevails in the ordin-
ary bush settlement. Its immediate effects are
the surprising quality and cheapness of table
grapes in the cities, and a growing disposition
among Australians to substitute wine of local
growth for beer and spirits, and so to conform
further to the climatic conditions in which they
live.
licenses for the sale of Australian wine are not
costly, and the wineshop has long been a feature
of the city streets. Unfortunately for the home
reputation of the Australian wines, the manage-
ment of these establishments has too often been
faulty, and the method of conducting business, as
well as the quality of the wine sold, has been a
cause of reproach. In this respect, amendment
has recently taken place, and it is now possible
to obtain a glass of good Australian wine at a
very moderate price, and to drink it amid sur-
roundings holding nothing to offend the most
fastidious taste. Some of the heavier Australian
wines have also found their way into Kngland,
where a yearly increasing demand is found for
them. The industry is better suited to the Aus-
tralian climate, perhaps, than the growth of some
cereals, and is attracting a very intelligent class
of men, who receive the assistance of Government
150 Australian Life
experts in dealing with the peculiarities of soil
and climate encountered.
As already hinted, the difficulty of the man on
the land is not the growth, but the disposal of
certain kinds of produce. I remember dining in
Melbourne once, and enjoying some canned apri-
cots which came, as I learned on asking, from
America. Three days later, I was assisting to
destroy an orchard of apricot trees two acres in
extent, their owner having decided to replace
them with orange and lemon trees. The trees
were in their prime, and had never failed to yield
good crops of first-class fruit. But the grower,
who was a practical man, had found that they
afforded but an insignificant return, while an ad-
jacent area under fruit trees of the citrus order
gave handsome profits. The reason, he declared,
lay in his distance from the state capital and the
rapidity with which soft fruits spoiled in the hot
summer. These are difficulties that will be obvi-
ated with the further settlement and development
of the country, but in the mean time, they scarcely
serve to explain why Australia, with its remark-
able capacity for growing fruits of all kinds,
should be an importer instead of an exporter of
dried and preserved fruits.
This is but one example of many industries
that are languishing, although possessing possi-
bilities that have been proved beyond any ques-
tion. The future of many of them and especially
those of Northern Australia is inextricably in-
Farm and Factory 151
volved with the question of coloured labour,
against the employment of which Australia has
definitely decided, at least, for the present. The
experiment, described in another chapter, of de-
porting the Kanaka labourers from the sugar
fields, and substituting white labourers in their
place, will be watched with the keenest interest
throughout Australia. Should it succeed, it will
be argued that cotton and other products can be
cultivated without the coolie labour for want of
which, according to the advocates of coloured
labour, these industries are at present neglected.
There are other possibilities, however, which
long ago commended themselves to the notice of
Australian politicians. The position assigned to
the Colonies in the present scheme of the British
Empire would appear to be that of producers of
raw material, and consumers of the manufactured
articles of the Motherland. Proposals for strength-
ening the links of Empire on the basis of trade
are founded on these relations, and, without the
principle having been accepted, have encountered
obstacles arising from the unwillingness of the
Colonies to accept the minor part thus assigned to
them. If the use of the word "colony " implies
a place entirely given up to the primary indus-
tries, then " Once a colony, always a colony " is
an axiom that must not be too readily accepted.
If the United States of America were still an in-
tegral part of the British Empire, it would hardly
be possible to refer to them in their present stage
152 Australian Life
of development as "our American colonies." It
is quite certain that Australia looks forward to
the day when certain of its raw materials, such as
wool and leather, will be manufactured in Aus-
tralian factories. With this end in view, quite
early in the history of responsible government in
Australia, some of the states began by imposing
customs duties designed to protect local indus-
tries, and the present Commonwealth Tariff, while
framed partly for revenue purposes, is also in some
measure a protective tariff.
The industries created and fostered in this
way have had to contend with difficulties aris-
ing from a want of uniformity in the tariff of
the different states, and from the tariff war
the states waged against one another before the
Federal era.
Their expansion has been more definitely
affected by the determination of the Australian
Labour party to preserve the favourable conditions
under which the city worker exists. The in-
dustrial legislation of Australia is designed to
maintain high wages and short hours of labour,
and under these conditions it is possible that the
amount of protection afforded by the present tariff
does not give the manufacturer sufficient en-
couragement. In any case, the dictum of Mr.
Coghlan, the leading authority upon Australian
statistics, is that ' ' progress of the manufacturing
industry in Australasia has been very irregular,
even in the most advanced states. ' '
Farm and Factory 153
The broad principles of Australian industrial
legislation for the details vary in the different
states are extremely favourable to the worker.
Short hours are secured by the provision of an
eight-hour day in workshops and factories, and
by Acts insisting on the early closing of shops,
and the observance of a weekly half-holiday.
The rate of wages is maintained either by a
Factories Act, which provides for the establish-
ment of Boards to fix a minimum wage for each
class of labour, or of Arbitration and Conciliation
Acts, designed to settle disputes between Capital
and I/abour. An instance of the working of the
Arbitration Act in force in New South Wales may
be of interest. The men engaged in the coal
mines at Newcastle and in the neighbourhood of
that city, some four thousand in number, had a
difference with the mine-owners on the subject of
the rates for hewing coal. By common consent,
the dispute was referred to the Arbitration Court,
and, in this case, the decision of the Court was
favourable to the masters rather than the men.
Most of the men went on with their work without
interruption, but in one mine, it was decided to
defy the Court and cease work. The mine- owner
then appealed to the Court to enforce its decision,
and found that it was powerless to do so, although
the owner might have been heavily fined had he
refused to obey the ruling given. Proceedings
to punish the men were then taken in another
Court, but in the meantime, chilled by the open
154 Australian Life
disapproval of their fellows elsewhere, they re-
treated from their position and resumed work.
These Arbitration courts are gradually estab-
lishing definite rates of pay in most employments,
and further legislation provides that these rates
shall not be lowered by the introduction of cheaper
labour from outside. The Immigration Act of
the Commonwealth Parliament, for instance, pro-
vides for the exclusion of coloured labour, and of
contract labourers as well. Attention was drawn
to this by the notorious case of six hatters, who
were subjected to the interrogation of the authori-
ties before being allowed to enter Australia. It
was made clear at the time that it was possible
for white British subjects to be excluded from the
Commonwealth if they entered into a contract
with their employers before reaching Australia,
and the fact was eagerly seized and used as a
basis of attack upon the Government respon-
sible for such legislation. The wrongs of the
six hatters were discussed in both the English
and the Australian Press, and inspired many a
spirited Opposition assault in the Commonwealth
Parliament.
Meanwhile, the six hatters themselves had
settled down comfortably in Sydney, and proved
in due time that, once having obtained admission
into Australia, they were fully contented with its
industrial legislation.
The occasion occurred at the general election
of 1903, when Mr. G, R. Reid, the Opposition
Farm and Factory 155
leader, contested the seat of East Sydney. Mr.
Reid had made full use of the six-hatters episode
throughout the session of Parliament, and by a
curious coincidence found the six dwelling in his
own constituency. Moreover, they were all on
the committee of the I/abour candidate who op-
posed Mr. Reid, and who was heart and soul in
favour of the legislation by which they might
easily have been excluded from Australia. This
conclusion to a much discussed episode is re-
counted as affording proof of the one certain result
of the experimental legislation now on its trial in
Australia. The workman, at any rate, is reason-
ably contented with it, as, indeed, he has every
reason to be.
It is never safe, however, to argue a priori about
Australian affairs. The statistician who predicted
an Australian population of 5,678,000 for the year
1901 had no prevision of the ten years of stagna-
tion that almost immediately followed his pro-
phecy. The return of normal and favourable
climatic conditions will afford the observer a bet-
ter chance of determining whether the country can
support manufactures hampered, as far as outside
competition is concerned, by industrial legislation
so favourable to the workers.
A more immediate issue may be found in the
policy now being initiated by the Government, of
attracting population to the vacant lands of Aus-
tralia. This policy implies the throwing open of
areas of land suitable, by reason of soil and
Australian Life
climate, for immediate settlement, the opening up
of fresh markets for Australian produce in other
parts of the Empire and in foreign countries, and
a larger measure of encouragement to the man
upon the land. It further implies the construc-
tion of railways designed, not for the benefit of one
capital city, but for the utmost development of the
districts through which the} 7 pass; it involves the
conservation of the invaluable water that now
runs to waste; and it points to the stern discour-
agement of the professional unemployed of the
Australian cities. It reads like a broad national
policy, born of recognition of errors in the past,
and consistent with the national ideals of which
so much was heard during the first few days of
the present century. It is a case of farm versus
factory, and the present trend of Australian opin-
ion seems to be strongly in favour of farm first,
and factory afterwards.
CHAPTER XIII
THE AUSTRALIAN WOMAN
THE ups and downs of Australian life have
forced upon the Australian woman very
many different parts in life. Fifty years ago,
upon the goldfields at least, woman occupied the
position which Mr. Bret Harte has so aptly pic-
tured in his stores of the Pacific Slope. The few
women upon the goldfields were made the objects
of a chivalrous admiration that was not without
its humorous side. I have often heard a lady
she is a very old lady now describe her first ap-
pearance in one of the more prosperous mining
camps. As she walked from the coach to her
husband's tent, her uplifted skirts displaying a
stout pair of Wellington boots prudently worn as
some protection against the stettgJr-uf mud and
clay through which she had to struggle, the camp
resounded with cries of "Jo, Jo," and ten thou-
sand jolly miners threw down picks and dishes
to gaze at the novel sight of a woman. For
months, she was the heroine of that out of the
way camp, the miners resorting to all sorts of
novel expedients to procure her some delicacy
158 Australian Life
or comfort, which was tactfully offered as a tribute
to her femininity. The ideals of those good days
are fortunately not dead, but the conditions of
Australian life are variable in the extreme, and
the position of woman in the Australian cosmos
has varied with them. In the flood-tide of pro-
sperity, the Australian showed a tendency to treat
his womankind as the American is said to treat
his: to isolate them from every care of business
and even of household management. The Aus-
tralian woman had good times then, but not at
the expense of her home life, and she showed in
the crash that followed that she possessed the re-
sourcefulness and courage which is a mark of
Australian character. Australians have good
reason to be proud of the manner in which many
of their women, born and educated amidst sur-
roundings of comfort and luxury, set to work at
a moment's notice, when, by an unexpected turn
of fortune's wheel, their fathers and husbands
were stripped of their wealth, and hampered by
a very general business depression throughout
Australia.
Visitors to Australia have been unanimous in
recording the marked difference in type of the
Australian woman, for she has adapted herself
more readily to the changed conditions of life and
climate than the Australian man. Her dress,
although following the standard of fashion im-
posed upon her by Parisian and L,ondon authority,
is modified so as to suit the bright light and
The Australian Woman 159
cloudless blue skies of her surroundings. No-
thing is more charming on an Australian holiday
than the cheerful effect of the bright but cool and
appropriate dresses of the daughters of the people.
In the clear sunlight and against the sombre
foliage of the trees and shrubs, it becomes at once
apparent that the genius of the Australian woman
has solved the question of dress, while the halting
instinct of man is only beginning to rebel against
the conventions imposed upon him by his Old
World ancestors. The same genius is shown by '
the woman in the management of her house;
if allowed her own way, the furnishings are de-
signed for coolness and airiness, no trouble is
spared during the glaring daytime to expel the
light and the flies, and her own regimen of diet
is rapidly approaching that which is natural and
healthful in such a climate. It is the Australian
custom that pleasure shall mainly be taken out of
doors, and to this rule, the Australian woman has
not been slow to conform. But there has never
been any craze for undue athleticism among the
Australian girls, many of whom learn to swim
and to ride as a matter of course, leaving the more
competitive pastimes to their brothers. It is true
that there have been teams of lady cricketers, who
enlivened the rather dull life of their rival country
townships by matches which attracted consider-
able attention. The fact that the attention was
attracted proves that the incident was a rare one,
and up to the present, the Australian girl has
160 Australian Life
been content with those pastimes, such as tennis
and golf, which have always been considered
womanly. But she revels in the less active open
air entertainment provided by picnics, garden
parties, boating excursions, and open-air concerts,
and the frequency of these gives to her intercourse
with the other sex a frankness and freedom from
restraint which is one of her special charms. The
camaraderie between the sexes, and the free use
of Christian names, is at first disconcerting to the
new arrival, who may be apt to misconstrue the
free-and- easiness of the Australian girl and to be
snubbed accordingly.
Among the troubles of the household life in
Australia, the servant difficulty is not the least,
and this presses most heavily upon the woman.
The best servants obtainable are those from the
bush, who, although rough diamonds at the out-
set, have the qualities of diligence, quickness, and
extreme good nature. They have also the Aus-
tralian characteristic of independence in a marked
degree, and the national love of holiday-making
and of celebrating anniversaries. Every house-
wife in Australia is familiar with the sinking
sensation experienced on learning that "her treas-
ure," carefully trained through twelve months
of awkwardness or ignorance to something like
aptitude, intends to take a holiday from Christ-
mas Eve to New Year's Day. Remonstrance is
useless. " My mother wants me at home," is
the only explanation vouchsafed of this base de-
The Australian Woman 161
sertion, and there is nothing for it but to submit.
The best way out of the difficulty is that fre-
quently followed in Australia. The Christmas
season is chosen for the annual holiday to the sea-
side or into the country, and the home is locked
up for the occasion. Thus Mary Jane is allowed
to enjoy her Christmas at home, and repays by a
patient and good-tempered service and a willing-
ness for work of all kinds which could not be de-
manded from the highly-trained British domestic.
The critics of the Australian woman and there
have been many have complained that she both
walks and talks badly. For the first charge,
there would seem to be less foundation than for
the second; for, although the ordinary observer
would fail to notice any lack of grace in the car-
riage of the women in the cities, the presence of
an accent is too obvious to be overlooked. The
theory that the hardening and distorting of vowel
sounds so common in Australia can be traced to
the State schools has been advanced. Those who
support this contention point to the large classes
common in these establishments, and to the
monotonous repetitions in chorus that constitute
part of the system of teaching. If this theory be
a correct one, the system cannot be amended too
quickly, for the accent itself is a sad drawback to
the pleasure afforded by the clear and musical
voice that is a characteristic of the Australian
woman.
A more serious matter is the decline of the
1 62 Australian Life
Australian birth-rate, noticeable during the latter
part of the nineteenth century, pointing as it does
to a corresponding decline in the physical or moral
fibre of the Australian woman. Mr. Coghlan, the
statistician whose paper upon the subject first
called public attention to this development of
Australian life, decided as a result of his early in-
vestigations that Australian-born women do not
bear so many children as the European women
who emigrate to Australia. Fuller inquiry, how-
ever, convinced him that in this conclusion he
had been mistaken. The decline of the birth-rate
is more intimately connected with the rapid
growth of the capital cities, where the conditions
of life approximate more closely to those of the
Old World. Mr. Coghlan's carefully reasoned
paper upon the subject has resulted in the ap-
pointment of a commission, empowered to inquire
fully into all the circumstances affecting this
phase of Australian life.
Among the most prominent characteristics of
the Australian woman is her talent for music,
amounting in many instances to positive genius.
This statement is not made merely because Aus-
tralia has given to the world singers who, like
Madame Melba, unite the highest artistic instinct
with the most remarkable natural gifts, and have
so become famous. It is rather because, go where
you will in Australia, you will hear good voices,
used with instinctive art, and instruments played,
even where skilled instruction is lacking, with
The Australian Woman 163
sympathetic and just perception of the meaning
of the music. From the singing of the church
choir in the little back blocks township to the
concert given by the pupils of the musical con-
servatorium of the capital, there is everywhere
abundant evidence that Australians have not only
a true love for music, but the gift of musical ex-
pression. The eagerness in grasping any means
of improved cultivation and knowledge is proof of
this, as well as the enthusiasm with which skilled
performers are welcomed and heard. Music is
the one art that has received genuine and notable
encouragement in Australia.
The Australian woman who earns her own liv-
ing has had to encounter less prejudice and oppo-
sition than has been the case elsewhere. In the
professional class, women have come rapidly to
the front, and women doctors, dentists, and lec-
turers are matters of everyday existence, being
accepted as readily as their male counterparts.
One Australian capital possesses a lady, who,
having developed marked business ability as a
house and land agent, applied for and obtained
an auctioneer's license. Her sales are conducted
with a promptness and readiness of which any
male auctioneer might well be proud, and her
repartees to interrupters at the outset of her career
were peculiarly crushing. In the financial crisis
following the period of over-speculation in land
there were many examples of young ladies who
devised novel and useful methods of replacing
1 64 Australian Life
vanished incomes. One result of that episode in
Australian history is the air of pleasant refinement
that distinguishes the Australian tea-room from
similar establishments elsewhere. The condition
of the working-women of the poorer classes, un-
fortunately, leaves much to be desired. In some
employments, they have reaped the benefits of the
organisation and political power wielded by men,
but in other of the avocations peculiar to the
working-woman alone, their position is not as
advanced as that of the Australian worker gen-
erally. The sweater exists in Australia as else-
where, and finds his victims, as elsewhere, among
those who are poorest and least able to protect
themselves.
This state of affairs may possibly be remedied
by the exercise of the franchise now conferred
upon the Australian woman. The woman voter
is, of course, no new thing in Australasia, for
both in New Zealand and South Australia, the
women have for some years held equal electoral
privileges with the men. But the granting of the
Commonwealth franchise to the Australian wo-
man was an experiment on a much larger scale,
and has resulted in some developments of a most
interesting nature. It has been found that the
women voters outnumbered the men in the Com-
monwealth, although the majority of women is
not a very large one. The woman's vote is,
therefore, a very important consideration for the
politician, who is alive to the experience already
The Australian Wom^n 165
gained of its effect in New Zealand. In that
Colony, it has been found that the one political
question of absorbing interest to the feminine
mind is the regulation and control of the traffic in
intoxicating liquors. It is significant that with
the approach of the first general election at which
the woman's franchise was exercised, those inter-
ested in this trade formed associations designed
for meeting the would-be reformers halfway, and
for improving the conditions under which intoxi-
cants are sold in Australia.
The franchise itself was received by the women
with a due sense of the importance of the gift.
The more advanced formed political associations,
devised an election programme, and actually
nominated women candidates for positions in the
Australian Senate. There are also associations
of women who hold that the time for woman's
representation is not yet ripe, although taking
an active and intelligent interest in the current
political topics. Frequent meetings were organ-
ised, at which addresses of an explanatory nature
were delivered by Australian public men, with
the view of educating their hearers upon the un-
familiar topic of politics. Three women allowed
themselves to be nominated for seats in the Aus-
tralian Senate, but none of them were successful,
the polling disclosing the curious fact that they
obtained more support from male voters than from
those of their own sex. The result of this first
election at which woman's suffrage was exercised
1 66 Australian Life
throughout Australia afforded little justification
for the fears entertained by those who opposed
the granting of woman's suffrage. For the pres-
ent, the Australian woman is content to be guided
in the main by the political opinions of her hus-
band or brother.
It is one of the accepted doctrines of the Aus-
tralian bushman that ' ' the bush is no place for a
woman," but it frequently happens that the same
bushman marries and settles down to make a
home in the bush. The settler's life presses more
hardly upon the woman than the man, with the
result that the first impression gained of the wo-
men of the bush is one of sallow complexions de-
prived of all their freshness by the burning sun,
and of worn faces marked with premature lines
by care and waiting. More lasting, however, is
the remembrance of their simple goodwill and
kindly hospitality to strangers, their mutual help-
fulness at all times, and their courage and re-
sourcefulness in the desperate expedients to which
they are sometimes turned by the loneliness and
isolation of bush life. Every little settlement has
its tale of woman's heroism, told, and then quite
as a matter of course, only in response to the most
persistent questioning. The story of the woman
who maintains and keeps together the little bush
home when necessity forces the man to seek em-
ployment somewhere in the wide emptiness of
pastoral Australia, is but an everyday incident,
for there is no finer thing in all Australia than
The Australian Woman 167
the noble, self-denying lives of many of these
bush women.
The bush affords many instances of women
who, under stress of circumstances, have played
strange parts in life. There are authenticated
accounts of women tramping the country in men's
attire, carrying their swags and turning their
hands to all the varied employments required of
the handy-man of the bush. It is not many years
ago since there died a woman known on the Aus-
tralian roads as " Bullocky Mary." In short
skirts and heavy boots, with a man's felt hat
upon her head, this Amazon used to drive her
team of bullocks through the country, lashing
them with her long whip and a vocabulary of
the most effective description. The spectacle of
husband and wife mining together is by no means
an uncommon one, the man working below in the
mine, while the woman turns the windlass which
lifts the debris from the shaft. Australian race-
courses have known at least one woman who
trained her own race-horse, and more than one
woman who plied the calling of a book-maker.
This aspect of feminine life is fortunately grow-
ing more uncommon as time goes on, and it is
easily possible to discern the true place of the
Australian woman by looking in exactly the
opposite direction. The proportion of women
students at the Australian universities is steadily
increasing, and it appears from the reports of
these institutions, that woman is less apt than
1 68
Australian Life
man to regard the higher education as merely a
means to an end. Many of the women's clubs
have a literary and an artistic basis, and it seems
very probable that the Australian woman will
play an important part in preserving the race
from the commercialism which is at present so
noticeable among the men of the cities.
CHAPTER XIV
HOME AND SOCIAL
THE complaint that the Australians are
abandoning the pleasant home life of their
fathers is not unfrequently heard from the older
generation in Australia, and especially from
those of British birth. The rigorous British
winter, that casts a halo of attraction around the
family circle gathered about the fireside, has no
place in the experience of young Australia. In-
clination conduces to less time being spent in-
doors and more in the open air. For the greater
part of the year, the beaches, parks, and streets
of the cities are thronged in the evenings with
promenaders, chatting and laughing gaily in the
enjoyment of the pleasant coolness that comes
after sunset. It may be possible that the in-
timacy of family life is weakened by this devo-
tion to outdoor recreation, but it is not easy to
discern any marked difference between the home
life of the Australians of the cities and that of
people in a similar sphere of life in Great Britain.
In the bush, however, the absence of any
attempt to make home attractive is readily
169
1 70 Australian Life
noticeable. The primitive discomfort that was
unavoidable during the early pioneer work of the
settler, often clings to his habitation when the
necessity for it has ceased to exist. The endur-
ance of inconveniences and makeshifts becomes a
habit, and money that might well be spent on
home comforts and necessities is laid out on im-
provements to the land, or saved against the bad
times for which the people of the bush are pre-
pared by the uncertain conditions of their life.
Brought up amid these surroundings, the
younger generation has learned the lesson of
doing without things, and perpetuated the cus-
tom. The unloveliness of the bush house, its
unfinished aspect, and its want of any homelike
appearance are only too noticeable. The crowded
capital cities are a standing proof of the distaste
of the people for life on the land, and there can
be no doubt that at present it is rendered more
unattractive for the younger folk by the extent to
which comfort and convenience are subordinated.
As a rule, the Australian is content with three
meals a day, and has meat at every meal. The
working-man will breakfast on chops or steak,
and at midday, if unable to go home, may
patronise a restaurant, where a plentiful dinner
costs him sixpence. At six o'clock, he has a
substantial tea, with cold or hot meat, and very
wisely dispenses with supper. At every meal,
he probably drinks two or three large cups of
tea, and appears little worse for it. London
Home and Social Life i? 1
clerks and employees in business houses usually
take a cup of tea between four and five in the after-
noon, and supper in the evening. In Australia,
city workers lunch in the middle of the day, and
are able to reach their homes in time for a dinner
at six o'clock, so that they have little time or
inclination for the afternoon break. The pro-
fessional and upper middle classes dine a little
later, as a rule, and the cup of afternoon tea may
or may not be taken; but, in Australia, afternoon
tea is recognised as more exclusively a feminine
privilege.
The large amount of meat eaten by the Aus-
tralians is due, in a great measure, to the cheap-
ness of that commodity. Statistics are rarely
interesting, but it is surprising to learn that each
Australian consumes two hundred and sixty-four
pounds of meat annually, as against one hundred
and nine pounds eaten by the average Briton, and
seventy-seven pounds by the Frenchman. Dur-
ing recent years, however, there is a noticeable
tendency among Australians to eat less meat, and
more of the abundant fresh fruit. Most Aus-
tralian doctors advise a breakfast of fruit, followed
by toast and coffee, in the place of the meat and
tea of the old Australian rgime> as being more in
keeping with the Australian climate. In the
cities, this advice begins to be followed, but the
bush remains faithful to the fried chops and
steaks which have always constituted its staple
fare. The monotony of this meat diet cannot
i7 2 Australian Life
fail to impress itself upon any one who has been
called upon to endure it for long, and is all the
more remarkable because so many circumstances
exist in Australia favourable to its inexpensive
variation.
If blazing fires and draught-proofrooms are not
essential to the comfort of the Australian home,
it is at least necessary to resort to expedients to
counteract the effect of the burning summer suns.
Many Australian houses have their roofs coated
with white paint, because that colour attracts the
rays of the sunlight least readily, and are
screened on all sides with thick roller blinds
made of strips of bamboo. Devices for excluding
dust and flies, while admitting the cool evening
air, are generally used, and in the middle and
northern parts of Australia, beds are customarily
furnished with mosquito nettings. In a well-
appointed Australian house, an ice-chest is a
necessity rather than a luxury, for in this way
only can the drinking water be kept cool and the
butter set upon the table in a state of solidity.
The ice-cart goes from door to door as regularly
as the milk-cart, throughout almost the whole of
the year. Finally, the Australian of the cities
does not consider a house fit for human habitation
unless it contains a bathroom and shower-bath,
and this statement holds good with every class of
Australian society.
With these modifications, the Australian con-
tinues to cherish the home ideals just as the
Home and Social Life 173
Briton does his. It is an airier home, not so
crowded with cherished pieces of furniture, and
not regarded so much as a refuge from the
rigours of the world outside. It is a home of
open doors and windows, with a wide veranda,
where indoor life meets the open air existence on
terms of happy compromise. By imperceptible
degrees, the Australian home is adjusting itself
to the Australian climate.
The belief in the absence of class distinctions
in Australia is cherished by the masses in the face
of an existing class. But the man who rises
from the masses is quickly made aware of an
exclusive circle of people " in society," and of the
efforts made to reserve such privileges as this
circle may enjoy. Australian society and the
struggle made to maintain class distinctions have
furnished the theme for many satires. It is, in-
deed, easier to ridicule than to adequately describe
the basis of Australian society. I^et it be pre-
mised that the most important, if not the most
exclusive, social entertainments are those offered
by the Australian Governors in their capacity as
representatives of the Crown. At such entertain-
ments, the most prominent people are those who
have made their way to the front in politics, pro-
fessional life, commerce, or pastoral pursuits.
Many of them, by their education and upbring-
ing, or by their natural qualities, are well fitted
to adorn any society, but there are some of whom
it may be said, without any unkindness, that
i?4 Australian Life
they are quite at their worst in the atmosphere of
the court and ballroom.
The social duties of an Australian Governor
are obviously of a very exacting nature, since in
his hands is placed the task of reconciling the
claims of so many social aspirants, and of keep-
ing Government House free from the invasions of
enterprising people whom those already within
the pale would consider impossible. The newly
arrived Governor accordingly provides a book in
which callers may write their names and ad-
dresses, and from this book is compiled the list
of those who are subsequently entertained by the
vice-royalty. I do not profess any ability to
indicate the lines upon which the selection is
made, but it is no secret that the path of the
Australian Governor who has not a well-posted
secretary and a staff of tactful aide-de-camps is by
no means a pleasant one. These Government
House entertainments are interesting. The cen-
tral figure is that of a tactful and courteous
gentleman, who, with the assistance of an alto-
gether charming wife, and a band of bored-
looking aides, is cordially receiving an immense
number of guests, some of whom regard his hos-
pitality as a right. As they arrive, the guests
fall naturally into sets: the political set, includ-
ing a number of the higher officials; the land-
owning set, descended from the Australian
wool-kings ; the professional and military set,
including many worthy gentlemen in expensive
Home and Social Life 175
military uniforms; the newly moneyed set, cast-
ing a suspicious eye upon the latest recruits to
their ranks. There is, in addition, a large num-
ber of pleasant people who have come for the sole
purpose of enjoying themselves, and set about
doing so very naturally and thoroughly.
There is, further, an inner circle of Australian
society, whose doings are chronicled with great
exactness and intimacy by the society papers.
For obvious reasons, no attempt is made at a
rigid definition of this circle of "the very nicest,"
for that would defeat the end for which the
society paper exists. One gathers that its ideals
are drawn from high life elsewhere, and that a
close acquaintance is maintained with the latest
movements and customs of the best English
society. It may be urged, with some truth, that
no better model could be taken, but it has re-
sulted, rather unfortunately, in the permanent
transfer to England of some of the people and
much of the money that Australia can ill spare.
There are, naturally, thousands of refined and
well-bred people, for whom neither the exclu-
siveness of this circle of "the very nicest," nor
the entry to Government House and the social
cachet it is supposed to give, have any special at-
traction. To outline their social life would be but
to describe the ordinary existence of the educated
Anglo-Saxon middle class everywhere. Formali-
ties and conventions may be slightly modified, but
they are by no means dispensed with entirely.
i7 6 Australian Life
In this respect, the lot of those in the lower
grades of the official class, and of the ordinary
clerk, is perhaps less to be envied than that of any
other class in Australian society. The incidence
of the Australian protective tariff, and the high
scale of professional fees of all kinds, make any
attempt at keeping up appearance one long
struggle. The working-man, who is more
highly paid than the clerk and the subordinate
public servant, is much better off, and, by frankly
disregarding the distinctions these others must
observe, can obtain a far greater share of the
desirable things of Australian life. Owing to
the heavy protective duty on clothing of all
kinds, the clerk and the shop-assistant are, in
proportion to their earnings, the most heavily
taxed classes in the whole Australian com-
munity, although the higher rates of remunera-
tion obtained in other employment do not hold in
these occupations.
As for the working-man, he is little troubled by
social distinctions of any kind. His relations
with his employer do not call for any show of
deference, his political representatives see that
his necessities shall not contribute too largely to
the revenue, and his main concerns are family
affairs, politics, and sports. His interest in poli-
tics occasionally brings him into touch with the
movements of "society," after a fashion that
rouses a curious resentment in him. It will be
difficult for any one who has never lived in A us-
Home and Social Life 177
tralia to understand how keenly the people
dislike the acceptance by one of their popular
politicians of the knighthood and decoration
sometimes proffered as an honour by the Im-
perial Government. The Australian politician
who refuses such honours, renews the trust of
the people in himself, and incidentally deprives
his wife of an attribute of a mean value in society.
The covert antipathy that exists between masses
and classes is illustrated by this society approval
of what the people condemns. The reasoned
objection to the bestowal of titles upon Aus-
tralians is that it is at once unnecessary, and
anti- Australian, and the most national in spirit
of all Australian papers wrote seriously of it that
" Australia took up the Cross of the Order of St.
Michael and St. George on its shoulders to march
towards the crucifixion of its national life. ' ' It
should be borne in mind that the whole of the
resentment excited by the bestowal of these
honours is directed against the recipient, and that
the offer of them is recognised in the spirit in
which it is made.
Clubs in Australia are few, but, as a rule, they
are very good. Bach of the capital cities possesses
at least one club managed on lines as constitu-
tionally exclusive as any that L,ondon can boast.
An extreme conservatism is one of the products
of the ferment of an ultra democratic community,
and in his club, the Australian Conservative finds
a congenial atmosphere free from the Radicalism
178 Australian Life
that disturbs him everywhere else. Their mem-
bership is almost exclusively confined to the
squatters, mine owners, and property owners,
who find themselves, by sheer force of circum-
stances, in direct opposition to the socialistic spirit
that pervades the working classes. Other clubs
are founded on an artistic or literary basis, but
the average Australian, who cannot be considered
a club man in the English sense of the word, is
usually content with his suburban club, with its
tennis-lawns, bowling-greens, and modest card
and billiard rooms. Throughout Australia, the
sporting and recreation club flourishes exceed-
ingly, but the political club, so dear to the British
tradesman and artisan, is an unknown thing. Its
place, however, is more than taken by such
organisations as the Australian Natives' Associa-
tion, some account of which is given in another
chapter.
The social life of the bush, based on the general
foundation of comradeship and mutual helpful-
ness, is grandly simple in principle. Men under-
take for one another obligations not recognised
in other communities, and rely upon one another
in a spirit of trust that is marvellously justified.
By this rule of the bush, the population of a
whole district sets itself to scour the country for
days in search of a lost child, and the same rule
makes it possible for a bushman to travel on foot
throughout Australia without a shilling in his
pocket. Life in the bush is hard and monoton-
Home and Social Life 179
ous, and sometimes breeds bitter senseless feuds
and stupid misunderstandings. But in time of
trouble or loss, fancied slights and ancient
grudges are forgotten, and the sufferer experi-
ences only the full and practical sympathy of his
neighbours. The traditional hospitality of Aus-
tralia is the hospitality of the bush, extended
without a second thought to acquaintance and
stranger alike, and accepted in the same unques-
tioning spirit. "I have ridden," writes Sir
Gilbert Parker, "to a plantation late at night,
turned my horse into the horse paddock, entered
the house, struck a match, found a sofa, lain
down, and waked in the morning to find life
bustling about me, my breakfast ready on the
table, and I an utter stranger! . . . They
appreciated the desire on my part not to disturb
their rest, and they apologised for the hardness
of the sofa. ' '
The social code of the bush is summed up by
Mr. Henry L,awson in one brief sentence : "Drunk
or sober, mad or sane, good or bad, it is n't bush
religion to desert a mate in a hole. ' ' And among
all bushmen there is an acknowledged mateship.
City and bush meet in the country townships,
where neither shows to any great advantage. To
begin with, the township, whether new or old, is
invariably unlovely. A wide street of strag-
gling, iron-roofed houses, a hotel or two and a
few stores, at least two churches and a school,
each building as monotonously unsightly as its
i8o Australian Life
neighbours these are the township's main
constituents. Local society consists of the bank
manager, doctor, clergyman, and a few others,
with lower positions assigned to the school-teacher
and police-constable, the latter usually a superior
man and invariably an influential one. This
circle is regarded as consisting of city folk, and is
viewed with distrust and suspicion by the locals.
The feuds and scandals inevitable in village life
are embittered by this jarring of town and bush,
and to the policeman, if he is tactful, falls the
task of keeping peace between the parties.
The visitor who studies the life of Australia in
a bush township can hardly escape the con-
clusion that this must be among the least sober
of all countries of the world. The conclusion
would be an erroneous one, as statistics will
prove, but there is no doubt about the amount of
hard drinking that goes on in the bush town-
ships. There may be seen the bushman, who
has not known the taste of intoxicating drink for
months, indulging in an orgy in which he invites
all comers to participate. The occasional "bursts"
of more frequent visitors to the place are equally
obvious, for the little township concentrates the
drunkenness of a whole district. The moral fibre
of the young man called upon to live in such sur-
roundings, perhaps as bank clerk, or civil ser-
vant, must be stout, or he will run considerable
danger of yielding to the infectious atmosphere.
Life in the bush township is supremely dull,
Home and Social Life 181
especially to a youngster who has newly aban-
doned the attractions of a big city, and the one
spot less boresome than the rest is the hotel
parlour. It is recognised in Australia that young
men who would remain steady in other sur-
roundings are apt to acquire intemperate habits
during a period of township life.
It is not an attractive picture, although, unfor-
tunately, it has its counterpart in other countries.
Years go by and bring little change to the dull
hamlet, with its single dusty street and its gen-
eral unfinished air of rusty untidiness. The
railway comes, and the one event of the day is
the arrival of the up- train, just as the one topic
of conversation is the latest aspect of the peren-
nial quarrel between the bank manager and the
publican.
Dingo Bill arrives from " way back " and paints
the place red, until his career is cut short by the
constable, after which the doctor treats him for
delirium tremens, and he departs, penniless, but
satisfied. Once a year comes the show, or the
sports, followed by drinking, fighting, and a
general scene of licentiousness and disrepute. It
is Australian life at its worst: worse than the life
of the big cities, and infinitely worse than the
brave struggle on the lonely selection.
CHAPTER XV
THE AUSTRALIAN AT PLAY
AS might be expected from a people which
allots eight hours out of the twenty-four to
recreation, the Australians are devoted to out-
door sports of all kinds. The climate assures so
large a proportion of fine days, the cities have
been provided so liberally with playing-grounds,
and the hours of labour are so short, that it could
hardly be otherwise. As a result, the Australian
is sometimes reproached with devoting too much
time to play, though there is something to be said
in favour of a national sentiment which regards
it as a matter of course that every young man
shall be able to swim, to ride a horse, and to
handle a gun or a rifle. The president of an
Australian Science Congress recently proposed
no doubt jocularly that research should be in-
itiated to the end that the bacillus of sport might
be eradicated from the rising generation; but
Australians are not able to forget that a full recog-
nition of their existence was first obtained in the
Motherland by the success of their bands of
cricketers.
182
m I
The Australian at Play 183
It has been said that when an Australian settle-
ment is planted, the first care of the pioneers is
to mark out the site of the cemetery, the second
to plan a race-course. Horse-racing in Australia,
however, is not the constant and absorbing pur-
suit made of it by its devotees in Great Britain,
but an amusement that concentrates public at-
tention during certain seasons of the year. For a
week, it becomes a consideration and is made
a leading topic of conversation, and then little is
heard of the subject until another racing carnival
comes round. During the first week in each
November, for instance, the city of Melbourne is
devoted to horse- racing; for the Melbourne Cup,
the most important event in the Australian racing
calendar, is then decided. It is remarkable how
many gatherings, necessitating the presence of
visitors from other states, are held in Melbourne
at that season. The Australian fleet of warships,
usually stationed at Sydney, may invariably be
found in Port Philip, and from all corners of the
continent, visitors find their way to Melbourne
for the great Australian reunion. Bronzed squat-
ters from Queensland, lean prospectors from the
sands of Western Australia, and traders who have
exhausted all the possibilities of the South Sea
Islands, may be seen renewing old acquaintance
on the spacious lawns of the Flemington race-
course. Everybody is there, from the Governor-
General to the newest music-hall favourite.
People who would not entertain the idea of
1 84 Australian Life
attending any other race meeting, find their way
to the course on Melbourne Cup Day. The Aus-
tralian spring is in its most winsome mood, and
as fashion has decreed that this shall be the occa-
sion when the Australian woman may display
her most tasteful dress and most expensive hat,
the scene on the great lawn before the grand-
stand becomes the most brilliant to be witnessed
in all Australia.
On a big hill behind the grand-stand are the
Australian workmen in their thousands, and the
hoarse roar of the bookmakers in that part of
the race-course is loud and continuous. Half a
crown admits to this enclosure, attached to which
is a large paddock where wives and families may
picnic in comfort. Admission to the area enclosed
by the race-course itself is free, and here, too,
is a dense crowd, enjoying all the shows and
amusements usually seen at a fair. As many as
a hundred thousand people have been present on
the course to see the race for the cup, and the
day is observed as a public holiday in the city.
But the interest in the race is not confined to
those upon the course. For five shillings, a
ticket may be purchased in a cup lottery, and the
fortunate drawer of the winning horse learns from
the result of the race that he has suddenly
stepped into a fortune. The promoter of these
lotteries deducts ten per cent, of the money pass-
ing through his hand, amounting annually to
some hundreds of thousands sterling. Clerks
The Australian at Play 185
and shop girls set aside a small portion of their
earnings each week, forming speculative com-
panies to send regularly for tickets and divide
any winnings accruing to them. Apart from
these ' 'consultations," as they are called, there
is a great deal of betting upon the result of the
race, which usually attracts a field of about thirty
of the finest horses in Australia.
When this field of horses faces the barrier of
the starting-gate, there is a sudden hush over all
the course. The promenade on the lawn stops
for the time, and every one seeks some point from
which the race can be viewed. The roar on the
hill ceases, the swing-boats and merry-go-rounds
are still, while all prepare to watch the struggle.
In five minutes, the result will be telegraphed to
every town through a continent of three million
miles, huge sums of money will have changed
hands, a few fortunate ones will have become
suddenly rich, and many thousands disappointed.
Three minutes of breathless suspense, a mighty
roar as the struggling horses flash past the
winning-post, and then the great crowd settles
down to its promenading and picnicking again.
The race is the great event of the day, certainly,
but there are old friends to be met, reminiscences
to be exchanged, and luncheons and afternoon
teas to be consumed. East meets West on Cup
Day, and North meets South. It is much more
than a mere race meeting to a sparsely popu-
lated country such as Australia.
1 86 Australian Life
The conduct of horse-racing in Australia is
marked by the regard paid to the convenience
and comfort of the race-going public. Of the
minor improvements introduced upon Australian
race-courses, such as the numbering of saddle-
cloths, so that spectators can, by a glance at their
cards, tell the name of a horse without reference
to the colours worn by his rider, much has been
written. Betting in many of the Australian
States takes place on the course through the
agency of the totalisator, or pari-mutuel, while in
other states, book-makers are controlled by the
racing clubs governing the sport. Admission
fees to the race -courses are strictly reasonable,
and it is certain that while more of the Aus-
tralians have a personal knowledge of racing
gained from attending the courses, there is much
less of the blind and ignorant gambling which
takes place in the cities of Great Britain among
men who never saw a race-horse extended. On
the other hand, it would be idle to contend for
one moment that the sport is as pure in itself in
Australia as in Great Britain. Many of the Aus-
tralian owners of race-horses are frankly con-
cerned in racing for the sake of the money they
hope to make at it, and incidents take place at
some of the minor meetings that would not for
one moment be tolerated by the English Jockey
Club.
The climate of Australia largely accounts for
the skill in cricket which has now become recog-
The Australian at Play 187
nised as an Australian attribute. It would easily
be possible in many parts of Australia to play
cricket throughout the winter, and many
cricketers devote that season to baseball, recog-
nised as a summer pastime in America. Perhaps
nothing is more eloquent of the Australian
interest in sport, than the appearance of the
newspaper offices during the progress of an
Anglo- Australian cricket match. Hoardings are
erected on the street frontage of each office, and
from time to time, bulletins are posted there
announcing the latest scores, with full par-
ticulars. All day long a crowd stands before
each hoarding, disclosing by shrewd comments
an intimate knowledge of the game. The same
knowledge is often displayed by the much
abused "barracker," who yells advice and
reproach at the players during the course of the
match. It is an evil custom certainly, and can-
not be excused even in experts who may usually
be found, not as spectators, but as active ex-
ponents of the game.
It is in this particular that an Australian cricket
crowd differs most essentially from a similar
gathering in England. The regular spectator
can hardly be said to exist, for these large crowds
are reserved for very special occasions. An ordi-
nary club cricket match does not attract more than
a few score of watchers, while every vacant piece
of land proves that the Australian, as a rule, would
rather play cricket than look at it. Football,
1 88 Australian Life
on the other hand, draws its regular crowds of
spectators; and it is not uninteresting to note
that in most of the Australian States, the game
is played according to a set of rules of local
origin. The result is a fast, exciting game, best
played on a dry field with a lively ball. For a
bracing, sunny winter afternoon, there is no finer
game for player or spectator, and the popularity
of football can readily be understood.
A visit to one of the large city parks on Satur-
day afternoon will show that the Australian's
aptitude for sport has caused him to adopt, not
only all the recognised pastimes of Great Britain,
but those of many other countries as well. He
takes baseball from the United States, lacrosse
from Canada, and polo from Asia, and can boast,
in addition, of one or two sports that are
peculiarly his own.
Most of these belong to the men of the bush,
and, perhaps, the most interesting and character-
istic among them is the sport of wood-chopping.
A championship contest is at once a novel and
exciting spectacle, and one not readily forgotten.
Each axeman has his trainer, who plays the
part of mentor during the contest, sometimes
pointing to the spot where the next blow could be
delivered with most advantage, and continually
reporting the progress made by the other com-
petitors. The logs to be severed all practically
of the same girth stand upright, so that the
axemen deliver their blows in the same position
The Australian at Play 189
as when felling a tree. At a given signal, all
fall to work, the sharp axes bite their way
through the solid logs, and great segments of
wood fall thick and fast upon the ground. It is
impossible to predict where victory will rest, for
those who start best often tire most rapidly, and
sometimes a man will fall down from sheer ex-
haustion before the log is severed, since wood-
chopping mades a severe demand upon even the
strongest frame. But the cheer that goes up
when the first log topples over relieves the ten-
sion, and the victor's name and the time occu-
pied in the performance of the feat are quickly
announced. Cash prizes of a very substantial
size are often won by expert axemen, a few of
whom have exalted the accomplishment into a
profession. Wood-chopping contests are adver-
tised for many weeks beforehand, and during an
afternoon devoted to this pastime, the sport is
varied by contests in splitting and sawing wood.
I^ike the British soldier, the Western Australian
miner is no stranger to the delight afforded by a
camel race, with native riders. Many of the
Afghans are very proud of the speed and endur-
ance of their saddle camels, and it is no difficult
matter to arrange a race, when the bulk of the
fun is afforded by the efforts of the riders to
urge the beasts along. The excitement is mainly
confined to the Afghan spectators, who are all
violent partisans, and shout frantically at the
animals they do not wish to win, in the hope of
i9 Australian Life
inducing them to lie down. The sequel is invari-
ably a terrific squabble, during which challenges
are thrown out and a fresh race is arranged.
Even quainter than a camel race is the goat-race,
peculiar, so far as I know, to the race-courses
of Northern Queensland, and not unusually the
brightest item in the day's programme of sport.
In dealing with the amusements of the bush, it
would be possible to dilate upon the sheep-
shearing contests that take place at the country
shows, and the competitions in riding buck -jump-
ing horses; also the rock-drilling matches that
may be witnessed in a mining-camp. They are
at least interesting as showing how the Aus-
tralian makes a sport of the occupation in which
he excels.
For shooting and fishing in Australia, no
licenses are required, but the sportsman must
have a knowledge of the close seasons, and of the
birds and animals protected throughout the year.
Game is not everywhere plentiful, but the pursuit
of it affords a pleasant excuse for the best of all
Australian amusements, that of camping out. To
pitch a tent on the banks of a clear stream, with
plenty of good water-holes for bathing, and to
sleep on a thick couch of springy fern is a joy in
itself during the golden Australian summer. The
stream holds all sorts of wonders, crayfish, and
black fish, and little silver trout. A glimpse of
a platypus may sometimes be caught, if the
locality is a sufficiently remote one, and a sight
The Australian at Play 191
of a pair of these water-moles at play is reward
enough to the nature-lover for much patient
watching. In the big water-hole, there will
surely be black duck and teal, both very welcome
additions to the larder, while the presence of the
rabbit may be taken as a matter of course.
Every patch of scrub may shelter a wallaby, but
one may only look from a distance at the big
forester kangaroos, hopping away at long range
among the open forest trees.
Flour and bacon, with potatoes and onions,
and, of course, tea and sugar, are necessities to
the camper-out; also a pair of blankets, the
oldest clothes available, not forgetting a pair of
thick leather leggings as a precaution against
snake bite, and just as much or as little sporting
paraphernalia as may seem desirable. A horse
and cart for the conveyance of these things, and
of the tent, may be hired at the railway-station
nearest the chosen spot, and then all arrangements
are made. From the first dip in the water-hole
before the sun is up to the last pipe smoked
around the camp fire before turning in, the whole
day is one round of keen delight. Damper and
billy tea provide a meal that appears in the light
of a choice confection, and the feeblest joke gains
a zest from its surroundings.
lyet me recall but one incident from among
many memories of camp life. We had been in
camp a week in a secluded valley in the Dividing
Ranges, and during that time had seen no human
192 Australian Life
faces but those of our own party. That night we
were sitting around the fire under the stars, and
finishing the last of a demijohn of excellent Aus-
tralian wine bought at a vineyard on the road,
when we heard, far away, the footbeats of an
approaching horse. We listened in silence as
they came nearer, and presently a horseman rode
into our circle of firelight and drew rein. He
stayed only long enough to explain his errand,
for he was riding across country to the nearest
township for a doctor. Then he drank the
proffered cup of wine, and was gone into the
darkness, the only man we saw during our stay
there.
Even big-game shooting is possible for the
ambitious sportsman in Australia. The Northern
Territory has its herds of swamp buffalo, the
descendants of animals introduced from the
Malay archipelago in the middle of the last cen-
tury. The shooting of these animals has been
made an occupation by a band of adventurous
men, who obtain handsome incomes from the
sale of hides, horns, and salted buffalo beef. On
Melville Island, near Arnheim Peninsula, the
buffalo herds are estimated to number fifty thou-
sand, the right of shooting them belonging to
one man, who has rigorously preserved them for
some years. The buffalo shooter must be able to
ride well, and willing at any time to take the risk
of an encounter with an infuriated buffalo bull.
The country inhabited by the buffalo herds is
The Australian at Play 193
swampy, and in holding ground, the buffalo, by
reason of his large flat feet, holds a distinct
advantage over a horse. It is the custom of the
riders to keep a respectful distance while pur-
suing their quarry through the swamps, but to
ride up to the animal's quarters when sound
going has been reached. Then a shot from a car-
bine or shortened rifle shatters the animal's spinal
column, and it is left to be despatched and
skinned by the aboriginal assistants who follow
in the horses' s tracks, while the shooter himself
rides on after the flying herd.
The sportsmen who have introduced animals
and fish from the Old World are not altogether
to be congratulated upon the result of their enter-
prise. The streams have been stocked with
trout, which have thriven and eaten up the
native fish, and multiplied, only to treat with con-
tempt every lure in the shape of an artificial fly,
and to fall an ignominious prey to the boy who
baits with a local grasshopper. Foxes have been
introduced and have betaken themselves to the
hilly ground, where it is impossible to hunt them.
They have become a pest to the farmer, and every
Australian shoots a fox on sight as readily as he
would a snake. The depredations of the rabbit
in Australia are well known, and in some dis-
tricts, hares are almost as great a nuisance. The
house-sparrow and the Indian mina were surely
unnecessary, even to the sportsman, but they are
there, and it is impossible to get rid of them
i 9 4
Australian Life
It is not surprising, therefore, that a gentleman
who proposed introducing the African eland into
Australia was begged by the Press to consider
first whether that animal might not develop in
his new habitat some latent vice not readily dis-
cernible in his natural surroundings.
CHAPTER XVI
THE ABORIGINES
THE rapid dwindling of the aboriginal races of
Australia, since the coming of the white
man, is one of the least attractive incidents in
the development of the continent. The Tas-
manian blacks are already extinct, and of the
scattered tribes of Victoria, only a few hundred
members now remain. There were more than
six thousand full-blooded blacks in New South
Wales in 1882, and twenty years later, the num-
ber had shrunk to less than three thousand. Mr.
Archibald Meston, Protector of Aborigines in
Southern Queensland, estimates that the number
of blacks in that state was two hundred thousand
in the year 1840, and these, according to the
same authority, had been reduced to twenty-five
thousand at the end of the century. In spite of
the most stringent laws passed for the protection
of this remnant, they annually decrease by at
least five hundred, and it is therefore the opinion
of the authority I have quoted that the race will
be practically extinct in Queensland by the
middle of the present century. In Central and
195
196 Australian Life
North- Western Australia, there are large tribes
of blacks still living in their primitive condition
of wildness, but the laws existing for their pro-
tection are not so carefully drawn as in Queens-
land. The opportunities for obtaining drink and
opium are too many, and too frequent, and these
tribes are also diminishing in number.
This rapid decay of an interesting race, unfor-
tunate as it is, would appear to be inevitable.
The unvarying testimony of all the authorities
upon the subject goes to prove that contact with
civilisation is fatal to the Australian black. His
rapid extermination may have been hastened in
the past by carelessness and cruelty of treatment
that was grossly selfish on the part of the white
man, but even the most intelligent and best-
intentioned efforts to civilise this people have
proved abortive and injurious to them. The
only elements of civilised existence they seem
able to assimilate are those calculated to prove
destructive to them. "In their wild state, they
get along all right," wrote one of their official
protectors, " but when they are educated, what
can we do with them ? ' '
It is, indeed, only of late years that any
organised attempt has been made to obtain
accurate and scientific knowledge of their real
and natural life, and of the curious and interest-
ing tribal customs which survive among them.
The task has been one of considerable difficulty,
since the sources of information most readily
The Aborigines 19?
available have been tainted by communication
and intercourse with the white man. It has,
nevertheless, been possible to gather from the
scattered remnants of the original Australian
race, still living in a wild state, an excellent idea
of life in Australia when the black-fellow roamed
in undisputed possession of the continent. Of
agriculture, he had not even the most primitive
idea, and relied for food upon the wild fruits and
vegetables of Australia, and upon the game
secured during his fishing and hunting expedi-
tions. The only animal he has ever succeeded
in domesticating is the dog, and every tribe of
blacks is still accompanied by large packs of
these animals. As a rule, the black-fellow is
fond of his dogs, and feeds them when he is able.
But even when they have to look after them-
selves, they are certainly not treated with any
active cruelty, nor set to fight for the amusement
of their masters. The dogs are useful only to the
wild black-fellows, who have to exist by hunting
for the greater part of the year.
The same necessity which made him tame the
dog has also impelled him to invent the most
scientific wooden weapons that the world can
show. It is curious that, although the develop-
ment of the aborigine was arrested at the stage
of the manufacture of wooden weapons, he has
nevertheless succeeded in making the boomerang
and the woomera, both highly ingenious and
effective weapons, which he handles with a
Australian Life
remarkable degree of skill. The boomerang has
often been described, and examples of the
woomera, or throwing stick, may be seen in most
museums. It is a short, stout stick, notched at
one end to receive the butt of an exceedingly
long and light spear. With a woomera, the
adept can throw these light spears with amazing
force and accuracy, and although the spear-tips
are made of hard wood only, these missiles
served to kill kangaroos and emus, and after-
wards sheep and cattle.
In a very interesting paper on aboriginal foods,
Dr. Roth, of North Queensland, has enumerated
more than two hundred varieties of fruits and
vegetables which are eaten. When he can get
them, the black shows no aversion to insects and
reptiles of all kinds. Snakes are regarded as a
delicacy, and the hills of some species of ants are
plundered, eggs, larvae, and mature insects being
kneaded into a kind of paste, and eaten with
relish. Grubs of all kinds, and especially the
large, white grubs found under the bark of the
wattle tree, are looked upon with extreme favour,
and are sometimes roasted, and sometimes eaten
raw. Earth-eating is also practised by some of
the Queensland blacks, to satisfy a craving
created by a disease common among them, and
not unknown among the whites of the same
locality.
In fishing and hunting, the black- fellow is at
his best, and shows himself possessed of great
The Aborigines 199
skill, cunning, and endurance. Emus are driven
into traps and pits, or else speared, after much
patient stalking. Snares are set for smaller
birds, which are also killed with the boomerang.
Swans and ducks are taken by swimming and
diving, the head of the hunter being concealed
in a mass of aquatic weeds. Kangaroos are
tracked and ' speared, or run down with dogs,
while the dogs also assist in driving the wallabies
into snares and nets. The black-fellow catches
opossums by climbing the trees in which they
live, sounding the trunks for hollows in which
these animals shelter.
Fishing is carried on in several ways. In an-
gling, they employ the sucker-fish as a natural
hook, but a more favoured method of taking fish
is that of stupefying them by treading the water
until it becomes very muddy, or by the use of
some vegetable poison. They also make nets
into which the fish are driven, and some tribes
show great skill in spearing fish.
The manufactures of the black- fellow are not
limited to the fashioning of his weapons, for the
women make many articles of string. Some of
this string is twisted from the hair of human
beings, and animals, but the greater part of it is
made of the vegetable fibre of the spinifex grass.
This is chewed and soaked to get rid of the
adhesive matter, and then twisted into strands
in a very businesslike fashion. From the string
thus made, nets for fishing and hunting are
200 Australian Life
manufactured, as are the dilly-bags in which
the gins carry their possessions. The unfailing
amusement of the women and children, it is
interesting to learn, is an elaborate imitation of
the game of cat's cradle; for with a length of
string, all sorts of designs are produced, each
of which is supposed to bear resemblance to some
natural object.
The amusements of the men consist in athletic
contests, in duels, partly sham, but still of a very
realistic nature, and in tribal dancing. Owing
to the investigations of Messrs. Spencer and
Gillen, the true significance of some of these
dances or corroborees is now understood. The
information was gathered in the course of two
expeditions to Central Australia, when photo-
graphs and even cinematographic records of the
corroborees were obtained. One typical dance is
reserved for the rainy season, and is supposed to
be conducive to the fall of the much-desired
showers. In this dance, some of the actors repre-
sent ducks and other aquatic birds which make
their appearance during the rainy season, and
they deck themselves for the performance with
objects symbolical of clouds and running water,
thus preserving the significance attached to this
special dance.
At least one aboriginal dialect has been
reduced to a written language by Dr. Roth, as-
sisted by two German missionaries, Messrs.
Schwartz and Poland, of the Lake Bedford
The Aborigines 201
Station. This language is exceedingly interest-
ing, on account of its remarkable inflections and
grammatical complications, an extremely limited
vocabulary of root words being most ingeniously
employed to serve all the purposes of a spoken
language. Dr. Roth declares it to be identical
with the dialect of which Captain Cook made a
vocabulary in the year 1770, since which time the
spoken language appears to have undergone few,
if any, alterations.
Interesting as the black-fellow undoubtedly is
while he remains in his wild condition, when he
comes into close contact with the white man he
presents a spectacle that is pitiable and pathetic.
A visit to one of the aboriginal reservations will
convince any inquirer that, with the very best in-
tentions, the Australian Governments are able to
do but little for those people. Houses built to
shelter them are kept in a bare and sordid state,
and the uncultivated state of the good lands they
possess shows that it is impossible to instil into
them even the rudiments of agriculture. The
large proportion of half-caste children, while it is
a reproach to the whites, is also eloquent of the
absence of any vestige of morality in either black
man or woman. Neither the stringency of laws,
nor the vigilance of paid officials serves to protect
the black race from itself; for it dates back to an
era before the stone age, and cannot be in any
way reconciled with the conditions of to-day.
The skill of the aboriginal as a tracker has
202 Australian Life
formed the subject of countless stories, many of
which can be readily verified. Attached to the
police force of each of the Australian States is a
band of these black trackers, whose services are
most useful in tracing the footsteps of criminals
or of unfortunates lost in the bush.
These trackers are drawn from the wildest and
least civilised tribes of Northern Australia, and
it is curious to notice how rapidly they lose the
instinct which makes their services of value.
After a very few years, it is generally found
necessary to dismiss them and to fill their places
with men freshly drawn from the wild existence
natural and necessary to the welfare of the Aus-
tralian blacks. In a book on the Black Police of
Queensland, Mr. E. B. Kennedy, who had a long
and varied experience with that force, narrates
many instances of the tracking ability of the
black-fellow. One of these is of especial signifi-
cance, because it proves that the tracker loses
none of his skill when transferred to another
land where the local conditions are unfamiliar
to him.
Attached to one of the Australian contingents
sent to the Boer war was a native Australian
tracker called Billy. Some English officers, when
discussing scouting and kindred topics with their
Australian colleagues, expressed their doubt as
to the powers of the tracker being as great as
they were represented, although admitting their
belief that the stories told them might have some
X U
N
The Aborigines 203
foundation in fact. A trial was at once arranged,
and five officers set off, at different hours and in
different directions, two on foot, and three on
horseback; Billy being meantime locked up.
When released he followed up each track in turn,
and on his return to camp, note-books were taken
out and he was told to proceed. Billy forthwith
sketched the routes taken by each, described how
one had tied up his horse, and climbed a tree,
although there was neither " possum or sugar
bag ' ' in it. One of the footmen was a ' ' silly
pfeller," for he had gone out in his socks and cut
his foot, and so lamed himself for the rest of his
journey. The half-burnt match of another man
who had lighted his pipe was produced, as well
as hairs establishing the fact that the three horses
were dark brown, light brown, and grey in
colour. In short, Billy quite convinced those
English officers that his powers were as great as
had been claimed.
Apart from this sphere of usefulness, the
aborigines make splendid stockmen, for they are
good natural horsemen, and their keen sight and
hearing, as well as their instinct for observation,
are of the greatest advantage in this work. It
more closely resembles their natural life, provid-
ing them with plenty of change and excitement,
and with the nomad existence to which they have
always been accustomed. But should the tribe
to which they belong make its appearance in the
neighbourhood, they at once grow unsettled and
204 Australian Life
sullen, and nothing will restrain them from
"going wild," for a time at least. As they grow
older, this longing for freedom from restraint
gains upon them, and they become less diligent
and attentive to their duties. The best work is
obtained from those who are taken when quite
young, and removed to some distance from the
district to which they belong.
The women are more reliable, and on the sta-
tions in the far West and North, perform all the
household drudgery. Some of them make very
faithful and useful servants, and as they are very
fond of children, are frequently employed as
nurses. They are cheerful and good-tempered,
fond of a joke, and of bright colours, and easily
managed by any one who understands them. La-
dies who have grown accustomed to them will
often declare that they prefer them to the best
white servants, especially for work in the bush.
This opinion is shared by some of the gins them-
selves, if the story told by a Western station
holder be true. His wife employed an Irish
servant-girl as well as a black gin, and between
the pair an endless quarrel went on. For the
Irish girl, the lady of the house made a dress, and
promised the gin one exactly like it. She was
rather surprised to hear the latter begging for
something of different pattern, and on asking
the reason was told, "Mine think it people take
me for sister that white Mary."
According to bush report, the black-fellow has
The Aborigines 205
a very poor head for figures, and is unable to
count beyond ten. Hence the story of the black-
fellow whose master took him to Sydney, and
who, on his return to the station, was questioned
by the boundary-rider, "Well, Jacky, did you see
many people in Sydney ? ' '
"My word! Tousands ! Millions! Very nearly
fifty!"
Even on the far-out cattle stations, poor Jacky
is worse off than in his wild state. For his rugs
of native animals, he learns to substitute absorb-
ent blankets, and the damp affects him in a
terrible way. Pulmonary complaints develop
with an awful rapidity, and the black- fellow is
unable to make any fight against them. He is
even worse off in the more settled districts, where
he may be seen hanging around the public-
houses and begging for money and tobacco.
Some of them find employment on the sugar
plantations, but in too many cases their em-
ployers are Chinamen, who bribe them to work
with gifts of opium. There is a law forbidding
any one to supply this drug to the aborigines
under very severe penalties; but the Chinese defy
it, and add to the offence by supplying the opium
in a most deadly form, adulterated with the ashes
from opium pipes already smoked. Indulgence
in this poisonous drug is even more fatal to the
blacks than spirits, but they readily acquire the
craving for it, and will do anything for a small
quantity.
2o6 Australian Life
The myall, or wild black-fellow, is frequently
a law-breaker, his peculiar weakness being the
spearing of cattle. At a place called Wyndham
in the north of Western Australia, there is a gaol
devoted solely to aboriginal prisoners, the majority
of whom have been convicted of this offence.
This gaol will accommodate a hundred prisoners,
and is usually full, the ordinary sentence imposed
for cattle-spearing being from three to six mouths.
It would be interesting to know to what extent
the wild black is acquainted with the rights of
property, and exactly what difference he sees
between spearing a bullock and spearing a
kangaroo.
It seems idle to express any hope for the future
of this race, or to propose any plan for arresting
its rapid decay. The portions of Australia not
yet occupied by the white race are considered to
be the most arid and unproductive areas of the
continent, and these are all that is left to the
myall of the country he once held without dis-
pute. Educational influences have been ex-
pended upon them to worse than no purpose, for
it is generally conceded that the black children
brought up in the mission schools have turned
out more thievish, idle, and vicious than any of
their fellows. The utmost distinction ever at-
tained by any member of the race has been to
become a clever jockey, a swift runner, or a
skilful cricketer. Regeneration of this people
seems out of the question, and the most that can
The Aborigines 207
be done is to treat it with the kindness that is
extended to a dying man. On this point, the
laws of some of the Australian States might
well be revised, and steps taken for their stricter
enforcement.
CHAPTER XVII
A WHITE AUSTRALIA
A LTHOUGH untroubled by any questions
f\ arising out of the presence of an indigenous
coloured race, the Australians recognise a more
serious danger in the proximity of Asia and its
surplus millions of population. They con-
sequently enforce the most stringent measures of
exclusion against the coloured alien, and espe-
cially against Chinese, Japanese, and Indian
coolies. It is contended, and with some force,
that the development of Northern Australia is
seriously retarded by these restrictions, and there
are those who say that tropical Australia will
always remain a wilderness if white labour is
relied upon for its cultivation. The same argu-
ments are advanced in support of the employ-
ment of Kanakas, or South Sea Islanders, upon
the sugar plantations of Queensland. Before the
restrictive measures were applied, a large number
of coloured immigrants had already found their
way to Australia, the latest census revealing
their number at fifty-five thousand, of whom
thirty-two thousand are Chinese, and ten thou-
208
A White Australia 209
sand South Sea Islanders, the bulk of the
remainder consisting of Hindoos, Japanese,
Manila men, and Afghans.
The reasons that induced the Commonwealth
Parliament to decide that no addition should be
made to these numbers have frequently been
rehearsed. The exclusionists point to the dif-
ficulty thrust upon the United States by the
presence of a large negro population. The low
standard of living adopted by the coloured races,
the undesirable intermixtures of race already evi-
dent in some parts of Queensland, and the absence
of due regard for morality and sanitation, are
further arguments advanced by the advocates of
a " White Australia." Even those who admit
that coolie labour is best suited to tropical Aus-
tralia shake their heads over the impossibility of
confining the coloured alien to the North, and so
arrive at the conclusion that it is better the North
should suffer than that all Australia should be
overrun. It is not proposed to enter into the
discussion of this question, but rather to describe
some of the very interesting occupations in which
the coloured alien is already engaged.
It should first be understood that the ex-
clusionist legislation of the first Commonwealth
Parliament deals with two aspects of the coloured
labour question. One Act, dealing with the
indentured labour of South Sea Islanders, sets a
term to the employment of this labour. The last
boats carrying indentured labourers from the
210 Australian Life
islands to Australia arrived in Queensland early
in 1904, and from that time, the Kanakas were
deported as their indentures expired. This Act
was supplemented by an offer of bonuses to the
canegrowers employing white labour on their
plantations, the amounts of the bonus being
proportionate to the quantity of sugar produced.
The object of these bonuses is the gradual sub-
stitution of white labour for coloured, so that the
deportation of the Kanakas may be accomplished
without dislocating the industry. The result of
this experiment will be watched with the keenest
interest, especially by those who contend that the
white man is physically incapable of the work
required on a tropical plantation. The second
legislative measure provides, among other things,
an educational test whereby undesirable immi-
grants may be excluded. The greatest merit of
this test lies in its elasticity. The test may be
reduced almost to vanishing point for the benefit
of immigrants whose presence is welcome, while
an undesirable can be confronted, if necessary,
with a stiff paper in Greek. The Common-
wealth Parliament has carried its opposition to
coloured labour to the length of abolishing it on
the boats carrying the mails to and from the
United Kingdom, and there can be little doubt
that this attitude represents the sentiment of a
majority among Australians.
The reader has already been introduced to the
Chinaman at his cabinet and laundry works in
A White Australia 211
the cities, and raking over the abandoned work-
ings of the gold-fields. He is equally successful
as a market gardener, and may be found pursu-
ing that occupation on the outskirts of almost
every Australian town, whether large or small.
His ramshackle wooden hut is unmistakable, the
roof patched with strips of rusty tin, and the
broken windows obscured by sheets of dingy
paper. In this hovel, half a dozen or more coolies
are crowded together in a condition that would
appear to any European as distinctly uncomfort-
able and unsanitary. A set of bunks, one above
the other, lines the walls, and a peep into the
malodorous kitchen proves that John Chinaman's
fare is as meagre as his sleeping accommodation.
In the tumble-down stable, however, may be
found a sleek, well-cared for horse, luxuriating
in comfort. "Fat as a Chinaman's horse," and
"fat as a larrikin's dog," are two similes of a
significant frequency in Australia. The garden
itself is a picture of neatness and good manage-
ment. The little square raised beds of cabbage
and onions are free from weeds and flourishing,
a result achieved by constant diligence and a sys-
tem of liquid manuring it would not be advisable
to investigate too closely, if the vegetables are to
be eaten. John is not always cleanly, just as he
is not always communicative. On some points,
he is bubbling over with information; on others,
his attitude is that of the poor untutored foreigner
with a very imperfect knowledge of the English
212 Australian Life
language. He shakes his head and smiles
blandly, murmuring the words, "No savvy," at
intervals. For all his politeness, it is not pos-
sible to break through his wall of reserve.
In Northern Queensland, the Chinaman is often
a wealthy shopkeeper, and an employer of both
coloured and white labour. His admirers can
point to his donations to the charities in proof
that he is not ungenerous, and to his unfailing
politeness to show that he is a genial soul, shame-
fully misunderstood. The fact remains that his
object in life is to return to China with as much
money as he can possibly carry with him, and
that meantime his low standard of morality is the
more dangerous to his adopted country because
he seldom brings his womenkind with him. The
Chinaman has done good work in the Northern
Territory by proving the immense possibilities of
that district for raising coffee, arrowroot, cotton,
and other tropical products. Against this service
must be set his utter want of scruple in the em-
ployment of the aborigines, whom he rewards
with doles of rum and the opium that has so
deadly an effect upon them.
Against the Chinaman as a citizen may further
be urged his taste for secret societies, and organ-
ised opposition to the law. Definite information
on the subject of his secret societies may not
readily be obtained, because of the reserve he
maintains upon this subject above all others. It
is known, however, that there are two important
A White Australia 213
societies with branches in every Chinese com-
munity in Australia, and that one of these is a
wing of the Boxer organisation so prominent of
recent years. Evidence of the existence of
Chinese organisations for bribing policemen and
magistrates has more than once been obtained,
although it is possible that John may be credited
with greater subtlety in this direction than he
really possesses.
An example of the slimness of the Chinaman
is afforded by the following letter, written in
reply to a demand for rent from his landlord, by
a Chinaman, who, I have been assured, is a
shrewd and clever business man, with a capital
knowledge of colloquial English, both written
and spoken :
"DEAR SIR:
"To support our public doctrine of the prestige
illustration to restore salubrious enjoyments
prime to celebrate the Cup season. I acknow-
ledge your transit, will supervise the same your
prime of health, I appreciate you. As to the
detouration of the season it will prophesize to
foretell the thirstiness of the consecuting months:
occasion with heavy rainfall. Household dwell-
ers, with inferior roof, will soon complaint and
suffer same. Strange to say the Being's spending
most of the hour in dwelling-houses is the bed-
room : but due to inferiority of the roof and walls,
sufferers (sleepers) are compel to retire from their
214 Australian Life
natural slumber. At the same time foundation
of houses are generally destroyed through neglect
of improvements. However, this matter refer to
the same idea of our dwelling place. The best
time to inspect and improve is during the rainy
season. In conclusion with best wishes and sus-
tain, confirm interest to aid the sufferers.
"Yours truly,
" WING Mow."
As no cheque accompanied this lucid note, the
landlord took legal proceedings, and found that
his agreement had been signed by a Chinaman
who was not of age, and therefore not legally
responsible. This is only one of many examples
that could be adduced in illustration of the cun-
ning employed by the Chinaman in playing "the
game he does not understand."
At Thursday Island, in Torres Straits, and at
Broome, on Roebuck Bay in the north of Western
Australia, are situated the headquarters of the
pearling industry. Most of the Japanese, Malays,
and Manila men in Australia are engaged in this
occupation, and from each centre a fleet of some
three hundred pearling vessels put out. The
crews and divers engaged on these boats are all
coloured men, who work under the commands of
a white skipper. The chief product of the in-
dustry is the pearl-shell, for the pearls them-
selves, although giving a romantic and speculative
interest to this occupation, are regarded as only
a secondary consideration. Most of the boats are
A White Australia 215
fitted with an air-pump and diving apparatus,
although Thursday Island still sends boats to the
shallower fishing-grounds manned with swim-
ming divers only. The maximum depth at
which the man in diving dress can work is twenty
fathoms, or one hundred and twenty feet, and, at
that depth, the pressure of water is so great as to
produce very unpleasant effects upon those who
are called upon to endure it. At one time, white
divers were not unfrequent upon the pearling
grounds, but so many of them became afflicted
with paralysis that diving as an occupation has
been abandoned to the coloured man. The white
master may occasionally descend in the diving
dress for the purpose of examining the fishing-
grounds for himself, but that is all.
When the diver is at work, the boat is allowed
to drift, and he walks along the ocean-bed beneath
it. The shell he gathers is sent in a bag to the
surface, where the master opens it and searches for
the pearls. This is the speculative side of the
business, which appeals most keenly to the ad-
venturous class engaged in it. Fortune is pro-
verbially fickle, and men who have spent many
years at the fisheries without finding a pearl of
great value have to accept with resignation the
fact that the most precious gem ever found in
Australia, sold in London for ^"5000, fell to a
novice who had just embarked in the pearling
trade. On those northern coasts of Australia,
the difference between the tides is very great, and
216 Australian Life
the residents often find a few oyster shells upon
the beach at low tide. A new arrival there
had the pleasure of opening his first find and dis-
covering two pearls, one worth ^10, and the
other worth ^50. This took place in the presence
of a resident who had been picking up shells for
years without any notable result, and the disgust
of the latter was naturally too deep for words.
The pearls are sometimes found in the fish, some-
times attached to the shell, and sometimes in a
"blister" covered over with mother-of-pearl.
The crews of the pearling boats are paid from
thirty to fifty shillings a month, according to
their length of service, while the divers earn a
great deal more. Most of them are engaged
under contract at Singapore, and when the term
of service has expired are able to renew their
engagement on better terms. A clever and reli-
able diver is thus placed in the position of being
able to make his own terms, and these are fre-
quently a very remunerative kind. The masters
of the boats are made responsible for their men,
and should one of these desert his boat and escape
into Australia, a penalty of ^100 is inflicted. As
a further precaution, these men are not even
allowed to go ashore until an official permit has
been obtained. These conditions are considered
quite severe enough by those engaged in the in-
dustry, and they threaten they will transfer their
headquarters to Dutch territory (in Java or else-
where) if any further restrictions are imposed.
A White Australia 217
The business is undoubtedly a remunerative
one. A clever diver will collect five tons of shells
in the course of a year, and the best quality of
shell is worth ^200 a ton. As already stated, the
value of the pearls is a secondary consideration,
but although it varies very greatly it is always
well worth taking into account. The initial out-
lay on the purchase, equipment, and provisioning
of a boat may be set down at from ^500 to ^1000,
and the extent of the fishing-grounds is so great
that, up to the present, there has been little talk
of overcrowding.
Outside the pearling industry, the Japanese,
with his womenkind, is no stranger to Australia,
and the degraded lives of these visitors afford
sufficient reason for the stern embargo now placed
upon them by the authorities.
The climate and soil of the eastern slopes of
tropical Queensland are well suited to the culti-
vation of the sugar-cane, and the industry has
obtained so firm a footing there that the most
active controversy is still maintained concerning
the probable effect of the exclusion of Kanaka
labour. The islanders, both men and women,
have in the past been introduced from all parts
of the South Seas, and have proved themselves
well fitted for the work in the cane-fields. The
methods employed to induce these people to leave
their island homes were carefully regulated by
the Government, each boat employed in the re-
cruiting work being forced to carry a Govern-
218 Australian Life
ment agent. The remuneration offered to the
labourers, though slight compared to the wages
required by white men to do the same work, was
nevertheless sufficient inducement to those who
engaged themselves, and in proof of the state-
ment that they were usually well treated may be
advanced the willingness shown by many of them
to engage for a second period. Those who re-
turned to their island homes usually laid out their
earnings in brightly coloured clothes and value-
less fancy goods, but after a few weeks of island
life, they were frequently very glad to return to
the plantations again.
The work of cultivating the sugar-cane, from
the propagation of the young plants to the cutting
of the ripe cane for transport to the mills, neces-
sitates hard physical labour in a sweltering
climate. The man who would " trash" the cane
must stand hidden in a breathless cane-brake,
while he tears the dead and dying leaves from
the lower parts of the stalks. The oppressive
atmosphere is laden with minute particles of vege-
table fibre that choke the throat and penetrate
the lungs. This task, and the still heavier work
of cane-cutting, the Kanaka undertakes cheer-
fully. The women also work in the fields, hoeing
the ground and freeing it from the rank crop of
weeds that spring up so rapidly in the moist heat.
These people live in great wooden barracks, and
their staple foods are maize porridge, molasses,
and salt beef. Most of them are Christians, and
A White Australia 219
the visitor to a sugar plantation will carry away
a recollection of the fervour they exhibit in the
singing of hymns of the Moody and Sankey order.
Among the objections taken to the measure
providing for the deportation of the Kanakas was
the possible danger to the civilised islander him-
self. It was contended that the labourers ran no
inconsiderable risk of being killed and eaten by
their savage island relatives. On this point, the
most reassuring testimony was obtained from the
missionaries working among the islands, than
whom no one is more competent to express an
opinion. Some of these gentlemen entertain the
hope that the return of the Queensland labourers
will have a good effect among the islands, and
that some agricultural development will take
place, resulting in the expansion of island pro-
sperity. In any event, the Australian Govern-
ment has charged itself with the responsibility of
transferring the Kanaka labourers to islands
where neither their lives nor their prosperity will
be in any danger.
CHAPTER XVIII
EDUCATION, LITERATURE, AND ART
THE Australian States charge themselves with
the primary education of children, either
without expense to the parents or for a fee that
is purely nominal. There may be found a few
private elementary schools, but it is estimated
that quite eighty per cent, of Australian children
attend the State schools. The difficulties in the
way of supplying the more sparsely populated
bush districts with schools and teachers can be
readily imagined: and they are solved, in many
cases, by expedients that can only be justified by
urging that any sort of education is better than
none at all. It is no uncommon thing to find
a hardworked bush teacher in charge of two
schools, and holding classes in each on alternate
days of the week. Each school may be attended
by from twenty to thirty pupils, their ages
ranging from six to sixteen : and how the teacher
contrives to maintain order and discipline is a
question he alone can answer. Many of the bush
children live far away from the lonely little
schoolhouse, and have to walk or ride long dis-
220
Education, Literature, and Art 221
tances in order to attend. Most of these children
have duties to perform at home as well, both be-
fore setting out for school and on their return
home again. Their education is not accomplished,
therefore, without a very considerable strain being
thrown upon both pupils and teachers, and for
that reason, perhaps, it is the more highly valued.
It is at least certain that residents in remote and
sparsely-settled districts make every effort to ob-
tain schools in their neighbourhood, and insist
upon the regular attendance of their children,
wherever possible.
The difficulty with regard to religious instruc-
tion is constantly occurring in connection with
the free schools of Australia. It is a question
complicated by the absence of a State Church in
Australia, and by the fact that the balance be-
tween Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, and other
Protestant sects is very even. In some States,
the instruction is entirely secular, and the duty
of providing religious instruction for the children
is cast upon their parents. It may be said, how-
ever, that with the view of assisting in every way
towards the religious instruction of the children,
the State places the school buildings at the service
of such religious instructors as may choose to use
them, after school hours, for the purpose of re-
ligious instruction. The scholars who wish to
attend may do so, but those who prefer to absent
themselves are under no compulsion of any kind.
In other States, religious instruction is included
222 Australian Life
in the programme of education, the instruction
consisting of the reading aloud of chosen pas-
sages from the Bible and works of a moral
character. Of the two systems, the former has
given the more general satisfaction, and in spite
of warm remonstrances from some of the religious
bodies, it seems unlikely that any alteration will
be made in the free, compulsory, and secular
educational system.
There is nothing exceptional about the course
of education provided, unless it is the importance
attached to physical drill. All children are drilled,
but the elder boys are attached to the Australian
military forces, by means of the cadet corps.
Almost every large school has its band of cadets,
who wear neat khaki uniforms and are armed
with light rifles, in the use of which they are fre-
quently instructed. Every year, these boys have
shooting matches, and the scores prove that
among the youngsters there are many who have
already become skilled marksmen. On leaving
school, the cadet can attach himself to a corps
better suited to his altered mode of life, and from
that body may pass into the Militia force without
having suffered his military training to fall into
neglect. When the Prince of Wales visited Aus-
tralia for the opening of the Commonwealth
Parliament, four thousand of these cadets took
part in a review held at Melbourne. Foreign
officers from most of the European armies wit-
nessed the review, and much as they were struck
Education, Literature, and Art 223
by the appearance of the citizen army of Aus-
tralia, the cadets moved them to the greatest
admiration. Owing to this practical system of
military drill, there are few young men in Aus-
tralia at present who do not know something of
drill and the use of the rifle.
Secondary education is almost completely given
up to private enterprise, and the result is far from
being satisfactory. The exclusive aim of many
Australian "private schools" is to pass as many
scholars as possible at the matriculation examina-
tion of the State University. This examination
has a commercial value, for many banks, insur-
ance offices, and similar institutions make it a
sine qud non for entrance into their services. The
proportion of matriculated students who after-
wards attend University lectures is remarkably
small, most of them entering commercial life as
soon as they matriculate. The masters of the
private schools have, therefore, but one end in
view, and many and ingenious are the cramming
systems devised in order to obtain good results at
the matriculation. If the advertisements of the
private schools may be accepted as a guide, suc-
cess in this direction is the surest method of
obtaining fresh pupils.
Most of the mining centres have schools of
mines, subsidised by Government, where scientific
and technical education may be obtained for very
moderate fees. The instructors at these mining
schools are, as a rule, very competent men, and
224 Australian Life
the courses in such subjects as assaying and min-
ing engineering are of sterling practical worth.
To these schools Australia owes the very
thorough and up-to-date methods of mining in
practice on all the more important gold-fields.
Indeed, education in Australia has a basis that is
nothing if not practical and commercial. At the
universities, this side is ever uppermost, the ma-
jority of the students attending lectures for the
sole purpose of qualifying for professions. As far
as the men students are concerned, this statement
has almost a universal application: their object
is to obtain the necessary degree as quickly as
possible, and to begin at once the practice of some
profession. Some of the women students who sit
in the same lecture-rooms are probably less com-
mercial in their pursuit of knowledge, and in
them the professions find their ideal pupils, who
follow learning for learning's sake alone. But if
the Australian universities are hampered in their
aspirations by the practical and utilitarian nature
of the young community in which they exist, it
must also be said that they make little or no
effort to reach the classes who might be inspired
by a genuine desire for higher education. They
exercise as little influence as could be expected
from conservative institutions in a democratic
community, and have become strangely out of
sympathy with Australian life and Australian
ideals.
The Australian Press is an educational force
Education, Literature, and Art 225
more closely in sympathy with the people. It
has been said that a people gets just as good
newspapers as it deserves, and if that be true, the
deserts of the Australian people must be high.
It has to be remembered, however, that the dailies
and weeklies of the Commonwealth are more than
news sheets and political organs, since they partly
fill the gap created by the absence of any repre-
sentative Australian magazine or review. Each
of the capital cities maintains two or more daily
papers comparable to any similar productions in
the world. To preserve the mean between accu-
racy, dignity, and decorum on one side, and dul-
ness on the other is a task that is yearly becoming
more difficult to the newspaper editor, but it can
fairly be said that the Australian daily papers are
neither dull nor unduly sensational. For the
people of the bush, weekly editions are prepared,
containing in addition to a r/sum/ofthe week's
news much useful matter pertaining to agri-
cultural and pastoral affairs, L,ondon letters,
serial stories by the best writers, illustrations of
the events of the week, and many other features.
The arrival of these weekly budgets is an event
upon the station or selection, and the interest they
create furnishes an explanation of the fact that
the average bushman is far from being a rustic,
but is very often closer abreast of the times than
the man in the street
Even more characteristic of Australian life are
the weekly satirical and society papers, and
15
226 Australian Life
among these the Bulletin is by far the ablest and
most influential. To describe the Bulletin merely
as a satirical and society paper is to do it a very
grave injustice. By no mere tricks of satire and
news-gathering can any paper sway part of a
nation; and this, by its deadly earnestness, great
ability, and ferocious plain speech, the Bulletin
has continued to do for many years. The most
talented artists and the brightest writers of all
Australia are in its service, and nowhere in the
world is a political situation better expressed in
a clever cartoon, or a newly proposed legislative
measure more ably reduced, in a small space, to
perfect lucidity and simplicity. It is not con-
tended for one moment that the whole policy of
the Bulletin commends itself to one half of its
regular readers, for it frankly advocates the inde-
pendence of Australia under a republican form of
government. But the Australian who is content
with things as they are, or even desires some
closer connection with the Motherland, cannot
afford to do without his Bulletin for this reason.
For the paper is at once the most interesting
chronicler of Australian matters, and the most
trustworthy guide in Commonwealth affairs.
Other papers have, unfortunately, strong provin-
cial leaning, but the Bulletin steadfastly sets the
national question before all others, and so com-
mands the respect and admiration of the many
nationalists among the young Australians.
The Bulletin renders a further service to Aus-
Education, Literature, and Art 227
tralia in its sympathetic encouragement of
Australian literature and art. " There is no
Australian literature," wrote the editor of a seri-
ous London review to an Australian writer who
offered him an article upon that subject. This is
a hard saying, and of its truth or otherwise it
would be useless to contend. It is certain that
the path of literature, rough and painful as it is
to the beginner in any land, bristles in Australia
with obstacles that will disappear when the
country is older.
Reference has been already made to the
absence of any notable Australian magazine or
review. Numbers of such publications have been
launched, and none have failed for want of
writers of ability, or subjects of importance or
interest. Their failure has been a financial one,
and due, in the first place, to the expense of
printing and publication where wages are high,
materials are dear, and the circle of appreciative
readers is small. Such publications have had to
compete with the magazines and reviews of Eng-
land and America, produced under circumstances
vastly more favourable to cheapness and adver-
tising support. One after another they have
dwindled and died. The Australian publishing
firms have contended with the same adverse
circumstances, heightened by the fact that the
Australian market is flooded by cheap "colonial"
editions of the newest books published in London.
Thus for three and sixpence one may buy in Aus-
228 Australian Life
tralia a copy of one of Kipling's volumes of poems,
the cheapest edition of which costs six shillings
in I,ondon. The Australian belief in protecting
local industries has not yet reached the stage of a
scheme to encourage the Australian author and
publisher, and at the present time the author
finds the easiest and most profitable method of
publication in L,ondon. To this Mecca many
Australians of promise have gone, in time to lose
touch with Australia, and to devote themselves
to subjects of closer interest to the wider public
they address.
Had it not been for the Bulletin^ the history of
the last fifteen years would certainly have con-
firmed the dictum of the I/mdon editor. The
pages of the Bulletin have always been open to
writers of Australian verse or prose stories or
sketches of moderate length.
literary ability and the Australian interest are
the two essentials for publication in the Bulletin,
and verse and story alike have to be racy of the
soil. The Bulletin writers have chosen for their
theme the varied aspects of bush life the life of
the shearing-shed and the cattle camp, the race-
course, the mines, and the bush track. The
works of the more popular of these writers have
been collected and published in book form, and
are now familiar in town and country alike.
Henry Lawson, A. B. Paterson, Edward Dyson,
Barcroft Boake, Victor Daley, Will Ogilvie,
Roderick Quinn, and a number of others bear
Education, Literature, and Art 229
names as well known in the bush as those of the
standard English poets. Their influence in the
main is invigorating, as any influence must be
that tends to make the Australian more keenly
alive to the interests and beauty of the land he
lives in. This school of Australian literature
succeeds an earlier group of writers whose names
are more familiar to British readers. Chief among
them were Adam I/indsay Gordon, Henry Ken-
dall, Marcus Clarke, ''Orion" Home, and J.
Brunton Stephens, all of whom are now dead.
The Australian theatre is almost an exact
counterpart of the theatre in Great Britain. The
buildings are designed on the same lines, with
but little regard for the coolness and ventilation
necessary in such a climate, and one may see, as
in the English provinces, the latest London suc-
cess, enacted by a company of London players.
Save for a few melodramas, and dramatic ver-
sions of well-known Australian novels, such as
Robbery Under Arms, or His Natural Life, the
Australian drama does not yet exist. There are
music-halls, but, robbed of their attractions in the
shape of permission to smoke and consume alco-
holic liquor on the premises, they do not enter
into so keen a rivalry with the legitimate theatre
as in other countries. The taste for light opera
and musical comedy, so marked a development
in the theatrical preference of Great Britain and
America during recent years, is even more
noticeable in Australia, where grand opera is also
230 Australian Life
popular among the people. The universal love
of music which makes this possible is also
accountable for the frequency and the success of
ballad concerts, and these, rather than the music-
halls, are the rivals which the theatrical manager
has to fear.
The Australian artist complains, with good
reason, of the discouraging conditions in which
he works. Large sums have been spent in the
foundation of public art galleries, but a mere
driblet of this money has been devoted to locally
painted canvases. In connection with some of
these galleries, a fund exists for providing young
artists of promise with the means of study in
Europe, and the expenditure of this money has
almost an invariable result. Having once come
into touch with the world's art centres, the artist
does not find it easy to return to the practical and
commercial world of Australia, so that, up to the
present, these travelling scholarships have done
more for Australian artists than for Australian
art.
At present, London proves an irresistible mag-
net for Australians following the artistic pro-
fessions, and it will be many years before this
migration can be expected to cease. Even if the
Australian community were less commercial and
more artistic, London would still offer a wider
sphere and more congenial surroundings, as well
as larger rewards. It is not in Australia, then,
but in London that the successful painters,
Education, Literature, and Art 231
singers, authors, and actors expect to crown their
careers, and so long as this remains true, the
growth of art that is distinctively Australian
must necessarily be slow.
CHAPTER XIX
NATIONAL LIFE IN AUSTRALIA
THE average Briton has always been content
to class Queenslanders and Tasmanians
alike as Australians, and more loosely to include
even a New Zealander in the same description,
owing to a natural confusion of the words Aus-
tralia and Australasia. He, therefore, finds ex-
treme difficulty in grasping the distinctions that
grew up in Australia with the granting of sepa-
rate constitutions to the various states, and the
consequent checks experienced by the statesmen
who undertook the task of welding them into a
Commonwealth. Even to indicate the whole of
these distinctions would be a noteworthy task,
but a significant feature of them was the tariff
retaliation brought about by differences in fiscal
policy. How far these differences injured the
progress of Australia was conclusively shown in
the first three years of the existence of the Com-
monwealth, by the expansion of inter-state trade
following the removal of the customs barriers.
Instances of rivalry between neighbouring
communities of the same race are not uncommon
232
National Life in Australia 233
in the history of the world, but Australia has
furnished a unique example of the length to which
these unreasoning jealousies can be carried. Lest
the products of one division of a State should find
their natural outlet at the seaport of a neighbour,
the construction of a long and expensive railway
would be undertaken, and an annual loss incurred
in its working and maintenance. Indeed, the
railways of Australia remain as a standing illus-
tration of the injurious results of this provincial-
ism. The traveller from New South Wales to
Victoria must leave his train on the border line,
and enter another, because the railway lines of
the two states have different gauges. Another
break of gauge occurs at the boundary between
Victoria and South Australia; and as a result of
this failure in co-operation, a huge sum will have
to be spent at some time in standardising the
railway gauges. If a reason be sought for the
neglect in conserving the waters of the river
Murray for purposes of irrigation, it will be found
in the fact that this river, the most important in
all Australia, forms the boundary between two
states, and finds its outlet in a third. Instances
could be multiplied to show how state jealousies
have retarded Australian progress.
In the days when this provincialism was at its
worst, there nevertheless existed aspirations for a
wider national life. Societies were formed with
the object of fostering a national spirit, and one
of these organisations exercises no small influence
234 Australian Life
upon the everyday life of Australia at the present
time. The Australian Natives 1 Association was
founded at a time when British statesmen re-
garded the Colonies as a burden, and the word
"colonial" was employed as conveying a meaning
of inferiority. Even in Australia, where the
proportion of British-born folk was then greater
than at present, colonial wines, colonial boots,
and colonial customs were openly despised.
To combat this tendency to undervalue Aus-
tralian things, a number of young men, who were
proud of their Australian birth, formed the Aus-
tralian Natives' Association. Among them were
Sir George Turner, Treasurer in the first Com-
monwealth Ministry, Mr. J. I,. Purves, leader of
the Melbourne Bar, and a number of others
afterwards prominent in Australian political and
professional life. The avowed object of the asso-
ciation was to make the native-born Australian
proud of his country, and to encourage Australian
manufactures, Australian art, Australian litera-
ture, and everything else Australian.
Each branch of the Association combines the
functions of a benefit lodge with those of a debat-
ing society. Meetings are arranged at regular
intervals, when the members first transact the
business of the branch and then discuss some
chosen subject, usually Australian in interest.
Every member who shares the benefit system of
the Association pays a weekly levy, amounting
to a little more than a shilling. This assures
National Life in Australia 235
him medical attendance and medicine when sick-
ness comes into his house, a weekly allowance,
should he himself be prevented from attending
to his business by illness, and a provision for his
fitting burial after death. This sick and funeral
fund represents the business side of the Australian
Natives' Association, and is really responsible for
the continuance of its growth, and the extension
of its influence.
There comes a time in the history of many such
associations when enthusiasm dwindles, and sen-
timental or political discussions no longer draw
crowds of eager debaters. Then the rent of halls,
and the very cost of postage and stationery
becomes too heavy a tax on the remainder, if
remainder there be. All over the world, how
many societies were founded for national or edu-
cational purposes, which enjoyed for a time more
or less influence on public affairs, and then passed
away !
But the Australian Natives' Association,
though interest in public affairs may flag, can
never die. Its halls are hired, its postage paid
by the business department. In every locality
where a branch is established, it begins to ac-
cumulate wealth. Twelve or fifteen pence per
week, from perhaps twenty members, soon mounts
up, and those twenty members do not fail to keep
up their payments merely because they have be-
come tired of affirming that "this branch resents
the interference of France in the New Hebrides."
236 Australian Life
The weekly levies are funded according to an
act known as the Friendly Societies Act, a
portion being available for management. From
this portion, a fee not extravagant, but still a
fee is set aside for the secretary, and this stipend
some pushing young man is glad to earn by a few
hours' night work each week. So, when the Aus-
tralian Natives' Association wakes up to the im-
portance of some national question, it finds the hall
open and lighted, and its stipendiary secretary
waiting to receive the orations of young Australia.
Many of the branches become the possessors of
a few hundreds of trust moneys, which they invest
in local property. The management of these
funds, and of the property, affords congenial
occupation to a few, and it generally happens
that the secretary is not entirely alone when the
orators of young Australia arrive. Each branch
sends two delegates to an annual conference, at
which a board of directors and a president are
elected. This conference is the parliament of the
association, and the young men with political
aspirations contrive to be chosen as delegates.
Its agenda is a pamphlet, the president's address
is a volume, and the debates would, if published,
fill an ordinary library shelf. It is not all empty
talk, for the professional Australian native, in the
main, is a practical and sensible person. He is
certainly a person to be reckoned with, just as
the association to which he belongs is a force in
Australian affairs. Delegate to the conference
National Life in Australia 237
to-day, the year after next he may easily be a
Cabinet Minister.
The intending member must declare that he
was born in Australia, or at sea en route to Aus-
tralia. The association has frequently been
assailed because it rigidly excludes all persons
born in other lands. "I came here of my own
free will," declared one who had been pronounced
without the pale. "Am I not therefore a better
lover of the country? I came by choice, not by
accident of birth." To which a prominent
"native" replied: "The prophet of old wor-
shipped with his windows open towards Jeru-
salem, and in Australia, when English, Scotch,
and Irish folk speak of 'home,' they mean some
part of the United Kingdom. They worship with
their windows open toward Jerusalem."
The Australian Natives' Association method
of fostering a national spirit is therefore to deal
at first hand with the native-born, who have no
mental or emotional reservations in favour of
some green land across the sea. The title of the
organisation is so confusing that at least one
historian of Australia, writing from his chair in
the British Museum, allowed himself to comment
upon the enthusiasm of the Australian aborigines
in the cause of Australian unity. He was so far
right that the membership of the association is
not denied to the autochthonous Australian, but
diligent inquiry has failed to procure evidence of
even one aborigina-l member.
238 Australian Life
The founders of the society had another reason
for confining its membership to those of native
birth. It is an excellent reason from a business
point of view, and has to do with the sick and
funeral fund. In a country newly settled, the
native born are all young, with the prospect of
long and healthy lives before them. This was
the case with Australia when the Australian
Natives' Association was founded. Its members
were recruited from among the hale youths of
the first generation of the Victorian born, the best
possible constituency for a benefit society. The
men who wanted to build up a sound and sub-
stantial funeral fund displayed astuteness in
passing by the elder men born in Great Britain,
who were not only less whole-souled in their
allegiance to Australian ideals, but less eligible as
benefit members.
Among the functions of the association is the
celebration of the Australian national holiday.
This is Anniversary Day, the commemoration of
the landing of Captain Phillip on January 26,
1788. Accordingly, the Australian Natives'
Association holds its annual fte on each 26th of
January. Prizes are offered in all departments
of art, literature, and athletics. The budding
singers, musicians, and artists of Australia com-
pete in one part of the Melbourne Exhibition
Building, while foot and cycle races are going
on in the arena outside. There are prizes for
reciting, prizes for debating, and prizes for liter-
National Life in Australia 239
ary composition, in prose and verse. The organ-
isation of this annual celebration is carried out
in the practical and effective manner that char-
acterises the whole management of the society,
and certainly points to considerable business
ability among its controllers.
Many of the branches reproduce this fete on a
smaller scale, especially those existing in country
towns of the second rank. In such places, the
association is a centre of social activity, holding
debates, concerts, dances, and other functions,
contributing largely to the amusements of the
little community. The chief of these functions
is undoubtedly the competition, which interests
the parents and friends who form the audience,
as well as the young people who take part in it.
Beginning in a modest way in Melbourne this
association has now extended its influence
throughout Australia, although its chief strong-
hold is still in the State of Victoria. Its member-
ship is open to both sexes, and while officially
denying partisanship with any creed or party, the
association itself has become at once a creed and
a party. When the proper time came, it was
able to render assistance to the cause of Austral-
ian unity, a cause reflecting the very spirit of the
founders of the society.
The most serious obstacle to Australian unity
was the state rivalry already referred to, and this
was only overcome by the expedient of referring
the question to the people for settlement. The
240 Australian Life
result of the popular referendum showed that a
large majority of Australians were in favour of
federation, although the minority in opposition
cannot be described as negligible. Serious
difficulties in the way of a complete federation
were found in the differences in the development
of the separate states : some had borrowed more
freely than others, some had parted with a larger
proportion of the State lands, or had exploited
their mineral wealth more fully, and, finally, the
states with small populations were in fear of being
dominated by those more populous. For these
reasons, the Federal Constitution defines the
functions of the Commonwealth Parliament in
detail, and expressly declares that all other
functions belong to the State Legislatures. By
amending the Constitution, the Commonwealth
Parliament is able to increase the functions it at
present exercises, and so to diminish the func-
tions of the State Parliaments.
This is not very interesting, perhaps, but it
has to be understood if the change in Australian
life wrought by the federation is to be appre-
ciated at all. The State Parliaments still exist,
and still retain most important functions. The
number of members in each State Assembly is
disproportionately large, although reductions
have been made in most State Legislatures since
the accomplishment of federation. The member
of a State Assembly may represent but a few
hundred voters, spread over a sparsely populated
National Life in Australia 241
district, with insatiable requirements in the
matter of bridges, schools, and post-offices. His
constituents are continually urging these require-
ments upon him, and it too often happens that
the State member considers his electorate first,
and the interests of Australia last.
The Commonwealth House of Representatives
affords a striking contrast. It contains fewer
members than the Legislative Assembly of New
South Wales, but some of these members repre-
sent electorates larger in area than the United
Kingdom, since the number of representatives
returned by each state is proportionate to its popu-
lation. Thus Western Australia, with an area of
nine hundred and seventy-five thousand square
miles, returns only five members to the House of
Representatives; while Victoria, eighty-eight
thousand miles in extent, returns twenty-three.
The Senate, on the other hand, contains an equal
number of members from each state, and serves
to guard the less populous states from being
overruled by those older and more powerful.
From the very outset, the meeting and delibera-
tions of this Parliament had the anticipated effect
of broadening the Australian outlook. For
the first time, the requirements of tropical Aus-
tralia were considered in conjunction with those
of the temperate South; East was balanced
against West; and young Australia realised with
a gasp how vast were the considerations
affecting national life. It was a heavy blow
16
242 Australian Life
directed at provincialism, but provincialism is
dying hard.
A striking example of the conflict between
national and state interests is afforded in the ques-
tion of fixing the site of the proposed Australian
capital a question still unsettled at the time
these words were written. The proposal to build
a new capital city in one of the most favoured
parts of Australia was welcomed by all, both as
a means of compromise between the rival claims
of Sydney and Melbourne, and because it would
create a national centre apart from the influence
of any State section. It was, therefore, provided
that a site should be chosen in the State of New
South Wales, at least a hundred miles from
Sydney, and with a minimum area of one hund-
red square miles, for the creation of a Com-
monwealth capital. When the question of
determining the site came before the House of
Representatives, the members representing the
State of New South Wales made an endeavour to
have a place called Lyndhurst, one hundred
miles north of Sydney, chosen for the capital.
The attempt failed, and selection was narrowed
down to two places both equidistant from Mel-
bourne and Sydney. One of these is Tumut, on
an elevated plateau inland; the other Bombala,
near the coast and communicating with the sea-
port of Eden, on Twofold Bay. In the House
of Representatives, where the vote of the New
South Wales and Victorian delegates preponder-
National Life in Australia 243
ates, the choice fell upon Tumut, possibly from
the fear of creating at Eden a rival port to Sydney
and Melbourne. When this choice was referred
to the Senate for approval, Bombala was at once
substituted for Tumut, the explanation being
that the less populous and more distant states
naturally wished the capital to be near a seaport
town, and were able to give effect to their wishes
in the Chamber where all states have equal re-
presentation. Parliament was soon afterwards
dissolved without the dispute having been settled,
but the incident is recounted here as showing how
the old State rivalries still affect national ques-
tions, and also the safeguard to the less powerful
states constituted by the Senate.
The creation of a Federal capital, where no
State influence is paramount, suggests fresh pos-
sibilities to the Australian, and especially to the
Australian of the bush, who has been for so long
ruled for the benefit of the capital of his state.
The idea of an undertaking entered upon, not
for the good of Brisbane, or Sydney, or Adelaide,
but for the good of Australia, is a new one, but
it is none the less pleasant. Perth, the capital
of Western Australia, has no railway commun-
ication with the Eastern States. The people of
Western Australia might build a line, reaching
to the border line of South Australia, without in
any way ameliorating their isolated position.
South Australia is intent upon a line connecting
Adelaide on its southern coast with Palmerston
244 Australian Life
in the north, and in the meantime is unwilling
to extend railway communication westward and
join hands with its neighbour there. Before the
Federation it would not have been possible to
move the South Australians from their position,
but the question has now become one to be decided
on its national merits by the national Parliament.
The provincialists in Australia have watched
the growing prestige of the Commonwealth Legis-
lature with dismay. In the third year of the
Commonwealth, motions were tabled in some of
the State Parliaments affirming the desirability of
secession, and were promptly laughed into obliv-
ion. Enthusiastic gentlemen who have organised
secession movements in the capital cities have
been regarded in the light of amiable farceurs. It
has now become certain that the aspiration after
national life was no momentary enthusiasm of
the Australian people but a deep-rooted senti-
ment, and it is to the national Parliament that
the Australians look to free them from the finan-
cial embarrassment resulting from many years of
State maladministration.
CHAPTER XX
THE AUSTRALIAN
SOME time ago a London paper published, as
a seasonable supplement, a coloured picture
entitled Christmas in Australia. It represented a
bearded man in red flannel shirt, and top-boots,
sitting alone in a log-hut, grasping a large packet
of letters. His eyes were closed and he was
dreaming. Lest this fact should not be suf-
ficiently obvious, one corner of the picture was
given up to the representation of his dream. It
was the home of his boyhood: outside, the snow
was thick upon the ground, but within, the
family circle was gathered around the cheerful
fire. Venerable parents, golden-haired daughters,
and manly sons were effectively grouped, but one
vacant chair marked the fact that the family exile
was not forgotten.
It is not the fault of the average Briton that
the man in the red shirt represents his conception
of the Australian to-day. The globe-trotter is
not alone responsible for the notion that the
people of Australia are "more English than the
English," and that native-born Australians, who
245
246 Australian Life
have never seen the British Islands, are never-
theless accustomed to speak of them as "home."
The impression is confirmed by many of the
Australians who visit England, and especially by
the Australian politician whose eloquence is in-
spired by the theme of colonial loyalty, and the
absentee landlord who spends in L,ondon the
income derived from his Australian possessions.
These people are largely responsible for the fic-
tion of the "colonist " whose interests, as well as
his allegiance, are altogether in the keeping of
the Motherland.
The real Australian is no unwilling exile.
The day is not far distant when an Australian
paper will publish a companion picture entitled
Christmas in England. It will show a tall, lean,
clean-shaven man, correctly and uncomfortably
clad, cowering over a dull fire in a Bloomsbury
boarding-house. It is midday, though the gas is
lighted, and he has just discovered by a visit to
the street door that there is an inch of slush on
the pavement, and that fog prevents his seeing
across the narrow street. So the Australian falls
a-dreaming. His first dream for he has many
is of a tree-dotted plain, warm with joyous sun-
light. So far away as the eye can carry through
the pure clear air, the skyline ends the day in a
low blue rampart of hills; but his imagination
ranges far beyond those to the very centre of the
vast unknown continent that is his birthright.
Yes, and though the dreamer see as many visions
The Australian 247
as the goblins showed to Gabriel Grub, not one
of them but shall concern his own Australia.
There is nothing in this Australian attitude
that is inconsistent with the loyalty to Imperial
ideals that Australia has proved by more than
mere words. The most aggressively Australian
paper in the whole continent is careful to explain
that it is not anti-British, but only pro-Aus-
tralian. The ordinary Australian finds it easy
enough to be pro-British and pro- Australian at
one and the same time. From the Imperial as
well as the Australian point of view, this is a
distinct advance upon the days when it was cor-
rect for Australians to be pro-British only, and
to disparage all the things that they termed
" colonial." The reaction was inevitable in
time, but it has come about without any weaken-
ing of the race sentiment that is the strongest tie
between the Colonies and the Motherland. This
desirable consummation speaks eloquently of the
wisdom and sagacity of Imperial administration,
as well as the common-sense that is so strong a
characteristic of the Australian.
The seasons, the climate, and the fauna and
flora of Australia are all united in one conspiracy
against the Australian remaining "more English
than the English." I can still remember that
the most pronounced effect of the British books
and poetry I read when at school was to convince
me of the unreality of literature. ' ' Chill October' '
was to me the gladdest month of the year, when
248 Australian Life
the bush was flecked with light and deep yellow,
and the aromatic air was fragrant with all wood-
land smells. Even in the city streets, the groves
of eucalyptus trees were swarming with honey-
questing parrakeets, that flashed screaming from
one blossom-laden tree to another like living
jewels. Why, then, did the poet write so sadly
of chill October ?
Tom Brown' s Schooldays was more interesting,
but those schoolboy heroes played football with a
brazen disregard of all rules, as we knew the
game. (Later on, I found it difficult to reconcile
an acquaintance with the history of Rome,
Greece, and England with my total ignorance of
the history of my native country.) All reading,
all learning, had to be accompanied with a set of
mental adjustments. If the native-born Austral-
ian is to be accused of scepticism and irreverence, it
must be said in his behalf that he was accustomed
from his childhood upwards to read and be taught
things that, in the circumstances, were mislead-
ing, and untrue. Teaching is better now, and
text-books are specially prepared for the Aus-
tralian schools. The children so educated are
the less likely to speak of Great Britain as
"home."
More than eighty per cent, of the present in-
habitants of Australia were born there, and very
few of these can expect to have the opportunity
of making the twelve thousand mile journey to
the Motherland. Not only is Australia far dis-
The Australian 249
tant from the centre of Empire, but it occupies
the most isolated position among all the con-
tinents. As a result of this isolation, the Aus-
tralian has a tendency to become too completely
engrossed in local affairs. The Australian Press,
more cosmopolitan than the Australian people,
devotes a large amount of space to the outside
world, and still contrives to leaven the self-
absorption of the Australian. But the pride and
patriotism of the native-born have been focussed
by the last step taken, when provincialism was
renounced for a national life. He is now inclined
to think so well of his birthplace that he plans
to keep it entirely to himself, and raises a cry of
"Australia for the Australians," not "Australia
for the white man," nor "Australia for the
Empire," let it be observed. In a recent conver-
sation with an Australian friend, who was paying
a visit to I/mdon, I obtained from him a curious
admission. "As far as I can see," he declared,
"Australia has nothing whatever to learn from
Great Britain, but there is much that Great
Britain might learn from Australia." The
speaker was an able journalist, occupying a
responsible position, and in the Australian sphere
of life anything but a narrow-minded egotist.
And his attitude, extreme though it be, is surely
preferable in every way to that of the Aus-
tralians of a generation ago, many of whom were
highly gratified when some polite person would
feign to mistake them for Englishmen.
250 Australian Life
The restlessness which forms so dominant a
key-note to Australian character is obviously
inherited. The founders of the race were men
of enterprise and adventure, drawn across the
seas by tales of a new land with possibilities in-
definitely wide, or by dreams of easily won gold.
As one of the Australian poets 1 has written:
Our fathers came of roving stock
That could not fixed abide,
And we have followed field and flock
Since e'er we learnt to ride.
By miners' camp and shearing shed,
In land of heat and drought,
We followed where our fortunes led,
With fortune always on ahead,
And always further out.
The Australian is consequently a man of many
places, and of many occupations. He will aban-
don his settled avocation and assured income at
a moment's notice in order to enter upon a new
life that seems to afford possibilities of increased
prosperity. He can become prospector, company
promoter, journalist, or trader in turn, in the end
to fall back upon his original occupation. Even
his own great continent of three million square
miles does not contain him, and at the hint of
prosperity elsewhere, he is off to South Africa,
or Argentine, or any other spot far enough away
or little enough known to hold attractions for him.
1 Mr. A. B. Paterson.
The Australian 251
The lust of wandering takes possession of him,
and on a reasonable excuse he must gratify it.
This restlessness is accentuated by the uncer-
tainty of the conditions under which he lives.
Change meets the Australian at every turn: he
never knows what a year may bring forth. Two
good seasons convert the land into a smiling
paradise, gladdening the eyes of man with
pictures of easy prosperity and happy animal life.
Two dry years make it a desolate hell, horrible
with sights and sounds of dead and dying ani-
mals : unsightly, forbidding, and altogether
sordid. The year's work of the settler is at the
mercy of the seasons; he lives for ever in dread
of drought, flood, bush fire, and those plagues of
rabbits and locusts that are continually descend-
ing upon him. The cities, too, are quick to feel
the pinch of bad seasons, with their consequent
scarcity of employment and increase in the price
of commodities. Therefore every Australian
State has its percentage of floating population
that flies at the approach of ' ' bad times ' ' to seek
easier conditions within the borders of a neigh-
bouring State.
This uncertainty has bred in the Australian a
taste for speculation and a fine courage in the
face of adversity. He has learned to count the
risks, and makes an excellent loser. To have
planned and toiled for nothing is but part of the
game of life, and a fresh start must be made with
a stout heart, and as often as not with a jest
252 Australian Life
upoii his lips. But the Australian counts his
possible gains as well, and in this respect is gifted
with a vivid imagination. He is not always a
good winner, being easily puffed up by the first
breath of prosperity. Land booms, mining booms,
and even booms in butter and sugar production
are the frequent result of this over-confidence, and
the effects of the bursting of an Australian boom
are fraught with an infinity of disaster. When
such calamities occur, it is impossible to avoid
a feeling of wonder at the extent to which men
reputed shrewd and far-seeing have allowed
themselves to become involved. It is equally
impossible to refrain from admiring the courage
and self-reliance shown by men approaching
and past the middle age, in marking out for
themselves fresh careers, and facing once
more the vicissitudes of life in surroundings so
inconstant.
This familiarity with misfortune makes the
Australian tolerant and sympathetic. Where
prosperity is so often the result of circumstances
rather than merit, poverty is not so hastily set
down as the sign of either lack of industry or
ability. Men speak of their reverses with a ready
frankness that betokens an absence of fear of
condemnation, and recount their successes with
an equal readiness. On this score, the Australian
lays himself open to a charge of boastfulness,
and those who fail to understand his interest in
his neighbours as well as in himself may readily
The Australian 253
be pardoned for holding that view. But the
friendliness and helpfulness of the Australian,
when once experienced, are sadly missed by
those who are afterwards called upon to encoun-
ter the reserve and suspicion of older countries.
Underlying the Australian's breezy communi-
cativeness there is a strange vein of shyness,
and his tolerance and friendliness are tinged with
a scepticism and cynicism not entirely youthful.
His shyness he strives to conceal by bluster, his
scepticism is made evident by his readiness to
find fault. ''If Patti came to Australia," de-
clared an exasperated entrepreneur, ( ' they would
set about criticising her at once." Quite right,
that is the first thing they would do. There is
no place in the world where an outside reputa-
tion is of less value than in Australia.
The things that never happen, and the things that never
could,
Are engraved upon the tombstones of the men who never
would,
says one of their verse writers, and, with some
exaggeration, sums up the first Australian
attitude towards everything not yet proven in
Australia. This attitude is not infrequently the
prelude to an appreciative acceptance that com-
pensates, by its fulness and warm-heartedness, for
all preliminary doubts. When once convinced,
the Australian knows no half measures in his
appreciation.
254 Australian Life
lyife in Australia, and especially in the Aus-
tralian bush, is made attractive by the existent
spirit of comradeship. Staunchness is the pet
virtue of the man of the bush, and the deadliest
sin in his moral code is committed by the man
who ' ' turned dog ' ' upon his mates. * ' Mate ' ' is
the most engaging form of address in the bush,
just as " Mister" denotes aloofness tinged with
no little suspicion. Services that money could
not buy are rendered willingly and cheerfully by
neighbour to neighbour, and that without any
loss of the feeling of independence that is the
bushman's most treasured attribute. It is curious
to notice how completely this feeling of comrade-
ship has been accepted throughout the bush. The
solitary swagman is at considerable pains to ac-
count for the absence of his " mate," whose ex-
istence somewhere is regarded as the natural
complement of his own being. Two such mates
may work the country together, sharing good and
evil fortune alike. Bach may be ignorant of the
other's life story, and even of his very name, for
nicknames and contractions do much hard service
in the bush, yet all their interests and posses-
sions are in common. Not infrequently one man
may obtain a few days' work where the other can
find none, when his mate will camp close at hand,
and the money earned will be regarded by both as
a common possession. Acquaintance with a bush-
man's mate constitutes a strong claim upon his
ready and immediate friendship. The man with-
The Australian 255
out a mate is a " hatter," an eccentric person who
cannot be quite right in his head.
No sketch of the Australian character could be
made without reference to Australian political be-
lief, for, as already shown, politics are a large
part of the everyday life of Australia. Nowhere
in the world is there a more thorough belief in
the efficacy of State intervention. The Australian
pays his politicians, and is accustomed to lay all
his misfortunes at their door. He knows no
foreign questions, and many matters that are else-
where burning questions have already been settled
for him. It was said that during the Common-
wealth elections of 1903 each state was agitated
by a different question, the issue in Queensland
being fought on lines entirely remote from those
affecting Tasmania. In the absence of broad
dividing principles, the Australian applies to his
politicians the test of his own convenience and
prosperity. A misplaced school, or a bridge un-
built, has cut short the career of many a promising
politician. Good seasons and prosperous condi-
tions mean long-lived administrations and political
indifference; but when bad times come, they bring
rapid changes of Government and much political
fervour. At such times, the Australian approaches
the ballot-box in a spirit of sanguine pessimism,
determining to give the other side a chance, in
the forlorn hope that his ideals of government
may yet be realised. This introduction of the
speculative spirit .into the realm of politics shows
256 Australian Life
the Australian in all his weakness, and his cheer-
ful endurance of the calamities that follow only
partly justifies him.
giving in the almost continual presence of sun-
shine, the Australian is naturally cheerful and
good-humoured. Although subject to change,
his life holds no extreme of poverty and want,
no abyss into which he may be plunged without
the possibility of emerging. The signs of hard-
ship and suffering are not always before his eyes,
nor has he to contend with the class distinctions
that serve elsewhere to advance those who are al-
ready ' ' up, ' ' and deter those who are ' 'down' ' from
rising. He learns initiative from observing that
those who have risen owe their success to oppor-
tunities deftly seized, while courage in the face of
failure is his unalienable birthright. Each of his
fellows is potentially an easily made friend, char-
itable of his failings and appreciative of his vir-
tues. Circumstances and surroundings have
combined to create of him an industrial Bohemian,
with the Bohemian failings of thriftlessness and
lack of prudence. With borrowed money, he has
provided his big cities with every modern con-
venience of necessity and luxury, and with bor-
rowed money, constructed long railways in order
that they may be fed by the country behind them.
Now, just when the prospect of a broader national
life lies open before him, he finds his revenues
consumed by the heavy burden of interest these
developments have entailed. How the Australian
The Australian
257
will win through the difficulties immediately be-
fore him will be interesting to see, but that he
will win through them nobody who appreciates
his individual courage, energy, and resource can
doubt.
CHAPTER XXI
INDUSTRIAL PIONEERS
THE coming of the white man to this conti-
nent of the Southern Seas is an oft-told
tale, but not without its constituents of romantic
and heroic interest. Any close examination of
the details of Australian discovery would be out
of place in a book concerned with the past only
so far as it affects the present. The outlines of
Australian history, however, compel some atten-
tion, since the means by which the country was
populated is largely responsible for the character
and distribution of the Australian people to-day.
The beginning of Australia was a legend, due no
doubt to an unrecorded discovery made by some
long-forgotten adventurer. Certain it is that
early in the sixteenth century, the geographers of
the time agreed that somewhere in the Southern
Seas there was a great unknown land of mystery.
The map-makers of those days dotted this great
South Land on their maps of the world, varying
its outline and dimensions, each according to his
own fancy. In 1598, we find the Dutch historian
Cornelius Wytfliet writing of it: " The Terra
258
Industrial Pioneers 259
Australis is the most southern of all lands, and
is separated from New Guinea by a narrow
strait. . . . The Terra Australis begins at
one or two degrees from the Equator, and is
ascertained by some to be of so great an extent
that if it were thoroughly explored it would be
regarded as a fifth part of the world."
Within a few years, Torres confirmed part of
this guess if it were a guess by sailing between
New Guinea and the mainland of Australia by
the strait that has ever since borne his name.
Then came the Dutch, who discovered Australia
as far as the history of the land can tell. Tasman,
most intelligent of ocean explorers, found Tas-
mania, which he named Van Diemen's L,and
after his patron, and New Zealand, which still
bears the curious Dutch name he gave it. In-
deed, Australia was known in the seventeenth
century as New Holland, and had considerable
difficulty in shaking off the name. Thus a good
deal was known about the great South Land be-
fore the first Englishman landed on its shores.
He was William Dampier, a genial pirate, who
wrote of his adventures with such engaging in-
terest that he attracted much English attention
to the new country. On a second voyage to
Australia, undertaken in 1699 in the Admiralty
vessel Roebuck, Dampier found that the new
country offered few attractions to him, for he was
a picker-up of unconsidered trifles rather than an
explorer.
26o- Australian Life
More than half a century later came Captain
Cook, the most accurate, painstaking, and scien-
tific explorer the world has ever known. The
conclusion of his remarkable life-work left little
more to be learned about the Australian coast,
and that little was carefully and well investigated
by men who had the advantage of acquaintance
with his methods. On the scientific side of
Cook's expedition was Sir Joseph Banks, whose
enthusiastic account of Botany Bay remains to
this day as an apt illustration of the deception
practised by Australia in her most winsome
moments. The worthlessness of the land at
Botany Bay, which appeared to Banks an earthly
paradise, was soon discovered by Governor
Phillip, and to this day it remains barren and
unproductive. But it is well that Banks formed
such a glowing opinion of the new country, for
his advocacy had no little weight with the Gov-
ernment that first attempted the colonisation of
Australia.
The long discussion that ended in the despatch
of Captain Phillip to establish a penal settlement
in Australia may well be passed over. It should
be said, however, that the early advocates of the
colonisation of Australia did not even include
a convict establishment in their scheme. That
was added by a Government hard pressed to dis-
pose of its malefactors, and in time the Colony
became a penal establishment, and little else.
Captain Phillip landed at Port Jackson January 26,
Industrial Pioneers 261
1788, a date that is now annually celebrated in
Australia as Anniversary Day. He was only a
few days ahead of a French expedition, com-
manded by M. de la Perouse. Had Phillip been
a week later he would probably have found Aus-
tralia in the hands of the French, and it would
be necessary to write the history of the continent
after quite another fashion. For many years
after the landing of Governor Phillip, Australia
remained a convict settlement. It was ruled
with an iron hand by prison governors, who
looked with disfavour upon any free settlers who
might come there, and deliberately stifled any
attempt to enlarge the area of settled country by
exploration. But during those years, one man at
least was working steadfastly for the prosperity
of his adopted country. Captain John Mac-
Arthur was a member of the New South Wales
Corps, a military body raised in England for serv-
ice in Australia. MacArthur belied his military
training by a sure instinct in matters both agri-
cultural and pastoral, and seems to have grasped
the pastoral possibilities of Australia immediately
upon his arrival there. He was fortunate
enough to obtain from Cape Colony a few of the
merino sheep that had long been one of the most
jealously guarded possessions of Spain, and with
these he began sheep-breeding on scientific lines.
The result of his experiments was a wool-produc-
ing sheep of a character different from that of
the Spanish flock, but bearing a fleece of equal
262 Australian Life
quality. He was granted a large grazing area to
carry on his experiments, and encouraged by the
interest of Governor King, who then ruled the
Colony, his flock increased wonderfully. Within
a century, those few Spanish sheep smuggled
away to Australia were represented by flocks
numbering more than one hundred million,
spread over the pastures of the whole continent.
Captain MacArthur was the father of the pas-
toral industry of Australia, and his efforts were
splendidly aided by the work of the explorers.
North, south, and west, they pushed, over the
rugged peaks of the Dividing Range into the
strange unknown country beyond. They fol-
lowed the great inland streams of New South
Wales to their junction with the river Murray,
and, so to their outlet in the sea. They crossed
the desert plains of the interior, and the fertile
plateaux of south-eastern Australia, always on
the look-out for land suitable for settlement.
Wherever they went the hardy band of free
settlers followed, glad to escape from the ferment
of the penal settlement on the coast. Some of
the explorers lost their lives in their bold endeav-
ours to penetrate the unknown, while others re-
turned to safety after performing deeds of heroism
and endurance that seem to have been well-nigh
miraculous. The practical value of their work
was shown by the expansion of the pastoral in-
dustry during the first half of the nineteenth cent-
ury, and by a progress in settlement that enabled
Industrial Pioneers 263
Australia to reap a full advantage of the golden
awakening that was to follow.
The discovery of gold did not take place until
1851, but rumours of the existence of the precious
metal were current long before that date. The
search for it was steadily discouraged by the
Government, which feared the effect of so unset-
tling a discovery upon the population, then
largely composed of convicts. But the golden
discoveries made in California in 1848 drew atten-
tion to the possibilities of Australia, and it was
inevitable that the secrets still held by the soil
must sooner or later be brought to light. The
instrument of the discovery was Edward Har-
graves, a New South Wales settler who had been
attracted to the Californian coast by the tales of
treasure to be dug out of the earth in hatfuls.
Hargraves got little gold in California, but he
got an idea which afterwards proved highly
profitable to him. He was quick to notice how
the gold-bearing regions of California resembled
country he had seen in New South Wales, both
in the characteristics of soil and of rocks, and he
argued that gold would probably be found in
such country in Australia. Thither he returned,
determined to verify his conclusion. He has
left an interesting account of his find. He deter-
mined to "prospect" in Summer Hill Creek, a
tributary of the Macquarie River, and he met
with success almost at his first trial. On Febru-
ary 12, 1851, he found alluvial gold at this spot.
264 Australian Life
In the greatest excitement, he turned to the bush-
man who accompanied him, and explained the
consequences of their find. " I shall be knighted,
Bill, and your name will get into the papers. As
for our old horse here, when he dies they '11 stuff
him and put him in a museum." The prophecy
was a lame one, for none of these things hap-
pened. But Hargraves earned by his discovery
a Government reward of ^10,000 and a Govern-
ment position as Commissioner of Crown L,ands.
When Hargraves' s discovery became known to
the outside world, there followed such a rush of
immigrants as Australia had long needed and
desired. They came from all quarters of the
globe, brave, enterprising men well fitted to be
the ancestors of a new race. Some of them were
little suited to the work of mining, and soon
dropped into the callings they had followed before
their pilgrimage to Australia. Many settled on
the land, or in the towns that grew up about the
richest mining fields of the country. Some re-
turned in disgust to the Old World, which they
had left with such high hope of fortune' s favours.
But the access to the population was enormous.
Victoria alone gained a quarter of a million peo-
ple in five years, and nearly all of them pioneers
of the finest type. Younger sons of noble houses
rubbed shoulders with enterprising tradesmen,
adventurers from every corner of the earth
worked side by side with stolid miners from
Cornwall and Lancashire. But they all had the
Industrial Pioneers 265
saving grace of imagination, that brought them
so long and dangerous a journey across the seas
in search of the wealth of Eldorado.
Cities grew up as if by magic. Not many
years before, John Batman had found on the
banks of the river Yarra what he declared was a
fine site for a " village." Melbourne rose on the
village site, and in half a century was a city with
a population of half a million. The " roaring
fifties" are still remembered as the days when
Australia held a prosperity never equalled in the
world's history, and a touch of romance as well.
The gold fever never passed away from the land.
It is there still, as I hope presently to show. But
the fury of gold-seeking passed away, and the
red-shirted miners became peaceful farmers, or
prosperous tradesmen and mayors of country
towns. Gold-mining became simply a trade,
although a trade from which the element of
romance could never be altogether dissevered.
Twenty years later, Australia had another burst
of prosperity, though it was a fictitious pro-
sperity, as it is easy enough to see now. It was
created by the lavish expenditure of borrowed
money on public works of all kinds, and on com-
mercial enterprises of a private nature as well.
The country experienced a series of "booms."
Money invested in silver mines inflated these
to many times their real intrinsic value; money
invested in land caused extravagant prices to be
paid for worthless allotments in remote city
266 Australian Life
suburbs. It was an era of frantic speculation,
and it ended in a collapse from which only a
highly recuperative country could ever have
recovered. A recital of the successive calamities
that struck Australia during the ultimate decade
of last century would read exceedingly like the
first chapter of the Book of Job. A great in-
dustrial conflict paralysed the shipping, mining,
and pastoral industries, and dislocated the whole
business of the continent. It was followed by a
financial crisis. Banks closed their doors, thou-
sands and tens of thousands were ruined, and the
country was plunged into a commercial stagna-
tion from which it has only now recovered. Then
came the drought ; and it came to stay. The
pastoral history of Australia knows no other
drought like it, for it lasted for ten years. Many
pastoralists concluded that it was a permanent
drought, and either by choice or necessity aban-
doned their pastoral holdings. It swept away
half the animal life of the country. No one will
ever know what it cost Australia. One illustra-
tion only may be supplied. The wheat crop of
Australia for 1902-1903 the last of the dry years
was worth ,2,000,000 in round figures. Next
year, from a smaller area of cultivated ground,
wheat worth ^12,000,000 was harvested. Wheat,
of course, is only one product among many.
The greatest asset of a new country is popula-
tion, and it will never be known what Australia
lost in this direction by the drought. The popu-
Industrial Pioneers 267
lation of the continent rose from two million to
three million in eleven and three-quarter years.
But it has taken more than sixteen years to in-
crease from three to four million, the present
population. The position would have been
worse but for an opportune discovery of gold
in Western Australia. An outlet for the rest-
less surplus of unwillingly idle people was
found in the continent, and while the rest of Aus-
tralia was languishing, Western Australia ex-
panded in the rays of a golden sun of prosperity.
But the continent could not be bolstered up for
long on the basis of gold mines, and would have
fared exceedingly ill but for the genius of one
man, whose name is still unknown to many
Australians.
Some day Australia will build a national
Walhalla perhaps in the bush capital of the
Commonwealth to hold the statues of its de-
parted great ones. John MacArthur will be
there, no doubt, and Hargraves, as well, for
these are the pioneers of two of Australia's
greatest industries. My third worthy is James
Harrison, who first experimented in the ocean
carriage of perishable produce. Harrison was a
journalist when he was not an inventor who
lived in the sleepy little town of Geelong, near
the entrance to Port Phillip Bay. The State of
Victoria at that time was trying to dispose of the
surplus products of its agriculturists meat, but-
ter, fruit, poultry, and the like, by creating a
268 Australian Life
home market for their consumption. That is to
say, an endeavour, not wholly unsuccessful, was
made to create local manufactures and an artisan
class by the imposition of heavy customs duties on
imported manufactures. Harrison attacked the
problem from another point of view. He tried
to find some way of getting these perishable pro-
ducts to the empty markets of the Old World
without impairing their freshness and value.
Among his clever inventions was one for making
ice cheaply and in large quantities, and he, too,
evolved the idea of the refrigerating chamber.
An attempt to put his invention to practical use
involved him in financial ruin, but it established
the possibility of success.
Harrison failed in the pecuniary sense, and
ended his life as a hard-working journalist. But
his idea, to which, let it be said, he gave prac-
tical form, has meant the salvation of Australia.
The Commonwealth has at last found markets
for the goods that are most readily produced
there, and they are markets without any limit.
In 1904, Australia sold ^20,000,000 worth of pro-
ducts in excess of her purchases. Whatever the
political economist of Great Britain may have to
say to this credit balance, in Australia it is re-
garded as highly satisfactory. A large propor-
tion of the money was received for products that
could only leave Australia in the refrigerating
chamber. Cold storage has even shown a solu-
tion of the rabbit problem, so long the nightmare
Industrial Pioneers 269
of the Australian farmer and pastoralist. In ten
years, ; 1,500,000 has been received in Australia
for frozen rabbits, and so a pest has been con-
verted into a profit. A modest monument in the
Geelong cemetery, erected by a few admirers,
and an occasional reference in the Press are all the
tribute Australia pays to James Harrison. He
has deserved better of his country than that.
CHAPTER XXII
AUSTRALIA'S DESTINY
I HAVE striven to depict the people of Aus-
tralia busy in the work of developing the
resources of their country, secure from all outside
influences. The generous measure of self-govern-
ment which they enjoy permits them to manage
their own affairs practically in their own way.
The remoteness of their continent, as well as the
protection of the world's greatest sea-power, has
so far ensured their immunity from outside inter-
ference. For more than a century, they have
worked on undisturbed. The Old World has
been torn by wars and revolutions, yet these
have meant no more to Australia than so many
extra columns of interesting reading matter in the
newspapers. There are many Australians who
act as though this golden reign of peace would
last for ever.
Yet Australians have had some sharp re-
minders that their lands are broad and their
people few. From time to time, some great
European Power has coveted one of the many
islands that dot the near Pacific waters, and has
270
Australia's Destiny 271
not stopped short at coveting. American influ-
ence in the Sandwich Islands; German aggression
in Samoa, in New Guinea, and last of all in the
Marshall Islands ; French interference in New
Caledonia and the New Hebrides these incidents
have in turn given the alarmists cause to raise
their voices. Australian politicians have been
untiring and vehement in their protests to the
Colonial Office, but the effect of their representa-
tions has never been appreciable. The sphere of
foreign influence in the Pacific has enlarged by
almost imperceptible degrees, and only the other
day, the Australian Prime Minister awakened
with a gasp to the consideration of sixteen foreign
naval stations within easy striking distance of
Australian shores. Distance is being annihilated
by time, and the remote and peaceful Australian
is now confronted by possibilities it was once the
fashion to ridicule.
Perhaps the Boer War furnished Australia
with its first real reminder that national responsi-
bility must go hand in hand with national am-
bition. It is not easy for the home-keeping
Englishman to grasp the real meaning of the
wave of patriotism that swept over Greater
Britain during the progress of that struggle.
" The loyalty of the Colonies" has degenerated
into a phrase for the use of party politicians, who
too seldom stop to consider its meaning. Whether
the Colonies will always be loyal to Great Britain
is a question that may yet have to be decided.
272 Australian Life
It is quite certain, however, that they will always
remain loyal to the Empire, provided there re-
mains an Empire to excite the passion of loyalty.
The Boer War opened with an incident that
appealed most forcibly to every Colonial who
cherished this ideal of Empire the invasion of a
self-governing Colony by a hostile force. From
that time forward, the Australians and New Zea-
landers and obviously the Canadians and other
Colonials as well regarded the war as peculiarly
their war. It was clear enough to any one who
saw much of the men who left their homes
to fight in South Africa that this aspect of
the quarrel had touched their imagination most
keenly. It was the first real Colonial war in
which the Empire had been engaged, and the
notion of Empire suddenly gained an attractive
reality in the eyes of Australians. Even so, per-
haps, would Canadians and Africans rally to
their help if ever Australia were invaded by an
enemy.
From the sentimentalists' standpoint, this view
of Australian loyalty is possibly less attractive
than the conventional idea of love for " the dear
old Mother Country." It is, however, the view-
consistent with the Colonial attitude on most
Imperial questions. Canada still refuses to pay
one penny toward the maintenance of the British
fleet, simply because it is a British fleet and not an
Imperial fleet. Australia with a grudging re-
luctance contributes the sum of ,200,000 annu-
Australia's Destiny 273
ally as a naval subsidy, and New Zealand only
pays an amount in proportion. Yet all the
Colonies gladly combined to bear the cost of an
Imperial line of cable, in the administration of
which they were allowed some voice.
These instances of Colonial sentiment and
Colonial policy are advanced merely in explana-
tion of the manner in which the Boer War
changed the Australian outlook upon the world
outside. It brought home at once the reality of
the Imperial tie and the unsubstantial nature of
the Imperial fabric. It showed, as nothing else
could have done, the desirability of an Imperial
Federation, and the obstacles that existed in the
way of such a Federation.
Australia to-day is halting on the path towards
Imperial unity. Rightly or wrongly, the Aus-
tralian believes that in order to enter into closer
relations with the Mother Country he will have
to lay aside that striving for race purity which is
an instinct with him. Since the Federation of
the Australian States was accomplished, the whole
history of the world has been rewritten for Aus-
tralia. A new Power has grown up in the Pacific.
In the sudden rise of Japan, the Australian dis-
cerns the most sombre menace to all his most
cherished ideals. From the Australian's point of
view, the position is an intricate and difficult one.
Almost in the moment when the Commonwealth
was deciding that the Japanese was not a desirable
citizen for Australia, and passing legislation to
274 Australian Life
exclude him from Commonwealth territory, a
stroke of British diplomacy exalted Japan to the
position of an Imperial ally. The outbreak of
the Eastern war followed, and from that time the
Australian attitude towards Japan has been in-
definable. The Australians love the Japanese at
a distance. They regard them as splendid fight-
ing men, and creditable allies even to the Mother
Country. But these facts do not alter the Aus-
tralian view that the Japanese is an undesirable
citizen, whereas the Russian is a desirable one.
During the progress of the war, a motion was
tabled in the Australian Parliament for the free
admission of Japanese into the Commonwealth.
It was not granted even serious consideration.
On the other hand, Japanese feeling on the
subject is equally unmistakable. The Japanese
are not given to parading their feelings, or an-
nouncing their plans in advance. But it is certain
that their exclusion from Australia is at once
harmful to their settled policy of expansion, and
wounding to their national pride. It is set down
as a matter for attention as soon as more pressing
affairs have been settled. Responsible Japanese
statesmen have openly said as much. Japanese
merchants who have business relations with Aus-
tralia are never tired of referring to their griev-
ance, even in business correspondence. The
injury crops up in every pearlers' quarrel at
Thursday Island or on the north-west coast of
Australia, and the angry Japanese coolie does not
Australia's Destiny 275
hesitate to threaten his white rivals with what
will happen as soon as Japan is able to take in
hand his grievances. Australians also remem-
ber how, not very long ago, they entertained a
Japanese fleet in their harbours. The visitors
were made much of, and fited at every port,
so that they were able to see whatever was to be
seen. No Australian who has ever given two
thoughts to the matter doubts now that the
Japanese information as to the sea gates and
fortifications of Australia is full and complete.
Possibly they credit their visitors with powers
of observation greater than they possessed, but
the history of the Manchurian campaign proves
that the Japanese Intelligence Department has
never yet neglected an opportunity so favourable
as that afforded by the easy Government of the
Commonwealth.
No doubt the Australian takes an alarmist
view of the situation, but it must be remembered
that the " Yellow Peril," which is still only a
bugbear phrase to Western Europe, is a very near
and real thing to him. He is forced to look for-
ward to the day when Japan, as Great Britain's
ally, will request that the disabilities under which
the Japanese labour in the Southern continent
shall be removed, and he cherishes no illusions
as to the reply His Majesty's Government will
make. He does not believe that the decision
will be influenced in any way by Australian
sentiment or Australian opinion. Since the day
276 Australian Life
when Australians turned British convict ships
from their wharves with an open show of force,
there has never been a moment when the Im-
perial tie has been in any danger of severance.
But that moment will come should the Common-
wealth at any time receive the order to throw
open its territories to an Asiatic people.
It is at least certain that Australian life of to-
day is very strongly influenced by this shadow
which lies across the future of the continent.
Not long ago, Mr. Deakiu, who is the most repre-
sentative of Australian Nationalists, was inter-
viewed on the subject of Australia's relations
with the outside world. He expressed very
forcibly the view that the Commonwealth should
immediately prepare itself for the defence of its
shores. " Australia," he said, " which used to
depend largely on its isolation for security, is now
within what is termed striking distance of no
fewer than sixteen foreign naval stations San
Francisco, Mazatlan, Callao, Iquique, Hawaii,
Tahiti, Samoa, New Caledonia, Yokohama, Port
Arthur, Shanghai, Manila, Saigon, Bencooelen,
Reunion, and Tamatave. It is very doubtful if
we are properly prepared to meet a dash at our
weak spots, delivered by two or three fast cruis-
ers. It is also very much open to question
whether our harbour defences are equal to the
test to which they might be put. The forts
about our principal cities are most of them of
antiquated design, and very dangerous to the
Australia's Destiny 277
garrisons who would hold them under a fire of
modern missiles. We require submarines, tor-
pedo boats, and torpedo-boat destroyers. We
have enough men for any requisite naval forces,
and for the naval reserves a great influx of de-
sirable settlers is necessary all round Australia,
with a view to the efficient defence of the whole
continent, of which at present only part is
occupied.
" When we are attacked, it will not be with
kid gloves or after convenient notice, but it will
be when and where we least desire it, and with
remorseless fury. The very least with which we
can be content is such an expenditure and such
defence forces as will afford us reasonable guar-
antees of safety to our ports, our cities, and our
coasts."
The significant features of the interview were
the omission of any reference to the British fleet
stationed in Australian waters and the desire for
a great influx of population. The presence of a
British fleet in Australian waters is merely a
matter of social interest to Australians. They
have been told so often that the great naval
battle for the protection of their continent will
probably be fought many thousands of miles
from its shores, that they have accepted the
statement as being probably true. They feel
equally sure that such a battle will be fought
around no quarrel of Australia's choosing. The
advocates who from time to time have urged the
278 Australian Life
Colonies to increase their naval contributions
have employed the very arguments calculated to
defeat their own ends. Australia, like Canada,
has been led by these enthusiasts to believe
that the defence of Commonwealth shores rests
with the Commonwealth. The national spirit in
Australia contemplates nothing more certainly
than that the nation shall be self-protective.
Otherwise, says the young Australian, we shall
not be protected at all.
But for the efficient protection of so large a
country a much greater population is required.
On this point all political parties in Australia are
now agreed. The most remarkable effect of the
apprehension caused by the rise of Japan is dis-
played in the modification of the L,abour pro-
gramme. Mr. Watson, the L,abour leader in the
national Parliament, has been quick to recognise
the danger of the waste, unoccupied plains of
Northern Australia. So long as these fertile lands
remain undeveloped, they afford the best possible
reason for a demand that Australia should open
her ports to coloured labour. Opportunities for
growing cotton, and a score of other valuable
tropical products, are let slip year by year for
want of suitable labour to develop these lands.
It is not probable that British immigrants would
be able, in such a climate, to do the hard work
that is required in a satisfactory manner. The
suggestion is now made that immigration should
be encouraged from the races of Southern Europe,
Australia's Destiny 279
who are accustomed to perform heavy tasks in
a climate approximating to that of Northern
Australia. Although this scheme is practically
dependent upon permission being obtained to in-
denture Italian, Bulgarian, or Austrian labourers
under contract, it already meets with a tentative
support from the L,abour party. It involves an
important modification of that clause of the
Restriction Act which forbids the introduction
of immigrants under contract. The I/abour
leaders are now letting drop guarded intimations
that they are prepared to modify this clause in
favour of the white labourer from over the seas.
Mr. Watson recently stated that people had
abandoned the idea that white men could not
work on Northern plantations. While not an-
ticipating that there would be any necessity for
it, he continued, he would be prepared, under
certain circumstances, to consider the necessity
for allowing the indenturing of white labour, but
it would have to be done under very carefully
framed conditions, with an insistence upon the
payment of fair wages. " We shall have, I
think, to widen our platform," said another
Labour leader, ' ' so that people from Southern
Europe, who are accustomed to working in hot
climates, may be induced to accept the engage-
ment of work in the Queensland sugar fields.
The engagements would have to be under Gov-
ernment control. I would even go so far as
to agree to a system of assisted passages, on
280 Australian Life
condition that the State Governments would
undertake to settle the immigrants on land on
the completion of their engagements."
The fear of Japanese aggression will have a
wholesome effect, if it causes the leaders of the
Popular party in Australia to take immediate
steps for populating their waste territories. By
doing so, they will abolish one reason for outside
interference. At the same time, such a step will
prevent the coloured man from gaining any firm
foothold in Australia, should it be found neces-
sary in the interests of Imperial unity to throw
the Commonwealth open to Eastern races. On
the other hand, if Australia should see fit to
stiffen her back when the time comes, and to
insist on the maintenance of a white Australia,
the advantage of an immediate influx of white
population cannot be overestimated. In Amer-
ica, whither Australia has turned for guidance in
the solution of many problems, already presented
by her national life, it has been found that the
European immigrant becomes Americanised with
extraordinary rapidity. This lesson the labour
party appears to have learned; hence the modifi-
cation of its programme and legislation.
It will be seen, then, that Australia is not
entirely blind to the future, as the Australians
conceive it. The day may be far distant when
Australia will be called upon to choose between
Imperial unity and independence. It may never
come. But the Australian anticipates that in the
/
Australia's Destiny 281
near future Japan will press for the recognition
of her people to share equal rights in Australia
with any white man. What may happen then
will be beyond the power of Australia to decide;
except upon one point. The present writer meets
in L,ondon many Australians who have settled
down to existence in Great Britain more or less
permanently. ' ' Do you ever intend to go back ? "
is a question not infrequently asked. Most
Anglo - Australians are now familiar with the
answer: " Well, I may have to go back some
day to fight."
INDEX
ACCENT, Australian, 161
Aliens, coloured, 117, 208
Animals, wild, 85
Anniversary Day, 114, 238, 261
Arbitration, compulsory industrial, 127, 153
Area of Australia, 4
Artists, Australian, 230
Artesian wells, 91
Australian Natives' Association, 234
"BAGMEN," 72
Ballarat, 134
Bicycles, novel use of, 72
" Billy-can," 75
Birth-rate, declining, 161, 162
Boer War, 271
Boundary riders, 21
"Brownie," 22
"Brumbies," 35
Buckjumpers, 38
Buffalo in Australia, 192
Bulletin, the, 226
Bush, aspects of, 8 ; fire in, 51 ; women of, 167
CA.DETS, military, 222
Camel in Australia, 63, 189
Camping out, 190
Capital, Commonwealth, 242
283
284 Index
Capitals of States, 7, 12, 95, 162
Cattle runs, 23
Chinese, the, 117, 210
Christmas in Australia, 3, 50
Churches, 221
Clearing the land, 146
Clubs, 177
Coastline, 4
Cockatoo farmers, 43
Constitution, Commonwealth, 240
Coolie labour, 208
Cricket, 182, 186
Customs, English, 2
Cycling swagmen, 71
DAIRYING, 47
Debt, public, 126
Defence, 222, 276
Dialect, aboriginal, 200
Diet, Australian, 170 ; aboriginal, 198
Dog, native, 197
Dress, 158
Droving, 58
Drought, 66, 81
EIGHT-HOUR day, 128
Empire, unity of, 273
Equality, social, 112
Exclusiveness, class, 175
Explorers, 56
FEDERATION, imperial, 273
Fetes, national, 238
Fish, Australian, 119
Fishing, 190, 199
Football, 187
Franchise, female, 164
Index 285
Fruit, abundance, of, no
GOI<D, discovery of, 263 ; exploration for, 57, 134
Governor as host, 174
HOLIDAY resorts, 106
Home life, 169
Homestead station, 17
Horsebreaking, 36
Horses, wild, 35
Hospitality, 2, 179
Hospitals, bush, 79
Housing question, 108
ICE habit, 172
Immigration, 155, 278
Immigration Act, 154
Imperial Federation, 273 ; unity, 273
Irrigation, 90
"JACKAROO," the, 20
Japan and Australia, 273
Japanese, 214, 217
KAIX2OORUB, 138
Kanakas, 217
LABOUR leaders, 130, 278
Labour party's origin, 128
Labour programme, 131
"Larrikins," 114
MAGAZINES, 227
Malays, 214
Manila men, 214
Meat, consumption of, 171
Mining "rush," 139
Mirage, 66
286 Index
Music, 162
Mustering cattle, 34
NATIONALISM, 240
Navy, Australian, 276
Never-Never Land, 7, 55
Newspapers, 225
Novels, 229
OPIUM, abuse of, 117, 205
PARKS, 106
Parliament, Commonwealth, 240
Parliament House, 97
Pastimes, aboriginal, 200
Pearl fishing, 214
Pensions, old-age, 127
Population, increase of, 155, 267
Press, 224
Professional men, 103
Protective tariffs, 12, 152
Provincialism, 232, 239
Public buildings, 97
Public servants, 123
" Push," larrikin, 114
RABBITS, 16, 39
Racing, 183
Racing picnic, 26
Railways, 92, 233
Rainfall, 5, 81
Rations, station, 22, 70
Refrigeration, 268
Religious teaching, 221
Rents, 108
Rivers, 5
"Runs," pastoral, 7
Index 287
SAI/TBUSH, 10, 87
Schools, 48, 220
Secret societies, 212
Selectors, 16, 43
Servants, 160
Sexes, comradeship of, 160
Shanty, bush, 78
Shearers, 29
Shearing machine, 19
Shooting, 190
Slang, bush, 73
Sports, 50
Squatters, 14
Stampede of cattle, 60
States, division into, 6
Stockmen, 25
Strike, maritime, 128
Suburban life, 104, 119
Sugar-cane, cultivating, 210, 217
Swagmen, 49, 69
Swag-rolling an art, 75
TEA, consumption of, 170
Tea-rooms, 104
Tenements, 108
Theatres, 229
Township life, 180
Trackers, aboriginal, 201
Transport difficulty, 150
UNEMPLOYED, the, 125
Universities, 224
VINEYARDS, 148
WAGES, 152
Water conservation, 88
288
Index
White Australia, 161, 280
Wood-chopping a sport, 188
Wool-classing, 32
Wool-kings, 15
Wool-shearing, 29
Working man, status of, 176
Working woman, status of, 164
Our Asiatic Neighbours
12. Illustrated. Each, net $1.20
By mail 1.30
I INDIAN LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY
By HERBERT COMPTON.
" Mr. Compton's book is the best book on India, its life and its
people, that has been published in a long time. The reader will
find!^ it more descriptive and presenting mote facts in a way that
appeals to the man of English speech than nine-tenths of the
volumes written by travellers. It sets forth the experiences of a
quarter of a century, and in that period a man can learn a good
deal, even about an alien people and civilization, if he keeps his
eyes open. If the other volumes in the series are as good as
' Indian Life in Town and Country ' it will score a decided suc-
cess." Brooklyn Eagle.
" An account of native life in India written from the point of view
of a practical man of affairs who knows India from long residence.
It is bristling with information, brisk and graphic in style, and
open-minded and sympathetic in feeling." Cleveland Leader .
II. JAPANESE LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY
By GEORGE WILLIAM KNOX, D.D.
" The childlike simplicity, yet innate complexity of the Japanese
temperament, the strangely mingled combination of new and old,
important and worthless, poetic and commercial instincts, aims,
and ambitions now at work in the land of the cherry blossom are
well brought out by Dr. Knox's conscientious representation. The
book should be widely read and studied, being eminently reason-
able, readable, reliable, and informative." Record-Herald.
" A delightful book, all the more welcome because the ablest
scholar in Japanese Confucianism that America has yet produced
has here given us impressions of man and nature in the Archi-
pelago." Evening Post.
Our Asiatic Neighbours
III.-CHINESE LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY
By B. BARD. Adapted by H. TwiTCHEU,.
Every phase of Chinese life is touched on, explained, and made
clear in this volume. The nation's customs, its traits, its religion,
and its history, are all outlined here, and the book should be of
great value in arriving at a better understanding of a people and a
country about which there has been so much misconception. The
Illustrations add greatly to the value of the book.
IV.-PHILIPPINE LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY
By JAMES A. LERoY.
Mr. IvCRoy is eminently fitted to write on life in the Philip-
pines. He was for several years connected with the Department of
the Interior in the Philippine Government, when he made a
special investigation of conditions in the islands. Since his return
he has continued his studies and is already known as an author-
ity on the Philippines. His book gives a full description of life
among the native tribes, and also in the Spanish and American
communities.
V. AUSTRALIAN LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY
A bright, readable description of life in a fascinating and little-
known country. The style is frank, vivacious, entertaining, cap-
tivating, just the kind for a book which is not at all statistical,
political, or controversial.
Our European Neighbours
Edited by WILLIAM HARBUTT DAWSON
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I. FRENCH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY
By HANNAH LYNCH.
" Miss lunch's pages are thoroughly interesting and suggestive.
Her style, too, is not common. It is marked by vivacity without
any drawback of looseness, and resembles a stream that runs
strongly and evenly between walls. It is at once distinguished and
useful. . , . Her five-page description (not dramatization) of the
grasping Paris landlady is a capital piece of work. . . . Such
well-finished portraits are frequent in Miss I^ynch's book, which is
small, inexpensive, and of a real excellence." The London Academy.
" Miss Lynch 's book is particularly notable. It is the first of a
series descnbing the home and social life of various European
peoples a series long needed and sure to receive a warm welcome.
Her style is frank, vivacious, entertaining, captivating, just the
kind for a book which is not at all statistical, political, or contro-
versial. A special excellence of her book, reminding one of Mr.
Whiteing's, lies in her continual contrast of the English and the
French, and she thus sums up her praises: 'The English are
admirable : the French are lovable.' " The Outlook.
II. GERMAN LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY
By W. H. DAWSON, author of " Germany and the
Germans," etc.
"The book is as full of correct, impartial, well-digested, and
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an insight into German life. It worthily presents a great nation,
now the greatest and strongest in Europe." Com mercial Advertiser.
Ill RUSSIAN LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY
By FRANCIS H. E. PALMER, sometime Secretary to
H. H. Prince Droutskop-Loubetsky (Equerry to
H. M. the Emperor of Russia).
" We would recommend this above all other works of its charac-
ter to those seeking a clear general understanding of Russian life,
character, and conditions, but who have not the leisure or inclina-
tion to read more voluminous tomes. ... It cannot be too highly
recommended, for it conveys practically all that well-informed
people should know of 'Our European Neighbours.' "Mail and
Express.
Our European Neighbours
IV. DUTCH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY
By P. M. HOUGH, B.A.
" There is no other book which gives one so clear a picture of
actual life in the Netherlands at the present date. For its accurate
presentation of the Dutch situation in art, letters, learning, and
politics as well as in the round of common life in town and city,
this book deserves the heartiest praise." Evening Post.
"Holland is always interesting, in any line of study. In this
work its charm is carefully preserved. The sturdy toil of the people,
their quaint characteristics, their conservative retention of old dress
and customs, their quiet abstention from taking part in the great
affairs of the world are clearly reflected in this faithful mirror. The
illustrations are of a high grade of photographic reproductions."
Washington Post.
V SWISS LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY
By ALFRED T. STORY, author of the " Building of
the British Empire," etc.
" We do not know a single compact book on the same subject
in which Swiss character in all its variety finds so sympathetic and
yet thorough treatment ; the reason of this being that the author
has enjoyed privileges of unusual intimacy with all classes, which
prevented his lumping the people as a whole without distinction
of racial and cantonal feeling." Nation.
"There is no phase of the lives of these sturdy republicans,
whether social or political, which Mr. Story does not touch upon ;
and an abundance of illustrations drawn from unhackneyed sub-
jects adds to the value of the book." Chicago Dial.
VI. SPANISH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY
By L. HIGGIN.
"Illuminating in all of its chapters. She writes in thorough
sympathy, born of long and intimate acquaintance with Spanish
people of to-day." St. Paul Press.
"The author knows her subject thoroughly and has written a
most admirable volume. She writes with genuine love for the
Spaniards, and with a sympathetic knowledge of their character
and their method of life." Canada Methodist Review.
Oar European Neighbours
VII. ITALIAN LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY
By LUIGI VILLARI.
"A most interesting and instructive volume, which presents an
intimate view of the social habits and manner of thought of the
people of which it treats." Buffalo Express.
"A book full of information, comprehensive and accurate. Its
numerous attractive illustrations add to its interest and value. We
are glad to welcome such an addition to an excellent series."
Syracuse Herald.
VIII. DANISH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY
By JESSIE H. BROCHNER.
" Miss Brochner has written an interesting book on a fascinat-
ing subject, a book which should arouse an interest in Denmark in
those who have not been there, and which can make those who
know and are attracted by the country very homesick to return."
Commercial Advertiser.
"She has sketched with loving art the simple, yet pure and
elevated lives of her countrymen, and given the reader an excellent
idea of the Danes from every point of view." Chicago Tribune.
IX. AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN LIFE IN TOWN AND
COUNTRY
By FRANCIS H. E. PALMER, author of '* Russian
Life in Town and Country," etc.
'' No volume in this interesting series seems to us so notable or
valuable as this on Austro-Hungarian life. Mr. Palmer's long resi-
dence in Europe and his intimate association with men of mark,
especially in their home life, has given to him a richness of experi-
ence evident on every page of the book." The Outlook.
"This book cannot be too warmly recommended to those who
have not the leisure or the spirit to read voluminous tomes of this
subject, yet we wish a clear general understanding of Austro-Hun-
garian life." Hartford Times.
Our European Neighbours
X. TURKISH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY
By L. M. J. GARNETT.
" The general tone of the book is that of a careful study, the
style is flowing, and the matter is presented in a bright, taking
way." St. Paul Press.
"To the average mind the Turk is a little better than a blood-
thirsty individual with a plurality of wives and a paucity of vir-
tues. To read this book is to be pleasantly disillusioned." Public
Opinion.
XI BELGIAN LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY
By DEMETRIUS C. BOULGER
" Mr. Boulger has given a plain, straight-forward account of
the several phases of Belgian Life, the government, the court, the
manufacturing centers and enterprises, the literature and science,
the army, education and religion, set forth informingly." The
Detroit Free Press.
" The book is one of real value conscientiously written, and
well illustrated by good photographs." The Outlook.
XII. SWEDISH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY
By G. VON HEIDENSTAM.
" As we read this interesting book we seem to be wandering
through this land, visiting its homes and schools and churches,
studying its government and farms and industries, and observing
the dress and customs and amusements of its healthy and happy
people. The book is delightfully written and beautifully illus-
trated." Presbyterian Bannet ,
"In this intimate account of the Swedish people is given a
more instructive view of their political and social relations than it
has been the good fortune of American readers heretofore to ob-
tain." Washington Even. Star.
Our European Neighbours
IN PREPARATION :
XIII. ENGLISH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY
Entertaining descriptions of English Society by one
who knows Belgravia from experience and White-
chapel from keen observation. In order that per-
sonalities and real occurrences might be described
without reserve, the identity of the author is for the
present withheld.
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