More English than the English.--A day in the Bush.--Immigration.--A
case of spirit return.--A Seance.--Geelong.--The lava
plain.--Good-nature of General Ryrie.--Bendigo.--Down a gold
mine.--Prohibition v. Continuance.--Mrs. Knight
MacLellan.--Nerrin.--A wild drive.--Electric shearing.--Rich sheep
stations.--Cockatoo farmers.--Spinnifex and Mallee.--Rabbits.--The
great marsh.
In some ways the Australians are more English than the English. We have
been imperceptibly Americanised, while our brethren over the sea have
kept the old type. The Australian is less ready to show emotion, cooler
in his bearing, more restrained in applause, more devoted to personal
liberty, keener on sport, and quieter in expression (as witness the
absence of scare lines in the papers) than our people are. Indeed, they
remind me more of the Scotch than the English, and Melbourne on a
Sunday, without posts, or Sunday papers, or any amenity whatever, is
like the Edinburgh of my boyhood. Sydney is more advanced. There are
curious anomalies in both towns. Their telephone systems are so bad that
they can only be balanced against each other, for they are in a class by
themselves. One smiles when one recollects that one used to grumble at
the London lines. On the other hand the tramway services in both towns
are wonderful, and so continuous that one never hastens one's step to
catch a tram since another comes within a minute. The Melbourne trams
have open bogey cars in front, which make a drive a real pleasure.
One of our pleasant recollections in the early days of our Melbourne
visit was a day in the bush with Mr. Henry Stead and his wife. My
intense admiration for the moral courage and energy of the father made
it easy for me to form a friendship with his son, who has shown the
family qualities by the able way in which he has founded and conducted
an excellent journal, _Stead's Monthly_. Australia was lucky ever to get
such an immigrant as that, for surely an honest, fearless and
clear-headed publicist is the most valuable man that a young country,
whose future is one long problem play, could import. We spent our day in
the Dandenong Hills, twenty miles from Melbourne, in a little hostel
built in a bush clearing and run by one Lucas, of good English cricket
stock, his father having played for Sussex. On the way we passed Madame
Melba's place at Lilydale, and the wonderful woods with their strange
tree-ferns seemed fit cover for such a singing bird. Coming back in
Stead's light American car we tried a short cut down roads which proved
to be almost impossible. A rather heavier car ahead of us, with two
youths in it, got embedded in the mud, and we all dismounted to heave it
out. There suddenly appeared on the lonely road an enormous coloured
man; he looked like a cross between negro and black fellow. He must
have lived in some hut in the woods, but the way his huge form suddenly
rose beside us was quite surprising. He stood in gloomy majesty
surveying our efforts, and repeating a series of sentences which
reminded one of German exercises. "I have no jack. I had a jack. Some
one has taken my jack. This is called a road. It is not a road. There is
no road." We finally levered out the Australian car, for which, by the
way, neither occupant said a word of thanks, and then gave the black
giant a shilling, which he received as a keeper takes his toll. On
looking back I am not sure that this slough of despond is not carefully
prepared by this negro, who makes a modest income by the tips which he
gets from the unfortunates who get bogged in it. No keeper ever darted
out to a trap quicker than he did when the car got stuck.
Stead agreed with me that the Australians do not take a big enough view
of their own destiny. They--or the labour party, to be more exact--are
inclined to buy the ease of the moment at the cost of the greatness of
their continental future. They fear immigration lest it induce
competition and pull down prices. It is a natural attitude. And yet that
little fringe of people on the edge of that huge island can never
adequately handle it. It is like an enormous machine with a six
horsepower engine to drive it. I have a great sympathy with their desire
to keep the British stock as pure as possible. But the land needs the
men, and somewhere they must be found. I cannot doubt that they would
become loyal subjects of the Empire which had adopted them. I have
wondered sometimes whether in Lower California and the warmer States of
the Union there may not be human material for Australia. Canada has
received no more valuable stock than from the American States, so it
might be that another portion of the Union would find the very stamp of
man that Queensland and the north require. The American likes a big
gamble and a broad life with plenty of elbow-room. Let him bring his
cotton seeds over to semi-tropical Australia and see what he can make of
it there.
To pass suddenly to other-worldly things, which are my mission. People
never seem to realise the plain fact that one positive result must
always outweigh a hundred negative ones. It only needs one single case
of spirit return to be established, and there is no more to be said.
Incidentally, how absurd is the position of those wiseacres who say
"nine-tenths of the phenomena are fraud." Can they not see that if they
grant us one-tenth, they grant us our whole contention?
These remarks are elicited by a case which occurred in 1883 in
Melbourne, and which should have converted the city as surely as if an
angel had walked down Collins Street. Yet nearly forty years later I
find it as stagnant and material as any city I have ever visited. The
facts are these, well substantiated by documentary and official
evidence. Mr. Junor Browne, a well-known citizen, whose daughter
afterwards married Mr. Alfred Deakin, subsequently Premier, had two
sons, Frank and Hugh. Together with a seaman named Murray they went out
into the bay in their yacht the "Iolanthe," and they never returned. The
father was fortunately a Spiritualist and upon the second day of their
absence, after making all normal inquiries, he asked a sensitive, Mr.
George Spriggs, formerly of Cardiff, if he would trace them. Mr. Spriggs
collected some of the young men's belongings, so as to get their
atmosphere, and then he was able by psychometry to give an account of
their movements, the last which he could see of them being that they
were in trouble upon the yacht and that confusion seemed to reign aboard
her. Two days later, as no further news was brought in, the Browne
family held a seance, Mr. Spriggs being the medium. He fell into trance
and the two lads, who had been trained in spiritual knowledge and knew
the possibilities, at once came through. They expressed their contrition
to their mother, who had desired them not to go, and they then gave a
clear account of the capsizing of the yacht, and how they had met their
death, adding that they had found themselves after death in the exact
physical conditions of happiness and brightness which their father's
teaching had led them to expect. They brought with them the seaman
Murray, who also said a few words. Finally Hugh, speaking through the
medium, informed Mr. Browne that Frank's arm and part of his clothing
had been torn off by a fish.
"A shark?" asked Mr. Browne.
"Well, it was not like any shark I have seen."
Mark the sequel. Some weeks later a large shark of a rare deep-sea
species, unknown to the fishermen, and quite unlike the ordinary blue
shark with which the Brownes were familiar, was taken at Frankston,
about twenty-seven miles from Melbourne. Inside it was found the bone of
a human arm, and also a watch, some coins, and other articles which had
belonged to Frank Browne. These facts were all brought out in the papers
at the time, and Mr. Browne put much of it on record in print before the
shark was taken, or any word of the missing men had come by normal
means. The facts are all set forth in a little book by Mr. Browne
himself, called "A Rational Faith." What have fraudulent mediums and all
the other decoys to do with such a case as that, and is it not perfectly
convincing to any man who is not perverse? Personally, I value it not so
much for the evidence of survival, since we have that so complete
already, but for the detailed account given by the young men of their
new conditions, so completely corroborating what so many young officers,
cut off suddenly in the war, have said of their experience. "Mother, if
you could see how happy we are, and the beautiful home we are in, you
would not weep except for joy. I feel so light in my spiritual body and
have no pain, I would not exchange this life for earth life even it were
in my power. Poor spirits without number are waiting anxiously to
communicate with their friends when an opportunity is offered." The
young Brownes had the enormous advantage of the education they had
received from their father, so that they instantly understood and
appreciated the new conditions.
On October 8th we had a seance with Mrs. Hunter, a pleasant middle-aged
woman, with a soft South of England accent. Like so many of our mediums
she had little sign of education in her talk. It does not matter in
spiritual things, though it is a stumbling block to some inquirers.
After all, how much education had the apostles? I have no doubt they
were very vulgar provincial people from the average Roman point of view.
But they shook the world none the less. Most of our educated people have
got their heads so crammed with things that don't matter that they have
no room for the things that do matter. There was no particular success
at our sitting, but I have heard that the medium is capable of better
things.
On October 13th I had my first experience of a small town, for I went to
Geelong and lectured there. It was an attentive and cultured audience,
but the hall was small and the receipts could hardly have covered the
expenses. However, it is the press report and the local discussion which
really matter. I had little time to inspect Geelong, which is a
prosperous port with 35,000 inhabitants. What interested me more was the
huge plain of lava which stretches around it and connects it with
Melbourne. This plain is a good hundred miles across, and as it is of
great depth one can only imagine that there must be monstrous cavities
inside the earth to correspond with the huge amount extruded. Here and
there one sees stunted green cones which are the remains of the
volcanoes which spewed up all this stuff. The lava has disintegrated on
the surface to the extent of making good arable soil, but the harder
bits remain unbroken, so that the surface is covered with rocks, which
are used to build up walls for the fields after the Irish fashion. Every
here and there a peak of granite has remained as an island amid the
lava, to show what was there before the great outflow. Eruptions appear
to be caused by water pouring in through some crack and reaching the
heated inside of the earth where the water is turned to steam, expands,
and so gains the force to spread destruction. If this process went on it
is clear that the whole sea might continue to pour down the crack until
the heat had been all absorbed by the water. I have wondered whether the
lava may not be a clever healing process of nature, by which this soft
plastic material is sent oozing out in every direction with the idea
that it may find the crack and then set hard and stop it up. Wild
speculation no doubt, but the guess must always precede the proof.
The Australians are really a very good-natured people. It runs through
the whole race, high and low. A very exalted person, the Minister of
War, shares our flat in the hotel, his bedroom being imbedded among our
rooms. This is General Sir Granville Ryrie, a famous hero of Palestine,
covered with wounds and medals--a man, too, of great dignity of bearing.
As I was dressing one morning I heard some rather monotonous whistling
and, forgetting the very existence of the General, and taking it for
granted that it was my eldest boy Denis, I put my head out and said,
"Look here, old chap, consider other people's nerves and give up that
rotten habit of whistling before breakfast." Imagine my feelings when
the deep voice of the General answered, "All right, Sir Arthur, I will!"
We laughed together over the incident afterwards, and I told him that he
had furnished me with one more example of Australian good humour for my
notes.
On October 13th I was at the prosperous 50,000 population town of
Bendigo, which every one, except the people on the spot, believes to
have been named after the famous boxer. This must surely be a world
record, for so far as my memory serves, neither a Grecian Olympic
athletic, nor a Roman Gladiator, nor a Byzantine Charioteer, has ever
had a city for a monument. Borrow, who looked upon a good honest
pugilist as the pick of humanity, must have rejoiced in it. Is not
valour the basis of all character, and where shall we find greater
valour than theirs? Alas, that most of them began and ended there! It is
when the sage and the saint build on the basis of the fighter that you
have the highest to which humanity can attain.
I had a full hall at Bendigo, and it was packed, I am told, by real
old-time miners, for, of course, Bendigo is still the centre of the gold
mining industry. Mr. Smythe told me that it was quite a sight to see
those rows of deeply-lined, bearded faces listening so intently to what
I said of that destiny which is theirs as well as mine. I never had a
better audience, and it was their sympathy which helped me through, for
I was very weary that night. But however weary you may be, when you
climb upon the platform to talk about this subject, you may be certain
that you will be less weary when you come off. That is my settled
conviction after a hundred trials.
On the morning after my lecture I found myself half a mile nearer to
dear Old England, for I descended the Unity mine, and they say that the
workings extend to that depth. Perhaps I was not at the lowest level,
but certainly it was a long journey in the cage, and reminded me of my
friend Bang's description of the New York elevator, when he said that
the distance to his suburban villa and his town flat was the same, but
the one was horizontal and the other perpendicular.
It was a weird experience that peep into the profound depths of the
great gold mine. Time was when the quartz veins were on the surface for
the poor adventurer to handle. Now they have been followed underground,
and only great companies and costly machinery can win it. Always it is
the same white quartz vein with the little yellow specks and threads
running through it. We were rattled down in pitch darkness until we came
to a stop at the end of a long passage dimly lit by an occasional
guttering candle. Carrying our own candles, and clad in miner's costume
we crept along with bent heads until we came suddenly out into a huge
circular hall which might have sprung from Dore's imagination. The
place was draped with heavy black shadows, but every here and there was
a dim light. Each light showed where a man was squatting toad-like, a
heap of broken debris in front of him, turning it over, and throwing
aside the pieces with clear traces of gold. These were kept for special
treatment, while the rest of the quartz was passed in ordinary course
through the mill. These scattered heaps represented the broken stuff
after a charge of dynamite had been exploded in the quartz vein. It was
strange indeed to see these squatting figures deep in the bowels of the
earth, their candles shining upon their earnest faces and piercing eyes,
and to reflect that they were striving that the great exchanges of
London and New York might be able to balance with bullion their output
of paper. This dim troglodyte industry was in truth the centre and
mainspring of all industries, without which trade would stop. Many of
the men were from Cornwall, the troll among the nations, where the tools
of the miner are still, as for two thousand years, the natural heritage
of the man. Dr. Stillwell, the geologist of the company, and I had a
long discussion as to where the gold came from, but the only possible
conclusion was that nobody knew. We know now that the old alchemists
were perfectly right and that one metal may change into another. Is it
possible that under some conditions a mineral may change into a metal?
Why should quartz always be the matrix? Some geological Darwin will come
along some day and we shall get a great awakening, for at present we
are only disguising our own ignorance in this department of knowledge. I
had always understood that quartz was one of the old igneous primeval
rocks, and yet here I saw it in thin bands, sandwiched in between clays
and slates and other water-borne deposits. The books and the strata
don't agree.
These smaller towns, like the Metropolis itself, are convulsed with the
great controversy between Prohibition and Continuance, no reasonable
compromise between the two being suggested. Every wall displays posters,
on one side those very prosperous-looking children who demand that some
restraint be placed upon their daddy, and on the other hair-raising
statements as to the financial results of restricting the publicans. To
the great disgust of every decent man they have run the Prince into it,
and some remark of his after his return to England has been used by the
liquor party. It is dangerous for royalty to be jocose in these days,
but this was a particularly cruel example of the exploitation of a
harmless little joke. If others felt as I did I expect it cost the
liquor interest many a vote.
We had another seance, this time with Mrs. Knight MacLellan, after my
return from Bendigo. She is a lady who has grown grey in the service of
the cult, and who made a name in London when she was still a child by
her mediumistic powers. We had nothing of an evidential character that
evening save that one lady who had recently lost her son had his
description and an apposite message given. It was the first of several
tests which we were able to give this lady, and before we left Melbourne
she assured us that she was a changed woman and her sorrow for ever
gone.
On October 18th began a very delightful experience, for my wife and I,
leaving our party safe in Melbourne, travelled up country to be the
guests of the Hon. Agar Wynne and his charming wife at their station of
Nerrin-Nerrin in Western Victoria. It is about 140 miles from Melbourne,
and as the trains are very slow, the journey was not a pleasant one. But
that was soon compensated for in the warmth of the welcome which awaited
us. Mr. Agar Wynne was Postmaster-General of the Federal Government, and
author of several improvements, one of which, the power of sending long
letter-telegrams at low rates during certain hours was a triumph of
common sense. For a shilling one could send quite a long communication
to the other end of the Continent, but it must go through at the time
when the telegraph clerk had nothing else to do.
It was interesting to us to find ourselves upon an old-established
station, typical of the real life of Australia, for cities are much the
same the world over. Nerrin had been a sheep station for eighty years,
but the comfortable verandahed bungalow house, with every convenience
within it, was comparatively modern. What charmed us most, apart from
the kindness of our hosts, was a huge marsh or lagoon which extended for
many miles immediately behind the house, and which was a bird
sanctuary, so that it was crowded with ibises, wild black swans, geese,
ducks, herons and all sorts of fowl. We crept out of our bedroom in the
dead of the night and stood under the cloud-swept moon listening to the
chorus of screams, hoots, croaks and whistles coming out of the vast
expanse of reeds. It would make a most wonderful hunting ground for a
naturalist who was content to observe and not to slay. The great morass
of Nerrin will ever stand out in our memories.
Next day we were driven round the borders of this wonderful marsh, Mr.
Wynne, after the Australian fashion, taking no note of roads, and going
right across country with alarming results to anyone not used to it.
Finally, the swaying and rolling became so terrific that he was himself
thrown off the box seat and fell down between the buggy and the front
wheel, narrowly escaping a very serious accident. He was able to show us
the nests and eggs which filled the reed-beds, and even offered to drive
us out into the morass to inspect them, a proposal which was rejected by
the unanimous vote of a full buggy. I never knew an answer more
decidedly in the negative. As we drove home we passed a great gum tree,
and half-way up the trunk was a deep incision where the bark had been
stripped in an oval shape some four foot by two. It was where some
savage in days of old had cut his shield. Such a mark outside a modern
house with every amenity of cultured life is an object lesson of how two
systems have over-lapped, and how short a time it is since this great
continent was washed by a receding wave, ere the great Anglo-Saxon tide
came creeping forward.
Apart from the constant charm of the wild life of the marsh there did
not seem to be much for the naturalist around Nerrin. Opossums bounded
upon the roof at night and snakes were not uncommon. A dangerous
tiger-snake was killed on the day of our arrival. I was amazed also at
the size of the Australian eels. A returned soldier had taken up fishing
as a trade, renting a water for a certain time and putting the contents,
so far as he could realise them, upon the market. It struck me that
after this wily digger had passed that way there would not be much for
the sportsman who followed him. But the eels were enormous. He took a
dozen at a time from his cunning eel-pots, and not one under six pounds.
I should have said that they were certainly congers had I seen them in
England.
I wonder whether all this part of the country has not been swept by a
tidal wave at some not very remote period. It is a low coastline with
this great lava plain as a hinterland, and I can see nothing to prevent
a big wave even now from sweeping the civilisation of Victoria off the
planet, should there be any really great disturbance under the Pacific.
At any rate, it is my impression that it has actually occurred once
already, for I cannot otherwise understand the existence of great
shallow lakes of salt water in these inland parts. Are they not the
pools left behind by that terrible tide? There are great banks of sand,
too, here and there on the top of the lava which I can in no way
account for unless they were swept here in some tremendous world-shaking
catastrophe which took the beach from St. Kilda and threw it up at
Nerrin. God save Australia from such a night as that must have been if
my reading of the signs be correct.
Illustration: A TYPICAL AUSTRALIAN BACK-COUNTRY SCENE. By H. J.
Johnstone, a great painter who died unknown. (Painting in Adelaide
National Gallery.)
One of the sights of Nerrin is the shearing of the sheep by electric
machinery. These sheep are merinos, which have been bred as
wool-producers to such an extent that they can hardly see, and the wool
grows thick right down to their hoofs. The large stately creature is a
poor little shadow when his wonderful fleece has been taken from him.
The electric clips with which the operation is performed, are, I am
told, the invention of a brother of Garnet Wolseley, who worked away at
the idea, earning the name of being a half-crazy crank, until at last
the invention materialised and did away with the whole slow and clumsy
process of the hand-shearer. It is not, however, a pleasant process to
watch even for a man, far less a sensitive woman, for the poor creatures
get cut about a good deal in the process. The shearer seizes a sheep,
fixes him head up between his knees, and then plunges the swiftly-moving
clippers into the thick wool which covers the stomach. With wonderful
speed he runs it along and the creature is turned out of its covering,
and left as bare as a turkey in a poulterer's window, but, alas, its
white and tender skin is too often gashed and ripped with vivid lines of
crimson by the haste and clumsiness of the shearer. It was worse, they
say, in the days of the hand-shearer. I am bound to say, however, that
the creature makes no fuss about it, remains perfectly still, and does
not appear to suffer any pain. Nature is often kinder than we know, even
to her most humble children, and some soothing and healing process seems
to be at work.
The shearers appear to be a rough set of men, and spend their whole time
moving in gangs from station to station, beginning up in the far north
and winding up on the plains of South Australia. They are complete
masters of the situation, having a powerful union at their back. They
not only demand and receive some two pounds a day in wages, but they
work or not by vote, the majority being able to grant a complete
holiday. It is impossible to clip a wet sheep, so that after rain there
is an interval of forced idleness, which may be prolonged by the vote of
the men. They work very rapidly, however, when they are actually at it,
and the man who tallies most fleeces, called "the ringer," receives a
substantial bonus. When the great shed is in full activity it is a
splendid sight with the row of stooping figures, each embracing his
sheep, the buzz of the shears, the rush of the messengers who carry the
clip to the table, the swift movements of the sorters who separate the
perfect from the imperfect wool, and the levering and straining of the
packers who compress it all into square bundles as hard as iron with 240
pounds in each. With fine wool at the present price of ninety-six pence
a pound it is clear that each of these cubes stands for nearly a hundred
pounds.
They are rich men these sheep owners--and I am speaking here of my
general inquiry and not at all of Nerrin. On a rough average, with many
local exceptions, one may say that an estate bears one sheep to an acre,
and that the sheep may show a clear profit of one pound in the year.
Thus, after the first initial expense is passed, and when the flock has
reached its full, one may easily make an assessment of the owner's
income. Estates of 10,000 acres are common, and they run up to 50,000
and 60,000 acres. They can be run so cheaply that the greater part of
income is clear profit, for when the land is barb-wired into great
enclosures no shepherds are needed, and only a boundary rider or two to
see that all is in order. These, with a few hands at lambing time, and
two or three odd-job men at the central station, make up the whole
staff. It is certainly the short cut to a fortune if one can only get
the plant running.
Can a man with a moderate capital get a share of these good things?
Certainly he can if he have grit and a reasonable share of that luck
which must always be a factor in Nature's processes. Droughts, floods,
cyclones, etc., are like the zero at Monte Carlo, which always may turn
up to defeat the struggling gamester. I followed several cases where
small men had managed to make good. It is reckoned that the man who gets
a holding of from 300 to 500 acres is able on an average in three years
to pay off all his initial expenses and to have laid the foundations of
a career which may lead to fortune. One case was a London baker who knew
nothing of the work. He had 300 acres and had laid it out in wheat,
cows, sheep and mixed farming. He worked from morning to night, his wife
was up at four, and his child of ten was picking up stones behind the
furrow. But he was already making his L500 a year. The personal equation
was everything. One demobilised soldier was doing well. Another had come
to smash. Very often a deal is made between the small man and the large
holder, by which the latter lets the former a corner of his estate,
taking a share, say one-third, of his profits as rent. That is a plan
which suits everyone, and the landlord can gradually be bought out by
the "cockatoo farmer," as he is styled.
There is a great wool-clip this year, and prices in London are at record
figures, so that Australia, which only retains 17 per cent. of her own
wool, should have a very large sum to her credit. But she needs it. When
one considers that the debt of this small community is heavier now than
that of Great Britain before the war, one wonders how she can ever win
through. But how can anyone win through? I don't think we have fairly
realised the financial problem yet, and I believe that within a very few
years there will be an International Council which will be compelled to
adopt some such scheme as the one put forward by my friend, Mr.
Stilwell, under the name of "The Great Plan." This excellent idea was
that every nation should reduce its warlike expenditure to an absolute
minimum, that the difference between this minimum and the 1914 pre-war
standard should be paid every year to a central fund, and that
international bonds be now drawn upon the security of that fund,
anticipating not its present amount but what it will represent in fifty
years' time. It is, in fact, making the future help the present, exactly
as an estate which has some sudden great call upon it might reasonably
anticipate or mortgage its own development. I believe that the salvation
of the world may depend upon some such plan, and that the Council of the
League of Nations is the agency by which it could be made operative.
Australia has had two plants which have been a perfect curse to her as
covering the land and offering every impediment to agriculture. They are
the Spinnifex in the West and the Mallee scrub in the East. The latter
was considered a hopeless proposition, and the only good which could be
extracted from it was that the root made an ideal fire, smouldering long
and retaining heat. Suddenly, however, a genius named Lascelles
discovered that this hopeless Mallee land was simply unrivalled for
wheat, and his schemes have now brought seven million acres under the
plough. This could hardly have been done if another genius, unnamed, had
not invented a peculiar and ingenious plough, the "stump-jump plough,"
which can get round obstacles without breaking itself. It is not
generally known that Australia really heads the world for the ingenuity
and efficiency of her agricultural machinery. There is an inventor and
manufacturer, MacKay, of Sunshine, who represents the last word in
automatic reapers, etc. He exports them, a shipload at a time, to the
United States, which, if one considers the tariff which they have to
surmount, is proof in itself of the supremacy of the article. With this
wealth of machinery the real power of Australia in the world is greater
than her population would indicate, for a five-million nation, which, by
artificial aid, does the work normally done by ten million people,
becomes a ten-million nation so far as economic and financial strength
is concerned.
On the other hand, Australia has her hindrances as well as her helps.
Certainly the rabbits have done her no good, though the evil is for the
moment under control. An efficient rabbiter gets a pound a day, and he
is a wise insurance upon any estate, for the creatures, if they get the
upper-hand, can do thousands of pounds' worth of damage. This damage
takes two shapes. First, they eat on all the grass and leave nothing at
all for the sheep. Secondly, they burrow under walls, etc., and leave
the whole place an untidy ruin. Little did the man who introduced the
creature into Australia dream how the imprecations of a continent would
descend upon him.
Alas! that we could not linger at Nerrin; but duty was calling at
Melbourne. Besides, the days of the Melbourne Cup were at hand, and not
only was Mr. Wynne a great pillar of the turf, but Mr. Osborne, owner of
one of the most likely horses in the race, was one of the house-party.
To Melbourne therefore we went. We shall always, however, be able in our
dreams to revisit that broad verandah, the low hospitable facade, the
lovely lawn with its profusion of scented shrubs, the grove of towering
gum trees, where the opossums lurked, and above all the great marsh
where with dark clouds drifting across the moon we had stolen out at
night to hear the crying of innumerable birds. That to us will always be
the real Australia.