THE AUSTRALIAN BUSH
An introduction to an Australian home--Off to a picnic--The
wattle, the gum, the waratah--The joys of the forest.
The Australian child wakens very often to the fact that "to-day is a
holiday." The people of the sunny southern continent work very hard
indeed, but they know that "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy";
and Jill a dull girl too. So they have very frequent holidays--far more
frequent than in Great Britain. The Australian child, rising on a
holiday morning, and finding it fine and bright--very rarely is he
disappointed in the weather of his sunny climate--gives a whoop of joy
as he remembers that he is going on a picnic into the forest, or the
"Bush," as it is called invariably in Australia. The whoop is, perhaps,
more joyful than it is musical. The Australian youngster is not trained,
as a rule, to have the nice soft voice of the English child. Besides,
the dry, invigorating climate gives his throat a strength which simply
must find expression in loud noise.
Let us follow the Australian child on his picnic and see something of
the Australian Bush, also of an Australian home.
Suppose him starting from Wahroonga, a pretty suburb about ten miles
from Sydney, the biggest city of Australia. Jim lives there with his
brothers and sisters and parents in a little villa of about nine rooms,
and four deep shady verandas, one for each side of the house. On these
verandas in summer the family will spend most of the time. Meals will be
served there, reading, writing, sewing done there; in many households
the family will also sleep there, the little couches being protected by
nets to keep off mosquitoes which may be hovering about in thousands.
And in the morning, as the sun peeps through the bare beautiful trunks
of the white gums, the magpies will begin to carol and the kookaburras
to laugh, and the family will wake to a freshness which is divine.
Around the house are lawns, of coarser grass than that of England, but
still looking smooth and green, and many flower-beds in which all the
flowers of earth seem to bloom. There are roses in endless
variety--Jim's mother boasts that she has sixty-five different
sorts--and some of them are blooming all the year round, so mild is the
climate. Phlox, verbenas, bouvardias, pelargoniums, geraniums, grow side
by side with such tropical plants as gardenias, tuberoses, hibisci,
jacarandas, magnolias. In season there are daffodils, and snowdrops, and
narcissi, and dahlias, and chrysanthemums. Recall all the flowers of
England; add to them the flowers of Southern Italy and many from India,
from Mexico, from China, from the Pacific Islands, and you have an idea
of the fine garden Jim enjoys.
[Illustration: A HUT IN THE BUSH. PAGE 63.]
Beyond the garden is a tennis-court, and around its high wire fences are
trained grape-vines of different kinds, muscatels and black amber and
shiraz, and lady's-fingers, which yield splendidly without any shelter
or artificial heat. On the other side of the house is a little orchard,
not much more than an acre, where, all in the open air, grow melons,
oranges, lemons, persimmons (or Japanese plums), apples, pears, peaches,
apricots, custard-apples (a curious tropical fruit, which is soft inside
and tastes like a sweet custard), guavas (from which delicious jelly is
made), and also strawberries and raspberries.
The far corner is taken up with a paddock, for the horses are not kept
in a stable, night or day, except occasionally when a very wet, cold
night comes.
That is the surrounding of Jim's home. Inside the house there is to-day
a great deal of bustle. Everybody is working--all the members of the
family as well as the two maid-servants, for in Australia it is the rule
to do things for yourself and not to rely too much on the labour of
servants (who are hard to get and to keep). Even baby pretends to help,
and has to be allowed to carry about a "billy" to give her the idea that
she is useful. This "billy" is a tin pot in which, later on, water will
be boiled over a little fire in the forest, and tea made. Food is packed
up--perhaps cold meats, perhaps chops or steaks which will be grilled in
the bush-fire. Always there are salads, cold fruit pies, home-made
cakes, fruit; possibly wine for the elders. But tea is never forgotten.
It would not be a picnic without tea.
Now a drag is driven around to the front gate by the one man-servant of
the house, who has harnessed up the horses and put food for them in the
drag. Some neighbours arrive; a picnic may be made up of just the
members of one family, but usually there is a mingling of families, and
that adds to the fun. The fathers of the families, as like as not, ride
saddle-horses and do not join the others in the drag; some of the elder
children, too, boys and girls, may ride their ponies, for in Australia
it is common for children to have ponies. The party starts with much
laughter, with inquiries as to the safety of the "billy" and the
whereabouts of the matches. It is a sad thing to go out in the Bush for
a picnic and find at the last moment that no one has any matches with
which to light a fire. The black fellows can start a flare by rubbing
two sticks together, but the white man has not mastered that art.
The picnic makes its way along a Bush road four or five miles through
pretty orchard country, given up mostly to growing peaches, grapes, and
oranges, the cultivated patches in their bright colours showing in vivid
contrast against the quiet grey-green of the gum-trees. It is spring,
and all the peach-trees are dressed in gay pink bloom, and belts of this
colour stretch into the forest for miles around.
The road leaves the cultivated area. The ground becomes rocky and
sterile. The gum-trees still grow sturdily, but there is no grass
beneath; instead a wild confusion of wiry heather-like brush, bearing
all sorts of curious flowers, white, pink, purple, blue, deep brown. One
flower called the flannel-daisy is like a great star, and its petals
seem to be cut of the softest white flannel. The boronia and the native
rose compel attention by their piercing, aromatic perfume, which is
strangely refreshing. The exhaling breath of the gum-trees, too, is keen
and exhilarating.
Now the path dips into a little hollow. What is that sudden blaze of
glowing yellow? It is a little clump of wattle-trees, about as big as
apple-trees, covered all over with soft flossy blossom of the brightest
yellow. I like to imagine that the wattle is just prisoned sunlight;
that one early morning the sun's rays came stealing over the hill to
kiss the wattle-trees while they seemed to sleep; but the trees were
really quite wide-awake, and stretched out their pretty arms and caught
the sunbeams and would never let them go; and now through the winter the
wattles hide the sun rays away in their roots, cuddling them softly; but
in spring they let them come out on the branches and play wild games in
the breeze, but will never let them escape.
Past the little wattle grove there is a hill covered with the white
gums. The young bark of these trees is of a pinky white, like the arms
of a baby-girl. As the season advances and the sun beats more and more
fiercely on the trees, the bark deepens in colour into red and brown,
and deep brown-pink. After that the bark dies (in Australia most of the
trees shed their bark and not their leaves), and as it dies strips off
and shows the new fair white bark underneath.
Our party has now come to a gully (ravine) which carries a little
fresh-water creek (stream) to an arm of the sea near by. This is the
camping-place. A nice soft bit of meadow will be found in the shade of
the hillside. The fresh-water stream will give water for the "billy" tea
and for the horses to drink. Down below a dear little beach, not more
than 100 yards long, but of the softest sand, will allow the youngsters
to paddle their feet, but they must not go in to swim, for fear of
sharks. The beach has on each side a rocky, steeply-shelving shore, and
on the rocks will be found any number of fine sweet oysters. Jim and his
mate Tom have brought oyster-knives, and are soon down on the shore, and
in a very short while bring, ready-opened, some dozens of oysters for
their mothers and fathers. The girls of the party are quite able to
forage oysters for themselves. Some of them do so; others wander up the
sides of the gully and collect wildflowers for the table, which will not
be a table at all, but just a cloth spread over the grass.
They come back with the news that they have seen waratahs growing. That
is exciting enough to take attention away even from the oysters, for the
waratah, the handsomest wildflower of the world, is becoming rare around
the cities. All the party follow the girl guides over a slope into
another gully. There has been a bush-fire in this gully. All the
undergrowth has been burned away, and the trunks of the trees badly
charred, but the trees have not been killed. The gum has a very thick
bark, purposely made to resist fire. This bark gets scorched in a
bush-fire, but unless the fire is a very fierce one indeed, the tree is
not vitally hurt. Around the blackened tree-trunks tongues of fire seem
to be still licking. At a height of about six feet from the ground,
those scarlet heart-shapes are surely flames? No, they are the waratahs,
which love to grow where there have been bush-fires. The waratah is of a
brilliant red colour, growing single and stately on a high stalk. Its
shape is of a heart; its size about that of a pear. The waratah is not
at all a dainty, fragile flower, but a solid mass of bloom like the
vegetable cauliflower; indeed, if you imagine a cauliflower of a vivid
red colour, about the size of a pear and the shape of a heart, growing
on a stalk six feet high, you will have some idea of the waratah.
Two of the flowers are picked--Tim's father will not allow more--and
they are brought to help the decoration of the picnic meal. Carried thus
over the shoulder of an eager, flushed child, the waratah suggests
another idea: it represents exactly the thyrsus of the Bacchanals of
ancient legends.
The picnickers find that their appetites have gained zest from the sweet
salty oysters. They are ready for lunch. A fire is started, with great
precaution that it does not spread; meat is roasted on spits (perhaps,
too, some fish got from the sea near by); and a hearty, jolly meal is
eaten. Perhaps it would be better to say devoured, for at a picnic there
is no nice etiquette of eating, and you may use your fingers quite
without shame as long as you are not "disgusting." The nearest sister to
Jim will tell him promptly if he became "disgusting," but I can't tell
you all the rules. It isn't "disgusting" to hold a chop in your fingers
as you eat it, or to stir your tea with a nice clean stick from a gum
tree. But it is "disgusting" to put your fingers on what anyone else
will have to eat, or to cut at the loaf of bread with a soiled knife. I
hope that you will get from this some idea of Australian picnic
etiquette. But you really cannot get any real idea of picnic fun until
you have taken your picnic meal out in the Australian Bush; no
description can do justice to that fun. The picnic habit is not one for
children only. The Jim whom we have followed will be still eager for a
picnic when he is the father of a big Jim of his own; that is, if he is
the right kind of a human being and keeps the Australian spirit.
After the midday meal, all sorts of games until the lengthening shadows
tell that homeward time comes near. Then the "billy" is boiled again
and tea made, the horses harnessed up and the picnickers turn back
towards civilization. The setting sun starts a beautiful game of shine
and shadow in among the trees of the gum forest; the aromatic
exhalations from the trees give the evening air a hint of balm and
spice; the people driving or riding grow a little pensive, for the spell
of the Australian forest, "tender, intimate, spiritual," is upon them.
But it is a pensiveness of pure, quiet joy, of those who have come near
to Nature and enjoyed the peace of her holy places.
* * * * *
I took you from near Sydney to see the Australian forest and to learn
something of its trees and flowers, because that part I know best, and
its beauties are the typical beauties of the Bush. Almost anywhere else
in the continent where settlement is, something of the same can be
enjoyed. A Hobart picnic-party would turn its face towards Mount
Wellington, and after passing over the foothills devoted to orchards,
scale the great gum-forested mountain, and thus have added to the
delights of the woods the beautiful landscape which the height affords.
From Melbourne a party would take train to Fern-tree Gully and picnic
among the giant eucalyptus there, or, without going so far afield, would
make for one of the beautiful Hobson's Bay beaches. Farther north than
Sydney, a note of tropical exuberance comes into the forest. You may see
a gully filled with cedars in sweet wealth of lavender-coloured
blossom; or with flame trees, great giants covered all over with a
curious flowerlike red coral.
But everywhere in Australia, the hot north and cool south, on the bleak
mountains and the sunny coasts, will be found the gum-tree. It is the
national tree of this curious continent, the oldest and the youngest of
the countries of the earth. Some find the gum-tree "dull," because it
has no flaring, flaunting brightness. But it is not dull to those who
have eyes to see. Its spiritual lightness of form, its quiet artistry of
colour, weave a spell around those who have any imagination. Australians
abroad, who _are_ Australians (there are some people who, though they
have lived in Australia--perhaps have been born there--are too coarse in
fibre to be ever really Australians), always welcome with gladness the
sight of a gum-tree; and Australians in London sometimes gather in some
friend's house for a burning of gum-leaves. In a brazier the aromatic
leaves are kindled, the thin, blue smoke curls up (gum-leaf smoke is
somehow different to any other sort of smoke), and the Australians think
tenderly of their far-away home.
[Illustration: SURF BATHING SHOOTING THE BREAKERS. PAGES 23 & 73.]
One may meet gum-trees in many parts of the world nowadays--in Africa,
in America, in Italy and other parts of Europe; for the gum-tree has the
quality of healing marshy soil and banishing malaria from the air. They
are, therefore, much planted for health's sake, and the wandering
Australian meets often his national tree.
A very potent medicine called eucalyptus oil is brewed from gum-leaves,
and a favourite Australian "house-wives'" remedy for rheumatism is a bed
stuffed with gum-leaves. So the gum-tree is useful as well as beautiful.