Beyond the hills, which we see in the background, is the steep
descent to the Hunter valley and the coastal plain. The hills
are wooded, but the trees thin out and the ground becomes more
open as we go westward down the long slope. We must not forget
that here at the back of the plateau edge, though we are on the
“Plains,” yet we are still more than a thousand feet above
the level of the sea. We shall realise the importance of this
height later. Our next picture shows a wide expanse of level 24
ground, under grain, with the reapers at work. We are at Tamworth
on the Liverpool Plains, not far from the northern end of the
wheat-belt; but this belt can be traced from Queensland right
round to South Australia, and from end to end the scenery is
the same. There are the same open sunny plains, dotted with
homesteads and small agricultural towns, and covered with the
waving grain. Everywhere is the hum of machinery, reaping,
binding, and threshing; for labour here is costly and as little
as possible is done by hand. We may find it hard to tell, from
the appearance of the country, where we are within a thousand
miles, and we may be struck by the monotony of the view as we
rush through it. None the less this great field of grain is
impressive in its own fashion, if we use our imagination and
follow the heavily loaded waggons to the station, and on to
Sydney, and so across the ocean to London or Liverpool, until
the grain appears as bread in the baker’s shop. We are watching
here the beginning of the process by which the crowded millions
of Industrial Europe are fed; and the wide spaces under crop may
give us some idea of the greatness of the business; for we have
in the wheat-belt of Australia, in spite of its great extent,
only a small fraction of the wheatfields of the world.
A rainfall map is the best aid to the understanding of the
position and extent of the wheat area. The map is arranged in a 25
series of parallel zones, which show the annual fall decreasing
rapidly on the west side of the Divide, as we move further away
from the coast. We are crossing one of these zones where the fall
is from twenty to twenty-five inches, or not far removed from
that of the eastern counties of England. This is the wheat-belt
of Eastern Australia, which follows the rainfall right round the
inner slope of the plateau as far as South Australia.
This zone gradually shades off into another rather broader where
the rainfall is much lower; from ten to twenty inches at most.
So the scenery changes as we travel westward until we are lost
in the country of the western plains: a great dry lowland not
far above sea-level, and drained by slow-moving rivers, the
Lachlan, Darling, Murray and their tributaries. The railway runs
north-westward, through interminable miles of grass and scrub,
until it ends at Bourke, the head of navigation on the Darling.
It is the land of the sheep and nothing else. We may gain some
idea of the enormous extent of land in this part of Australia,
available for pasture or agriculture in some form, by placing
upon it for comparison the eastern part of the United States, as
in the map which we see here. 26
New South Wales possesses nearly as many sheep as the rest of
Australia together, and most of these are to be found on the
inland slope of the plateau and far out into the plains, more
especially in the Riverina district, between the Murray and the
Murrumbidgee. We have left behind us the wheatfield and the
reapers; the loaded waggons which we pass, drawn by long teams of 27
horses, are carrying great bales of wool to the railway. We may
follow the wool back to the shearing sheds where again all the 28
work is done by machinery; then we go on to the sorting shed, and
so to the railway and the showrooms at Sydney, where thousands
of samples are displayed for the benefit of the buyers for the 29
markets of Europe. We can see the great flocks of sheep before
and after the shearing at the homestead or follow them as they 30
are driven to pasture; and everywhere in this great river plain
we find the same thing repeated. The rainfall is not sufficient
for agriculture; but in ordinary years it will provide good grass
for the sheep; and there is also the drought-resisting salt-bush
to eke it out. Sometimes the rain fails, and then there is
neither food on the ground nor water in the creeks and pools, and
millions of sheep die, as in the great drought of 1901-2. The dry
climate gives the best wool in the world, but it is not without
its drawbacks; though the large profits made by the farmer in
ordinary years more than compensate for an occasional period of
drought.
The uncertainty of the rainfall shows itself in another way,
in the peculiarities of the rivers. Of all the great rivers in
this basin, the Murray alone, fed by the melting snows of the
Australian Alps, has a good supply of water at all seasons; the
rest are variable. The Darling, Lachlan and Murrumbidgee are
navigable for long distances in favourable seasons, and sometimes
are flooded and overflow their banks, turning the surrounding
country into a huge shallow lake; but at other times they become,
in places, little more than strings of detached pools. Here is a 31
lagoon on the Murrumbidgee, and here is the Murray evidently in 32
flood, to judge from the trees growing out of the water; another
view shows us the river in its ordinary state. By way of contrast 33
here is a small creek in the Riverina district; the road crosses
it by a ford, so that it is evidently not very deep, and would 34
soon dry up. But after heavy rains, further up-country, the creek
may become for a short time a roaring torrent. Settlers new to
the country have often made the mistake of camping in the evening
on the near side of a creek of this kind, only to find in the
morning that the ford has vanished and that they must stay where
they are until the water subsides. One of the most remarkable
features in Australian weather is this sudden change from drought
to flood, which not only transforms the rivers but in a few days
gives a covering of rich green pasture where before was a parched
desert supporting only the hardy salt-bush.
When the rivers are full we can see the shallow draught steamers
collecting wool and other products; but the want of water is 35
not the only drawback. The rivers wind greatly in their courses
over the level plain, so much so that at one place it is said
that the steamer takes a whole day to pass a particular house,
owing to the river bending right back upon itself. The river
banks are marked by lines of gum trees, by which the eye can
trace them for many miles across the level. Except for this, the
whole area crossed by these rivers in their lower courses is one
vast treeless plain, covered with grass and scrub in the rains,
but at other times dry, dusty, and monotonous. It extends into
Queensland and Victoria, but its greatest development is in New
South Wales: for though the other colonies have large flocks of
sheep, it is here that sheep-raising is the one industry above
all others; in fact, under ordinary conditions, no others are
profitable or even possible. In this country, next to the sheep,
water is the most valuable commodity.
The greater part of the Murray-Darling basin is filled up by
recent rock sediment and river alluvium; but the narrow belt of
country with a moderate rainfall, lying between the plateau edge
and the western plains, has not depended for its development
solely on agriculture. All along it the older rocks crop out,
and in the older rocks we find the valuable minerals in which
Australia abounds.
Gold, in its alluvial form, occurs all along the agricultural
belt; and since the time of the first discovery near Bathurst, in
1851, the search for gold has often caused an inrush of people
who have abandoned mining for the more secure and pleasant
business of growing wheat or rearing sheep. Though much gold is
still produced, New South Wales is not by any means the chief of
the States to-day in this respect; but gold has been woven deeply
into her history. One of the most usual methods of obtaining
gold is still by dredging alluvium; but in place of the shovel
and washing-pan we have the ugly machine dredger scooping out
the creeks and flats where the gold is to be found. We must look
elsewhere for gold-mining from the rock on a large scale; though
this is increasing in New South Wales in connexion with the
development of mining for other minerals, especially copper.
Well out in the plains, and south of Bourke, at the end of a
branch line of railway, is the town of Cobar; it stands just
where the old rocks are disappearing underneath the recent
deposits. Here is one of the chief centres of copper mining;
and, once the work was started, mining for other ores naturally
followed. It is a desolate country, rendered more so by the
nature of the industry. The furnaces for the rough smelting of
the ores need fuel, but coal is far away; so that the country
round has been stripped of its small supply of timber, and has
nothing left to relieve its ugly monotony. The ore, partly
worked, is sent by rail all the way to Lithgow, on the coalfield,
to undergo the further process of refining. The importance of
these mining fields to the State lies not so much in the money
value of the products as in the fact that they give rise to
railways and traffic and so to a further spread of the settled
agricultural population. The minerals, and especially gold, have
played a great part in the settlement of the less accessible or
less attractive regions of Australia.
The old rocks, which disappear at Cobar, under the alluvium
of the Murray basin, crop out again at the surface in the far
west, and give us one of the chief silver-producing areas of the
Continent. The natural outlet of the district is by Spencer Gulf,
as Sydney is more than twice as far away; and the development
of these mines has been largely due to the people and capital
of South Australia. Here is one of the most famous mines at 36
Broken Hill; and here we have the camel team, the only means of 37
transport away from the railway. We are in the semi-desert area,
and the existence of the mining population is only made possible
by collecting the water from the neighbouring hills in great 38
reservoirs, such as we see in the picture before us.
We have still to see the south-east corner of the State, where
we shall find some of the most picturesque scenery and a country
rather different from that which we have so far visited. We
take a line running south from Sydney, not along the coast, but
following the river valleys and so up again on to the plateau
at Goulburn. Here we branch off from the main line southwards
through the Monaro Plains; this is a high pasture land, thinly
populated, though there is a growing agricultural industry
in some of the more favoured spots. To the east of the plain
are the Coast Ranges, to the west the Snowy Mountains; both
extending over the border into Victoria. Cooma, the terminus of
the railway, about fifty miles from the State boundary, lies
nearly three thousand feet above sea-level. North-west of Cooma
is the town of Kiandra, in the Alps, where we find snow and
winter sports as in Switzerland. South-west of Cooma is Mount
Kosciusko, rising over seven thousand feet, the highest mountain
in Australia; here the snow lies even in summer. We reach it by 39
a road following the valley of the Snowy River, and can ride or 40
even motor up the track almost to the summit. Here are two views 41
of the river and its tributaries. Kosciusko is not an imposing
peak as we see from these pictures, but merely a flattened ridge 42
lying on the top of a great tableland, so perhaps we may be 43
somewhat disappointed in the outcome of our visit.
From Goulburn we begin the long descent to the level of the
Murray. We are again crossing the agricultural belt, and forty
miles west of Goulburn we break our journey at Yass. Here, on
the banks of a small stream, the site has been fixed for the
ideal city, the future capital of Federal Australia. Notice that
we can have here no great industrial and commercial centre, but
merely a town like Bathurst, a centre of farming and country
life. Perhaps in this it will be more representative of the
real Australia than are the larger cities. In position Yass is
nearer Sydney than Melbourne; but it is roughly halfway between
Brisbane and Adelaide; so that it is fairly central for the long
belt which contains most of the population of Eastern Australia.
The city is not to be allowed to grow haphazard; here we see 44
the surveyors’ camp and the surveyors at work, mapping out the 45
ground. In the distance is Black Mountain. The whole scene is
quiet and rural, but it will be very different in a few years’ 46
time. This deliberate choosing of a site for a new city is common
in Australian history; we may contrast with this the way in which
centres of population have grown up in the course of ages in old
countries almost of their own accord.
We continue our journey down the slope, and crossing the
Murrumbidgee at Wagga Wagga reach Albury, the border town. Here,
it is necessary to change trains to continue the journey to
Melbourne, for unfortunately the different States of Australia
did not plan their railways on the same scale. In New South
Wales the gauge of the lines is the same as that in England; in
Victoria and in part of South Australia there is a broad gauge;
while all the other railways in the continent are on a narrow
gauge of three feet six inches. This has been adopted as the most
economical for opening up a new country; but the differences have
led to great inconvenience and loss, where through connexion is
made between the main railway systems of the various States. We
may remember how, in our own country, the Great Western Railway
was forced to abandon the old and comfortable broad gauge, so as
to be able to work in connexion with all the other lines which
had adopted a narrower gauge; Australia has still to face the
problem of unifying her railways in this respect.
We have travelled for many miles over the railways, and now (13)
perhaps we may begin to notice certain peculiarities in their
arrangement. First there is the main-line system connecting up
the capitals. This runs north-east and south-west from Sydney,
roughly parallel to the coast. Only a short stretch of this is
on the low coastal plain; the rest is inside the plateau edge.
The line descends through the Victorian Mountains to the sea
at Melbourne; but goes inland again on its way to Adelaide.
Branching from this system, or starting independently from the
coast, is a whole series of lines running inland, roughly at
right-angles to the coast. Some are very short, some very long;
and they commonly end at a small town on one of the rivers. We
can trace them right round from the line between Normanton and
Croydon, in North-West Queensland, to that ending at Oodnadatta
in the desert region of South Australia. Except round Bathurst,
and in the country at the back of Melbourne, we shall not find
many branches or cross connexions. This curious arrangement can
only be understood in the light of the resources and historical
development of the country; we have already seen something of its
meaning in New South Wales.
We noticed that the line from Sydney left the sea at Newcastle
to follow the valley of the Hunter and scale the edge of the
Liverpool Downs. For two hundred miles north of Newcastle the
coast district lacks a railway; but in Clarence county, in the
extreme north of the State, there is a detached piece of line
running for a hundred miles not far from the coast, and touching
it at one or two points. This line has a meaning.
[Illustration:
_Copyright._) (_See page 40._
ON THE DARLING DOWNS.]
[Illustration:
_Copyright._) (_See page 41._
GLADSTONE.]
[Illustration:
_Copyright._) (_See page 43._
TOWNSVILLE.]
[Illustration:
_Copyright._) (_See page 46._
ABOVE THE BARRON FALLS.]
The district is warm, as it is low-lying, and not very far
from the tropic; while the south-east winds bring abundant rains.
It has been found to be well fitted for dairy cattle, and is
displacing to some extent the coast district south of Sydney
where the industry first started. Sydney still provides a good
local market for the dairy products of this northern region, but
there is also a growing trade with more distant places. We can
understand now the need of a railway to open up the country and
connect it with the sea.
Here is a typical dairy farm with the cattle clustered in the 47
shade on the banks of the creek. We notice the abundance of
trees, and the curious dead bare look of some of them. These have
been ringbarked, that is, a strip of bark has been cut away right
round the trunk; this process kills the tree quickly, and the
dead wood can then be burnt off. It is a rough and extravagant
method of clearing, and some of the forest, which grows
luxuriantly in this rainy district, is put to better use. In the
wetter parts are to be found the cedar and other soft ornamental
woods; in the drier, are the various hard woods of the eucalyptus
family, especially the ironbark and the blackbutt. It was the
timber which attracted the first settlers to this district, 48
though the difficulty of transport has prevented them from making
much use of it up to the present. Here we see the felled timber
lying ready for removal; it must be dragged over rough tracks, 49
often for long distances, by teams of horses and bullocks. We
can gain some idea, from these pictures, of the huge size of the
trees and the difficulty of forest development. Evidently the
forest further inland can only be attacked by the aid of the
railway. We shall find similar conditions in Queensland; in fact,
we may look on this coast strip as giving us geographically the
beginning of the Queensland coast conditions; for round Grafton,
at the southern end of the railway, we find the cultivation of
the sugar-cane.
We have seen the beginning of the new capital of Federated
Australia; we will now, before visiting Queensland, cross Torres
Strait, with its innumerable islands and reefs, for a glimpse of
Australia’s new tropical colony. British New Guinea, or Papua
as it is now officially styled, was annexed in 1888, owing to
pressure from the Australian colonies, and more particularly
Queensland. From the first, Queensland, New South Wales and
Victoria contributed to the cost of administration; and in 1906
the new Commonwealth Government took over the entire control.
British Papua is a curiously shaped corner, carved out of the 50
eastern end of the great island of New Guinea. The western end of
the island is entirely Dutch; the eastern we share with Germany.
We may think of British Papua as two separate blocks, as the Gulf
of Papua almost divides the territory into two. In the west is a
rectangular area, with a low marshy coast, fringed with mangroves
and split up by river deltas, especially that of the Fish River.
The dividing line in this district between British and Dutch
territory is merely a line of longitude. The country is mostly
unexplored, except along the Fish and Strickland Rivers, and the
natives are still fighters and cannibals. On the north of this
block of country, and continuing south-east through a long narrow
peninsula, is a high mountain backbone, on the other side of
which is German territory. The eastern peninsula is mountainous
everywhere; while the whole country is wet, densely forested
and difficult to penetrate. The peninsula ends in a string of
islands, mostly volcanic.
The colony is in the first stage of organisation, when the main
problem is to reduce the native to some kind of order. Let us see 51
what he is like and how he lives. Here are two inhabitants of
the coast district; they seem very different from the aborigines
of Australia. Notice their frizzy hair, standing out in a great
mop, and their bracelets and necklaces. The Papuans are fond of
personal adornment. Here is a girl from the same district; she 52
wears an elaborate girdle of grass. Behind her we see the end
of a curious canoe, with an outrigger. The canoe is important
to the Papuan, since he commonly plants his village at the
water’s edge. Here is a village, and here is a nearer view of 53
some of the houses; they are merely covered platforms, built 54
on piles. Fighting and headhunting are still the amusements of
the tribes which are not yet brought under our control, but
conditions are changing rapidly for the better. Here is one of 55
the instruments of the change, the native village constable,
who seems quite proud of his office. Behind him, law and order 56
are represented by the visiting magistrate with a small force
of armed constabulary. The chief difficulty in opening up the
country is that of movement. Everywhere we find forest, mountain,
and unbridged streams. Here is the kind of track through which 57
the explorer must force his way, and here we see two methods of 58
crossing a stream. The native bridge hardly seems calculated for
heavy traffic. We may realise from these pictures the nature of 59
the task of controlling the natives of the interior, such as
the formidable pair in front of us. Even when reduced to order 60
the Papuan is not anxious to develop the country by work on
plantation or mine.
Port Moresby, the capital, stands on a fine bay in a relatively
dry district. Here a few score white people represent the
influence of civilisation. The climate forbids effective
settlement. Here we see a European house with its staff of 61
servants, and here is the steamer which links Papua with the 62
mainland. It will be interesting to see how Australia solves the
various problems of her new tropical Dependency. In Queensland we
shall find similar problems, though in a modified shape.
LECTURE III
QUEENSLAND
The land route from New South Wales to Queensland does not at
present follow the sea-coast. The railway at Newcastle turns up
the valley of the Hunter River, climbs the steep edge of the
plateau, to run along the eastern rim of the Liverpool Plains
and the Darling Downs, and then descends again by a steep pass
to the sea-level at Brisbane. At the little frontier station of
Wallangarra we must change trains, since the Queensland railways, 1
as we have already noticed, are on a narrower gauge than those of
New South Wales. This would be a very serious matter but for the
alternative route by sea to Sydney; this is the natural route for
heavy goods, since nearly all the important towns of Queensland
are on or near the sea-coast. Before the advent of the railway,
the sea was the sole means of intercourse for all the towns on
the eastern rim of Australia; even in our own country, where the
railway system is highly developed, the coasting trade is still
of very great importance.
[Illustration: QUEENSLAND: OROGRAPHICAL.
_By permission of the Diagram Co._]
The course of the railway suggests that the structure of the
country is not unlike that which we have seen in New South Wales. 2
This is true of the Darling Downs area, but further north the
map shows us a somewhat different type of country. The eastern
part of the State consists in the main of a broken and irregular
highland mass; the west of rolling plains, sloping gently towards
the interior or the Gulf of Carpentaria; but we look in vain
for a long, well-marked escarpment, such as we find further
south. The mountain ridges seem to run in every direction,
sometimes, as near Cairns, forming a definite coast-range, at
others striking inland or running down in spurs to the sea; so
that the country is split up into a number of distinct basins,
each with its own group of rivers flowing in the most diverse
courses. Thus, from Cairns to Brisbane a great stretch of
country, broadest in the middle, narrow at both ends, drains
into the Pacific; but the Burdekin and the headwaters of the
Fitzroy flow for long distances parallel to the coast, before
turning and breaking through the ranges to the sea. Another
group in the south joins the Murray-Darling system and belongs
physically to New South Wales; the rivers of the north-west and
of the Cape York peninsula drain for the most part into the Gulf
of Carpentaria, while a large block of country in the west and
south-west is occupied by intermittent streams, which in time of
flood find their way into the inland basin of Lake Eyre, in South
Australia. The country has not that simplicity of relief which we
found over the greater part of New South Wales, and, as we might
expect, the rainfall does not show such clear and symmetrical
divisions. The fall from the south-east winds is more irregular 3
and more widely distributed inland than in New South Wales; while
in the north there is an area with tropical rains of a monsoon
type.
[Illustration: QUEENSLAND: RAINFALL.]