Adelaide, when we reached it, was like the rest of the Australian

continent, celebrating the declaration of war by a tremendous outburst

of patriotism; the whole place fluttered with little flags, Union

Jacks were on every bicycle or cart or motor-car, loyal crowds were

assembling at street corners. We in England have no conception of

the depths of feeling that our fellow-countrymen in Australia have

for “home.” It embraces all those who come out there on a visit, so

that instead of strangers in a strange land they feel like a dear

and welcome friend returning to his own people. By the evening the

occasion had been felt to be so momentous that the youthful male

population, with whom the streets were crowded, had celebrated it in

some cases to excess, and this was the sole occasion on which we saw

anything approaching to intemperance while we were in Australia, or

on which the population forsook its habitual and universal beverage

of weak tea. That they were carried away by enthusiasm was all to

their credit. Trained to military service from his school days every

Australian realises, as few Englishmen have yet done, the importance of

self-defence, and the obligation of every man in the country to take

his share in it.

We have much to learn from Australia, but in no respect more than in

her admirable system of universal military training. We have already

mentioned her cadet training in schools. When a boy reaches the age of

fourteen he becomes a senior cadet, and a general military training

is added to the physical training that is already part of his school

curriculum. At the beginning of the year in which he reaches his

fourteenth birthday he has to be registered, and his registration

papers are sent to the Area Officer, under whose jurisdiction he

now passes. This officer sees that the boys go up for their medical

examination; after passing this, a boy is measured for his uniform,

and allotted to his company in the senior cadet battalion of the area.

The average percentage of rejections after the medical examination is

only seven and a half. The senior cadet is now subject to military

discipline and becomes part of the military system of the country. He

has to attend four whole-day drills of at least four hours, twelve

half-day drills of two hours’ duration, and twenty-four night drills of

one hour’s minimum duration. Boys who are still at school may be formed

into special companies. It is an important feature of the system that

all the companies in a battalion area form one battalion independently

of the numbers involved, for the battalions are training, not fighting,

units. The training for senior cadets consists of physical drill,

company and some battalion drill, field training and musketry. An

excellent provision secures good work on the part of the cadets. At the

end of each year’s training an inspection takes place, and all who fail

to satisfy the regular officer responsible, lose the value of their

year’s work, as the Act requires an additional year’s training for each

failure of the inefficient.

Ammunition and uniforms are supplied free. In his fourth year of

training the senior cadet must satisfy the medical officer of the

training area of his fitness, those falling below the standard are

certified in their record books as “exempt.” In the third stage

of his training, from eighteen to twenty-six years old, the young

Australian becomes a member of the Citizen Forces. This system is

gradually superseding the older militia, which prescribed a period

of three years’ training only, and consequently attains so much the

more an efficient military standard. The training is arranged as far

as possible with a view to the convenience of the men, who are only

obliged to be absent from home during a short period spent in camp

every year. Parades are held on holidays, Saturday afternoons, or in

the evening. In some districts Sunday training has been advocated

and has raised considerable opposition, but Brigadier-General J. G.

Legge, C.M.G., commanding, at the time of writing, the Division of the

Australian Forces in Egypt, in an article on Australian Defence,[9]

reminds his readers that “not so many centuries ago it was the law of

England that every able-bodied man should practise with the bow at the

village butts on Sunday after church hours, and why not now on Sunday

afternoons? This would get over the difficulty with employers quite

well.” Pay is given for attendance at parades in the Citizen Forces.

Under the universal training system all start as privates, and each

rank competes for promotion to the one immediately above it. But it

must be remembered that in Australia, as in other new countries, there

are no sharply drawn class distinctions, there hardly exists an idle

class, and to quote Brigadier-General Legge once more: “Brains and

practical proficiency alone will carry weight with units such as we now

have to lead and discipline in Australia.” There is no room in that

happy land for the promotion of influential incompetence.

The Australian system is working smoothly and well, and presents the

spectacle of a trained and disciplined people, far indeed removed

from militarism, yet with a corporate sense and a deep and zealous

patriotism. Almost equally important is the fact that the Australian

Government makes ample provision for all munitions of war and equipment

for its forces.

It is with the boys that every country must begin. “I believe this,”

wrote Lord Methuen,[10] “to be the proper solution for the national

defence of this country.... It is to be noted that each colony has

adopted compulsory cadet training as its foundation. We worked on Lord

Kitchener’s admirable Australian scheme in forming the Citizen Army in

South Africa.... The physique and discipline of our nation will gain

enormously if the lad is trained from the age of twelve till he reaches

eighteen.... Let the nation accept the principle and the details can be

made to fit in without any difficulty.”

With regard to Education South Australia is, in one respect only, the

least progressive of the states, for it has fixed the minimum age at

which children may be employed in factories at thirteen, as compared

with fourteen elsewhere. Victoria leads the way with a minimum of

fifteen for girls. On the other hand, the state has been a pioneer in

dealing with destitute and neglected children. The Chief Secretary of

the Government appoints a State Children’s Council composed of men

and women. Its work is conducted on the most enlightened methods.

The children, whether, as in most cases, they are boarded out, or in

institutions, are judiciously looked after and provided for, till the

boys have reached the age of eighteen, and the girls of twenty-one

years. The work, whether paid or unpaid, of the large staff of

assistants in urban and country districts, is given alike “ungrudgingly

and in the spirit of the volunteer,” says Mrs. Margaret Wragge, a

member of the council. Thus the state is providing with foresight for

the useful careers of every one of its future men and women.

In the matter of general education the system is that in force

elsewhere. Primary education is free and compulsory, there is an

elaborate system of training for teachers, who are given every

facility for self-improvement. Technical education is provided for

by the “School of Mines and Industries.” The Adelaide University is

of comparatively old foundation, as it dates from 1874. It has been

fortunate in receiving generous endowments from local benefactors, and

has handsome spacious buildings. The name of the late Sir Samuel Way,

the Chief Justice, and a prominent, active citizen, will always be

associated with the progress of the University.

* * * * *

As we have said, Adelaide is girdled with hills, of which the most

important is Mount Lofty, and part of this high ground has been set

aside as a national reserve, a park in perpetuity for the community; a

large area left in its natural state, to show what Australia once was

to the children’s children of the first settlers.

[Illustration: WATERFALL GULLY, BURNSIDE, NEAR ADELAIDE.]

The drive up the hills is not an easy one, for the road ascends steeply

and the ground falls sharply away. The view over Adelaide grows more

and more beautiful with every few feet of the ascent, as the semicircle

of hills, with their valley and city, and the illimitable expanse of

ocean are spread out below. The reserve is a vast area of sloping green

lawns, more or less thickly covered with trees. Growing among the gums

were the curious shea-oak, and the still more curious wild cherry,

whose stone grows outside the fruit; the wattle was here only

bursting its yellow balls into flower. We saw a clump of the pretty

drosera or sundew, and a quantity of small purple orchids not unlike

our blue squills in shape and size.

All kinds of birds live in this retreat: especially the Australian

magpie with his odd conventual air, and the white cowl and black frock

that make him look like a Dominican friar.

The magpies are sociable birds, friendly and companionable. They are,

besides, greedy and carnivorous. An Australian lady, who was acting

as our hostess on this occasion, told us she had once seen a magpie

swallow three mice in succession, and sit afterwards ruminating over

their digestion with the three tails hanging down from his beak.

There, too, was the laughing jackass, or to call him by his musical

native name the “kookaburra,” who resembles in shape and colour a

large untidy jay. We heard for the first time the sweet note of the

Australian thrush, and saw several redheaded parrots. The road led into

a beautiful wooded glen, a favourite place for picnics.

Picnics are a great institution in Australia, and to avoid the dangers

of bush fires little open-air hearths are made in such places as these,

with an iron rod across them and hooks for hanging the “billy” to boil

the water for the weak tea that is the invariable accompaniment of all

meals. There is always plenty of dry wood in that dry climate, and

generally a little shelter is put up, with a rough table and benches,

sometimes a tank for rain water, but this, when it is there, has a way

of being rusty. On this occasion time demanded our return, for we were

lunching with one of the University professors, so we came back to the

city that is only less pastoral than its hills, and were deposited at

our destination by the kind new acquaintances, who had devoted a long

morning to us.

Our hosts lived in a charming bungalow on the side of a hill, the

garden was full of early spring flowers, jonquils and other bulbs.

Their guest house was detached, as it were, in a little garden of its

own, which seemed a particularly pleasant way of entertaining one’s

friends, giving a sense of freedom both to visitors and hosts. In

the drawing-room was a big bowl of camellias, which flourish in the

open air in Australia. Our host and hostess came of one of the oldest

Australian families; that is, their daughter told us her grandfather

came over in 1837 and her grandmother three years later. Life was a

hard thing in those days. To begin with, there was the six months’

voyage in the old sailing ships. In their early days of married life

they had no food except salt pork and damper, or a kind of bread made

without yeast, which is very nice on a picnic, but would be trying

as a staple form of food. On Sundays they had rice boiled in water

and raisins. “My grandfather used to be so hungry that he once shot

a sitting magpie.” It must, even so, have been a meal of bones and

feathers.

There was something patriarchal about this pleasant, cultivated

household. The settlement which the earlier generation had won from

the bush remained in the family, and the descendants of its servants

still served them. After lunch we were taken off to tea in the

hospitable Australian way to some friends of our hosts’ who were

giving a tea-party. Their house lay at some distance from the town,

with its back to the hills. It was approached by a park much like an

English park, with eucalyptus for oaks and magpies for rooks, and the

house itself was much like an English country house, and an English

tea-party, with great bowls of roses and violets in the drawing-room.

It would be difficult to find anywhere a lovelier situation than the

slopes of these hills, facing the far-distant sea. The entrance to

the drive was heavy with the scent of stocks, and gay with masses of

red geranium, a bougainvillea covered with purple flowers hung over

the flight of steps, and below the garden lawns, on which the large,

handsome black and white Australian wagtails were hopping about,

orange trees displayed their golden fruit and glossy leaves against a

background of almond blossom, and ripe limes and grape fruits.

As it was only about three miles back into Adelaide, with a good road

and a fine evening, we proposed to walk home to our hotel, as we had

had no exercise since we had left England. The suggestion, however, was

considered so entirely impracticable as to be not worth discussing. It

was merely waved aside, and the whole time we were in the country we

were impressed by the fact that Australians never seem to walk. They

motor, they have excellent tram services, but except up-country they

don’t seem to ride. An older resident at Adelaide lamented that there

were actually so few young men who could ride in the district, that

their numbers were insufficient to keep up the local Hunt Club.

[Illustration: OSTRICH FARM, SOUTH AUSTRALIA.]

We left Adelaide on a warm sunny August day. The long, long railway

journeys from one state capital to another are made by night. The

trains are dusty, the scenery monotonous, so that the tedium and

discomfort are by this means minimised as much as possible. Of

course, there are beautiful tracts of country, that the railroad

passes through, but in a land where the eucalyptus is everywhere

the prevailing form of vegetation, and water is rare, monotony is

inevitable. On leaving Adelaide the main line towards Melbourne runs

through charming park-like country, with green lawns and trees and deep

gorges. The train climbs the Mount Lofty range with delightful glimpses

of the sea, and an ascent punctuated by peculiarly sulphurous little

tunnels, reminiscent of those on the Apennines.

Afterwards we crossed a spacious pastoral country dotted sparsely

with homesteads, peaceful in the great calm of the luminous evening,

then the swift dusk fell and blotted out all. At Murray Bridge we

paused for dinner, in the old-fashioned continental way. Dinner in

railway stations in Australia is simple and expeditious, and in our

experience invariably excellent. It is thrown at the traveller by a

miscellaneous assortment of young women, who fall over each other

in their hospitable anxiety to get through the menu in time. That,

however, did not suffice, for having hastily despatched our soup and

the very good turkey, which is always a standing dish in Australia,

and trifled with a sweet, we were summoned back to the train. Here

we observed in passing along the corridor to our own carriage a

bulky-looking passenger disgorging from his pockets large quantities

of the dessert, which we had had no time to eat, and which he had

adroitly commandeered. He was bulging with it, in fact, and was now

proudly exhibiting a selection of it spread out on the opposite seat

of the carriage--five oranges, three apples, and some bananas. Seeing

our eye upon him he offered us a share of the spoils, as a species of

hush money in kind. Oranges and apples and bananas are delicious in

Australia; the dry soapy things sold for bananas in London give no idea

of what a pleasant form of food a fresh banana can be.

He is no traveller who cannot sleep on any occasion under any

circumstances, even in a rattling and draughty train. After a good

night we woke up next morning to see an immense grassy plain stretching

away to the horizon on either side. Cattle and sheep were feeding, and

there were patches of plough land. For the first time the “bush” had

retreated to a respectful distance.

PART III

VICTORIA

CHAPTER IX

COLLINS STREET--MELBOURNE

On the day we reached Adelaide the train that took us from Port

Adelaide to the city slipped by an encampment of tents, those of the

naval division; and on the day we left Melbourne we saw the recruits

for Australia’s first contingent swing past us along Collins Street.

Splendid they looked: young and strong and confident. The cars and

motor omnibuses bunched up by the pavement, and the people hung out

of the windows to cheer as they went by. I remember I suddenly found

myself without a hat and the tears running down my cheek, when the last

of them disappeared in the dust, the crowd closing in behind them.

There was only a fortnight or so between that first glimpse at Adelaide

that war had begun, and the assurance that Australia had grasped what

was to be her share in it, when she sent her boys on the way to camp

through Collins Street.

Collins Street. For better or worse, for richer or poorer, Melbourne

will always be expressed to us in terms of Collins Street. It is a

wide street of tall buildings, and it photographs well. It has not

grown up haphazard. It is rectangular; and it exhibits Melbourne’s

ideal of doing the thing well, and of doing it in an official way. No

street in London is very like it, though Melbourne has more in common

with London than any other city we have ever seen. There is the same

nucleus of business and trading, shopping and luxury; the parks almost,

but not quite, set in the middle of things; and trams and suburban

lines linking up nearer suburbs (with High Streets of their own), and

more distant ones with large houses and their gardens, and more distant

ones still where the houses are cheaper. It has an official residence

for the Governor-General, set, as Buckingham Palace is, in a green

park; and it has a river though we will not press the point of any

resemblance in it to the Thames. In short, if you were to name anything

in London to us--Regent’s Park or Tottenham Court Road, the Mansion

House or the Natural History Museum, St. Pancras Railway Station or

the Reform Club--we believe we could find you something of the kind in

Melbourne. They have even a Tate Gallery, and it has pictures which

might have been the choice of the Chantrey Bequest.

One word more about Collins Street, and then, having served its

purpose as a simile, we may leave it. It is a London street, the artery

of an organism much smaller than London, so that it is a composite.

It has shops and clubs, hotels and banks, and nearly all are square

and solid. It is as wide as Kingsway, but less uniform than that

thoroughfare will be; as busy as Cheapside, but less heterogeneous; as

popular as Regent Street, but one of less specific attractions; and

the one characteristic of it which is unmistakable is that it is the

principal street of a big city. That is what Melbourne is. It is a

city, a city where money is made, and big business goes on. It is to

Melbourne and to Collins Street that you must come if you are to talk

to the men who are planning and financing and ordering the Australia of

the future.

There is a Melbourne of another kind, just as there are many Londons.

There is Melbourne of the University, nestling in its gardens and

secure in the strongest foundation a University can have, the solid

research of its professors and teachers. It would not thank us for any

forced comparison with the ineffable charm that the years and memories

have brought to our own older Universities; but it has their air of

unself-consciousness and breeding.

There is Melbourne, too, which sets the fashion; and which, if the

word were not so detestable, forms the “society” of the capital.

But “society,” so misused a word elsewhere, is more vague in its

application in Australia than elsewhere. Government House is the

vortex about which it eddies; and perhaps cards for Government House

garden parties, or receptions, or invitations to Government House

luncheons and balls may be the fount of as much rivalry and as many

heartburnings as in the oldest capitals of Europe. Certainly Government

House maintains a ceremoniousness which is in extraordinary contrast

to every other usage in this land of democracy. Ladies curtsey to the

Governor-General’s wife and to the Governor-General, as if they were

of Royal blood, instead of the representatives of Great Britain. The

Governor-General goes out to lunch attended by an aide-de-camp; nobody

would go to a reception at Government House in anything other than the

most official dress he was entitled to wear; nor would any lady go

in anything that was a stitch less than the best of her dresses--for

Government House is the Court. And yet ... one day when one of us was

lunching at the Melbourne Club,[11] the Governor-General came into the

luncheon room and sat down at our round table, with his aide and a

friend, and the other lunchers at the same table, who all more or less

impartially went on with their own conversation or exchanged a word

or an answer with the Governor-General, were an editor, a doctor, two

business men, a lawyer and a geologist. There was somebody else whose

profession I have forgotten, but the luncheon party was very typical

of the social life of Melbourne, and typical, too, I think, of what is

the most vivifying and vigorous thing in Australian intercourse and

converse.

In England, not altogether as a consequence of our social conventions,

though they are the chief thing, the people of one social circle know

very little of one another; and doctors, lawyers, artists, or literary

or scientific men, merchants, men in commerce or finance, tend to limit

their intercourse to those of the same profession as themselves. There

are exceptions to this rule, of course; and it grows less rigid. But in

Australia such limitations hardly exist at all. If you have a job of

any kind, in letters, or politics, or science, or commerce, or trade,

and are doing it well; and if you are a man of intelligence--then you

stand on your merits, not on your social position, and you are of the

same standing as anyone else. A few years ago in an English novel

written by a lady of talent and insight, a duke is made to say, as

almost his last utterance on his death-bed, “We big-wigs have a good

time.” Such an incredible observation would appear even more fatuous

in Australia than in Eaton Square; for there are no “big-wigs” in

Australia.

It would be hard to say who or what takes their place in such a

democracy: talent perhaps; ability in such public affairs as bring a

man into relation with European politics or with the home country,

though in politics or affairs men do not stand apart from their fellows

as they do over here. In England, or in any European country, the men

of affairs are known to their countrymen chiefly by their photographs.

How many people, for example, in England have ever seen Sir Edward

Grey? But in Australia the public men are not photographed; they are

known to everybody and are spoken to by everybody. The only exceptions

are the Governors. If they are men of great ability, a limited divinity

hedges them, but they are the only people thus fenced in, and the

fence can be seen through if they are not first-rate. If there are no

big-wigs in Australia, the land is knee-deep in critics.

In the absence of any deeply separated social circles in Melbourne,

there is a social life of unbounding vitality and capacity for

enjoyment. During our stay there, despite the outbreak of war, a

great deal of ceremonial festivity was taking place, so that abundant

opportunity was given for surveying Melbourne in its ball-dress at

Government House, or in its silk hat and morning coat at official

garden parties. One impression left on the mind and the eye was that

these things were sufficiently uncommon and sufficiently enjoyed for no

one to leave them out if they could attend them. I have a recollection

of good-tempered struggles for hats and coats at the City Museum and

Library (where a conversazione was held), such as obliterated every

other impression--even the impression of that massive and graceful

City Library with its domed roof and white arcading; or of the serried

multitudes coming and going from the supper rooms. There was the

hunt for the motor-car, too ... in a sudden night wind that brought

stinging dust from the north ... and there were the throngs of ladies

quite cheerfully sacrificing their satin shoes as they walked along

the streets to the cars, sometimes to the street cars. For if you go

home by street car in Melbourne it makes no difference to your social

standing.

Gay, cheerful, social, hospitable Melbourne. It is full of memories

of kindnesses, of hospitality, of dinner parties, of gay and--forgive

the blighting phrase--of that cultivated converse which our better

instructed grandfathers called “good talk”; of houses which were

luxurious and homes which were deeply comfortable--and of one house, to

which, however long and tiring the day, we always came back as those

who come back home.

CHAPTER X

SOCIAL LIFE IN MELBOURNE

The country surrounding Melbourne was far more populous than anything

we had yet seen. The land was very flat, and the plain was extremely

bare, even denuded; there was hardly a tree to be seen on the great

expanse; scattered over it were innumerable little yellow boulders,

thousands of them. Sometimes they had been laboriously collected and

heaped up to form walls. These are the recollections which the approach

to the Victorian capital by railway from the west leaves in the mind.

The entrance to Melbourne itself is much like that to any other great

seaport. The masts of the ships showed above the houses, the air

was cool and fresh, and invigorating after the night in the train.

Melbourne was in fact the coldest place we visited in Australia, but

even here heavy winter clothing such as one would wear in an English

winter is unnecessary in that dry air and brilliant sunshine.

Our hosts had sent their car to meet us, and we spun out of the station

yard into a city of immensely wide straight streets, sometimes rather

sharply ascending and descending, with handsome tall buildings, some

of which had a quite venerable air; the cathedral of St. Paul’s,

for instance, is grimy with age. From a local station people from

the suburbs were pouring out to their day’s business, as if it were

a London terminus, and there was little to distinguish them in

general appearance from the London morning throng. We gleaned a rapid

impression of gardens and parks and open spaces, and after crossing the

Yarra River, arrived in the pleasant green hilly suburb of South Yarra,

where we were to stay. The car drew up at a large bungalow in a sloping

street of bungalows each in its own garden. A broad verandah ran round

the one-storied house; at the entrance to the garden a pepper tree had

been cut back and a rose trained over it. These lovely trees, with

their grey fern-like foliage and strings of red berries are very common

in Australia, but they are untidy things in a garden, with obstreperous

roots. Geraniums were in flower even here, and a pink camellia bush.

[Illustration: THE RIVER YARRA, 48 MILES FROM MELBOURNE.]

The door was flung open by our hostess almost before we had had time to

ring the bell. We had arrived unseasonably early in the morning, rather

chilly, rather tired, with that uncomfortable, unkempt sensation

attendant on a hurried toilet in a rocking train, breakfastless, very

hungry, and it is only on such an occasion that the whole-hearted

warmth of an Australian welcome can be appreciated at its true worth,

a welcome no less generous to strangers than to recovered friends.

Our host and hostess in Melbourne had never seen us before, yet not

only were we made to feel as if we belonged there, as if their house

was a home in which we had the claim of longstanding friendship or

relationship, but though they were both very busy people of many

engagements, their car was placed at our disposal during our visit,

and they themselves made use of the very efficient Melbourne tram

service. Perhaps this extraordinary and generous kindness, which we met

everywhere, differing only in degree, not in kind, exists in Australia

as nowhere else.

It is sometimes spoken of as Colonial; and so in the best sense it

is. We had some foreshadowing of it at the Cape. Here certain of

the passengers had a collective invitation to a motor drive round

Table Mountain by the members of the local automobile club. A day’s

entertainment was planned by them, but owing to contrary currents our

boat was late. We only had a few hours to spend there. It was between

seven and eight o’clock in the morning when we went on deck, and

our host for the moment, a boy of about seventeen, came up smiling

and helped us into our fur coats. “Are you always as nice as this to

strangers?” we asked. “_You’re_ not strangers,” he said, with genuine

surprise, and even a little hurt. And it is that feeling that makes

colonial travelling such a delightful experience. Even the conductor

on the train will bid you a cordial farewell and hope you will enjoy

yourself. England must seem a cold place to Australians when they come

to it on a visit. We once heard some travelled Australians discussing

this very point. After lavishing hospitality on his English visitors

the Australian comes to London, and perhaps meets his former guest at a

club. After some few minutes’ conversation he says, “When are you going

back?” and adds, “Ah, I hope I shall see you again before you go!” and

that is all.

On the afternoon of our arrival in Melbourne, we went to a tea given

by the Women’s Union at the University. Australian women are in a

very superior position to their British sisters; they have the vote,

and their share in political life takes place quite unobtrusively

and as a matter of course. Women’s suffrage was adopted in Victoria

comparatively recently, and the state is now governed by the vote

of all those over the age of twenty-one who have not been convicted

of felony. Consequently there is no aggressive “Women’s Movement,”

though women have their own separate clubs in all the large towns,

and do useful and active work both in connection with public bodies

concerned with their interests, and in political organisation. We were

frequently asked with surprised incredulity if the newspaper reports

of suffragette activities at home were not wholly untrue or at least

greatly exaggerated. To women in peaceful possession of the vote, the

exasperated fuss on both sides about conferring what seems to them so

simple and obvious a benefit was wholly incomprehensible. It appears

that in Australia it has had very little effect on the balance of

parties except that of strengthening the Labour vote to some extent.

An active and experienced citizen of Melbourne has recorded his own

conviction that the measure “has produced little or no change for

better or worse in the general course of legislation. It has not

purified public life in the sense in which the term is generally used;

it has not enabled women to obtain adequate treatment in the subjects

they are specially interested in. It has in my opinion made but one

substantial alteration--the capacity of women to organise political

associations has been demonstrated repeatedly, and the interest of

women in public affairs is in conspicuous evidence.”[12] Working

women are, however, already in a better position in Victoria than in

any other part of the world. As long ago as 1873 an Act was passed

forbidding the employment of any female for more than eight hours in

any day in a factory. Nowhere is the factory worker, whether man or

woman, better looked after as to his wages, personal safety, health,

and moral surroundings than in Victoria.[13] A little over 33% of all

the women in the state are employed in factories, earning an average

wage of 17s. 4d. a week.

In any comparison of labour conditions at home and in Australia it must

be borne in mind that though foodstuffs cost about the same, imported

manufactured goods of all kinds are dearer. The higher wages are not

therefore proportionately greater in purchasing power. They have,

however, been much affected by the institution of Wages Boards. These

were first established in 1896 with the definite object of raising

the wages of women employed in the clothing trade, especially the

sweated home workers. The measure had the immediate effect of raising

wages in this trade. The Boards, which are composed of equal numbers

of employers and employed, elect a neutral chairman, discuss all the

aspects of the trade, and fix a minimum wage accordingly. The system

has now been gradually extended to practically all urban industries,

in which wages have in consequence steadily risen. The Wages Board,

says the Chief Inspector of Factories, “has now come to be regarded

pretty generally as the most nearly perfect system of fixing fair

wages and conditions that has yet been devised.”[14] It is a cardinal

principle of the Victorian system that, having provided the workers

with the means of securing a fair living wage, it takes no cognisance

of strikes. It is claimed that the Victorian method has had the result

of preventing strikes.

But to return to the Women’s Union tea at the University. Our hostesses

were representative of Melbourne’s social activities, and it was a

pleasant and interesting festivity, as well as an introduction to the

University, the centre of Australian intellectual life. The University

has done much to leaven Melbourne society, and has been fortunate in

securing first-rate men, not merely in point of scholastic attainment,

but in an equally invaluable social refinement. A splendid growing

country like Australia should have only the best we have to send,

whether as teachers or governors, nothing less is worthy of her deserts

and importance as a factor in the empire. The University is the

coping-stone of the educational machinery of Victoria, where the whole

of the primary and secondary education is in the hands of the state,

with the exception of certain schools owned by religious corporations.

There is an admirable system of small rural schools, and teachers

earn promotion by good work done in them. There are also a number

of technical schools and Agricultural High Schools--an interesting

development--one of which we visited.

The University Buildings stand in tree-planted grounds, with the

imposing Wilson Hall in the foreground. It is used principally for

social purposes and for examinations, and is an ecclesiastical

building, like a large college chapel, spacious and well proportioned.

In front of the open doors stands an immense Moreton Bay pine, one of

the handsomest of Australian trees, evergreen, like all the native

vegetation, large and shapely with glossy dark leaves. It is so called

from the beautiful Queensland bay on which Brisbane stands, where it

grows in great profusion. On the lawn beyond, two great black swans

were feeding, looking oddly incongruous. The various schools have their

main lecture rooms and laboratories grouped round an artificial lake

in the middle of the grounds. Residential denominational colleges are

erected on grants of land within the University precincts. One of them,

the Methodist College, we visited through the kindness of the wife of

the President, who showed us over the buildings.

It was vacation, and all was swept and garnished, but we saw the little

chapel, the dining-hall, library, and the men’s rooms. All was very

pleasant and comfortable, with fine views over Melbourne, and all was

as unlike as possible from the dreamy, stately old halls where our

English boys go and learn to be luxurious and extravagant at home, and

also learn other things which after all cannot be learnt elsewhere.

We were present at the conferring of some honorary degrees at the

University. It was a gay and picturesque scene, with the doctors’

scarlet gowns on the platform; and what we missed in the ancient

academic atmosphere that gives to such functions their impressiveness

at home, was compensated for by the lively interest and enthusiasm

of the visitors by whom the hall was filled. The ceremony was

incidentally memorable from the fine enunciation and beautiful voice of

the Professor who presented the candidates to the Chancellor.

After the degree ceremony we went on to the Town Hall, where the

Lady Mayoress was giving a tea-party. Mayors and Mayoresses are very

important people in Australia; they are lavish in their entertainment

of strangers, and are the centre not only of the civic life of a

town, but often of its social life as well, the two things being

usually indistinguishable. The Melbourne Town Hall is worthy of a

great city that is the seat of government, and the rallying point

of all the different phases of life on the continent. One sumptuous

council chamber is decorated with Australian woods, many of them very

beautiful, the central panels of black wood especially, which were

delicately variegated like the back of an old fiddle.

The same day we went to an evening party at Federal Government

House. Melbourne is the seat of the Federal as well as of the State

Government; and the balls or receptions at Government House bring

together what in a less democratic country one would call the society

of the state. Society in Melbourne is very cultivated and agreeable. It

is more settled, more homogeneous, more cosmopolitan than elsewhere

in Australia, so that here, if anywhere, one loses the sense of a

new country, which is at the same time part of its charm. The women

and girls in Melbourne are also prettier, and more prettily dressed

than elsewhere, and it makes a cult of charming-looking, elderly,

white-haired matrons, wearing the dignity of their years becomingly.

Not that pretty women and girls are not to be found everywhere, but

Melbourne has a colder, more bracing climate, and is more in touch with

the outside world. Two facts that tell in complexions and clothes.

CHAPTER XI

BALLARAT

Nobody has seen Australia who has not seen a goldfield, and though with

a certain reluctance, for the way was long and the trains unprovided

with restaurant cars, we decided to visit one from Melbourne, whence,

as one counts distance in Australia, they were easily accessible. The

choice seemed to lie between Bendigo and Ballarat; they were equal as

far as we were concerned, but there was something about the name of

Bendigo that expressed a smug prosperity, while Ballarat suggested

something of the unbridled spirit of adventure and undisciplined

audacity of the pioneer. We elected in favour of Ballarat. We started

very early in the morning, as you have to do in Australia if you

want to get anywhere, feeling full of enterprise and prepared for

any hardship. There had been a riot in Ballarat, they told us, quite

a serious affair, with military intervention. The line to Ballarat

runs at first through the flat country that we had already traversed,

covered with the odd little yellow boulders, which a well-informed

passenger now assured us were formed of lava. There had been a lava

flow all over the plain in some former geological period, he said, and

the lava had gradually broken up into these little yellow boulders.

The line then crosses the Bacchus Marsh Valley; this neighbourhood is

the centre of the milk and butter trade, and china clay is also found

in the district. Farther on we passed through the beautiful Werribee

Gorge, remarkable for having been “eroded through glacial conglomerate

into the underlying Ordovician sediment,” a well-informed passenger

hastened to explain to us. While we listened respectfully an immense

bird appeared hovering, lonely, majestic, above the gorge. “Aquila

audax,” cried the too well-informed passenger eagerly; the largest

known eagle. “How do you spell “Hordax?” inquired a lady. This tacit

reflection on his pronunciation so discomfited him that he retired to

another carriage, and we proceeded on our way unenlightened.

No sooner were we within sight of Ballarat than all our hopes of

adventure were dashed; instead of the mining town that we had expected

with little rows of corrugated iron huts, and miners in wideawakes

and shirt-sleeves, what we did see was a cloud of white dust driving

along a road, and behind it a town like any other town, containing, as

a guide-book informed us, a “Hospital, Orphan and Benevolent Asylums,

Women’s Homes, Mechanics’ Institute, with Library, Fine Art Gallery,

Banks, Commercial Houses, two Town Halls, three theatres, forty

churches, School of Mines and Museum, Agricultural High School, State

schools, six iron-founderies, a brewery, a flour and two woollen mills,

boot and other factories...!”

We were fifty years too late. We had come to see Ballarat, and we

were shown it by a kind and hospitable stranger to whose care we had

been consigned for the purpose. There is a tremendous fund of local

patriotism in Australia. Everybody is very proud of their own town,

for the simple reason that they have seen it grow and helped to make

it. They have a paternal or proprietary interest in it. In Ballarat

they are most proud, and justly so, of their principal street, Sturt

Street, called presumably after the pioneer who named that wonderful

hanging scarlet and black flower “Sturt’s desert pea.” Ballarat lies on

the side of a hill, and Sturt Street, very wide and planted with trees

in the centre, slopes sharply away through and out of the city towards

a green hill that rises abruptly, and is framed, as it were, by the

street.

Ballarat, we found, was gradually relapsing into what it had originally

been, an agricultural centre. It was in the year of Queen Victoria’s

accession that six prospectors, seeking good pastures for their flocks,

reached Mount Buninyong, and looking westward saw a rich expanse

of well-watered country that was soon settled as sheep runs, with

its centre at Buninyong. It was not till 1851 that gold was first

discovered in New South Wales, and the Melbourne authorities, alarmed

at the consequent exodus of population, offered a reward of two hundred

guineas for the discovery of gold in the state of Victoria. In July a

man accidentally discovered gold in felling a tree at Buninyong, and

a further search revealed the presence of gold in immense quantities

on the site of what is now Ballarat. In those early days, “The Roaring

Fifties,” as they were called, diggers hastened to Ballarat from all

parts of the world, including New South Wales itself, for gold in such

quantities had never been seen before. The whole neighbourhood became a

vast encampment of tents and huts, and the peaceful sheep-farmers were

forced to migrate.

The Government sought to enforce order among the cosmopolitan riotous

crew of diggers. Licences were issued for a fee permitting them to

work within certain specified limits, and the violence used in

enforcing this rule in 1854 produced a riot among the diggers, who

opposed armed resistance to the police and Government soldiers at what

was known as the “Eureka Stockade.” Order was restored after some

bloodshed, but the ringleaders went unpunished, for public opinion

was on the side of the diggers. The gold licences were withdrawn and

the grant of parliamentary representation soon brought about more

civilised conditions, or, in the words of the local guide, “Thus these

early years of revelry and devilry have faded and dissolved into the

far-famed golden city of the south, the garden city of Ballarat.”

That was sixty years ago. The greatest output of gold for any one year

in Victoria occurred in 1856, and amounted to nearly £12,000,000 in

value; for many years afterwards the mines yielded annually more than

five millions sterling. It can be easily seen that the discovery of

gold had a very great influence on the prosperity and development of

the State and the disposition of its cities. Ballarat and Bendigo, for

instance, are respectively the second and third cities in Victoria.

As the extraordinarily rich surface alluvial deposits of gold were

exhausted, mining was carried on at lower depths, involving greater

expenditure of plant and machinery, and producing smaller profits.

But in Ballarat, both east and west, there is a profitable field for

further development. After having been well fortified with lunch, our

host of the day took us off to see a gold mine.

We motored through the handsome main street of Ballarat, noting with

surprise the number of very large and important drapers’ shops, with

their impressive expanse of plate glass. They were all having what

they called “clean up sales,” and we wondered how a population of

about 42,000 could possibly support them, till our chauffeur, who was

also the owner of the car, explained that Ballarat was the metropolis

for the whole surrounding agricultural neighbourhood of the mines. On

the way we passed through old Ballarat, the driver jumping a gutter

with surprising skill. Old Ballarat is a wonderful, ramshackle-looking

place, run up anyhow in the early days of the gold rush, when fortunes

were made in other ways besides digging, and a “pannikin of rum”

fetched an ounce of gold. It had the air of Earl’s Court after the

season, when the exhibition is shut; the houses were of all shapes and

sizes, and the arcades over the pavement were the only concession to

convenience.

Gold-mining, like all other forms of mining, is an untidy process, and

we presently came to rough, shapeless patches of irregular yellow

ground, all holes and hillocks, and now partly overgrown, where mining

had formerly been carried on. Our destination was a hill of grey heaps

and smoking chimneys. Even an Australian motor-car looked askance at

the approach to it, so we walked up, for this was the mine we were

asked to visit. We were shown into an office out of which opened two

dressing-rooms. A litter of old boots was on the floor, the walls

were hung with derelict felt hats and clean suits of butchers’ blue

overalls. Here we were asked to attire ourselves suitably for the

occasion. It is an odd feeling that of walking out into the light of

day for the first time untrammelled by skirts, but this agreeable

sensation was detracted from by carrying several pounds’ weight on

either foot and by the difficulty of keeping on a large alien hat.

Some other visitors were going down the mine, and one of the ladies’

hats blew off. Retrieving it from the mud, a man politely offered her

his own, a quite clean one, in exchange. It belonged to somebody else,

but he had had the foresight to select it in the dressing-room in

preference to those provided for visitors. We were each furnished with

a tallow candle.

Going down a gold mine feels exactly like being one of a new box of

Bryant and May’s matches. A little two-storied platform takes down

eight adventurous souls at a time. There is a bar across to hold on

to; two people stand on either side squeezed close together. Then the

platform is lowered so that four more can get on to its upper story.

With stringent warnings to inexperienced passengers to keep their free

arm pressed close to their side, the platform descends the shaft just

like a box of matches being pushed into its case. It is quite dark in

the shaft. A sound of running water accompanied us, and we could hear

it swishing far below. As we got lower it got hotter and hotter, till

it felt as if we were suspended above the steam of some immense kettle,

producing a curious feeling of suffocation, which, however, wears off.

We had a general impression that the bottom of a gold mine would be a

beautiful, glittering thing, with shining white walls of quartz and

glimmering threads and patches of gold shining in it like the small

samples given as mementoes to visitors. Nothing of the kind. It might

as well have been a coal mine. On scrambling rather breathless out of

the little cage, we found ourselves in a low, small, open space, with

walls of some dun-coloured reddish stone, and narrow tunnels running

off it with wooden supports for the roof. That was the gold mine,

and except that in this Turkish bath of grotto and passage men were

“picking” walls like rock-salt or alabaster, nothing more is to be

said.

Coming up the shaft we were on the top of the platform, and the water

we had heard going down now splashed on to us, as if somebody with

a primitive sense of humour was watering us from above with a large

watering-can. Altogether, we were very grateful for the blue overalls

and the hats. Apropos of these, when we had recovered our own clothes

and were waiting to inspect the machinery above ground, a distraught

gentleman was passionately inquiring for his hat. The lady who had

exchanged hats observed innocently that there was quite a nice hat

hanging up in her dressing-room. He hurried off to look, and emerged

ruefully with the hat in which she had been down the mine. It had been

well watered with muddy water, and was now almost indistinguishable

from the hats provided for the purpose.

The machinery was to the uninitiated much like other machinery. There

were enormous pumps, fascinating like all such powerful, ruthless

looking things. We saw the slim-looking cable that draws the cage up

the shaft--(“Looks thin, don’t it?” said the workman in charge of

it)--and the stamper for breaking up the quartz, and the sifters, which

sift the mineral when it is crushed.

But there was much more to see. We were taken to see the Agricultural

High School. These schools are an interesting feature in the Australian

system of education, and play an important part in it. The Ballarat

Agricultural High School is a large, well-lighted building standing

in its own grounds, where students can learn the practical arts of

agriculture, at the same time that they attend classes, they learn to

test milk and to understand the properties of soils. As it was Saturday

we were unfortunately unable to see any classes at work. The art room

had a south light, which is the aspect corresponding here to our north.

The afternoon was now far advanced, so we paid a rapid visit to the

Botanical Gardens, very large and handsome ones, adorned by statuary

that is the great pride of Ballarat, the work of a local artist.

Finally, skirting Lake Wendouree, a piece of ornamental water on which

pleasure steamers run in the summer, our host took us to his house,

where we had a high tea, with one of those sumptuous cakes that only

Australian housewives can produce. The journey back seemed very long,

and we were very tired. There were innumerable stations, all quite

dark, so someone ran along the train, inquiring at each carriage,

“Anyone for ...?” whatever the name of the place happened to be. There

never seemed to be anyone, and he then said in disappointed tones,

“Right Oh! Jerry,” and we slowly creaked under way again.

We were very glad when we at last steamed into the brightly lighted

Melbourne station, and found our kind host and hostess waiting

there for us with their car, in spite of the lateness of the hour.

Afterwards, in talking over the development of Australia with the

people who lived there, we learned how great a part had been played by

the discoveries of gold in populating the state. The first permanent

settlement in Victoria, the smallest of the five states of Australia,

was made by some immigrants from Van Diemen’s Land, as Tasmania was

then called, in Portland Bay in 1834. This is an open bay which lies

at some distance from Melbourne to the south-west; it was found to

be unsafe for shipping, and there was a lack of good land in its

immediate neighbourhood. Melbourne was founded the next year at the

head of the deep inlet called Port Phillip Bay by parties of settlers

from Van Diemen’s Land. Other settlers came from Sydney, and beginning

to explore the interior were struck with its great capabilities.

Immigration rapidly progressed, regular government was established

under Captain William Lonsdale in 1836, and the capital was named

Melbourne.

[Illustration: THE AUSTRALIAN ALPS, NORTH-EAST VICTORIA. MOUNT

FEATHERTOP 6,300 FEET.]

By the end of 1850 the population already numbered more than 76,000

people. The next year gold was discovered, and in 1851 the population

had risen to over 400,000, and was six times that it had been before.

The gold boom brought in its train cultivators, and pastoral settlers,

for the staple of Australia is still wool. The state has an area of 56

million acres, less than 6 millions of which are under cultivation. The

climate varies greatly according to rainfall and elevation, and there

are even snow-bound districts during the winter months. Part of the

country with a low rainfall is excellent for the cultivation of wheat,

and one of the principal problems in Victoria is to guard against an

uncertain rainfall by the conservation of water. For the north-east and

north extensive irrigation works have already been undertaken, but the

whole question awaits further investigation.

At present it is not known whether drought cycles can be predicted; how

far the large quantities of water which flow through the Murray River

and its tributaries could be utilised for irrigation; how far improved

methods of farming will increase the extent to which the rainfall can

be utilised. “No country in the world,” says Dr. T. W. Barrett, whom

we have already quoted, “is more dependent than Australia on such

knowledge as can be afforded by meteorology; and perhaps no country in

the world is more disadvantageously placed, since at present there is

no means of obtaining information from the waste of ocean which lies to

the south.”

This brings us to a problem of very great interest in the land

question in Victoria, a tendency to convert agricultural into grazing

land. Returns show that the very large holdings of 10,000 acres are

decreasing in number, and that an aggregation of holdings of from 500

to 800 acres constitutes the present problem. The successful farmer

tries to increase his holding, but when he begins to grow old, and is

confronted with the disorganisation and high wages of agricultural

labour, he relinquishes cultivation and resorts to grazing stock on

his larger area, which will provide him with a comfortable living.

Consequently less labour is employed, the local schools decline, the

trade of the neighbourhood languishes. So it comes about that many of

the richest districts of the state are the least progressive. “The land

around these centres,” says Professor Cherry of Melbourne University,

“is probably as rich as that in any part of the world. But instead of

the farm areas being reduced by subdivision they are steadily growing

larger by aggregation.... The evil is intensified, because as the land

goes out of cultivation, the workmen leave the district and general

stagnation ensues.... Not one-tenth of the available land is under

cultivation.”[15] And it must be borne in mind that agriculture is the

basis of existence in Victoria.

The Government realise this. There are the Agricultural High Schools,

an Agricultural College, a School of Agriculture at the University,

and every primary school has its experimental plot of ground for

gardening. Australia has its own peculiar problems to solve here as

in other districts, especially that of breeding wheat which will

be “drought-resistant and capable of growing outside the existing

rainfall margin of profitable cultivation.” It is believed that vast

areas of pastoral country in the interior of the continent, which now

support a few sheep, might be successfully brought under cultivation,

if a kind of wheat could be evolved that would grow, as many native

grasses grow, under a low rainfall. As yet the average of wheat grown

per acre is very low, only amounting in ten seasons up to 1911–12 to

10·58 bushels an acre, due, it is believed, partly to imperfect methods

of cultivation, as well as to the growth of wheats that are not well

adapted to local conditions.

CHAPTER XII

THE BLACK SPUR

The Victorian bush is very beautiful owing to the immense tree-ferns

that grow among the gums, and during our stay in Melbourne we were

motored out to Black Spur, a favourite objective of Melbourne picnic

and week-end parties, and a point of the “Great Divide,” as the

Dividing Range of Australia is familiarly called. From Melbourne, which

lies at the edge of a plain, the country rises to the great Dividing

Range. This belt of highlands starts from Queensland, and separates

the coastal drainage from that flowing westward. An early rain had

laid the dust, so that we had ideal conditions for motoring, as we

left the city behind us, and passed through a region of trim villas

or bungalows in gardens, each one of which showed its patch of wattle

gleaming among the grey gum trees. At one point the road was bordered

by fir trees, often planted by early Scotch settlers to remind them of

home. Presently we had left all traces of the suburbs behind and were

crossing “Kangaroo Ground,” where, alas! kangaroos have long ceased

to browse and skip. The distant mountain range loomed up before us

gloomy and threatening. Every stream we crossed had its course marked

by a ribbon of wattle flashing among the sombre eucalyptus. Boys were

going out rabbiting this spring morning with bags of ferrets; the whole

country-side lay open to these infant patriots intent on slaying their

country’s enemies. The day was like a showery April morning at home,

with heavy drifting clouds, that threw deep shadows on the dark mass of

the mountains rising on our left. Sometimes we ran through cleared open

country with pale patches of early crops, oats or barley, springing

here and there, or lean store cattle, brought from up-country to be

fattened for sale, and feeding on the richer pastures. Sometimes our

way led through the bush, sometimes through occasional villages.

[Illustration: THE DIVIDING RANGE.]

At last we had climbed Christmas Hill, and stopped to survey the famous

view from its summit. Here the road runs between banks with the dark

shining gum trees stretching away on either side. We climbed through a

fence, where a little cleared space enabled us to look over the tops of

the trees to the valley of the Yarra spread out beneath; a wide, wide

plain with the stern-looking ranges in the background. Below us the

Yarra meandered like a yellow ribbon threaded through the green, for

its course was outlined by flowering wattle. Beyond, the gloomy and

forbidding wall of the Great Divide went up to meet the low-hanging

clouds.

At the foot of the Black Spur there is a sort of pleasure place,

with villas, hotels, and a golf course. Immediately afterwards we

began to ascend a very steep gradient. Here the Government have taken

over a reserve large enough to provide a sufficient water supply for

Melbourne. From time to time we had seen the aqueducts on our way. In

the early part of the year there had been a great bush fire; it had

raged for three weeks, and the smoke had hung about distant Melbourne

like a fog. The after effects of the fire were curious and very

interesting. In some places a whole gully had been burnt out, leaving

only the immense white poles of the gums upstanding like the masts of

ships. So wonderful is their vitality that in many cases the gum trees

had begun to reclothe themselves with young green shoots as if with

ivy. Great tree-ferns shot up too in the cleared spaces, repairing the

havoc that the fire had wrought; bracken covered the ground, and some

kind of pink heath was coming into flower. The fire had been curiously

partial, sometimes leaping the road, sometimes leaving a small area

untouched. Nothing can be done to stem the torrent of these fires or to

arrest their course, for they travel at sixty miles an hour.

Descending from Black Spur, we stopped to lunch at one of the

characteristic Australian picnic places, above a tumbling mountain

stream close to a place called Fernshaw. A fine rain was falling, and

it was pleasant to find the shelter of a roof, and dry benches and

tables. The place was a bird sanctuary; beautiful, and to us, unknown

varieties came and watched us from a wooden fence that bordered the

little clearing, or hopped about on the grass. The gorgeous Australian

robin flaunted his brilliant vermilion and black plumage, here was the

fabled “blue bird” in the life, a kind of wren; green finches, a large

crow, the ever-present magpie, of course, and pretty fawn-coloured

honey birds, said to cull honey from the flowers like bees, and the

peewit, black and white, like a smaller magpie, and so called from his

shrill, insistent note.

On the slopes of the Black Spur the eucalyptus attain to an unusual

height, even for their soaring growth, and some of the tallest trees

in Australia are to be seen here. It is impossible to be long in the

country without hearing much discussion on questions of forestry. A

great part of Victoria is still forest, about 4,000,000 acres of which

are reserved by the state. But though there is much valuable timber--in

the mountain ranges in the north-east especially--it is impossible to

transport it. Much forest country is let for grazing at nominal rents,

and forest let for grazing is inevitably burned. The timber is cleared

out by fire to obtain pasture. The fires are generally lighted on

purpose, with the consequent enormous destruction of valuable timber.

On the other hand, there are few cases in which the timber could be

profitably sent to any market, and a land covered with forest cannot

be used for grazing. Australian public opinion is becoming alive to

the importance of this question, and there is a Department of Forests

in the state of Victoria, but it is not considered that its powers are

sufficiently drastic and untrammelled, or its supply of expert opinion

adequate.[16]

The return journey was an exhilarating experience, for it was downhill

most of the way, and we spun through the sweet invigorating air, with

one wheel generally poised on a higher level than the other, bumping

and plunging, dodging the deep broad ruts, holding on tight with that

pleasant sense of adventure and hairbreadth escapes that only an

expert Australian motorist can give. At one point we stopped to take

a photograph of the Yarra, where its swift green stream took a sharp

bend in a low-lying meadow. Its opposite bank was one brilliant blaze

of wattle; through a gate in the hedge the mountains showed blue and

distant. While we were adjusting the lens a kookaburra somewhere out

of sight burst into his peals of derisive laughter; the shrill chorus

of unseen frogs, an ever-present accompaniment to the stillness of the

Australian country, was the only other sound. It was so typical, so

arresting, so unlike anything to be seen elsewhere, that we wished we

could have transferred the whole scene with its intensity of colour and

freshness to these pages. While we were busy on the bank a boatload

of rough boys swung into sight, shouting, barging, and splashing,

disturbing the peaceful charm of the little picture, breaking up and

destroying the reflected wattle on the smooth water by the bank. We

called to them to put ashore. They immediately did so, and, landing,

came up to us and asked some technical question about the photographic

process--it was a colour photograph on glass--with perfect civility

and friendliness. The little incident was such a marked contrast to

the relationship of different classes of the community at home that it

impressed us as being equally characteristic with the scene in which

it took place.

As we neared Melbourne the wet roads of the morning had already dried

and we were swept home in a cloud of dust. We arrived in time for a

very late tea, and went on to dine at one of those pleasant colonial

houses, whose warm friendliness and lavish hospitality is so homelike

and yet so un-English.

The next day, after lunching at Government House, we visited the

zoological gardens. This was the first unpleasant example of Australian

weather; it was like a nasty March day, with gusts of cold wind

sweeping up swirling clouds of blinding, stinging dust. It only lasted

one day as a weather sample, but it was a singularly objectionable day,

with a kind of parching quality in the air.

On this occasion we pursued a fruitless quest on which we had already

exercised considerable energies since our arrival in Australia. We

were very anxious to see a live platypus, that curious little hairy

animal, with the bill of a duck, which burrows, or used to burrow,

for it is becoming very rare, in Australian river-banks. We were told

that if we wanted to see a platypus we must go to Tasmania, there were

plenty there, but this was not part of our programme; however, there

was actually at the moment a live platypus in Melbourne. They do not

survive in captivity, but this hapless platypus had been sacrificed

in the interests of science, and was on exhibition at the zoological

gardens. We therefore made our way thither, our hearts beating high

with hope and excitement. The porter at the gate was calm, not to say

indifferent; it was also approaching closing time. We entered vaguely,

none of the animals could help us in our quest for the platypus,

neither the mild and browsing kangaroos, the haughty eagles on their

perch, or the slim cranes, like the answer of the winds brought by

‘sage Hippotades,’ “they knew not of his story.”

We were at last directed to a large wire enclosure, in the midst of

which lay a little muddy pool, it was planted with tall bamboos, amid

which fluttered innumerable small birds. Here, said a passing official,

the platypus was incarcerated. We eagerly watched and watched in

vain the unruffled and opaque surface of the pond. The platypus had

effectually concealed his outraged feelings in the mud. He is a shy

animal and resents observation. By this time, however, we felt that our

journey to Australia was vain unless we saw that platypus. Night was

drawing on, it was long past closing time. In these desperate straits

we penetrated with sacrilegious feet a threshold inscribed “private”

and unearthed the daughter of the keeper. She was very sympathetic,

but not encouraging. Her high authority, however, produced a man with

a key, and we squeezed in among the bamboos, which we found sharp

and aggressive plants, and with ruthless cruelty warmly applauded

the efforts to stir up the platypus out of the mud with a stick; but

the despairing platypus had buried itself beyond the reach of human

intervention. We were forced to give up and retreat, and it seemed to

us, as we went out of the gates, that the large blue parrot, who sits

sentinel on his perch at the entrance, winked at us derisively.

The same evening we were at least gratified by the sight of a stuffed

platypus. It was at the museum, where there was a civic reception. The

municipal buildings at Melbourne are on a most imposing scale. The

museum, picture galleries, and free library are all under one roof. The

museum is beautifully arranged. Most interesting to English visitors

are the complete collections of native animals of all kinds. Every

sort of kangaroo and wallaby is represented. From immense creatures

sitting up with that air of surprise peculiar to them, as if they were

wondering what had happened to their forelegs, to little things of the

same species no bigger than a cat. We saw the curious sharp-nosed

bandicoot, and at last our search was rewarded by a sight of the

platypus. All these smaller animals were exhibited under their life

conditions, with sandy burrows, or whatever they might be, carefully

reproduced.

[Illustration: TREE-FERNS IN THE BUSH NEAR MELBOURNE.]

The picture gallery consists principally of modern paintings, many of

them by Australian painters or of Australian scenes.

It seemed to us that the painter has yet to arise who will really

capture the spirit of Australian scenery. It is so wholly individual a

thing in colour and chiaroscuro. In a photograph it shows not unlike

Europe, but the heavy opaque look of the gums seen massed together at

a little distance does not resemble anything on this continent, nor

does the rather sad, almost dun-coloured effect of the grey eucalyptus,

near at hand, nor the translucent atmosphere, the clarity of light, the

brilliancy of sun, that makes a London winter seem a thing of abysmal

gloom following on those illumined days.

Leaving the picture gallery, a long corridor leads to the free

library, and Melbourne is justly proud of its beautiful and luxurious

reading-room, in every way worthy of the chief city of a great

democratic country. Circular in shape, it is surmounted by a dome so

high that it rather dwarfs its proportions. But looked down upon from

an upper gallery the effect of space and the soft radiance of the

electric light falling on the white walls combine to give a charming

architectural effect to the whole. Every member of the public over

fourteen years of age has the right of free access to the library. The

trustees have evolved an admirable system of a “travelling library,”

for circulation among country residents of the state.

It was a very pleasant evening. Every section of Victorian social and

official life was represented, for in an Australian town if there is

an evening party everyone goes to it, because there are not dozens of

other things going on at the same time as in London. So that everyone

goes to everything, and thus in the smaller societies of colonial towns

a few days in a place suffice to make many acquaintances, and a visitor

can never feel a stranger.

The authorities, however, always hopefully provide an amount of

cloakroom accommodation, which is to the needs of the guests in the

proportion of a sentry-box to an army. Having already experienced this

idiosyncrasy at Adelaide, we prudently deposited our wraps behind

a large stuffed kangaroo and asked him to keep an eye on them. He

faithfully fulfilled his charge.

We lunched next day with one of the leading citizens of Melbourne, one

of those active, public-spirited men that colonial life produces, whose

patriotism has grown with the growth of the town he has done his part

in building. It was interesting, because in the colonies everyone is

doing something and is ready to talk about his business, whatever it

is. One of the guests, for instance, had a thousand acres of dairy farm

in the neighbourhood of Bacchus Marsh. He could grow seven or eight

crops of lucerne a year, but it cost him 30s. an acre for irrigation.

Our host had a fascinating hobby of keeping a small private menagerie.

In a sloping paddock beyond the garden a number of kangaroos were

nibbling the grass; they were quite tame, but their pace if they are

startled is incredible; they don’t appear to touch the ground, but seem

to fly with their long hind-legs stretched out like a bird, skimming

the ground with a curious effect of great speed.

This was the only occasion during our stay in Australia on which we

saw a wombat. He is a thick-set, squat animal, about three feet long,

and not unlike a large guinea-pig in build. He lives on grass and

roots, and in his native state burrows a home for himself with his

sharp claws. He is such an inveterate burrower that in captivity he

can only be kept in an enclosure with a concrete floor and corrugated

iron sides without a door; in fact, his pen resembled those in which

pigs are incarcerated for life at Las Palmas, except that it was quite

clean. He seemed not unfriendly in a molluscous way; he lifted his flat

head to take grass from our hands, and his odd bristly fur felt like

the spines of a porcupine to the touch.

But the most engaging denizens of the garden were the little opossums.

The opossum bears a rough sort of resemblance to a squirrel with a

long prehensile tail, and, like squirrels, lives in trees. When we

went to look at them only the little pink inside of an ear was showing

through the open door of their hutch. Then one brown eye appeared, a

little hand-like claw was cautiously advanced towards the biscuit held

out to it, a bushy whisker emerged, and slowly the whole opossum came

into the open. They are most charming little things, very gentle and

well-mannered; they gingerly hold your hand in their tiny white claws

while they delicately nibble at your biscuit, and if they inadvertently

bite your finger by mistake they immediately draw back with an air

of distressed apology. Little Australian animals have an exquisite

urbanity that makes them the most endearing acquaintances.

[Illustration: VIEW OF THE AUSTRALIAN ALPS FROM THE MURRAY RIVER

FLATS.]

It was a bright afternoon of sunshine, and the Botanical Gardens to

which we went on the way to an At Home were looking their best after

an earlier rain. They are laid out on rising ground, with ornamental

water, sloping lawns, and graceful groups of trees.

In the evening we dined very pleasantly with a university professor,

when a fellow-guest at dinner described his experiences in shooting

the rapids of an Australian river. He and the friend who went with him

had to keep their food in watertight bags, as the canoes continually

upset. The one thing, he said, was whatever happened never to let go of

the canoe, or you would find yourself two hundred miles from anywhere,

bereft of all means of existence. “Was it dangerous?” somebody asked.

“You are never out of danger,” was the reply. And it is this sense of

the possibility of adventure that constitutes part of the charm of

colonial life, where men come into contact and into conflict with a

nature not yet all sleek and combed.

Our last day at Melbourne we spent in driving round the city and such

of its environs as we had not already seen. We visited St. Kilda’s, the

watering-place of Melbourne. A low, grey, cloudy sky threw a pale light

on the waters of the great inland sea, with its pretty opposite shore.

This is Melbourne’s pleasure-place, with hotels along the front.

Returning through the older part of Melbourne we saw the old road

along which men went out to the diggings, with some of its original

galvanised iron buildings still standing. We passed by the cemetery,

where the first settlers were buried, closed long ago. As we

returned into the everyday busy streets of the great city we met the

newly formed Australian contingent of troops marching out to their

camping-ground. There can be few people so invertebrate that they can

watch levies on the march without a responsive thrill, even in time

of peace, and these men were going to fight not for their homes and

families and country, but were relinquishing all for their distant

kindred in a life-and-death struggle miles away. This great unpeopled

country, where men are so urgently needed, was gladly sending of its

best to “the Old Country”--“home,” as they tenderly call it, with a

depth of sentiment incomprehensible here, and incomprehensible to

anyone who does not know and feel his own patriotism awake and flourish

on alien soil.

Our last visit was to the Tourist Bureau, which in general management

and organisation is incomparably the best in Australia. Here we were

given our choice of the admirable views of Victoria and small handbooks

of local interest. That afternoon our visit concluded.

We left Melbourne feeling more Australian than the Australians. The

afternoon sun was gilding the level plain as we sped across it, passing

scattered villages, often little more than clusters of iron-roofed

shanties, with a horse, its bridle hitched to a post, and children and

dogs playing in the road. After the swift darkness had come, there

was a clear night of stars lighting up the dim country, the great

spreading empty plain with its scattered gum trees, while the lamps

of the carriages sent out shafts of light, like searchlights, across

brilliantly illuminated patches, momentarily visible in the darkness.

PART IV

NEW SOUTH WALES

CHAPTER XIII

SYDNEY HARBOUR

When we were sailing from Batavia in Java to Colombo there was a New

Yorker on board, who was buying rubber in anticipation of the needs of

belligerents, and who knew most of the places in the world where rubber

was to be raised or bought. His views on Australia we have forgotten,

and his denunciation of the Indies, as places where the white resident

must deteriorate, do not matter here. What we do recall is the dislike

he expressed, as an Eastern American, for the pretensions of the West,

especially of California. “There’s nothing they’ve got,” he would say,

“that they don’t want to tell you about. Why, you take a Californian,

and he’ll stand there and blow out his chest, and talk to you about his

climate and climate! There’s Los Angeles.... I want to tell you right

now, that Los Angeles is the one place on God’s earth, where you can

get a sunstroke and a frozen foot at the same time.”

Other Americans, Californians, to whom we have repeated this

description, attempt to palliate it, but they admit its force; and the

fact is that being a people with a sense of humour, they recognise the

exaggeration as the recoil which we all experience when anything is

over-praised to us. It is very hard for a young country not to praise

its possessions, not out of conceit, but from a human desire to elicit

praise from a superior critic. We “know you’ve got some great things,”

they say by inference to the visitor, “but you’ll admit that this thing

of ours is not so bad.” Thus when the citizen of Ballarat points out to

you the glories of his main street, he does not ask you to compare it

with Piccadilly or the Champs Elysées, but he would like you to think

that it is something for a mining community to have cut out of the Bush.

So now to Sydney Harbour. Long before we ever saw it we had heard of

it. They think no end of Sydney Harbour, we had been told. They say

it’s better than the Bay of Naples. “If ever you meet an Australian,

and tell him you’re going to Australia,” Phil May once said to the

writer, “he’ll be sure to say, ‘Well, you look out for Sydney Harbour.’

It’s a fine place,” added May reflectively; “but, you know, if you tell

an Australian that the only thing you have to complain of in Australia

is the toughness of its beef, he’ll say, ‘Tough? Well, what of it?

You have to have it tough to sole boots with it.’” With which cryptic

observation he left the subject of Sydney Harbour, of which he was

quite incapable of giving any further description.

We are in not much better case. But let us say at once that whatever

one might expect of Sydney Harbour, whether having heard so much of

its beauties, one came to it prepared to deny them, or whether merely

eager to confirm one’s expectations, Sydney Harbour would always be

ready with its surprise. It reminds one of that Street in Tours to

which Balzac paid so affectionate a tribute, the Street where there was

always sunshine and shadow and a fountain playing, the Street that was

like a coquette ... in brief, the Street where he was born. For Sydney

Harbour, too, is everchanging; the Pacific is at its gates; and it has

a beauty which captures affection; in brief, it has charm. But it is

quite unlike what one expects of it. Our first glimpse of it was from

a heavy vehicle ferry, and when we rubbed the rain from the windows

of our car, we looked through rain on a prospect that might have been

Portsmouth, so little could we see. But if anyone should come to Sydney

Harbour by sea, he might arrive at the right first impression. If you

will lay your hand on the table with the fingers spread, you will

have some sort of a notion of the shape of this noble inlet. From the

sea you would come into it at the wrist between Sydney Heads, which

are jutting cliffs of sandstone, with the sea breaking at their base.

Then far away inland, the fingers of the harbour stretch for miles,

fingers very uneven in length and thickness and formation. On one of

them stands Sydney and the suburb melodiously named Wooloomooloo,

which was once a swamp, and is now as valuable as Brixton. On other

fingers are springing up Dulwich’s and Wimbledon’s and Surbiton’s; some

fingers dig so far into the continent that their headwaters are lost

among tree-clothed hills miles and miles away ... and all this, town

and suburb, and garden city and seaside and country village--all is

Sydney Harbour. We saw it a bit at a time, as this or that excursion

took us along its ramifications, now in a motor drive to Sydney Heads,

or in a taxi through the park that runs to the edge of its waters.

But it was most familiar to us, as to anyone who lives in Sydney,

by its ferry-boats, which run to and from its many promontories and

its growing suburbs, and find their terminus at the Charing Cross of

the harbour--Circular Quay. At night with their lighted saloons and

incessant movement, coming and going, the ferry-boats make Sydney

Harbour into a feast of lanterns. In the daytime no one could describe

it and convey any impression of it; for it changes so, and has so many

aspects:

The haze on the hills northward and westward.

The large and small steamers in motion....

The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of

the wheels.

The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset.

The scallop-edged waves in the twilight.

The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the grey walls of the

houses by the quays.

On the neighbouring shore the fires from the foundry chimneys

burning high in the night.

Or again:

I too, many and many a time crossed the harbour of old.

Watched the seagulls....

Saw the slow-wheeling circles and the gradual edging in towards

the south.

Saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water.

Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams.

Looked towards the lower bay to notice the vessels arriving.

Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me.

Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at

anchor....

That was written by a poet of another harbour, but it catches better

than any description I can give, the life, the humanity of Sydney

Harbour.

It will be the same, perhaps not less beautiful, fifty years hence.

But people who have lived there long, look at the encroaching villas

of Mosman’s Bay, and all the suburbs on that side, and say rather

sadly, “I can remember the time--ten years ago, twenty ... when there

wasn’t a house there.” And one cannot help an apprehension lest in

years to come, the tree-clothed heights and headlands may not all be

whity-brown with the houses of citizens. Doubtless on the side of the

harbour opposite to Circular Quay another Sydney will spring up which

will be to the old one what Brooklyn is to New York, and will have

its own factories and its own Mayor. One can hope only that it will

grow up maintaining some idea of public parks--which ought all to come

down to the water, and fend off the encroachments of houses--and of

town-planning. There is plenty of room now. Room will be dearer later

on.

Sydney itself is an object-lesson. It is a fine town in parts. It has

a fine park. Macquarie Street is fine; so is the enclosure of the

University; and there are the Botanic Gardens, and the Domain. You

cannot ask for better than that. At least I cannot, who am a Cockney,

and found in Sydney a town which had grown up haphazard very much like

London. Its best streets rather narrow and far from straight, just like

London’s; its Circular Quay bearing signs of reform that must have been

very much needed; its plebeian insertion of Wooloomooloo dropped in

the middle of the town much as Clare Market and Drury Lane were, or

are, left in between the Strand and Holborn. To a Londoner Sydney will

always be a homelike place. Those who live there will seem to him like

lifelong friends, and it will be his fault if they are any less.

The Glasgow Scot, it will be remembered, said that Glasgow was a

gran’ place to get out from; and New South Wales is very accessible

from Sydney. During most of the year the inhabitants do not live very

far from the city; for it is so much more easy to reach the spring

woodlands, the summer and the sun than it is from London. Manly Beach

and surf-bathing are just over the road; Broken Bay, where the simple

life presents itself without affectation, is round the corner; Pitt

Water and sounds and creeks and broads, where in September the wild

swans come, are a cycle ride away. In the background hover the Blue

Mountains; rather mysterious heights, because the light reflected

from the glossy leaves of the trees which wrap these hills as closely

as fur, gives always to them a bluish sheen. Even Melbourne admits

the Blue Mountains, and says without grudging that nowhere is there

anything quite like them. In the hot days of summer ... it can be hot

in Australia--once on a scorching day at Lord’s I remember that Jim

Phillips, the umpire in many Test matches, responded to a remark on

the heat: “Hot? Why, in Australia they’d call this ‘a break in the

heatwave!’” ... in the hot days of summer people take bungalows in the

Blue Mountains and come by morning train to town. It is worth it. In

the winter, by way of contrast, the holidaymakers can go still farther

up-country, and obtain ski-ing.

CHAPTER XIV

SYDNEY AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD

The approach to Sydney by rail lies through wooded hills with beautiful

views of dark ranges in the distance. It had been raining overnight,

and everything was glistening in the early morning sun that lighted up

the red shoots of the gum trees. Along the line were small encampments

of workmen, who have to live under canvas to be within reach of their

employment on the railway.

We had been told that Sydney would be very hot, but our first

impression was one of all-pervading moisture, for after the long

spell of dusty, dry weather, the rain had caught us up at last; a

fine driving rain that made everything sodden. Our host met us at the

station, and took us to identify our luggage, which was lying in the

mud on another platform. Our first view of Sydney was of tall houses

crowded together in narrow streets, more like those of a European town;

for the city has grown up anyhow, instead of being schemed on the

rectangular, spacious plan of the newer capitals. We caught passing

glimpses of fine buildings and open spaces, “Hyde Park,” and Macquarie

Street, the Harley Street of Sydney, where all the doctors live,

advertising their whereabouts with immense brass plates on the railings

of their houses.

Descending this broad street, we were on the famous Sydney Harbour,

the most beautiful in the world, Valparaiso its only rival. One always

thinks of a harbour as a round place full of shipping, with crowded,

dirty wharfs. Sydney Harbour is quite different from this; it is a

series of creeks running up into the land, its different arms separated

by wooded hills, whose trees are rapidly disappearing in a tide of

villas. Wherever you are in Sydney, you are never far away from some

fresh aspect of the harbour.

Our car ran on to a steam-ferry, already crowded with cars and carts,

climbed the bank on the other side, and passing a terrace of houses,

like an old-fashioned London suburb, drew up at a garden gate. We

never saw anything prettier in Australia than that garden. A sloping

tree-shaded lawn, bordered by grey, close-clipped salt bush, led down

to an old house, chocolate-coloured, two-storied, gabled. On the right

of the path was a large tree, still bare of leaves, but covered with

long, scarlet blossoms. It was the coral-tree (erythrina), common

in the warm north-eastern latitudes of Australia. The house itself

had an old-world charm, and a certain exquisite freshness that caused

us some anxiety as to the effect of our very travel-stained luggage

on its spotless interior; but the wise Australian hostess, whom long

experience has acquainted with the treatment her guests’ trunks will

have received at the hands of railway officials, sets an uncarpeted

room apart for their reception. Here the muddy, battered things are

deposited, and their owner can gingerly approach them there, for it is

not usual in Australian households for the maids to unpack visitors’

luggage, and, generally speaking, one may say this is fortunate for the

visitor.

The front of this charming old house was no less beautiful than the

back. It had been built long ago by convict labour, and was heavily

barred and shuttered against their possible depredations. The bedrooms

looked out over the harbour, a beautiful view of never-ending

kaleidoscopic fascination. Beneath the trees under the window

large steamers came, and the busy traffic of smaller craft slipped

soundlessly to and fro. It was a scene of continual colour, movement,

and life, with its silent background of wooded hills.

Sydney, with the exception of two days of heavenly blue skies, was

unpropitious in its weather during our stay; when it wasn’t raining,

which it did intermittently with great violence, it was blowing up

clouds of dust, in preparation for the next shower, and no amount of

rain seemed really effective in laying its stinging, swirling clouds.

However, we set off after lunch to visit the University, and walked

down a steep lane to the little pier where the steamers call for the

Circular Quay, whence the different boats run to one and another point

in the harbour. It is a charming little journey from Kirribilli Point,

by which musical native name, with its characteristic reduplications

of the vowel sounds, our temporary home was called; Old Admiralty

House lies picturesquely among its high gardens, and on the opposite

shore, on a green mound with two sentinel trees stands the little

fortress-like building where the first governors of the colony lived.

A tram from the Circular Quay runs up the principal street of Sydney,

past the Town Hall and the Cathedral to the University grounds. We made

a dash through the pouring rain to the University buildings, which

stand on high ground, overlooking the town. The University was founded

in 1850, though its scope has since been greatly enlarged. It comprises

faculties of arts, law, medicine, and science. As at Melbourne,

denominational colleges, of which the principal ones are Church of

England and Presbyterian, have been established and incorporated with

it. A woman’s college, undenominational, has also been built within

the University grounds, as well as a hospital, where medical students

and nurses are trained. The fees for tuition are fifteen guineas a

year in the Faculty of Arts, and twenty-seven guineas a year in the

professorial schools; but though these fees are hardly more than

nominal, pupils from the Government High Schools or Registered Schools,

can be awarded exhibitions on the result of the Leaving Certificate

Examination of the Department of Public Instruction, which give the

privilege of free education during the University course. These

exhibitions are, however, limited in number.

The handsome University main building will eventually form the front

of a proposed quadrangle. There is a large hall for examinations

and public meetings, and lecture-rooms for general subjects; but

the Science and Medical Schools are separately housed. The general

educational system of New South Wales, primary and secondary, is

established on much the same lines as that already described in Western

Australia. Only those children are admitted to the secondary schools

who have obtained a qualifying certificate. Every precaution has been

taken to render the technical education of the colony as efficient

as possible. Conferences, attended by both employers and workpeople,

discussed and drew up a course of instruction. Trades schools were

established that should lead up to the technical colleges, and by a

wise provision, without which the whole fabric of technical education

is rendered nugatory, an “entrance qualification” for the trades

schools was made compulsory. In some trades, by arrangement with the

employers, apprentices attend a trades school during working hours.

Every precaution is taken that the children in scattered, outlying

districts shall not elude the benefits the state provides. Wherever

central schools are possible, children are taken to them free by

coach, or in the coastal districts by launch. “Bush” children have

“Provisional” or “Half-time” schools,[17] provided for them. “Caravan”

schools visit scattered families. “Flying Camp” schools accompany

railway construction.

[Illustration: CIRCULAR QUAY, SYDNEY.]

It is claimed that New South Wales exhibits the most perfect

existing system of centralised educational administration. All state

education is controlled by the Public Instruction Department,

and the whole cost is paid out of consolidated revenue. There is no

educational tax or local rate.

It seemed to us, as we assimilated all these facts, that first day in

Sydney, that our colonies were doing things while we talk about them;

but it must be remembered that they have to form, while we have to

reform, and the first is much the easier task.

We got back to Kirribilli Point, eluding the heavy showers as far as

possible, but Sydney looked as miserable as all towns on a thoroughly

wet day, producing a confused impression of chilly damp, streaming shop

windows, jostling umbrellas, and liquid mud. The next day was better,

fortunately, as the Governor of New South Wales was giving a garden

party.

Government House, itself an unimportant structure, is charmingly placed

on a point of the harbour, with gardens sloping down to the water.

Towards evening the sun shone out, and gave us the first impression

of the real Sydney, and our host seized the opportunity to show us

something of the place as it ought to look. We motored to South Head

along a road, where verandahed and balconied houses clustered in

gardens on the hills above the harbour, clinging, as it were, to the

rocks, which crop out everywhere among the short grass, smoothed and

weathered by time. Graceful grey pepper trees grow in many of the

gardens, drooping over the fences. The road, which ran up and down

hill, ended abruptly in a boulder. We got out, and walked along to the

edge of the South Head, the southern extremity of the entrance to the

harbour, where the purple Pacific booms in the cavities of the high

sandstone cliffs. This view from the South Head is one of the most

beautiful in Australia. The blue waters of the harbour are guarded by

sentinel cliffs, and misty range on range of low hills stretch away

inland.

Here we saw growing for the first time the lantana, a hardy shrub, not

unlike the “meal tree” of our hedges at home, but with pink and yellow

flowers. It is a very decorative thing, but is regarded in Australia,

and especially in Queensland, as a noxious weed.

We returned home by way of the Domain, or public park, adjoining the

Botanical Gardens, along a road lined by the stately Morton Bay Pine.

[Illustration: SOUTH COAST, NEW SOUTH WALES.]

One day in Sydney was devoted to an excursion by boat round the

harbour. It is a curious fact that Captain Cook, in his careful survey

of the east coast of Australia, should have missed Sydney Harbour.

When exploring the east coast of Australia in the “Endeavour,” a ship

of 368 tons, he spent some time in Botany Bay in the spring of 1770,

where he buried one of his men, took in wood and water, and made some

ineffectual attempts at friendly negotiation with the natives. He gave

the bay the name by which it was afterwards known because of the “great

quantity of plants, that Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander collected in this

place.” He then sailed away to the North, passing Sydney Harbour at

two or three miles’ distance; merely noting that “there was there a

good bay or harbour, in which there appeared to be good anchorage,”

which he called Port Jackson. Here, years later, after the revolt of

the American colonies; when the English Government was faced with the

difficulty of disposing of the convicts, who had been formerly shipped

to America; a scheme was set on foot, partly through the initiation of

Lord Sydney, for shipping them to Botany Bay, and founding a colony

there. An expedition was sent out under Captain Philip, the first

governor of the colony. The fleet sailed in May, seventeen years after

Captain Cook’s exploration of the coast of New South Wales, as he had

named it, and took thirty-six weeks to reach Botany Bay by way of

the Cape and Brazil; but on his arrival Governor Philip came to the

conclusion that Botany Bay was not suitable for a settlement, and,

coasting north, entered the opening between the north and south heads

of Port Jackson, and discovered the magnificent harbour inside.

He selected as a landing-place a bay four miles from the opening of the

harbour, where there was a good spring of fresh water, and excellent

anchorage for many of the largest ships of that day. He therefore

made this his landing-place, and called it Sydney Cove, after the

then Secretary of State for the Colonies. On January 26th, 1788,

the date now commemorated as the anniversary day of the Foundation

of the Colony, the rest of Captain Philip’s fleet sailed round from

Botany Bay, and anchored in Sydney Cove, near what is now known as the

Circular Quay, though at that time the cove ran a good deal farther

inland. It was Governor Philip who planned the principal streets of

the new township of Sydney with a width of 200 feet, which was instead

unfortunately, reduced to sixty feet by his successors, producing

a narrow, crowded effect, instead of the generous sense of space

characteristic of cities in the new world.

The quay was a process of slow development. As late as 1803 Governor

King issued a general order which stated that “The framing,

lengthening, and planking of the wharf on the eastern side is complete,

and the inhabitants are expected to cart material to fill it up and to

make a way to it.” An admirably simple method of accomplishing public

works; equally salutary with the measures then in vogue for dealing

with loafers: “All persons loitering about the wharves will be put to

hard labour for the rest of the day.” The wharves grew up, like the

city, in gradual response to the needs of the increasing population.

But in 1900 an outbreak of plague produced stringent reforms. In

order to prevent its recurrence the Government took over the whole

of the wharves, regardless of cost, placing the business of their

reconstruction in the hands of a Harbour Trust, who have swept away old

wharves, provided new ones, and had the foreshores made rat-proof.

Sydney Harbour baffles description; pages would give no idea of its

varied charm and beauty. It is difficult even to realise that its

shores occupy a length of 188 miles, made up of innumerable bays

and creeks running up among its wooded hills. Some of these, in the

neighbourhood of the main centres of traffic, are fringed with busy

wharves and lined with shipping. On the opposite side from them the

hills are thickly dotted with villas, but in the more remote arms of

the harbour the bush remains still untouched and primeval, hiding quiet

sandy beaches in its recesses.

Roughly speaking, one may say the harbour divides itself into two main

sections; that on the northern side of the entrance called Middle

Harbour, and the more extensive southern portion which, with all its

many ramifications, runs west and ends in the Parramatta River. It is

on the southern shores of this side of the harbour that the commercial

life of Sydney is centred, the great and busy city with all its

thronging wharves. On the northern shores are the picturesque houses of

the well-to-do residents; for Sydney is also a pleasure city, and the

land-locked waters of the upper reaches of the harbour are delightful

for sailing, rowing, fishing, and bathing, while in the immediate

neighbourhood are the popular surf-bathing beaches of Manly and Coogee.

We had already visited some of the northern shores of the harbour,

but we had not penetrated to the west. The day was fine, the weather

propitious. Our steamer started from Fort Macquarie, and we sailed

first to the outer harbour, gaining varied impressions of the serrated,

undulating shores; past the old Federal Government House, and the

beautiful Botanic Gardens, which adjoin the public park, known as

the Domain, and run down to the shore; past Macquarie Point and

Wooloomooloo; past Rushcutter’s Bay, and past the charming Rose Bay, to

the steep escarpment of the North and South Heads, where the Pacific

comes rolling up its breakers. On the return journey we went as far as

Cockatoo Island in the Parramatta River, one of the most westerly of

the many picturesque islands scattered within the harbour. Here are

the Government docks, originally constructed by convicts; for Cockatoo

Island was formerly a penal settlement. In the last year or two the

docks have been very much extended, and shipbuilding is now carried on

on a large scale.

At the colliery of Balmain coal-mining is carried on at a great

depth below the harbour. It was growing late when we returned to

our starting-point, but the evening light was loveliest of all on

Kirribilli Point above which a crescent moon was hanging.

CHAPTER XV

THE BLUE MOUNTAINS AND A BUSH PICNIC

We had heard much of the famous Blue Mountains during our progress

from West Australia to New South Wales and were anxious to visit them.

In the early days they formed an impenetrable barrier between Sydney

and the rich country beyond. Many vain and unsuccessful attempts were

made to cross these labyrinthine ranges. Each successive line of

heights is so like another, its eucalyptus-covered shoulders with the

deep, blind gorges between, for long baffled and defied all attempts

at exploration. The first of these efforts was undertaken as early as

1793–4 by three naval officers; but it was not till 1813, in the time

of Governor Macquarie, that some settlers interested in stock-breeding

won their way through. For a time, like all their predecessors, they

got entangled in the bewildering network of gorges that make travelling

here so difficult, but at last, chancing upon a dividing spur that ran

westward, they pursued its ridge till, arriving at the summit, they saw

below them a fairly open valley with a running stream and good pasture.

Governor Macquarie at once followed up the important discovery by

sending out another expedition, which led to the discovery of a river

flowing westward, the “Macquarie River,” and subsequently opened up the

country beyond. A road was constructed across the mountain in 1815.

Early inland exploration in Australia forms an interesting and often

tragic chapter in the history of the continent. Its story has been told

in detail in Favenc’s “Australian Exploration.”

We got up very early in the morning. How delightful it was to throw

open the shutters on to the green trees and lawns of the garden with

the busy blue waters of the harbour below, the big ships lading and

unlading their cargo on to tenders, the little local steamers bustling

to and fro, looking as if there was not room for them all. Breakfast,

including a very agreeable kind of marmalade jelly, made of sweet

oranges, was brought to us at seven o’clock, and we started shortly

afterwards. It was a still morning with a threat of rain, and heavy,

drifting clouds. The water round the little wooden landing-stage of

Kirribilli Point is so clear that small shoals of fish can be seen

distinctly swimming about the piles, and we watched for some time a

little speckled thing that looked like a mouse in shape.

[Illustration: NATIONAL PASS, BLUE MOUNTAINS.]

We passed out of the suburbs of Sydney, through the outlying red wooden

houses, with corrugated iron roofs, surrounded by greenery and standing

in cleared spaces. Then came green fields, sometimes with the dead

trees or their stumps still remaining. We noticed numerous orange trees

before we left the populated district. The hour was still very early;

we slept peacefully for the greater part of the journey. Unless the

faculty of sleeping in a train is cultivated, there is no enjoyment for

the Australian traveller, for he must always journey scores of miles

to get anywhere, and the country, generally speaking, varies little in

character. On this occasion we awoke to find ourselves in a sort of

Swiss scenery, with range on range of blue hills. This endless vista

of gum-covered hill after gum-covered hill made it easy to see why for

years the Blue Mountains were the despair of pioneers, who, surmounting

one range, found another in front of them exactly the same. The view

was only varied by red escarpments in places. The stopping-places, as

we slowly mounted higher, were entirely conventional. We might have

been looking out on a suburb of London--Sydenham, for instance,

as far as the aspect of the neat suburban houses was concerned. The

illusion was deepened by the appearance of “Springfield Ladies’

College,” very trim and sedate among its neighbours, only the gardens

bore camellia bushes for roses.

Leura, on the other hand, gives the illusion of a Swiss village, with

its background of high dark hills, large flourishing hotels, and rows

of fir trees. Our destination was Katoomba. These hill settlements are

on the way to becoming thriving towns. A large and excellent hotel

already dominated the one main street of shops. The Blue Mountains are

a popular week-end, or holiday resort for Sydney, whose residents can

easily attain the pure mountain air, after the steamy heat which is

said to be the normal condition of the city in summer. Katoomba could

only boast of one modest street, but it supported two chemists’ shops,

and a furnishing company, conducted by a man of unsurpassed initiative

and a sense of the dramatic. One would not have supposed that there

was scope for such a faculty in the furnishing trade. But in his shop

window was represented not mere specimens of his wares, not merely

pillow-slips and dining-tables to tempt the hardy pioneer from the

backwoods, but that hardy pioneer himself. The whole shop front had

been converted into a scene representing a sumptuously furnished hotel

bedroom, in which a young man, a wax figure, had retired for the night.

His clothes were thrown carelessly about the room, his boots and socks

kicked off by the bedside, his gun leant in one corner, the contents of

his small tin trunk were neatly arranged on the dressing-table. A small

table, on which were a pack of cards and an empty champagne bottle,

bore testimony to his gay bachelor habits, but before he went to bed

his last thought had been otherwise, for open upon the writing-table

was a letter written in a large bold hand to his “Dearest Henriette,”

lamenting his loneliness, and asking when the happy day would come

on which they should set up house together. The whole scene was so

realistic that the youth of Katoomba could not linger long unmoved in

contemplation of it.

We lunched at the large hotel of the little settlement, its verandah

overlooking a fine vista of misty hills that must have been superb on

a sunny day, but the rain clouds hung heavily over them, diffusing an

exquisitely soft light under the low grey sky. After lunch we started

on the top of a coach drawn by five horses to see some of the falls

for which the neighbourhood is famous. It took skilled driving over

the rough tracks that did duty for roads. We bumped up and down steep

ascents and descents, swung round impossible corners with glimpses

between the trees of range on range of misty blue mountains stretching

away illimitable, mysterious, aloof, with no sign of life on their soft

gum-clad slopes.

Occasionally the coach stopped, and we got down, while the guide

who accompanied us pointed out some famous views or some especially

beautiful fir-clad gully, with a little trickle of water falling from

the rocks and tinkling away unseen. There seemed to be no birds or

animals. The guide said that the foxes were killing off the small

native animals in these gorges, and that of the koala bears, which were

once numerous, there were very few left. A price is given for foxes’

skins in the hope of exterminating them. We were told in Melbourne that

they fetched 10s. On one of these occasions we heard a curious noise,

something like the gobbling of a turkey, made by a large brown bird,

which the guide affirmed to be a lyre bird.

The Katoomba Falls, which we visited last, were on a much more imposing

scale. The water comes down from a great height in a succession of

falls. As a matter of fact an extra supply of water was turned on for

the benefit of ourselves and some other visitors, so that altogether

our impression of Katoomba was that of a very sophisticated spot. The

excellent hotel and the soft sweet air, even in winter, though it is

3000 feet above sea level, would certainly make it an ideal place for

rest, with an endless variety of delightful walks, which would reveal

in their season all kinds of plants, animals, and insects, as well as

the magnificent mountain views. It was dark when we started on the

return journey, which seemed so interminable that we marvelled at the

hardihood of the people who actually live at such places as Katoomba

and go into Sydney for business, for such we were told there are. The

lights of Sydney and a very belated dinner were more than welcome.

It is difficult in a new country to think in large enough terms--to

realise, for instance, that New South Wales is more than two and a

half times as large as the whole British Isles. In this vast expanse

of country the climate varies greatly, from that of Mount Kosciusko in

the south, where ski-ing and other Alpine sports are carried on in the

winter, to the warm and humid districts of the north. There is thus

a correspondingly great variety of products; from wheat, barley, and

maize to sugar-canes and tobacco, cotton, and olives; from strawberries

to that much over-rated tropical fruit, the mango.

[Illustration: SHEARING TIME, BURRAWONG STATION, NEW SOUTH WALES.]

The state of New South Wales may be roughly divided, geographically,

into three areas. A coastal district; plateaux or tablelands, of

which the Blue Mountains form part; and the western or inland plains.

Agricultural and pastoral production varies according to the character

of these different areas.

Dairying is making rapid progress in the coastal districts of the

north; the tablelands afford admirable conditions for mixed farming, in

which the raising of sheep and cattle is combined with the growth of

cereals; the western slopes are the centre of the wheat industry; while

the vast area of level grass land in the far west give pasturage to

40,000,000 merino sheep.

For the chief contributing factor to the pastoral wealth of Australia

has been wool. By far the greater part is exported, for though local

woollen mills have been started they do not absorb much more than 1¼%

of the whole clip. It was the introduction of the merino sheep from

South Africa, through the agency of a Captain MacArthur in 1797, that

laid the foundation of the Australian wool trade, for the merino unites

the faculty of producing the finest wool with the capacity of seeking

its food over the most extended areas, and of resisting drought.

New South Wales is now the most important wool producing state in

Australia, and exported in 1912 44·4% of the total export of wool from

the continent. The Commonwealth Returns for 1911 show that Australia

exported 44% of the total value of all wool imported into the United

Kingdom alone, in round numbers more than fourteen million pounds’

worth, as compared with seven millions from New Zealand, and two from

Cape Colony.

By far the most important product after wool is wheat. In 1911–12

a little over 65% of the whole area under cultivation was devoted

to wheat. At present less than 2% of the land in the state is under

cultivation, though over 92% is occupied. “In the past New South Wales

has filled a most important place as the premier wool-producing country

in the world. But during later years the production of wheat and other

cereals has been steadily increasing.... The land is the great source

of wealth, and we cannot continue to let the great part of such wealth

lie idle.... Australia, and more particularly New South Wales, may

confidently accept “mixed farming” as the solution of the land problem.”

The days of enormous runs, at all events on land suitable for

agriculture, are numbered ... the big run, having served its turn, is

fated to undergo subdivision and closer settlement.[18] Under the

Closer Settlement Act large areas of good land have been repurchased by

the Government and disposed of at from 25s. to £5 an acre. The terms

are very easy; a small deposit has to be made, and the remainder is

paid off over a term of years. Many large private estates are being

periodically cut up, and under the Closer Settlement Promotion Act

three or more persons having agreed with the owners of land as to

price and area, may apply to the Crown to purchase the lands.[19] The

system of “Shares Farming” is being worked with great success in New

South Wales at present. The landowner supplies the land, the tenant

the labour, the produce of the combination is equally divided. By this

means the farm labourer without capital soon acquires land of his

own.[20]

[Illustration: “A FLOCK OF SHEEP,” KINROSS STATION, NEW SOUTH WALES.]

Among the many charms of Sydney and its neighbourhood are the flat

sandy beaches that have made surf bathing popular. Our host had

planned a delightful expedition by motor and motor-launch that was to

culminate in a real Australian picnic in the bush with “billy” tea and

damper, showing us on the way Manly Beach. The morning was drizzling

and heavy, but Australian weather at its worst always has lucid

intervals, and soon after our early start the rain had cleared off. Our

way led through the extensive suburbs of Mosman, past many arms of the

harbour, like lovely inland lakes with wooded banks, down to a narrow

point called the Spit, from which a ferry crosses to the eastern side.

Here we met many other motor-cars, all converging on the same point,

and after crossing on the ferry and climbing a steep hill, we had left

Sydney and its harbour behind, and presently began to have glimpses of

the Pacific. The drive was one of endless charm and novelty: sometimes

we passed what looked like a rushy inland lake, sometimes we were close

to the shore. Several miles of the coast land here have been bequeathed

to the Salvation Army, which has erected various buildings on this

beautiful site. At one point a sandy bar separated a reach of still

water from the great sunlit breakers beyond, and within it hundreds of

black swans were swimming.

There were numerous week-end cottages among the gum trees. The road

ended under a steep hill, its hedges covered with a sweet-scented

yellow flower. We had reached our destination of Pittwater, an arm

of Broken Bay, so named by Captain Cook. It looks like a great lake,

the low hilly shores covered with trees down to the water’s edge.

Our motor-boat was waiting at the end of a little jetty. The tide

was low, and in the mud alongside were myriads of little crabs that

disappeared with astonishing rapidity, scuttling into their holes. It

was a pretty little voyage across this smooth arm of the sea, in which

big yellowish-green jelly-fish floated beside us. At the landing on the

opposite side of the creek the shore was fringed with small oysters.