In the bush spring flowers were already beginning to appear. Ferns

and cotton palms grew among the gums, a yellow clematis was coming

into flower, and the lovely pink starlike Queensland rose, that is not

really a rose, but a kind of boronia. We lunched at one of the picnic

places provided by the forethought of a paternal government, with a

place to boil the billy all ready, and a wooden shelter with rough

benches and table. There is always plenty of dry wood in Australia;

a soft-water tank was part of the equipment, and the billy was soon

boiling; so we had our billy tea and damper, a kind of unleavened bread

that is very agreeable, and it was great fun, though the pioneer effect

of it was rather diminished by such accessories as hock and salmon

sandwiches. Then we gathered a bunch of the lovely unfamiliar flowers

and started on our return journey, which was varied by our running

along Manly Beach, crowded with Sunday pleasure-seekers even in these

early spring days.

Sydney is so split up and scattered over its hills that it takes some

time for a stranger to realise its extent. All these Australian towns

are so extraordinarily well-to-do; there is never anything like our

working-class suburbs. “Where do the poor people live?” we used to ask.

The obvious answer being that there are _no_ poor.

[Illustration: SURF BATHING, MANLY, NEAR SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES.]

For us Sydney will always mean Kirribilli Point, and the old house,

whose owner called it by the pretty native name of Wyreepi--“Come and

stay”--a name eloquent of the unfailing kindness and hospitality within

its portals--an old house shuttered and barred against the depredations

of the early lawless convict settlers who had helped to build it. The

name evokes a mental picture of its red gables and chocolate-coloured

walls, with the gravel paths to match; its hedge of grey, closely

clipped salt bush, its sloping lawns and tall trees, its beds of sweet

peas and stocks, sweetest of spring flowers, the coral-tree its bare

boughs hanging with scarlet flowers; and in front the grass sloping to

the water’s edge, and the endless panorama of the harbour.

* * * * *

Those who have unlimited time at their disposal can choose between

taking ship at Sydney and coasting up to Brisbane in preference to the

very long and exhausting railway journey of about thirty hours; though

by so doing they would miss the magnificent scenery of the Hawkesbury

River, and the smiling suburban country-side that the train passes

through after leaving Sydney, with the red iron-roofed houses scattered

among the gum trees. The Hawkesbury River runs into the northern

extremity of Broken Bay, bordered here by a national reserve of great

beauty called Kuring-gai-Chase. Formerly trains from Sydney were met on

the shores of the river by a steamer, which took passengers across to

the other side to continue their journey; a delightful experience on a

fine day, for every traveller on its shores must long to make a closer

acquaintance with this noble and mighty river. Now, however, it is

spanned by a bridge, which crosses to Long Island, where it resembles

an Italian lake. Along the shore the water showed through a fringe of

coral-trees. Farther north the country grew more tropical; we noticed

a tiny house flanked on either side by two tall brugmancias in flower.

And the undergrowth of the bush became more varied. We saw for the

first time a curious kind of white bulrush, growing like the “black

boys” of Western Australia. They looked just like very tall church

candles, their black spikes forming the wick. The bush is always the

same, that is, it is always a forest of gums; but it has nevertheless

an individual character from the undergrowth in the different states

and latitudes.

We stopped for some time at Newcastle, an inferno of smoking chimneys

and coal-dust. The coal deposits of New South Wales are its most

important source of mineral wealth, and her coalfields are greater

in area, and produce a better quality of coal than those of any

other state; it is hoped for that reason that New South Wales may

become the principal centre of manufacture in the continent. Coal was

first discovered in 1797 in the coalfield south of Sydney, and soon

after coal was found in the cliffs at Newcastle, which has become an

important centre of export.

After leaving Newcastle the line turns westward from the coast and

crosses the fertile Hunter River valley, where the soil is so rich that

it yields as many as eight crops in one year, averaging between three

and four tons to the acre. We stopped for dinner at what we supposed to

be in the dark a small wayside station called Singleton. It is actually

a town of considerable importance, with a population of 10,000, and

the neighbourhood is famous for its breed of horses. We dined in the

characteristic wooden, iron-roofed hall. An immense advertisement of

the local hairdresser at one end inquired, “Is your hair ringbarked?” A

selection of the population, boys in front and men behind, a serious,

rough-looking group, watched us at our meal with silent and rapt

attention from the open doorway.

Soon after passing Singleton the line ascends steeply, crosses the

Liverpool Range and runs through the Liverpool Plains, where some

of the best wheat is grown. We awoke next morning to find ourselves

passing through forest, and changed trains at Wallangarra, the border

station where the gauge changes from four feet eight and a half

inches to three feet six, so that all passengers and luggage must be

transferred.

PART V

QUEENSLAND

CHAPTER XVI

BANANA-LAND

Oh Land of Ours, hear the song we make for you--

Land of yellow wattle bloom, land of smiling Spring--

Hearken to the after words, land of pleasant memories.

Shea-oaks of the shady creeks, hear the song we sing.

Those lines were written by an Australian in exile, for he was with

the Australian contingent in the war in South Africa. He is dead

now, and he did not long survive the brave soldiers whose epitaph he

wrote beginning with those words, which seem, to one who has known

Australia only a little, to sum up in a wonderful way the clinging

memories of the land. He spoke too of the “blue skies clear beyond the

mountain-tops,” and “the dear dun plains where we were bred,” and there

are no two sentences which more simply or clearly bring back Australia

to the mind. But it is the Australia of the west and the south. When

the Hawkesbury River is crossed eastwards, and the flats where the

first Cornstalks were raised have been left behind, a new country comes

into vision. It is tropic Queensland, whose inhabitants are called

Banana-landers, because the banana finds the climate very suitable to

its growth.[21]

Naturally the change is not immediately apparent in the long, long

journey by rail. The enchanting cool stretches of the Hawkesbury give

place to the ascending grades of the hills; then there are interminable

stretches of the dun plains, broken by lengths almost as long of gaunt

forest, sometimes dead wood. Then the plateau of fine pasture of the

Darling Downs, and the descent warmer and moister and greener as you go

into the land of the banana and the pine. It is also, if you strike far

enough north, the land of the prickly pear.

Railway journeying is not a bad way of seeing a country if you have

no better. One can gain an impression of China such as nothing can

obliterate by taking the North China Railway up to Harbin; and people

have written books of impressions of Java on the strength of the five

days’ journey which can be made from the port of Sourabaya, through

crumbling Djokjokarta and the wondrous Javanese highlands to Batavia.

So something of the nature of Queensland can be arrived at by that long

night and half-a-day journey by rail, though if we were asked what

was the chief impression which, at this distance of time, is left on

our minds, we should answer that it was one of wood and pasture lying

waiting for men and money--vast resources which need the spade and the

axe and the drill--and more railway.

Side by side would be quite another impression, one quite without

significance. It was that of the little township, one of many, where we

stopped for supper--a meal engulfed in all possible haste, and yet in

the midst of it there suddenly appeared on the platform of the hall,

which on ordinary occasions is probably used as a cinema theatre,

the Mayor. We were, as we should again explain, members of a large

travelling party, and the opportunity was one which the Mayor could not

resist. He bade us welcome to ---- (the name is forgotten), and added

what delight it was to see among us so many happy faces.... Then having

had our meal cut short by the oration, we hastened back to the waiting

special.

Queensland is full of townships like that--townships which are

springing into towns. Sometimes they seem to consist of a few boards

knocked together with telegraph wire; at a later stage they have added

a handsome Town Hall, a Catholic cathedral in red brick, a humbler

Church of England one ... but most of them retain the suburb of

wooden-frame houses. They do not spring out of the bush in the same way

that the towns of Western Australia do; perhaps because the clearings

have been made larger. But everywhere you seem to see right back to

the beginnings of the place, when a few people settled there and lived

there; and gradually added this and that to it, till Townsville, or

Maryborough, became to them the finest place in the world--because they

called it home. Even Brisbane, with its broad bank-building-fronted

Queen Street, retains something of the same aspect.

But Queensland is not its towns. Queensland, if you go but the smallest

distance away from them, is the unconquered wild; the land where the

blacks still signal with fires; where the forests smoulder and blaze

for days in the burning sun; a land where it is possible still to be

an explorer. Only a few days ago we were speaking to a professor in a

laboratory in London, who lived ten years in Australia, and mentioned

Queensland. His face lit up in a reminiscent gleam. “I once went for a

holiday on the Queensland coast,” said he, “and we had rare sport. We

used to go shark-spearing. It can only be done on a few nights in the

year. The season is when the sharks come in to the coast; and it must

be moonlight ... and you race along the beach with nothing on, and you

can see the sharks in the under curve of the big rollers as they break

on the beach. And if you are quick and have the knack you can stab

at them from underneath, and they can’t get you. I got two or three,

though I was only a learner ... the finest sport ...” His voice trailed

away into silence. Our friend the distinguished physiologist had gone

from dusty London to a place in a tropic land eleven thousand miles

away.

That is Queensland as it seemed to us: a place in which the towns

were still additions rather than a part of a land where enchantment

and adventure still linger. There is an island on the coast which is

quite near a thriving town of meat-packing warehouses, streets full

of sun and dust and flies, and it is called Magnetic Island. You can

reach the island by a steam launch, and the people of the town often

make the trip, and when they get there presumably they have lunch at

the boarding-house hotel. It is a wooden building with washing hanging

out in the backyard and a dissipated emu stalking among the fowls. A

melancholy bird which seems to have come unstuffed. So there is nothing

romantic at the outset of a journey to Magnetic Island.

But wait. Twenty paces away from the hotel is a stony path, and the

trees have closed in behind you. A hundred yards, and if you strayed

away from the path the way would be lost. Dense trees, rock cropping

out at times, and no way out. A strange bird calls somewhere in the

distance, but it is otherwise very still and stifling. There is a tree

covered with yellow flowers, but it has a poisonous look; and if you

venture to pluck it a regiment of stinging ants sallies out at you. So

you drop it and go on. And here is a tree covered with butterflies,

thousands upon thousands of them. And now you come to a mangrove swamp,

and if you look down at the roots of the mangroves you will find the

rare fish that live half in and half out of the water, and can hop

about in the mud. So suddenly you realise that this is an island such

as all the adventurers and pirates and wrecked sailors have been cast

upon in the romances. Here they would have sought long for water,

and perhaps have sought in vain. Here they would have had painful

experiences with poisonous berries, and would for many days have had

to live on shellfish. Perhaps one day they would have seen ascending

smoke behind that rocky ridge, and realised that hostile natives were

waiting to fall on them. Long, long they would have waited for help and

rescue, and perhaps have left only their whitening bones to tell other

mariners in other years that rescue came too late....

If you would add verisimilitude to these fancies you can find it, for

on a secluded beach of Magnetic Island lies the skeleton of a ship that

was wrecked there. It will lie there for many years to come, for it is

worth no one’s while to salve it. But to one who saw it a year ago it

was a priceless relic, for it proved to him that even now in Queensland

the old romance, the old adventure, and the spirit of them still linger

in the lands that lie within our reach beyond the seas.

CHAPTER XVII

THE BEGINNING OF THE TROPICS

Soon after crossing the Queensland border we entered a stony country

in which intrepid settlers had built themselves houses among granite

boulders. In spite of this the soil of the surrounding district is very

rich, and consists largely of decomposed granite, which stretches for

eight hundred miles round the township of Stanthorpe, and is specially

good for fruit-growing and vineyards. “There,” observes the guide-book

poetically, “roses bloom all the year round on the cheek of the young,

and vigour characterises the movements of the old.”

The line then crossed open country cleared of gums; on the pastures

numbers of horses were feeding. Mountain ranges stretched away to

the far distance with deep grassy gorges. At one point we passed a

large patch of prickly pear, one of the most terrible of Queensland

pests which has had to be dealt with by special legislation, both in

Queensland and new South Wales. Botanically it is known as a form of

_Opuntia inermis_. It resembles the cactus hedges common in Southern

Italy, and was introduced by Governor Philip in 1789, who brought

it from Rio de Janeiro as food for the cochineal insect. It is said

that the first plant was regarded as so great a curiosity that a

gardener was dismissed for neglecting to water it. This may be an

apocryphal story, but at any rate the prickly pear took so kindly to

the Australian soil, and climate, that vast areas have been overrun by

it to an entirely disastrous extent. No entirely successful measures

have been evolved for coping with its devastating increase. It is

a most serious anxiety to agriculturists, for it is estimated that

in Queensland alone thirty million acres have been affected by it,

and that it spreads at the rate of one million acres a year. It has

found its opportunity in the fact that the districts best suited to

it are sparsely populated. No economical means of eradication have

been devised. In New South Wales the cost of destroying this pest was

calculated a year or two ago at ten or twelve million pounds. Its

barbed spinules produce severe irritation in men and animals, and

besides its habit of entrenching itself in gullies, on hilltops, and

places difficult of access, it is propagated by birds and stock, which

eat the seeds; and every joint, or piece of one, forms a new plant.

The township of Warwick lies in the foot hills of the Darling Downs,

which the line now crosses. This is one of the most fertile areas in

the state. There are over four million acres of rich black soil, formed

of decomposed basalt and many feet in depth. It is well watered, has a

plentiful rainfall and a temperate climate. Toowoomba is the capital

of the district. It is a thriving, growing town, an important centre

of agricultural, and especially dairy, produce. The line now turns

sharply east, and descends again to the plains, where we saw fields of

Indian corn or maize, the stalks left standing after the crops had been

gathered.

Long before we arrived at Brisbane it was dark. The less said about

Brisbane hotels the better--in all respects. There seemed to be a

billiard-room somewhere below our uninviting quarters, for we heard

the click of balls, and a man’s voice thickly reproached a comrade for

having “given his girl a rosary and made her a Roman Catholic”--an

interesting sidelight on the ease with which conversion may be

effected. It was so pleasant to be out of the train, that after dinner

we strolled about the brightly lighted arcaded streets of the town,

and found our way to a broad, swiftly flowing river that reflected the

lights of the city.

[Illustration: THE BRISBANE RIVER.]

We had now left the mild Australian winter behind us, and were

in the height of an English summer, wearing the thinnest summer

clothes, though Brisbane counted it as early spring. Brisbane is a

most beautifully situated town, set among hills washed by the river,

which runs into the sea eighteen miles away. Its many handsome public

buildings are fronted by gardens full of tropical vegetation, its

broad arcaded streets, filled with people, prosperous-looking like all

Australians. In the charming suburbs on the slopes of the green hills,

the houses are all built high on piles, each capped by its inverted

saucer to ward off the depredations of white ants. The deep, verandahed

houses are screened from the sun by straw blinds.

Politically, Queensland is the youngest of all the Colonies. A convict

settlement was founded at Moreton Bay by Governor Brisbane in 1824, but

it languished and was soon afterwards abandoned. In 1842 Moreton Bay

was proclaimed a free settlement. Not till 1859 was state separated

from New South Wales by Letters Patent establishing Moreton Bay as

a new colony under the name of Queensland. The constitution of the

colony is modelled on that of New South Wales; that is to say, there

is an Assembly or Lower House, whose members are salaried and elected

by manhood and womanhood suffrage. The Legislative Council or Upper

Chamber has a continuous existence. It is interesting to note to

what extent the Australian Second Chambers have acted as a retarding

influence on the democratic legislation of the Assemblies. A well-known

Australian writer observes that: “Designed as Conservative bodies,

the Councils have certainly fulfilled the retarding function of a

Second Chamber. Nearly every measure which is claimed as democratic

and progressive has had to pass the ordeal of several rejections....

The resistance of the Councils to drastic schemes for breaking up the

large pastoral holdings, and to land taxation, and the brake they apply

to ‘Socialistic legislation,’ have driven many if not into the ranks,

at any rate to the support of the Labour Party, and have been the

main cause of the zeal of that Party for enlarging the powers of the

Commonwealth Government, in whose constitution a forward policy has to

encounter no such obstacle.”[22]

The promoters of the Colony in these early days had little idea how

rapid would be its growth or how great its material prosperity. Very

little was known of that vast area, and its resources were practically

undiscovered. As for the coastal waters, little more was known of them

than had been described by Captain Cook and Lieutenant Flinders. The

stretch of smooth water that forms a natural harbour for a thousand

miles inside the great barrier reef was unimagined. The northern coast

land was believed to be uninhabitable by white men; the interior was

supposed to be an almost waterless area of intolerable heat, while

experts affirmed that if sheep survived at all beneath the tropical

suns of Queensland, they would grow hair instead of wool.

Meanwhile the young Colony throve and prospered, and in 1909 held an

exhibition of her products to celebrate the completion of the first

half-century of her separate existence. Besides live stock, raised

on the rich, indigenous grass crops, which cost nothing except wire

fencing, Queensland products include cotton, sugar, butter, cheese,

bacon, wheat, maize, potatoes, oranges, pineapples, and other tropical

fruits. Her minerals consist of gold, copper, tin, coal, besides gems.

It is, however, Queensland’s pastoral industries that are the main

source of her wealth, and which form more than half the total value of

her exports. The great sheep district is in the “Western Interior,”

which occupies about half the area of the state. Here undulating downs

extend to the horizon, almost treeless, except above the watercourses.

In the summer season many of these become a mere series of water holes,

but the discovery of the great supply of underground water, over a

district reaching from the extreme north of Queensland into New South

Wales and South Australia, has made it possible to transform them into

running streams by means of artesian bores. It is a melancholy fact

that many of the pioneers in the industry got poor returns for their

hard and strenuous enterprise. In the early days labour was scarce and

dear, and in the absence of railways or good roads it took from six

to nine months to convey the wool to the coastal district by means

of bullock drays. It was many years before the great agricultural

possibilities of the Darling Downs were discovered and utilised, though

this rich district supplies more than 70% of all the oats, wheat, and

barley grown in Queensland. The Queensland farmer is at present in a

most fortunate position; he has good stock, cheap land, first-rate

pastures, and a climate which allows production to go on all the year

round. As immigrants from Great Britain are under normal conditions

admitted on payment of a nominal fee as passage money, there is an

unlimited scope for agricultural enterprise.

[Illustration: CHARLEVILLE BORE.]

The morning after our arrival at Brisbane we went out to gain our

first impression of the city and its immediate neighbourhood. The air

was soft and humid, as it is all along the north-eastern Australian

coast line, and our first walk left upon us a mingled impression of

brilliant sunshine, dust, and palm trees. In Brisbane there is tropical

vegetation everywhere; the charm of the tropics, their glorious

never-failing sunshine, and the picturesque and profuse vegetation is

first felt here. If it were not for the fine, all-pervading dust, it

would be Paradise. Here, too, we first encountered tropical fruits.

The pawpaw looks like a dark green elongated melon. Its firm yellow

fruit is rather tasteless, but eatable with sugar. On the whole, we

came to the conclusion that it was not worth while, and the same may

be said generally of all tropical fruits. The smell of a ripe mango

is sufficient to deter all but the hardiest vegetarian. The pawpaw

plant is handsome, tall, and palm-like in growth, closely resembling

the small greenhouse auralia. It is common in the gardens of Brisbane

suburbs.

All the public buildings are dignified and handsome, with white stone

fronts. The University buildings are adapted from a former Government

House, and stand in beautiful grounds which run down to the river.

The Botanical Gardens, which flank the drive, are also washed by the

broad, swiftly flowing river. They are enchanting to linger in more

so even than the world-famous tropical gardens of Buitenzorg in Java.

Perhaps it was the moisture and greenness after the arid look of most

of the rest of Australia at the end of the dry season, that seemed

to us so refreshing and delightful. At any rate, we never tired of

wandering in these gardens, where hedges of sweet peas and stocks

alternated with every kind of gorgeous tropical flowering shrub, now

just coming into bloom. Here were palms and sloping lawns; by the river

grew the curious bunya bunya trees, with their bare arms and mop-like

ends; here were greenery and quiet; and, most blessed of all, freedom

from dust. Above the river two large kingfishers often glanced to and

fro; they must have had a nest close at hand.

CHAPTER XVIII

A DAY IN THE QUEENSLAND BUSH

This was one of the most delightful of all the many crowded days we

spent in Australia, for it revealed to us the wonder and the beauty of

the Queensland Bush.

We started early for the station through the streets that leave on

one’s mind, looking back, an impression of sharply defined black and

white, from the contrasting sunlight and shadow in that brilliant

atmosphere. The three hours’ journey to Nambour, where we were to see

a sugar manufactory, was full of interest. The line passes quite near

the curious peaks, which Captain Cook called the Glass House mountains.

The origin of the name is conjectural, but it is supposed that the

conical shape of some of them resembled the glass-blowing factories

in the England of his boyish days. These bare, isolated peaks push

themselves up sharply and precipitately from the plain. They are formed

of trachyte or some kindred igneous rock, and geologists are not agreed

as to their origin among the surrounding sandstone. We saw again many

of the grass trees, as they call the Queensland variety of the West

Australian “black boy.” The tropical bush begins about fifty miles

from Brisbane, where a Government Reserve has been created on either

side of the line, which passes through a belt of forest with palms and

ferns and richly varied undergrowth. Now and then a little party of

men at work on the line would shout clamorously for “papers.” Their

only chance of getting news of the outside world is to attract the

attention of passengers in the passing trains, and get them to throw

out newspapers. The country round here is very rich and fertile, and

for the first time we saw pineapple farms. In a good year pineapples

can be bought in some parts of Queensland for threepence a dozen, so we

were told. They are very good and juicy, and they make a very pleasant

form of jam. The plants look like rows of low-growing rushes or very

coarse grass.

Towards twelve o’clock the train pulled up between a field of

sugar-canes and the Moreton Central Sugar Mill. Sugar is a very

handsome crop, when the canes are bearing their tall, feathery flowers.

The canes themselves are dark red, jointed like bamboo; the plant is

not unlike a very large maize in general effect. Nambour is a centre

of the sugar-growing industry, and there are plantations on the slopes

of the hills and the banks of the rivers. Two hundred and eighty tons

a day are crushed at the Moreton Sugar Mills just outside the town.

Its neighbourhood is pervaded by the peculiar sweet, thick, cloying

smell of the canes, a smell that can never be forgotten; we recognised

cargoes of raw sugar afar off on every wharf and landing-stage and

railway station on which we encountered it, during the remainder of our

stay in Australia.

The history of sugar-growing here is very interesting. It was started

originally on the system of large plantations worked by coloured

labour. No other system of working sugar plantations in the tropics was

known. Natives were imported from the Pacific Islands. Planters erected

their own mills, and conducted their business through managers and

overseers. In the early seventies the industry was rapidly developing,

but two circumstances intervened to hamper it. The price of cane sugar

fell owing to the great increase in the manufacture of beet sugar in

Europe; the Government prohibited the employment of coloured labour.

These circumstances revolutionised the industry. The large plantations

gave place to smaller farms worked by white labour; the farmers

received Government grants to enable them to erect co-operative

factories; further, a Government bounty was imposed as a compensation

for the withdrawal of coloured labour; this was subsequently abolished.

The Central Mill System by which groups of farmers control the

factories continues. The canes are crushed and the sugar sent to the

refiners. The work of manufacture is carried out under scientific

supervision, and state sugar experimental stations test the various

species of cane, and determine which are most productive, and most

immune from disease. Thus the Queensland Sugar Industry is specially

interesting, because it has solved the problem of carrying on a

tropical manufacture with white labour.

The Moreton Central Sugar Mill, which we visited, is close to the main

line of railway, but light railways run in all directions through the

district to bring the canes up on trucks to the mill. Masses of dark

red cane were lying about round the mill, and coming in on little

trucks. The raw cane tastes faintly sour. The sugar mill itself was

filled with the all-pervading sickly, thick, sweet smell of the raw

sugar, and streaming with moisture. The temperature is very high. We

climbed under and over moving machinery, were asphyxiated with steam,

nauseated with sweetness, and covered with molasses, all in the

pursuit of knowledge.

Still it was a very interesting experience. All processes of

manufacture are interesting. The canes are shot in from outside, and

crushed by a series of heavy rollers till a thick juice pours out. When

this is all extracted the exhausted fibre is burnt in the furnaces.

The juice of the cane is boiled in great vats. In its final stages of

boiling it is thick and black as tar. It is then run into revolving

cylinders, called centrifugalisers. These rotate at a very great rate,

and are fascinating to watch, for in a few minutes the dark, sticky

mass has disappeared, and the sides of the cylinder are coated with a

coarse yellow sugar very much sweeter than that which appears on our

tea tables.

We at last emerged from the mill, instructed, but very sticky, and

cast about for some spot in which it would be possible to obtain soap

and water. There were buildings of some kind close by, warehouses or

something of the sort, connected with the station, with two men sitting

on the verandah. We asked them if they could tell us the nearest way to

soap and water. One of them indicated with his pipe a large galvanised

iron tank with a tap in the bottom, and a broken tumbler, but they

shook their heads over the problem of soap. We turned on the tap

hopefully, but the Australian rainfall was quite inadequate to remove

molasses. So we went in search of the Nambour hotel. However new an

Australian town may be, it always has an hotel or two, and a sort of

communal hall. Nambour has in addition a few shops and some stray cows

and horses. We watched a cow eating sugar cane with every manifestation

of pleasure. It was not till we got to Queensland, by the way, that

we began to see horses everywhere, just as we had imagined them in

Australia, hitched up to gates by the bridle.

We made our way to the hotel, where everyone was very busy preparing

lunch. There was no hot water upstairs, but, penetrating into the

kitchen, where there was a great bustle, and anything extraneous was

very much in the way, we succeeded in getting a pudding basin full

of hot water and a teacloth, and attacked the molasses in the yard

outside, before an audience of poultry. Molasses, however, appears to

yield to nothing, not even chemical cleaning. It always re-emerges. So

relinquishing the vain attempt, we repaired to lunch.

[Illustration: NAMBOUR.]

Whatever you _don’t_ have for lunch in Australia, you always seem

to have turkey. It is like the inevitable _poulet_ in Continental

hotels. There must be enormous quantities of wild turkeys there;

at any rate, they are always succulent. We also always had very good

and elaborate trifles, and very weak tea, and, on this occasion,

strawberries and cream and pineapple. After lunch there was a long

interval, while we sat on a fence, and watched another ruminative cow

eating sugar cane. We were waiting for the “loco.” We were not very

clear what it was, and when it arrived, it turned out to be a little

engine drawing some trucks, across which rough planks had been thrown

for seats, like those at Big Brook; but whereas the engine on that

occasion was stoked with logs, and gave out a fragrant aromatic smoke,

this dilatory “loco” burnt some kind of soft coal, and had a very

short chimney, so that we were deluged with large and solid smuts, in

comparison with which the molasses were the merest trifle. However,

the country through which it took us was so beautiful and enchanting

that nothing else mattered. It was our first experience of tropical

bush. Elsewhere there had been little undergrowth, the tall gums soared

upwards unimpeded. Here the vast white eucalyptus trees were festooned

with thickly interlacing creepers hanging in great ropes. High up

on the trees grew masses of staghorn ferns and orchids. Far out of

reach the graceful, delicate “rock lily” hung its pendulum of pale

chablis-coloured bells, and still more exquisite were the fragile white

blooms of another orchid. In places were stretches of sugar plantation,

and banana fields, always with their background of hill and forest. The

fresh greenness of everything was delightful, for the district is well

watered.

The line, which was sometimes laid across rough logs thrown over a

small gorge, with a stream running through it, ended abruptly in the

Maroochy River, swift-flowing between low banks, with the tall trees

of the forest on one side, and a sugar plantation waving feathery

heads of bloom on the other. We walked back with two friends. It was

much more silent than an English forest. There was no pattering of the

small feet of birds on the dry, dead carpet of leaves, and no continual

twitter. A profusion of ferns grew along the track, and a quantity of

large scarlet raspberries. The gum trees were putting out their red

spring shoots. Sometimes the clear, sharp call of the peewit sounded,

or the infectious peal on peal of mocking giggles from the kookooburra,

sometimes the frogs were crying all together, as they cried in

Aristophanes’ time, “Breckkek kek kek--koax koax,” and now for the

first time we heard the Australian bull frog that clucks like a hen.

Here and there was a clearing with a homestead with high verandahs.

They made one long to spend a month in that lovely place, and feel

day by day the great peace of the forest, with only the frogs and the

trickle of a stream over its smooth, brown rocks to break the stillness.

We passed occasionally a little camp with a rough cooking place, but

there was never anyone in them. As we emerged from that charmed country

into the more prosaic, cultivated land, where pineapples were growing,

and bananas with their great purple bells, we saw a beautiful brown

bird with a long tail, silent and stately as the bush itself. It looked

down on us from the high fork of a gum tree, but did not condescend to

fly away. Hospitable Nambour had prepared tea for us on our return; not

what we mean by tea at home, but the Australian tea, a meal calculated

to stand a traveller in good stead till breakfast next morning. Of all

our sunny Australian days that walk in the bush was one of the most

charming episodes.

CHAPTER XIX

IN AND ABOUT BRISBANE

The Brisbane River, flowing gently between its green banks, is a

favourite resort of picnic parties, one of the most popular forms of

entertainment in Australia, where dry wood is abundant and the weather

can be depended upon; and the party pride themselves on their skill

in producing “billy” tea in the shortest possible space of time. One

sunny afternoon we started up the river in a motor launch. On either

shore were pretty suburban houses, each with its shady verandah, and

palm trees in the gardens. The river does not, however, always flow

softly and invite pleasure-seekers to embark upon it. Brisbane people

often allude in awestruck tones to “the Flood,” when the river rose and

swept away the peaceful bungalows on its banks and wrought much havoc.

After a pleasant little voyage we landed with some difficulty on a

rickety wooden pier, on the banks of an immense meadow of coarse rough

grass stretching away for many acres, with other scattered picnic

parties in the far distance; evidently a favourite spot. Our billy

was soon boiling, and when tea, which is on these occasions a sort

of sacrificial rite, reminiscent of the early settlers, was over, we

went up the bank to prospect, and heard for the first time the sound

which so many Australians had described to us, “the moaning” of the

shea-oak in a rising wind. We had heard it described as “weird” and

“depressing,” and it is certainly extraordinarily uncanny. The foliage

of the shea-oak is like a lot of knotted whip-cord, and when all its

strings are swept together by the wind it gives rise to a strange cry

that seems to come from far and near, shrill, insistent, and full of

foreboding. It is impossible to compare it to any other sound.

Among Queensland products are its precious stones, and Brisbane at

first seems to support a quite disproportionate number of jewellers’

shops. It is specially famous for its black opals, which are not black,

but a sort of peacock blue, with wonderful high green lights. These

beautiful stones are of infinite variety in depths of colouring, and

their very novelty makes them attractive, but all the same the visitor

should only make purchases in the presence of an expert adviser, for,

even in the case of jewellers of high repute, he will find that what

he pays for his stones in Brisbane may bear no relation to the value

attributed to them by a London firm. Almost every known precious stone

is found in Queensland, including diamonds. Opals occur in the upper

cretaceous rocks in the western districts of Queensland, and sapphire

mining is carried on to a considerable extent in the Anakie district

west of Rockhampton. The stones are blue, green, or yellow in colour.

They occur in an alluvial lead, and their original matrix is a basalt

found near the source of the alluvial deposit, the gems having been set

free by the weathering of the rock.

We saw some opal cutting in Brisbane. It is done in the jewellers’

workshops. They buy the rough-looking brown lumps from the miners, and

they are cut open and polished with emery to test their value.

One characteristic Australian sight we were unable to see, the “wool

sales.” The trade in this principal source of the continent’s wealth

was at the time practically at a standstill. Owing to the war the

annual wool sales could not be held. Before the war, the buyers,

chiefly German and French, attended the wool sales in the principal

Australian towns, so there was practically no market for the fine

merino wools. September ought to have been a busy month in Brisbane,

for that is the season of the wool sales. But if we could not see the

sales, we thought it would at least be interesting to see the wool, and

as in Australia you need only express a wish to have it gratified, an

acquaintance of our river picnic of the day before volunteered to show

us the principal Brisbane wool store.

It was a morning of dazzling Queensland sunshine, with a light

breeze off the sea, when we motored down to the wharf where the big

store-houses are built. Here the wool comes in on trucks in bales

of jute, and at first the visitor sees only endless rows of shelves

stacked with brown bales. These bales, or jute sacks, which are made

in India, are all marked with the name of the grower and the district

and quality of the wool, in a kind of shorthand unintelligible to the

layman. The “clips,” as they are called, are separated into the fleeces

proper and the other parts, packed in the jute sacks, labelled, and

sent straight to the storehouse. Our expert friend could tell, by

taking a handful of the wool out of any sack at random, the district

from which it came, explaining to us that this handful was stained with

the red earth peculiar to certain plains, while another contained the

characteristic “trefoil burr,” a little seed-vessel, which curls itself

tightly among the wool. In the sales samples of the wools of different

growers are taken from the bales and spread upon tables in an immense

upper room. The walls were painted a light blue, to soften the glare of

the light and throw a becoming tinge on the wool, as pink lamp-shades

are used for the complexion. Here the dealers inspect it, and it is

afterwards sold by auction, though the seller puts a reserve price

upon it. From the warehouse the bales can be run down a sort of shaft

directly on to the cargo boats for Europe; but the wool packs, as they

are called, are first squeezed in a press and bound with iron bands to

facilitate their shipment and storage. Some deterioration takes place

in the colour if it is kept longer than two years.

The most remarkable thing about the presence of this immense quantity

of wool was that, though the sheep are not washed before they are

sheared, the fleeces had none of the oily unpleasant smell of a flock

of sheep, but the warehouse only smelt of the jute bales. As we were

coming away we were shown some merino rams in a little pen yet in

possession of their deep silky fleeces. The breed of merinos has been

so greatly improved since its introduction in 1797 that merino rams

fetch as much as five hundred guineas, while in 1913 two rams actually

were sold for 1600 and 1700 guineas respectively. Merino sheep did

not, however, thrive on the coastal districts, and British sheep were

therefore imported for breeding purposes.

It was later the same day that to escape from the dust, which is

Brisbane’s besetting curse, we went by tram out into the suburbs.

Brisbane itself is on the sea level, but its suburbs climb the hills

behind it. The suburbs are only scattered bungalows dotted among

the green, with their flowers and paw-paw trees and palms. Patches

of eucalyptus scrub remain here and there, and rough roads connect

them with the main road, up which the tram climbs steeply. After its

terminus the road still climbs the hill and we climbed with it, till

we came to a green lane, where was a rare butterfly with wonderful

metallic blue wings fluttering above a yellow-berried duranta bush,

and where we heard a laughing jackass, and watched some untidy-looking

magpies. All Australian birds are rather untidy-looking, as if they had

lived so long in the bush by themselves, that their toilets could not

be regarded as of consequence.

From these innocent diversions we were driven by a smart shower to take

refuge in the nearest bungalow, which had an inviting verandah. The

house belonged to a Scotch settler, who welcomed us like old friends,

brought out cushions for the wicker chairs, and when the shower was

over begged us to prolong our visit--it was “so nice to see someone

from home.” Last summer, she told us, had been the hottest for thirty

years, but with that exception she had not felt the tropical heat

excessive. When we came away she gave us the handgrip of the exile.

The most beautiful point within easy reach of Brisbane, commanding

a magnificent bird’s-eye view of the city, the bay, and surrounding

country, is Mount Coot-tha Reserve, or One Tree Hill. It is only a few

miles out of the town, and a friend motored us up there one afternoon.

On the way we stopped to have tea at her house. In the drawing-room was

a heavily carved massive upright piano. We commented on its unusual

case, and our hostess told us it had been in “the Flood,” and the works

were ruined, but it was impossible to get them replaced in Australia.

Going on to talk of the drawbacks to life in Brisbane, she said that

before a storm the house would be filled with flying cockroaches and

other insects, and she showed us photograph frames and book bindings

riddled with small holes by the ravages of silver fish. Under her

carpets were quantities of crushed naphthaline to prevent their being

eaten, and a winter coat that was left hanging up by some oversight,

she said, was immediately ruined. We were considerably perturbed after

this on coming across a large whiskered silver fish among our clothes,

when we were packing, but his wicked intentions were frustrated

prematurely, and there were no ill-effects from his presence, though

we actually brought a silver fish home to London, where he was found

between a trunk and its cover, and instantly slaughtered as something

exotic and uncanny by the maids who were unpacking. He probably,

however, came from Java.

After tea we continued our journey to One Tree Hill, our hostess

actually was wearing a stole made of the skin of a platypus. The fur

was curiously wiry to the touch. Mount Coot-tha, like all reserves, is

the original untouched gum forest with carriage drives running through

it. At one point the trees had been cleared away to give a view of Lake

Enoggera, the reservoir of Brisbane, cradled in green hills some miles

away.

From the western extremity of the hill the view is very extensive and

extremely beautiful. Brisbane is spread out below nestling in greenery,

with its winding river, and Moreton Bay far off lying placid in the

sunshine. The view is bounded by distant hills.

There is generally some one feature of a town that stands out

afterwards more distinctly than the rest. In the mental picture

that the name of Brisbane evokes it will always be the Botanical

Gardens, cool and quiet with their banks sloping to the river, that

wake the pleasanter memories. Here we came often to escape from the

all-pervading dust, and here we came on our last evening in the brief

twilight that intervenes for some few minutes between sunset and the

fading of the afterglow. The level rays of the sun silhouetted the

grotesque bunya-bunya trees on the river-banks so that they looked like

bunches of crooked housemaids’ mops. The peace and calm of the quiet

place were intensified by the rapidly falling dusk. Except for the

scolding and chattering of a party of white Australian cockatoos in an

aviary, there was no sound but the swishing of the wind in a grove of

dry bamboos, and the little cropping noise of some kangaroos feeding

and skittering about in a paddock. In a small round pond fringed by

Cape lilies a bull-frog was beginning to cluck. Already the palm trees

were black against the fading orange afterglow. A too peremptory

custodian cut short the enchanting moment; it was closing time he

said. So we made our way back through the busy clangour of the crowded

streets, and for the last time sat out on the balcony after dinner in

the dusty half-light of the street lamps and the stars, and watched the

Southern Cross above the palms, and Venus shining with a lustre and

a brilliancy unknown to northern skies.

[Illustration: PALM AVENUE, BOTANIC GARDENS, BRISBANE.]

Our last morning came filled with the bustle of packing and departure.

And for the last time let us urge upon travellers to Australia to

take far less luggage than they can possibly imagine they will want.

Let them bear in mind, in the first place, the great inconvenience of

transferring small luggage, when there are no porters, the hideous

nuisance of packing and unpacking if they have to do it for themselves;

the very much simpler standard of dress that prevails in a new country,

where even in the capital people are contented to go out to dinners

and theatres by tram; well-to-do people dressed in elaborate cloaks

and satin shoes. The variation of climate compels a fairly large

assortment of clothes of different weight. But cut it down rigorously.

This digression is inspired by the recollection of the exhausting

nature of our packing in the heat. When it was done we had to charter

a cart and a man, and freightage in Australia is far from cheap, to

take it the half-mile to the station, where its mountainous bulk was

with difficulty packed into the very dusty little train that runs from

Brisbane to Pinkenbar, lower down the river, whence the steamers sail

for the Northern Territory.

We had already paid one visit to Pinkenbar to engage a porter, a lean,

tall, weather-beaten old man, selected on the wharf, to bring a truck

to the station and convey our luggage to the boat. When we arrived and

got out of the train with a litter of small baggage, the first thing

we saw was a large American trunk tightly jammed half in and half out

of the window of the guard’s van, the guard having got so much of our

luggage between himself and the door that he could not get it open.

Fortunately, however, our porter from the wharf was on the spot in

every sense of the word. He first shouted encouraging directions to the

guard, and then by the exercise of brute force thrust the trunk back

through the window without doing any serious damage to that perturbed

official. Eventually, with the help of another man, we got under way

and proceeded to the landing-stage. The rough intervening ground

was overgrown with tall blue thistles with flowers like pale yellow

anemones; they looked as incongruous as if someone had stuck them on.

After seeing our luggage over the ship’s side and consigning it to the

steward, we returned to Brisbane in search of lunch and recovered our

calm, for the boat did not sail till towards evening.

It was after lunch on this last day that we saw a thing we had always

wanted very much to see and despaired of doing so. It was the little

Australian tree bear, or koala bear, once very common, now becoming

rare. We heard from a French waiter that there was one in the hotel,

and presuming on our experience of Australian good nature, sent a

message to its unknown owner to ask if we might see it before we left.

He brought it down immediately, carried in the arms of his little girl,

and it really was an adorable little thing. It was about the same size

as the very largest child’s “Teddy Bear,” grey in colour. Its little

hand-like fore paws were holding on to the lace of the little girl’s

pinafore, one on each side of her neck, and it turned its head and

fixed a pair of wistful eyes upon us. She said it slept all day and

woke up at night, when it cried for milk like a cat. It only ate gum

leaves. “When we were boys,” said its owner, “we used to hunt them. It

took thirty or forty shots to bring one down, and then it would take

eight or ten dogs to finish one, they are so tough.” Even so, these

charming and harmless little animals, which live in the gum trees and

feed on their leaves, are becoming exterminated.

It was late afternoon when we made our third and last visit to

Pinkenbar. The scene in the neighbourhood of the station was so

typically Australian that we lingered regretfully to take a last look

at it. The rough dusty road that led away inland, the drove of horses

in an enclosure waiting to be entrained for the War, with another horse

hitched on to the fence by its bridle, the clear strong stereoscopic

light, a paddock of burnt grass, the scattered row of houses beyond,

with flat grey roofs, built high on piles, and beyond again gum trees

and more gum trees. We turned away towards the wharf with a certain

sadness, for this spacious country with its austere beauty and its

handful of warm-hearted inhabitants is wonderfully endearing in

spite of, or perhaps because of, all its crudeness. We distributed

our newspapers among the men loafing and smoking on the wharf, who

took them with that frank friendliness of a country, where class

distinctions are almost unfelt; and went on board the boat that lay

alongside, still busy with the bustle of departure.

PART VI

TO THE NORTHERN TERRITORY

CHAPTER XX

THE GREAT BARRIER REEF

We had already made acquaintance with the “Montoro” when she was

unlading in Sydney Harbour, her final port of call, and we now spent

on board three of the pleasantest weeks of our journey. There is

a great sense of peace and cleanliness on a ship after long dusty

travels. The “Montoro” was a small boat, less than 6000 tons, but

remarkably well-appointed and arranged, our airy bedstead cabin was

positively spacious, with the luxury of a large wardrobe and a full

length looking-glass in its door. The staff were Chinese, efficient,

ubiquitous, noiseless, and their gentle soft-voiced ways were

particularly restful after the rough and ready Australian servant. On

board we found awaiting us letters from home, the last we were to get

for two long months, for our Java mail, delayed by the war, followed us

to England. Presently we were slipping down to the sea between the low

banks of the green river, with a light breeze. Venus was rising and the

moon, and the shore lights began to glimmer.

Our first day out was choppy and rough, but a heavy shower smoothed out

the sea like oil, and the next day saw us inside the Barrier Reef, in

the Coral Sea that stretches away to the extreme north coast. Captain

Cook had made the same voyage that we were making in the summer of

1770 in a boat of 368 tons, and we thought our boat small! He noted

and named every headland and bay along “this dangerous coast, where

the sea in all parts conceals shoals that suddenly project from the

shore, and rocks that rise abruptly like a pyramid from the bottom,

for more than 1300 miles.” Even now, when every inch of the course has

been charted, the voyage is dangerous for the same reason, the low flat

islands are nearly indiscernible at night. The mountainous coast is

almost uninhabited, except by natives, unfriendly now as then; and is

almost entirely unlighted, as hitherto the Government has not been able

to incur the expense of erecting and maintaining lighthouses, except in

the neighbourhood of the few existing townships. No ship’s library on

this course should be without a copy of “Captain Cook’s Voyages,” or,

at any rate, no traveller should fail to provide himself with one, as

the record of this early navigator in these seas adds immensely to the

interest of the journey to-day.

The voyage within the Barrier Reef will always be one of the most

beautiful in the world. Once inside the Coral Sea, to awake in the

morning and go on deck is to dream an exquisite dream. Here is halcyon

weather, the heat of the sun tempered by light airs off the water,

and seas of an indescribable translucent turquoise green rippling

past among innumerable islands. One after another they appear in the

distance, shadowy and vague as clouds; slowly they take shape like

brown uncut opals; a nearer view discloses sandy coves, grassy slopes,

pine trees and forest. They grew more and more numerous, and, as the

day closed in beneath plum-coloured clouds, the soft light lay gently

and hazily upon them, till the sun sank in a sky of vivid orange.

The charm of this wonderful passage never palls, for its variety is

endless. Sometimes the austere, dark mountainous shore is visible, with

columns of smoke upon it, native fires as Captain Cook saw them two

hundred years ago, for they are still used as signals.

The sea is rich in all kinds of life for those who care to look for it,

and we were fortunate in having on board an accomplished naturalist,

who, in shirt-sleeves for coolness, and a large-brimmed hat, looking

like a sort of drawing-room pirate, sat all day in the bows searching

the clear blue water with a pair of field-glasses, and shouting to

all, who were interested, to come and see what he had found. It was

he who taught us how and where to look for, and what to call, the

unfamiliar birds and sea beasts that we saw.

On the June days two hundred years ago on which Captain Cook cautiously

essayed his dangerous journey in a rickety boat on uncharted seas, he

often named the islands and headlands after days of the week or month.

So it happens that one of the loveliest points on the voyage is known

as “Whit-Sunday Passage,” because it was on that day that Captain Cook

navigated it.

[Illustration: TOWNSVILLE.]

Our fourth day out we reached Townsville early in the morning. Its

absurd name is said to be due to the fact that the inhabitants wished

to commemorate the benefactions of a fellow-citizen called Town,

and did not know how to achieve their end less tautologically. We

woke early to find ourselves in a beautiful land-locked bay, called

Cleveland Bay by Captain Cook, who recorded that “the east point I

named Cape Cleveland, and the west, which had the appearance of an

island, Magnetical Isle, as we perceived that the compass did not

traverse well when we were near it.” “They are both high, and so is

the mainland within them, the whole forming a surface the most rugged,

rocky, and barren of any we had seen upon the coast.” He also

notes that they saw “several large smokes upon the main.” To-day a

picturesque little township lies under a sharply escarped granite hill,

with stately, misty coastal ranges in the background. Probably Captain

Cook, like ourselves, saw the beautiful yellow “white-headed eagles”

flying across the harbour. We took some time getting in because the

pilot ran on to a mud-bank, for the bay is very shallow. At last we

came alongside a wharf, and at once went on shore and started on the

long walk to the town. It was very, very hot on shore, and clouds of

grey dust met us all along the road from the landing-stage. We hoped to

reach the church on the hill, at all events before the Sunday service

was quite over.

Townsville is a picturesque little place, a mining port growing

continually in importance; and in that transitional stage, when rough

wooden corrugated iron buildings are giving place to brick. There

were some very showy hotels calculated to attract the miner with his

pockets full of money, when he comes to town to taste the sweets of

such civilisation as it affords, to spend all he has gained, and to

live riotously as long as it lasts. This at least is the popular

conception of the habits of miners, which was continually impressed

upon us. We were never able to verify these statements, because

though we occasionally conversed with miners, they looked anything but

dare-devils and spendthrifts, and it seemed scarcely delicate to ask

them if it was true that they periodically repaired to the nearest

town to paint it red as long as their money lasted. As for the shops

on either side of the broad, dusty, empty streets over which the

heat brooded, they seemed to consist principally of lettering. Every

minute shanty had above it vast boards proclaiming in letters as large

as itself the name of its owner and the superiority of its stock,

whether bicycles or tents, both essential articles of merchandise in

an outlying Australian town. The more ambitious shops had placards

inside. One enterprising draper called on the passer-by to observe the

rebuilding of his “palatial premises,” while another drew attention to

“Dame Fashion’s latest caprices.”

We passed a cotton tree with ripe pods, growing in a garden, and

several coco palms, the coconuts hanging in yellow bunches like a

cluster of immense bananas. After crossing a river bordered by mangrove

swamps, and passing through the main street, we struck off up a steep

hill in quest of the church. On climbing a granite mound we found

ourselves at its doors, with a beautiful view of the bay and its green

shores, but no service, for probably to suit the habits of the people

in a hot climate, it had ended about the time our churches at home are

beginning. Following an admirable plan, pursued elsewhere in Australia,

only a section of the church had been completed. There was an apse,

and enough space beyond it to seat a fairly large congregation. It was

very simply constructed, and had the dignity that simplicity gives to a

building. It was of red brick with an ambulatory and a kingbeam roof,

and had an air of being carefully tended. We lingered there a little

wistfully, for in a country very far from home there is a sense of

intimate nearness in hearing read that familiar liturgy, which contains

the noblest prose in the English language. Leaving the church behind

we wandered down towards the shore, and came to a wonderful tangled

garden. Tall palms grew there, and masses of feathery crimson grasses;

bananas drooped their immense purple bells, and the frangipani tree

was bursting into bloom, holding out to us over the fence bunches of

its dazzling, scented, creamy blossoms at the end of its bare, blunt

boughs. Returning, we faced the strong breeze off the sea, which had

been at our backs on the way up. We knew all about the dust on that

walk, and were very glad to attain once more the haven of the ship.

In the afternoon the whole population came down to the wharf in cars

and buggies to inspect the Australian hospital ship, which was lying

alongside ready to sail. We strolled on the shore, where a large

convolvulus with very succulent leaves grew profusely among the stones;

and watched a forest fire on a mountain at the farther end of the bay;

since the morning it had gradually worked its way right round the crest

and was crawling down one side. Our stay at Townsville should have been

a very brief one, but we were delayed there for three or four days by

the Customs officials, as we were carrying a contraband cargo of meat.

Nobody wanted to stay in Townsville, as there was nothing to be seen in

the neighbourhood, and it would mean cutting short the duration of the

ship’s visit to the Northern Territory.

The second day of our stay there, we climbed the granite peak that

rises behind the town, going across by a little ferry-boat that plies

between the wharf and the opposite side of the harbour. A strong wind

was blowing in from the sea, as we steamed across to Townsville, lying

deep in dust in the hot sun. We made our way up to the Castle Hill,

the red granite peak that dominates the town. A very steep path leads

up to it, and on the rocks above some goats and kids were silhouetted

against the clear blue sky like a scrap of Swiss scenery. The town from

this side is scattered along the shore, and the slopes above it half

hidden in tropical foliage. Below us were the Botanical Gardens, the

hospital embowered in trees, with the patients lying out on a shady

balcony. Everywhere was the heavy scent and glorious bouquets of gold

and white frangipani. We had been sent in the wrong direction, and

missed the path, so that the ascent was very steep and rough, but we

went on, slipping and scrambling up among falling stones, clinging on

where we could, among big butterflies and lizards, and large brown

grasshoppers with black spots. As we climbed higher Townsville spread

itself out beneath us charmingly. Bungalows nestled among vivid green

foliage, beyond were the blue bay, and its boats, ours amongst them,

riding gaily at anchor, with the dark green wooded mass of “Magnetic

Island” rising behind. Higher still we rested, while a fish hawk soared

far above in the clear blue, and on the southern side Townsville looked

like nothing but a vast mud flat with the river winding through it, and

houses dotted among the mangrove swamps. One fancied that one big wave

might submerge the whole.

On Wednesday we sailed early, keeping fairly near the coast, and

reaching Cairns the same night. Cairns is the port of Trinity Bay--“a

large and deep bay which I called Trinity Bay after the day on which

it was discovered,” says Captain Cook, who had spent the intervening

days in coasting up here from Whit-Sunday Passage. At Cairns we wished

profoundly that the stringent Australian labour laws would prohibit

night work, for our boat was lading or unlading with all the clangour

and shouting incidental to these operations till 3 a.m. We had to be

called early, because we were only to wait long enough in port to give

the passengers an opportunity of making the return journey to the

famous Barron Falls, about twenty miles inland from the coast, among

some of the most celebrated Australian scenery. From the porthole of

the ship’s corridor we looked straight into a mangrove swamp, beyond

was a background of misty dark hills with heavy clouds rolling down

them.

[Illustration: BARRON FALLS SCENERY AT CAIRNS.]

Cairns, apart from its fame for the beauty of its falls and mountain

scenery, is already an important place, and will become much more so,

for it is the port for the rich inland districts, with which it is

connected by railway. This fertile country is suitable for bananas,

maize, for dairying, as well as for the timber trade. In the

neighbourhood of Herberton, south-west of Cairns, fruit-growing is

carried on, and apples, plums, pears, peaches, and vines are all

successfully cultivated. The sugar industry is, besides, a most

important factor in the prosperity of Cairns. Not far from the railway

station of Redlynch, at the foot of the Barron Range, are the Kamerunga

State Nurseries for growing coffee, bread-fruit, coconut, and rubber,

and carrying out all kinds of experiments designed to solve the

problems of tropical agriculture.

The country is also rich in minerals. Herberton is the principal centre

for the production of tin, and the Herberton and Chillagoe districts

contain deposits of tin, copper, silver, lead, bismuth, gold, and coal.

Our time, however, did not admit of our penetrating far enough into

the interior to inspect the development of all these agricultural and

mineral sources of wealth, which have so great a future before them;

nor did it admit of our extending our journey far enough for even a

glimpse of the curious and beautiful volcanic Lake Eacham. We had to

content ourselves with the Barron Falls. We went ashore early, but

the boat was late, and the train had got tired of waiting and gone

away, so there was a long interval while it was fetched back and put

together again. We sat about on sacks on a high covered platform, and

conversed with some of the lean, long-limbed Australian workmen about

the Australian labour question.

Immediately in front three ibises were feeding on a sort of salt

marsh. The range of hills behind was half hidden in cloud. There was

an all-pervading smell of raw sugar from bales awaiting shipment,

and though it was not yet very warm the atmosphere was heavy with

moisture like that of a hothouse. There did not seem to be very much

of Cairns--one or two hotels and boarding-houses, a few wide grassy

streets. The scattered houses on high piles had a more than usually

unfinished air, with washing hanging out, kerosene tins lying about,

and bare-legged children playing among them. There were a great many

goats; two of them had discovered a bag of maize on the wharf and were

having a happy time. At last our train arrived, consisting of one

or two carriages, so arranged that the backs of the seats could be

reversed, and as they all turned sideways you faced the whole length

of the carriage, like a Pullman car, and we got the whole of the view

during the journey, for most of the time the train has one side against

the hill.

The line from the wharf runs among the houses to the station, where

the school children were just arriving from up country settlements.

After passing some tea gardens, which looked oddly sophisticated in

the bush, we found ourselves among banana fields and pineapples, but

everything was more or less obscured by fine driving rain. There was

still a fair number of scattered houses, built of wood and iron, with

a deplorably drenched air, and handfuls of draggled English flowers

in their little gardens among tropical fruits, paw-paws, and lemons.

When the ascent begins the line soon enters the wonderful tropical

forest--indescribable, unimaginable in the abounding luxuriance and the

variety of its tangled, matted growth. The stately soaring eucalyptus

is always the staple factor in Australian scenery, but here they are

linked together and festooned with heavy ropes of giant creeper,

“vines” they call them in the tropics.

In the thick undergrowth are ferns, paw-paw trees, bananas, mango

trees, with dark glossy leaves and feathery flowers, and the poisonous

“nettle tree,” or “stinging tree” (_Laportea gigas_). The leaves are

very large, of delicate pale green in colour, and covered with soft

hairs. The stinging hairs, though not large, are so virulent that

cattle have been known to die from the poison. An Australian botanist,

Mr. A. G. Hamilton, “once saw a cow which had rushed through a lot of

small plants. She had lost all her hair and looked like an india-rubber

cow.”[23]

[Illustration: BARRON, RIVER CAIRNS.]

The construction of the line must have involved a considerable feat

of engineering, for it winds up the hills like an Alpine railway.

Presently we began to have glimpses of deep dark gorges with a broad

green river flowing beneath us, then we crossed a waterfall slipping

down an almost perpendicular rock, and in flood covering the railroad.

The rain had ceased, and now the rolling clouds, soft loose masses

resting gently on the tops of the tallest gums, suddenly drifted away

and revealed a vast landscape of rare loveliness. Looking down the

opening gorge, we saw the valley of the Barron River, for almost its

whole course, winding to the sea, a pale streak below the dark slopes

of the mountains. The train stopped within sound of the thunder of

the Barron Falls. The swirling water takes its magnificent plunge

in tumultuous clouds of white froth to the gorge below, where rare

butterflies hover, and white cockatoos flutter among the tops of the

gum trees. Above all the tumult two swallows were darting to and fro,

they carried one’s thoughts home. Higher up the river there were

silent green backwaters, and soft sandy foreshores, where little pink

bivalve shells were lying. A big hotel dominated the neighbourhood

of the little station, and a young man and woman, faultlessly

attired in bathing costumes that would have done credit to a French

watering-place, were picking their way daintily down the steep slopes

to the river, giving the oddest note of incongruity to the wildness of

the place. We weighed anchor as soon as the tourist train brought us

back to the wharf.

We now entered on what proved to be the most interesting part of our

journey, for we kept farther inshore, and the coast became continually

more enchantingly beautiful and more full of interest. It was a time

of halcyon days and balmy nights. The ship’s company were very young

and gay and musical. In the starlit darkness of the tropical evenings

they sang and played charmingly. The Marconi-man was a violinist, the

supercargo had a fine baritone,--the very name of supercargo suggests

the atmosphere of Captain Marryat’s novels, an atmosphere of adventure.

The night we left Cairns the captain had some of the deck lights turned

out, because they made steering more difficult. He said that on a rainy

night he was obliged to anchor, for the coral sea is here often only

six or seven fathoms deep; but that on a clear night, even when there

was no moon, the officer on the watch could still “pick up the islands

with glasses.” The small coral islands are innumerable, and often quite

flat, so that only a practised eye could discern their neighbourhood at

night, even with glasses.

A great charm of travelling by sea is that it brings one into intimate

relationship with all sorts and conditions of men. People who stay at

home have a tendency to get into sets, to associate too exclusively

with people of their own kind, whose points of view, standards of life

and habits are all more or less the same as their own, and so they

settle into grooves and get dull, and their minds become inelastic. On

a ship, at sea, especially a small ship, the society may be as varied

as the world. One of the most interesting people we met on our travels

was a passenger on the “Montoro.” His business was shipping. He knew

all the islands that are scattered in enticing little groups from the

Torres Straits to beyond New Guinea. He could distinguish at a glance

the different types of natives--Kanaka boys from the Torres Straits

islands, pale-skinned, shock-headed Papuans, yellow Melanesians, or

sooty Cingalese. He knew every inch of the route we were travelling,

having often made the journey. Formerly boats of this line had gone

across to Port Moresby, in New Guinea; and our original intention had

been to visit the island and gain at least a passing glimpse of the

curious native life there. But the boats had been taken off, because,

as our fellow-passenger explained, the route was too dangerous and

expensive in ships and lives. Outside the Barrier Reef there is always

a swell, in which the small boats rolled heavily, and the passengers

grumbled proportionately. On the return journey the prevailing strong

winds heap up heavy seas, and are apt to drive a ship past the narrow

opening in the Reef. Small boats of about 800 tons now run directly

from Thursday Island to Port Moresby. But though we had all the

inclination, we had no time to make this most interesting journey.

Our fellow-passenger had an interest in the Pearl-fishing Industry

carried on in the neighbourhood of Thursday Island, by the “Island

boys.” These natives of the Torres Straits Islands, for that is what

the term means, have a Government inspector to look after them, and

see that they get a fair proportion of the profits of the trade.

Whatever those profits may be, they are sometimes hardly earned, for

there are many sharks. On one occasion a boy was diving and a shark

seized his head in its mouth. The boy dug his knees and nails into

its throat, forcing it to let go, and was rescued by his friends, his

whole chest horribly lacerated. He was taken ashore as quickly as

possible, and eventually recovered; but the doctor, who was summoned to

his aid, was so impressed with his marvellous escape from death, that

in the interests of science rather than of his patient, he sent for a

photographer and had the boy photographed as he was, before applying

his medical ministrations. One photographer had the photographs made

into picture post-cards. We could buy them, our informant said, when we

reached Thursday Island. The proofs of this story are, unfortunately,

incomplete. We hurried to the post-card shop, when we landed a few

days later, but the photographer, who also sold stamps and string,

sword-fish’s fins, coral, and newspapers, said the post-cards were

sold out. We asked to see the negative, but being busy with other

customers, he excused himself from finding it. We were unable to inform

the narrator of this missing link in his story, for he had left us to

embark for New Guinea on a little boat, in which he would sleep on

deck, and have his meals in the one cabin by the light of a swinging

lamp. We were sorry to lose his amusing company.

It was during the passage between Cairns and Thursday Island, that

Captain Cook, after having so far successfully navigated these

dangerous seas in his small sailing ship, “became,” by running on

to the Barrier Reef, “acquainted with misfortune.” The name Cape

Tribulation marks the headland to the north of the scene of his

disaster. His boat had passed safely over a shoal, while the ship’s

company was at dinner, though the sudden shallowing of the water

to eight fathoms had caused some temporary alarm. Nevertheless,

all seeming once more safe, “the gentlemen left the deck in great

tranquillity, and went to bed.” A few minutes before eleven, however,

they had struck upon the Barrier Reef, and remained immovable, except

by the heaving of the surge that beat her against the edges of the

rock upon which she lay. In a few minutes everyone was upon the deck,

“with countenances which sufficiently expressed the horrors of the

situation,” for “we had too much reason to conclude that we were upon a

rock of coral, which is more fatal than any other, because the points

of it are sharp, and every part of the surface so rough as to grind

away whatever is rubbed against it, even with the gentlest motion.” It

was not till a week after this disaster, a week of continual labour

and acute anxiety, that they succeeded in getting the ship ashore at

Endeavour Harbour. The place of Captain Cook’s landing is marked by

a low brownish green mound jutting out from the coast, which along

here has a most inhospitable air, the coastal ranges coming down to

the water’s edge. The days passed into weeks before the damage could

be sufficiently repaired to set sail again. As we passed near inshore

these same coastal ranges were deeply purple, with clouds rolling down

their sides. There was no sign of life, not even the smoke of a native

fire, the scene had great breadth and solemnity.

[Illustration: THURSDAY ISLAND. VIEW OF THE HARBOUR.]

It was on the same day that we too saw the Barrier Reef, at first

looking like a long sandy bar. Presently the coral itself showed with

some pelicans on it. Here, too, were the blue lagoons of fiction,

small coral islands, with little sandy coves, and pelicans, the only

inhabitants, walking under the trees. The warm water of the sea was

full of life. Yellow-banded snakes swam by, from two to four feet long.

We counted twenty of them in one day. Dampier, exploring the west coast

of Australia in 1699, notes these curious water snakes, which are

said to be very poisonous. He was sailing out of Shark’s Bay when he

observed some “serpents swimming about in the sea, of a yellow colour

spotted with dark brown spots. They were each about four feet long, and

about the bigness of a man’s wrist.” On several occasions we saw

turtles swimming just below the surface of the water. Sometimes the sea

was covered with a thick floating yellow substance not unlike the brown

“scum” which coats stagnant pools at home. Some of it was collected by

letting down a bath sponge on a string. The microscope revealed it as a

low form of animal life.

Frigate birds were not uncommon, and one night there came on board two

lovely bright green “bee-eaters.”

So the long sunny days slipped away, and towards sunset the misty

coastal ranges became dim and unsubstantial in the dove-coloured

evening light, while inshore one little white sail could be seen, that

might have been the ghostly vessel of Captain Cook himself. Wednesday

Island was passed the next morning. The islands here mark the days on

which Captain Cook sighted and named them, and we entered the narrow

Thursday Island Passage.

Thursday Island lies at the extreme northerly point of Australia, Cape

York Peninsula, that juts out, and narrows into a point forming the

eastern side of the Gulf of Carpentaria. To the north of it are the

Torres Straits, to the south Prince of Wales and other islands, among

them that Possession Island on which Captain Cook landed, and formally

took possession of the whole eastern coast in the name of George III,

calling it “New South Wales.”[24] It is a centre for pearl-fishing, and

a Naval Base. It is a sort of native cosmopolis. Every shade and tone

of colour can be seen here, Chinese, Island boys, Papuans, and Malays.

We entered the harbour, where the water was again that wonderful

greenish blue turquoise, and the little fleet of pearling boats rode

at anchor, for the War had put a stop to the industry. Thursday

Island itself was a gay-looking little place, its shores covered

with scattered bungalows, and a tropical forest covering the hills

beyond. Moored near to our own boat was the little New Guinea steamer,

manned by native Papuans. They wore nothing, down to their waists

any way, which was as much as we could see of them, and were a pale

chocolate-au-lait colour, with great mops of black hair. They returned

our enraptured staring by grinning at us with all their white teeth,

aware that they were objects of interest and beauty. This was the first

time we had seen all kinds of natives, of different shades. They manned

the boats round the steamer, that brought on board plenipotentiaries of

the official visits which always precede and delay a landing. At last

we drew up alongside the jetty, and were allowed to go ashore.

On the shore were innumerable empty coconut shells, also all the

derelict kerosene tins that had not been utilised by Australia were

washed up on the beach. Many of the little shops sell pearls, but the

uninitiated will find that they will do a better bargain with their own

jeweller at home, though the blister pearls are extremely pretty, and

can be bought for a few shillings. We also bought for threepence a copy

of the Thursday Island daily paper, which measured a few inches, and

was only printed on one side. It contained war news of a bewildering

nature. All the shops had large printed notices up in the windows,

warning the inhabitants what to do in case of a raid by a German

cruiser, for the “Emden” and the “Scharnhorst” were then at large. At

the ringing of a bell the women and children were at once to repair

to certain specified places of refuge. The little native children are

extraordinarily tough, and must be nearly as difficult to finish off

as a koala bear. We saw a small black naked baby of about two years

old fall off a verandah. It rolled down a steep flight of steps like a

football. We were hurrying forward to pick it up, but it immediately

scrambled to its feet, whimpered a little, and trotted off, none the

worse.

The post office to which we went to see if there were any telegrams,

with news from home, had rows of private letter boxes with glass

windows, as it was the custom for people to fetch their own letters. A

notice warned the owners that they must do their own repairs to these

boxes, as their messengers were in the habit of smashing the glass to

extract the letters. Another notice proclaimed that a murderer was

wanted. He was eighteen years old, the son of a half-caste Chinese

mother and a Kanaka father, a parental combination which one could

imagine was fraught with dire possibilities. We walked about the

island in an almost intolerably hot sun, on loose cobbles, alternating

with deep, soft sand. It is an arid, stony place, and bristled with

khaki-clad men. Inside the provision stores, which stood wide open,

Japanese were mending sails.

Following the path above the little town through a sort of rough scrub,

the ground was overgrown with some strongly smelling aromatic herb,

burnt brown in the sun. We saw here one of the rare ornithoptera,

a gorgeous blue velvet butterfly, and numbers of grasshoppers with

yellow wings that made an odd noise like little castanets as they came

out of the dead herbage. There did not seem to be many living things

except coconut palms and the beautiful heavily scented blooms of the

frangipani. We met the gorgeous nuns belonging to some Roman Catholic

sisterhood, dressed in dazzling blue raiment, which would have put the

“lilies of the field” quite out of countenance; and we avoided the

tropical forest that clothed the farther side of the island, tempting

as it looked at a distance, and were glad that we had done so. Several

of the passengers, who had made an expedition to it in search of

entomological specimens, brought back more than they intended, as they

got badly stung by green ants and ticks. The green ants are very pretty

and interesting at a safe distance; they are green with bright red

legs, and make their nests by sewing together the leaves of a tree, so

as to form a sort of large bag, but their sting is very gainful. The

ticks are much more seriously unpleasant, as they burrow in the skin

to lay their eggs there, leaving their legs sticking out, and if the

victim fails to extract all portions of them they produce a sore and

painful scar.

Thursday Island has an interesting church--the “Quetta” Memorial

Church. It stands in a green enclosure, with a blooming frangipani

tree, and commemorates the loss of the S.S. “Quetta” of Glasgow, which

some years ago sank on an uncharted rock one moonlight night, with

the loss of nearly all hands. We went into the quiet and airy place.

Just inside the door hangs in a frame, what seems to be a collection

of coral and shells, but closer inspection showed it to be a porthole,

that sixteen years later had been recovered, after having “suffered a

sea change,” and become so encrusted with the beautiful growth of the

sea floor that it was hardly any longer recognisable.

Returning to the ship, glad to escape from the blinding heat, we found

an oil boat moored alongside. On her some Japanese were eating their

rice with chop sticks, while a brown boy of unknown nationality, and a

picturesque absence of clothes, cleaned cooking pots.

We now had to cross the wide mouth of the Gulf of Carpentaria, and

round the westerly headland, behind which is the bay, that shelters

Port Darwin in the Northern Territory, our last port of call in

Australia. We sighted two frigate birds and quantities of large white

jelly-fish. We often saw, too, bones of the cuttle-fish floating on

the water, like bits of white paper. They were noted also by Dampier

on approaching the Australian coast: “We began to see some scuttle

bones floating on the water,” he remarks, “and drawing still nearer we

saw quantities of them.” The voyage after getting free of the Barrier

Reef was less entirely pleasant, as all deck and cabin lights had to

be darkened, or left unlighted at night, to disguise or conceal the

ship from prowling German cruisers. The portholes were blackened and

kept shut, the windows of the dining saloon boarded up each evening, so

that dinner was a stifling affair, and our pleasant informal musical

evenings came to an end, for no one could endure the atmosphere of the

music-room. There was, however, compensation, for the darkened decks

were very restful in the evening, and the stars were brilliant as they

had never seemed before, Venus making a path along the water like

moonshine.

CHAPTER XXI

THE NORTHERN TERRITORY

The Northern Territory is one of Australia’s many problems. How can the

immense tract of rich and fertile country with its tropical northern

area be cultivated, and its great resources developed, without the

importation of coloured labour? The native black population, though

they are useful and efficient with stock, are found to be unadapted for

agriculture, and incapable of the steady methodical work essential to

its success. The immigration of Chinese, who formerly were the market

gardeners of the neighbourhood of Port Darwin, supplying the small

resident white population with fruit and vegetables, has now been

discouraged, and we saw the plantations they had cultivated falling

back into, and becoming merged with the wilderness of the bush. It is

still an open question whether white men can perform manual labour

under the tropical suns of the coastal belt. Yet the future of Port

Darwin must be assured if it is eventually to become our nearest and

most direct port of call in Australia. It will in time be connected

by railroad with the southern states, as it now is by the telegraph

service. In the interior nomadic tribes of blacks hunt and fish and

wander; hardy settlers have pitched their homesteads in a clearing

in the forest, and raise cattle there, with the nearest neighbour a

hundred miles away; the lonely buffalo hunter plies his lucrative trade

with the help of native hunters.

The Australians themselves do not seem to know very much more about the

Northern Territory than the average Englishman. They speak of it as an

arid wilderness, much in the same way as they regard Western Australia;

yet, to the visitor from home, it is the beauty and the wildness of

Western and Northern Australia, that make an appeal far more profound

than that of the busy, civilised, and comparatively populous southern

and eastern states. With all their differences they are still too much

like home to stir the imagination. What is popularly known about the

Northern Territory is largely learned from the writings of a clever

Australian woman,[25] who has lived the isolated yet stimulating life

of the settler’s wife in the interior. The part to be played by women

in the future of the Northern Territory is a very important one. It is

a hard thing for a man to go into exile with his cattle and his black

retainers, but if Australian or European women will consent to share

the hardships, and the rough life, and the loneliness, in order to

make a home for their men; bringing to it, as opportunity offers, the

atmosphere and the comforts of civilisation, the problem of opening up

the inland country is helped considerably on its way. That there are

compensations in the life no one can doubt, who has talked with those

who know it, or seen the lonely homesteads in the bush, that wonderful

primeval forest with its manifold beauty and mystery.

For those who stay at home, no better idea of it can be derived

than from reading Mrs. Gunn’s “We of the Never Never,” in which she

describes the daily life of a cattle station up-country, and all her

odd adventures with the native servants, honest warm-hearted creatures,

with the artless cunning, and the caprices of children. The residents

of Port Darwin talked of the light-hearted gaiety of their native

servants, and their happy irresponsibility. Yet they seem to work well

in their own erratic way; but from time to time they find the call

of the wild irresistible, then they obey it, and steal away to their

native island, or forest tribe, till the conditions of life there weary

them, and the whim seizes them to return.

[Illustration: VIEW NEAR DARWIN.]

Approaching Port Darwin from the east the navigation is difficult and

dangerous. All the day before, we had steamed very slowly in order to

avoid reaching the passage of the Vernon Isles after nightfall. The

islands are inhabited, and the smoke of bush fires was frequently to be

seen, either signal fires lighted by the natives, or by Europeans, to

burn off the dead grass at the end of the winter.

The approach to Port Darwin is charmingly pretty. The tropical

vegetation that comes down nearly to the water’s edge is a vivid green,

and the cliffs that fringe the shore a warm red. The tops of quite

important-looking houses were showing among the trees.

This was Port Darwin, where we had been told there was “nothing to

see,” for it was only “an arid wilderness.” There is no sensation

quite like that of steaming slowly into an unknown port, the future

is so fraught with delightful and unusual possibilities. The shores

take shape and colour, houses just descried with glasses become clear

and distinct, people are seen on the beach, the vegetation can now be

identified, and finally the ship draws up alongside of the wharf, or

the tender has come to fetch us, and we set foot on a strange shore in

quest of new adventure.

At Port Darwin adventure had come to us. It was the prettiest scene

imaginable. The coming in of a boat is a gala day for Port Darwin.

It brings letters, and newspapers, and butter, and contact with the

outside world. So the rough wooden pier wore an air of some gay

festival, for most of the European inhabitants had come down to

welcome us on our arrival, and to claim those among us, who had had

introductions to them from friends in the other states. The men were

all in sun helmets and white ducks, the women in white linen, and the

little pier, crowded with its throng of white figures in the strong

sunshine, had for background the brilliant red and green of the shore.

We were fortunate in falling to the share of an official who knew and

cared for the district, and could tell us all we wanted to know about

it. His wife was with him, and another lady, to whom we had had an

introduction, and whose husband was kept busy by the incoming mail.

They are great organisers at Port Darwin. We were to be taken to

a tea-party in the Botanical Gardens, and received there by the

Administrator, as the Governor of the Northern Territory is called,

and his wife; and an evening lecture was to be given by one of the

passengers. With Australians you become friends in a very short

space of time in their own country. Of their generous kindness and

hospitality too much cannot be said, and the very fact that you are

ignorant of all they know is a bond. At home it is different. They

are often a little on the defensive, because they have an idea that

we shall assume superior airs and consider them “colonial”--a vague

term of opprobrium. Then, too, our ways chill them; their open-handed,

open-hearted hospitality is the natural thing there. In a country,

where there is a perennial shortage of servants, nobody minds or

regards it, if the hostess and daughter of the house change the plates,

except in the richest and most sophisticated circles. We should put off

a dinner-party if our servants were ill, because we are so hampered by

hard-and-fast conventions, not so much because we are inhospitable, but

because we must maintain an accepted standard--it must be impossible

for an Australian quite to understand this.

A little stuffy lumbering train takes passengers and merchandise from

the wharf to the foot of a steep hill that leads up to Darwin. But it

was too beautiful to immure ourselves in it, so we walked to the shore,

where a Government horse and cart had been commandeered on our behalf.

Its reins were held by “Tommy,” also in white ducks and all smiles.

Tommy was the native servant who, with his “lubra” and a Chinese cook,

ran our friend’s house. We got in and began the ascent of the steep

red hill. The Government horse was tough but deliberate, and crawled

leisurely through the thick red dust. The air was heavy with the sweet

strong scent of a curiously twisted Japanese-looking tree, not unlike

an olive. It was covered with small white flowers, and was called

a milkwood tree. The natives say that the milky juice of the wood

produces blindness.

At the entrance to Darwin is the Chinese quarter, all tumble-down tin

shanties, unsightly and comfortless, and very poverty-stricken looking,

with shrill children screaming and playing in the dust. Its appearance

gave one an inkling why Australians would rather dispense with the

cheap and efficient Chinese labour than leaven the population of their

great clean land with people who could thrive contentedly in a little

colony of pigsties. Here suddenly was a bullock cart laden with wood,

the little Chinese driver in his immense flat hat, looking exactly as

if he had just stepped off a valuable old tea-tray. It was the very

soul of all Oriental picturesqueness. Leaving behind the comfortable

verandahed houses of the European residents, we struck into a soft red

road that led through the bush to the Botanical Gardens. It seems

incongruous to talk of Botanical Gardens in a place that is yet hardly

a town, but in a new country foresight is essential, and the Government

has set apart here as elsewhere a reserve for the future, when Port

Darwin shall be a great busy port crowded with shipping, and its lonely

shores thronged with houses.

[Illustration: COCONUT GROVE, DARWIN.]

It was just at the end of the dry season when we were there, and as

we drove along between eucalyptus and coco palms, and all kinds of

unfamiliar tropical plants, their vivid green contrasted oddly with the

absolutely bare red soil--there was not a blade of grass or green upon

it. This is its normal condition in the dry season, which occurs with

perfect regularity from May to October. The rains are ushered in by

violent thunderstorms and hurricanes, increasing in frequency till the

end of November, when about an inch of rain falls nearly every day. In

January the wet season has penetrated to the heart of the continent.

Of course, these climatic conditions do not exactly apply to the whole

of a tract of country, which covers more than 500,000 square miles.

From north to south the Territory extends for about 900 miles, and

it is roughly divided into three areas, according to its climatic

conditions. The northern coastal belt is well watered by numerous

rivers, many of them navigable for some distance inland; the district

is very fertile, especially in the neighbourhood of the rivers. It is

described as “luxuriantly grassed” and well adapted for dairying, for

intensive farming, which is, however, at present non-existent, and for

the growth of many subtropical products.

Farther from the rivers the land is held to be suitable for agriculture

and grazing. This tract of country stretches inland to the tablelands,

where different conditions prevail, and which form the second climatic

zone. The rainfall here is less than half that of the coastal area. The

land rises to some fifteen hundred feet above the sea, and the sharp

distinction between the wet and dry seasons is less strongly marked.

In these tablelands, though there is a poor supply of surface water,

subartesian water is available by shallow boring. The conditions here

are admirable for stock raising. The third area stretches into the

temperate latitudes of the South Australian border, where the rainfall

is variable, but on the average low. Here are the McDonell Ranges,

including fine tracts of country that compare favourably with any part

of Southern Australia. But when all this has been said there remains at

present the question of transport. The great transcontinental railway

has now been extended from Pine Creek to Katherine River, and the

Government has decided to construct another section from Katherine to

Bitter Springs.

Till lately, settlement has not progressed rapidly on the land in the

immediate neighbourhood of the railway. It is hoped that the Northern

Territory lands will be better developed as the trade in frozen beef

develops. At present the mainstay of the state is beef-production. In

an article on the Northern Territory in “Australia To-day,” December,

1914, Mr. W. H. Clarke, late Director of Agriculture, states it as his

opinion that: “The possibilities in this direction are not far behind

those of Queensland, where the meat export industry is taxing already

to the utmost the output of cattle.” He goes on to say, however, “That

many holdings have been stocked and abandoned, hundreds of leases have

been taken up and forfeited. Men of sound experience and substantial

means have tried the industry in different parts of the Territory, and

given it up in despair. To-day some of the foremost cattlemen condemn

the country outright, yet there are many stations carrying between

them about half a million head of cattle.” He explains the causes of

this anomalous state of affairs by the distance from markets, “the

waste and anxiety of inadequately watered stock routes, an industry

in most cases on lines of crudest pioneering,” a lack of fences or

musterers, and, in the dry season, drinking-places that become “boggy

death-traps,” which hundreds, sometimes thousands of cattle frequent,

“till their numbers are decimated.” The opening of the Freezing Works

at Darwin, and the extension of the railway are the first steps towards

making it worth the while of the Territory pastoralist to remedy these

defects. Freezing Works are being erected.

Agricultural lands are granted in the Territory on perpetual leases

as long as the holder complies with certain conditions, such as the

erection of a house within two years on his lands, and residence there

for a certain number of months in each year. Pastoral leases are

granted on still more easy terms, and advances are made to settlers for

the purchase of building materials, plant, fencing, and stock.

The mineral wealth of the Northern Territory is as yet unexplored,

and is still awaiting a more complete geological survey, before it

can be estimated accurately. Gold, tin, and copper have been found in

considerable quantities, but have not as yet been adequately worked.

When we visited Port Darwin the rains were expected. In about another

week, said our host, they would begin, and in less than a week from

that time the bare red soil would be covered with springing vegetation,

three or four feet high. Here the mango trees, that we had seen in

flower at Cairns, were already bearing the yellow globes of their

fruit. Among a grove of coco palms we saw the picturesque corkscrew

palm, with its odd spiral stem, but we saw no animal life, except a

few peeweets of the smaller kind, though our host said the flocks of

wild geese, that herald the coming of the rain, had already begun to

pass overhead. He also pointed out a spot on the road, in which a short

time before, a large kangaroo had run out of the bush and, startled at

seeing him, cleared his horse’s head at one bound.

At the entrance to the Botanical Gardens we saw our first banyan

tree, bare of leaves, and showing the curious formation of the

branches. Later we passed one that had already burst into leaf.

The drive afforded lovely glimpses of the harbour, its bright blue

waters lapping the green, wooded shores. In the Botanical Gardens

there were as yet few flowers. The scarlet coral-tree was there, and

another scarlet flowering tree, and some waxy, red hibiscus. The

Administrator and his wife received their guests upon a lawn, that

had somehow retained its grass, and we then sat about at little

tables, and were waited on by the young daughters of the residents;

and anyone seeing their pretty bright faces and healthy colour, would

feel that the much-abused climate of Port Darwin had been greatly

vilified. The scent of a wood fire was wafted over to us, from where

the billy tea was boiling on some logs. The air was delicious; but we

had not started till the heat of the day was over, for, owing to the

unfortunate detention at Townsville, our stay at Darwin, a place of a

hundredfold its interest, had been lamentably curtailed. We had hoped

to see something of the native life. Here the native population has

retained its primitive simplicity. The natives of the interior do not

come into contact with other races. They are, unfortunately, dying out,

like the native Australian animals, for what reason is not definitely

known. The Commonwealth Year Book for 1912 gives the total number of

the native population of the Northern Territory as 20,000, and adds

that it is believed they are rapidly dying out. Of these, 1223 were

semi-civilised, through coming into contact with, or being in the

employment of, European residents.

The Australian native has always been in a different position from

other primitive peoples. He has not had to contend either with races

superior to himself in intelligence, or with savage wild animals.

Consequently he has had nothing to sharpen his wits, and remains the

most backward race now existing. Professor Baldwin Spencer, the most

recent authority on this subject, points out that though the natives

make use habitually of numerous kinds of grass seed, which they grind,

and make into cakes, it has never occurred to them to sow these seeds

and secure a regular crop. And he adds: “In many tribes, at least, this

is because he knows nothing of the relation between the seed and the

adult plant, and thinks that the latter grows because he makes it so do

by magic.” The habits and character, the strange customs and ingenious

superstitions of these interesting people have been charmingly

delineated in a series of unpretending sketches called “The Little

Black Princess,” by Mrs. Gunn. It is a sort of popular Fraser’s “Golden

Bough,” and is valuable as preserving a record of the everyday life of

the Europeans in the Northern Territory under conditions that must of

necessity soon pass away.

We could not hope to see the “myals,” or wild blacks, and it was

already drawing towards nightfall. Our host, with delightful

resourcefulness, proposed to take us to the local gaol, as it afforded

the only opportunity of our making acquaintance with the natives.

It was a question whether we could get there before it was dark. A

Government motor-car had just driven up, arrived back from the Daly

River. Its driver was having a hurried sandwich, which he must have

badly wanted, but he at once consented to take us. It was a powerfully

built car, covered with dust, and with no doors, so that we had to

scramble in over the sides, which we did with great alacrity. As we

were starting one of the ladies who had taken charge of us said, “Of

course you will dine with us to-night. Our servants have gone off, and

we have got workmen in the house, but that will make no difference, if

you will come.” There was the typical Australian hospitality, which

is so unlike what we mean by the word. If we had accepted, we should

no doubt have had an excellent dinner served on the verandah; but we

declined, as we had to dress for the evening lecture, and accepted

instead an invitation to supper afterwards.

This point satisfactorily settled, we proceeded to the gaol. The gaol

looked very clean and new and official. Its gates were closed, and some

scarlet hibiscus was in flower by the fence. On a look-out station

a sooty black man was keeping watch with a telescope for incoming

vessels. The prisoners had all gone to bed for the night, but they

were fetched out to make our acquaintance, and lined up in the grounds.

Inside it was cool and airy, with black cement floors, to match the

inmates. Out they came, the poor gaol-birds, wild things of the woods,

with the limitless forest to roam over, cooped up in a cell for

following the natural bent of any wild animal to fight and kill. They

have little sense of time, and their sentences are not for long; they

spend nearly all their day in the open air. They stood in a pathetic

little row in their dark blue prison dress, with their sooty, shaven

heads. One was in chains, as being held to be dangerous and likely to

give trouble. There seemed to be different types, some of them were

much flatter-nosed than others. Most of them were in for murder; in two

cases it had been provoked by cruelty. In one of these a white man had

justly earned the hatred of his black neighbours. The case, said our

friend, had been very well got up.[26] It was proved that the dead man

was fishing for bêche-de-mer[27] one moonlight night; the natives whom

he had injured lay in wait for him, and speared him to death. Morally

they were justified by their own code, but the forces of order were

obliged to assert themselves.

Life sentences are imposed for murder, but the prisoners are always

released, the period of their detention depending on their good

behaviour, for often they pine away in captivity.

Looking at these simple, childlike, confiding creatures, who play

marbles for amusement, one felt that any white who could treat them

cruelly deserved all he got. Only one of them looked at us with the

gloomy, smouldering eyes of a caged animal. The others all greeted

our host with beaming confidence. One man’s skull was deeply cleft

horizontally for about two inches. “By a black fellow,” he remarked

without resentment. Another from Pine Creek was asked what he was in

for. “Longa fight Chinaman,” he responded with a reminiscent chuckle

of satisfaction. It was the last amusing thing the poor fellow had

done. Another was in “longa kill Chinaman,” as he unconcernedly

explained. Our friend with the cleft skull had committed a very cruel

murder. After acting as guide to a white man in the bush, he followed

him secretly for days, and finally murdered him in his sleep for the

little food he had got left, and he was almost starving at the time.

We had come from England and must return, our host told them. “No

savvy,” they replied vaguely. So we said good-bye to our poor little

dusky brothers, and turned back to the Botanical Gardens to recover the

Government cart and horse. At parting, our driver took out of a native

basket a little collar of coloured beads made by the natives up the

Daly River, and gave it to us as a memento of our brief acquaintance.

[Illustration: ANT-HILLS.]

There were only three cars in Darwin, and the snorting noise made

by the one in which we returned awoke our horse to such terrified

and mettlesome curvetting, that we could only remount the seat with

considerable difficulty. We drove back through the gathering dusk with

flying foxes soundlessly flitting across our path. By the time we

reached the jetty darkness had come on. We had to make a hasty change,

and after a hurried dinner, we started back again in the heavy, moist,

scented darkness to find the hall in which the evening’s lecture was

to be delivered. It was very funny to find that early closing was

compulsory in Darwin. Chinatown must hate it. The little shops were

half lighted, and in the dusk seated figures like small Buddhas were

dimly discernible outside. A strong, Oriental smell hung over it all.

We shall always remember the scene of the lecture in the Town Hall. The

moist heat, the little red ants that swarmed on the floor, above the

voice of the lecturer, the frail rattle of the grasshoppers outside

insistent and unceasing; and the white-clad rows of men, gravely,

unwaveringly attentive.

After the lecture the kindly lady, who is the wife of the

Administrator, proposed a delightful scheme of giving us an early

breakfast at seven, and driving us out to the nearest native compound.

How exquisite the freshness of morning would have been in that tropical

country, and how full of interest and novelty the whole expedition. We

were only too eager to go, but there were depressing rumours of our

departure at dawn. We were now to visit our hostess of the afternoon,

and, guided by our host, we stumbled across what they called a paddock,

which seemed to be full of tussocks of some dead weed that smelt like

horehound.

The stars were brilliant, the Southern Cross pointing our way as it

hung just above the dark roof of the house. At the entrance to the

garden was a banyan tree, and there were green ants’ nests among the

leaves of the other trees, neatly sewn up like long, narrow bags,

and green ants with red legs were running about everywhere, even on

the window-sills. We sat on the verandah, and were given buffalo

tongue sandwiches, which have an agreeable, esoteric flavour, quite

incomparable to anything else. It was all very pretty and comfortable,

despite the absence of servants. The Port Darwin housewife has to wage

an active and unceasing warfare against insect pests. Food cannot

be left on the table for a short time without ants swarming on it.

Large cockroaches three or four inches long lurk behind furniture;

the destructive silver fish conceal themselves in unopened drawers,

and mosquitoes make life a continual irritation, unless ceaseless

precautions are taken. Still, active vigilance will reduce all these

pests to a minimum.

The pleasant evening slipped away too soon. It was time to return to

the port. We strolled back through the mysterious night, moist and warm

and scented by flowering frangipani in the gardens of the dimly seen

bungalows. Our boat lying below in the harbour was a blazing patch of

light; the glow of a distant bush fire lit up the opposite coast; and

that was all--all that we saw of the Northern Territory, mysterious

fascinating, and beautiful, with its vast and intricate problems

of labour and climate waiting solution. For with early morning we

slipped away from its red and green shores, just as the rising sun had

crimsoned all the glassy sea. That is our last memory of Australia,

and of all the places we visited it was Port Darwin that we were most

loth to leave, for we somehow felt that Australia had kept her best

till last.

PRINTED BY

WM. BRENDON AND SON, LTD.

PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND

FOOTNOTES

[1] A genus named after a nurseryman who introduced these Australian

plants into London.

[2] On the goldfields the grant is £8 10s. per each child and the

teacher’s income £40.

[3] A summary of the history of Western Australian Educational

Development will be found in the State Handbook, contributed by the

Hon. Walter Kingsmill, formerly Minister for Education.

[4] From the Federal Handbook to Australia, p. 204.

[5] “Ringbarking” is effected by cutting away an encircling strip or

ring of bark round the trunk and so slowly killing the tree.

[6] See Federal Handbook for this question, pp. 171, 414.

[7] Federal Handbook, pp. 445–53.

[8] Federal Handbook, p. 173.

[9] “Army Review,” Vol. IV., January, 1913.

[10] “Times,” January 28, 1915.

[11] Ladies are not admitted to the Melbourne Club.

[12] Dr. J. W. Barrett, C.M.G., M.D., in the “Handbook to Victoria.”

[13] See Mr. H. M. Murphy, Chief Inspector of Factories, on the

“Victorian Labour Laws,” “Handbook to Victoria,” p. 203.

[14] H. M. Murphy.

[15] “Handbook to Victoria,” p. 40.

[16] “Handbook to Victoria,” p. 42.

[17] In the “Half-time” school the teacher divides his time between two

centres.

[18] See “Sheep and Wool for the Farmer,” Part I., J. Wrenford

Matthews. Published by the Department of Agriculture, N.S. Wales.

[19] For details of this system see “Wheat in New South Wales,” by G.

L. Sutton, Tourist Bureau, Sydney.

[20] “Farming on the Shares System,” Government Tourist Bureau, Sydney.

[21] In reference to the vast amount of sand in West Australia, the

West Australians are called “Sand-gropers.” Life was hard in early

South Australia, and hence the South Australians remain “Crow-eaters”:

Victorians, proud of their giant gum trees in Gippsland, are called

“Gum-suckers,” and only the New South Wales people are genuine

“Cornstalks.”

[22] W. Harrison Moore, Professor of Law at the University of Melbourne.

[23] “Flora of the South Coast,” “Handbook to New South Wales,” p. 395.

[24] There has been considerable difference of opinion among writers

on the early history of Australia, as to whether Captain Cook did or

did not name the whole of this district New South Wales. It is true

that the name New South Wales does not appear in Cook’s journals, and

Bladen, editor of the “Historical Record of New South Wales,” says that

“the name appears to have originated with Hawkesworth,” who edited

“Cook’s Voyages.” Kitson, however, cites a letter written by Cook, 1771

(“Life of Cook,” p. 149), in which the words occur, “The east coast of

New Holland, or what I call ‘New South Wales.’” Hawkesworth therefore

did obtain the name from Cook.

[25] Mrs. Æneas Gunn, “We of the Never Never.”

[26] An account of this interesting trial has been brilliantly given in

“An Untamed Territory,” Macmillan and Co., by Miss Elsie Masson.

[27] In Malay called tripang.

* * * * * *

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a

predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they

were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unpaired quotation

marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left

unpaired.

Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs

and outside quotations.

The List of Illustrations refers to an illustration on the cover, but

the source of this eBook did not include that illustration.

Footnotes originally were at the bottoms of pages; in this eBook, they

have been sequentially renumbered and placed at the end of the book.