CHAPTER II

BEACHCOMBING

"For the Beachcomber, when not a mere ruffian, is the poor relation of

the artist."

In justification of the assumption of the title of "Beachcomber," it must

be said that, having made good and sufficient provision against the

advent of the wet season (which begins, as a rule, during the Christmas

holidays), the major portion of each week was spent in first formal and

official calls, and then friendly and familiar visits to the neighbouring

islands and the mainland.

Duty and inclination constrained me to find out what were the states and

moods of all the bays and coves of all the isles; the location and form

of rocks and reefs; the character of shrubs and trees; the nature of the

jungle-covered hilltops; the features of bluffs and precipices; to

understand the style and manner and the conversation of unfamiliar birds;

to discover where the turtle most do congregate; the favourite haunts of

fishes. I was in a hurry to partake freely of the novel, and yearned for

pleasure of the absolute freedom of isles uninhabited, shores untrodden;

eager to know how Nature, not under the microscope, behaved; what were

her maiden fancies, what the art with which she allures.

But there was an excuse, rather an imperious command, for all the

apparent waste of time. Before the rains came thundering on the iron roof

of our little hut, the washed-out and enfeebled town dweller who gave way

to bitter reflections on the first evening of his new career, could

hardly have been recognised, thanks to the robustious, wholesome effects

of the free and vitalising life. Fourteen, frequently sixteen, hours of

the twenty-four were spent in the open air, ashore and afloat.

What a glowing and absolutely authentic testimonial could be written as

to the tonic influence of the misrepresented climate of the rainy belt of

North Queensland on constitutions that have run down? According to

popular opinion, malaria ought to have discovered an exceptionally easy

prey. Ague, if the expected had happened, should have gripped and shaken

me until my teeth rattled; and after alternations of raging fever and

arctic cold, I ought to have gone to my long home with the fearful shapes

of delirium yelling in my ears. But there are places other than Judee

where they do not know everything. At the fraction of the fee of a

fashionable doctor, and of the cost of following his fashionable and

pleasing advice--a change to one of the Southern States--in three months

one of the compelling causes for the desertion of town life had been

disposed of by agreeable processes. None of the bitter, after-taste of

physic remained. I knew my island, and was on terms of friendly

admiration--born of knowledge of beauty spots--with all the others. I had

become a citizen of the universe.

During this period of utter abandonment of all serious claims upon time

and exertion came the conviction that the career of the Beachcomber, the

closest possible "return to Nature" now popularly advocated, has charms

none other possesses. Then it was that the lotus-blossom was first eaten.

Unfettered by the laws of society, with the means at hand of acquiring

the few necessaries of life that Nature in this generous part of her

domain fails to provide readymade, a Beachcomber of virtuous instinct,

and a due perception of the decency of things, may enjoy a happy life.

Should, however, he be of the type that demands a wreck or so every month

to maintain his supplies of rum or gin, and other articles of his true

religion, and is prepared if wrecks do not come with regularity, to

assist tardy Nature by means of false lights on the shore, he will find

no scope whatever among these orderly isles.

The Beachcomber of tradition parades his coral islet barefooted, bullying

guileless natives out of their copra, coco-nut oil and pearl-shell; his

chief diet, turtle and turtle eggs and fish; his drink, rum and coco-nut

milk--the latter only when the former is impossible. When a wreck happens

he becomes a potentate in pyjamas, and with his dusky wives, dressed in

bright vestiture, fares sumptuously. And though the ships from the isles

do not meet to "pour the wealth of ocean in tribute at his feet," he can

still "rush out of his lodgings and eat oysters in regular desperation."

A whack on his hardened head from the club of a jealous native is the

time-honoured fate of the typical Beachcomber.

Flotsam and jetsam make another class of Beachcomber by stimulating the

gaming instincts. Is there a human being, taking part in the rough and

tumble of the world, who can honestly make confession and say that he has

completely suffocated those inherent instincts of savagedom--joy and

patience in the chase, the longing for excitement and surprise, the crude

selfishness, the delight in getting something for nothing? Society

journals have informed me that titled dames have been known to sit out

long and wearisome evenings that they may obtain some paltry favour in a

cotillon. And when the sea casts up its gifts on these radiant shores, I

boldly and with glee give way to my beachcombing instincts and pick and

choose. Never ever up to the present have I found anything of real value;

but am I not buoyed up by pious hopes and sanguine expectations? Is not

the game as diverting and as innocent as many others that are played to

greater profit? It is a game, too, that cannot be forced, and therefore

cannot become demoralising; and having no nice feelings nor fine shades,

I rejoice and am glad in it.

And then what strange and varied things one sees! Once a "harness-cask,"

hostile to every sense, came trundled by waves eager to expel it from the

vicinity of these oxless but scented isles. It overcame us as we sailed

by, 20 yards off, and the general necessity for temperate diet and

restricted dishes came as a sweet and a comforting reflection. No marvel

if the ship whence it was ejected was in bad odour among the sailors.

Leaving, as it lurched along, a greasy, foul stain on the sea, it may

have poisoned multitudes of uncomplaining fishes during its evil course.

Occasionally a case of fruit, washed from the decks of a labouring

steamer, drifts ashore. One was the means of introducing a valuable

addition to the products of the island. It gave demonstration of how man

may unwittingly, and even in opposition to his wit, assist in scattering

and multiplying blessings on a smiling land--blessings to last for all

time, and perhaps to amend or ameliorate the environment of a budding

nation.

Many years ago--in 1878, to speak precisely--a ship laden with fragrant

cedar logs from the valley of the Daintree River--140 miles to the north--

touched on Kennedy Shoal, 20 miles to the south-east of Dunk Island.

Crippled though she was she managed to make Cardwell, where she was

temporarily patched up, and whence she set sail for Melbourne. It was the

critical month of March, and the MERCHANT--clumsy and cumbersome, but a

good and safe ship given ample sea-room--before sailing many miles on her

course, was caught in the coils of a cyclone, the violence of which is

well remembered by old residents on the coast to this day, and was lost

with all hands. She is supposed to have struck on a reef to the southward

of the Palm Islands, as the bulk of her cargo was cast ashore in Ramsay

Bay, Hinchinbrook Island. Portions of the wreckage were found on the

Brook Islands; her figurehead--the spread eagle of the United States--and

a seaman's chest were picked up on the beach here. Her windlass, with a

child's pinafore entangled with it--for the skipper had taken his wife and

two children to bear him company--drifted on the South Franklands, 40

miles to the north, and a large portion of the shattered hulk on a reef

eastward of Fitzroy Island, 25 miles still farther up the coast. Fate did

her worst for the poor MERCHANT, and not yet content, relentlessly

pursued two (if not more) of the vessels which sought to recover her

cedar, strewn on the treacherous sands of Ramsay Bay. Some of the logs,

however, drifted to our quiet coves, and portions remain sound to this

day. One more promising and accessible we beachcombed. It provided

planks for a punt, besides various articles of furniture, and gave me

some most practical homilies on contentment. Having found and duly

salvaged that log, it was necessary to cut it up; and then I began to be

thankful that pit-sawing was not forced upon me as a profession in the

days of inexperienced youth. Pit-sawing is deceptive. It has the

appearance of being easy, though not genteel, when others are the

toilers, and in the red dust, torn by the polished steel teeth from out

the heart of the dull log, do you not "inhale the balmy smells of nard

and cassia which the musky wings of the zephyrs scatter through the

cedared groves of the Hesperides?" Is not that fragrance sufficient

compensation for your toil, with the clean red planks profit over and

above legitimate earnings? Yet that long saw tugs at our very

heart-strings, and you know that to get a real, not merely sentimental,

liking for the craft of the sawyer, you must take to it very young,

before the possibilities of other occupations and pastimes have distorted

your genius. This worthy lesson comes from the gentle art of

Beachcombing.

Again, a German barque, driven out of its course, found unexpectedly a

detached portion of the Great Barrier Reef 200 miles away to the south.

When the south-easters came, they pounded away so vigorously with the

heavy runs of the sea that in a brief space nothing was left of the big

ship save some distorted fragments of iron jammed in among the

nigger-heads of coral and the crevices of the rocks. A few weeks after,

portions of the wreck were deposited on Dunk Island, and the beach of the

mainland for miles was strewn with timber. That wreck was the greatest

favour bestowed me in my profession of Beachcomber. Long and heavy pieces

of angle-iron came bolted to raft-like sections of the deck; various

kinds of timber proved useful in a variety of ways. What? was I to leave

it all, unclaimed and unregarded--in excess of morality and modesty--on

the beach, to be honey-combed by white ants or to rot? or to honestly own

up to that sentiment which is the most human of all? Without affectation

or apology, I confess that I was overjoyed--that my instincts, pregnant

with original sin, received a most delightful fillip. I wallowed for the

time being in the luxury of beachcombing.

Upon sober reflection, I cannot say that I am of one mind with the pastor

of the Shetland Isles who never omitted this petition from his long

prayer--"Lord, if it be Thy holy will to send shipwrecks, do not forget

our island"; nor yet with the Breton fishermen, who to this day are of

opinion that wreckage is the gift of God, and who therefore take

everything that comes in a reverential spirit, as a Divine favour,

whether casks of wine or bales of merchandise. But, after all, who am I

that I should claim a finer shade of morality than those, with their

sturdy widespread hands and perpetual blessing? My inherent powers of

resistance to such temptations as the winds and tides of Providence put

in their way have never been subject to proof. Does virtue go by default

where there is no opportunity to be otherwise than virtuous? The very

first pipe of port, or aum of Rhenish, or bale of silk, which comes

rolling along may wrestle with my morality and so wrench and twist it as

to incapacitate it for ordinary usage for months, or may even permanently

disable it. And must not I, venturing to regard myself as a truthful

historian, frankly admit a sense allied to disappointment when the white

blazing beaches are destitute of the most trivial of temptations?

No, the grating of the battered barque, upon which many a wet and weary

steersman had stood, now fulfils placid duty as a front gate. No more to

be trampled and stamped upon with shifty, sloppy feet--no more to be

scrubbed and scored with sand and holystone; painted white, it creaks

gratefully every time it swings--the symbol of security, the first

outward and visible sign of home, the guardian of the sacred rights of

private property, the embodiment of the exclusive. Better so than lying

inert under foot on the deck of the barque thrashing through the cold

grey seas of the Baltic, or scudding before the unscrupulous billows of

Biscay.

Moreover, what notable and precise information this derelict timber gave

as to the strength and direction of ocean currents. The wreck took place

on the 26th October 1900 in 18 deg. 43 min. S. lat., 147 deg. 57 min. E.

long., 72 1/2 miles in a direct line from the port of Townsville, and

about 200 miles from Dunk Island. She broke up, after a11 the cargo had

been salvaged, early in January 1901, and on Tuesday, 5th February, at

10 a.m., the seas landed the first of the broken planks in Brammo Bay.

Then for a few days the arrivals were continuous. For over 50 miles along

the coast the wreckage was scattered, very little going farther north.

Nothing goes south on this part of the coast. Yes, there is one exception

during my experience. A veritable cataclysm coincided with a stiff

north-easterly breeze, and hundreds of bunches of bananas from

plantations on the banks of the Johnstone River--25 miles

away--landing-stages and steps, and the beacons from the mouth of the

river, drifted south. Most of the more buoyant debris, however, took the

next tide back in the direction whence came.

When there are eight or ten islands and islets within an afternoon's

sail, and miles of mainland beach to police, variety lends her charms to

the pursuit of the Beachcomber. Landing in one of the unfrequented coves,

he knows not what the winds and the tides may have spread out for

inspection and acceptance. Perhaps only an odd coco-nut from the Solomon

Islands, its husk riddled by cobra and zoned with barnacles. The germ of

life may yet be there. To plant the nut above high-water mark is an

obvious duty. Perhaps there is a paddle, with rude tracery on the handle,

from the New Hebrides, part of a Fijian canoe that has been bundled over

the Barrier, a wooden spoon such as Kanakas use, or the dusky globe of an

incandescent lamp that has glowed out its life in the state-room of some

ocean liner, or a broom of Japanese make, a coal-basket, a "fender," a

tiger nautilus shell, an oar or a rudder, a tiller, a bottle cast away

fat out from land to determine the strength and direction of ocean

currents, the spinnaker boom of a yacht, the jib-boom of a staunch

cutter. Once there was a goodly hammer cemented by the head fast upright

on a flat rock, and again the stand of a grindstone, and a trestle, high

and elaborately stayed. Cases, invariably and disappointingly empty, come

and go, planks of strange timber, blocks from some tall ship. A huge

black beacon waddled along, dragging a reluctant mass of iron at the end

of its chain cable, followed by a roughly-built "flatty" and a huge log

of silkwood. A jolly red buoy, weary of the formality of bowing to the

swell, broke loose from a sandbank's apron-strings, bounced off in the

ecstasies of liberty, romped in the surf, rolled on the beach, worked a

cosy bed in the soft warm sand, and has slumbered ever since to the

soothing hum of the wind, indifferent to the perplexities of mariners and

the fate of ships. The gilded masthead truck of a smart yacht, with one

of her cabin racks, bespoke of recent disaster, unknown and unaccounted,

and a brand new oar, finished and fitted with the nattiness of a

man-o'-war's man, told of some wave-swept deck.

That which at the time was the most eloquent message from the sea came

close to our door, cast up on the snowy-white coral drift of a little

cove, where it immediately attracted notice. Nothing but an untrimmed

bamboo staff nearly 30 feet long, carrying an oblong strip of soiled

white calico between two such strips of red turkey twill. Tattered and

frayed, the flags seemed to tell of the desperate appeal for help of some

forlorn castaway; of a human being, marooned on a lonely sandbank on the

Barrier, without shelter, food or water, but not altogether bereft of

hope. BECHE-DE-MER fishers have in times past been marooned on the Reef

by mutinous blacks, and left to die by slow degrees, or to be drowned by

the implacable yet merciful tide. A makeshift rudder well worn bespoke

strenuous efforts to steer a troubled boat to shelter, but this crude

signal staff, deftly arranged, told of present agony and stress. It might

have been the emblem of a tragic event that the Beachcomber single-handed

was not able to investigate. As a matter of fact, it was only a temporary

datum of one of His Majesty's surveying ships engaged in attempting to

set the bounds of the Barrier.

Rarely do we sail about without enjoying the zest of the chance of

getting something for nothing. Not yet has the seaman's chest,

brass-bound, with its secret compartments full of "fair rose-nobles and

bright moidores," been lighted upon; but who can say? Perhaps it has

come ashore but now, after leagues of aimless wanderings, and awaits in

some cosy cove the next Beachcombing expedition. That from the ill-fated

MERCHANT came hither years before my time, and was, in any case,

pathetically unromantic.

Peradventure there are many who deem this solitary existence dull? Why,

it is brimful of interest and sensation. There are the tragedies of the

bush to observe and elucidate; all cannot be foreseen and prevented, or

even avenged. A bold falcon the other day swooped down upon a wood-swallow

that was imitating the falcon's flight just above my head, and bore it

bleeding to a tree-top, while I stood shocked at the audacity of the

cannibal. A bullet dropped the murderous bird with its dead victim fast

in the talons. There are comedies, too, and you have the wit to see them,

and in these Beachcombing expeditions expectation, fairly effervesces.

One lucky individual--a mere amateur--casually picked up a black-lip

mother-of-pearl shell on an island some little distance away. It

contained a blue pearl, the price of which gave him such a start in life,

that he is now an owner of ships. May not other tides cast up on other

shores other oysters whose lives have been rendered miserable by the

presence of pearls?

Byron says--"Even an oyster may be crossed in love." Science, more

precise and frank than the frankest of poets, tells us that oysters are

afflicted with tapeworms, and to kill the germ of these indecent pests,

enclose them in untimely tombs, which from the human standpoint are among

the most lovely and precious of gems. The assertions of the scientific

are often the reverse of poetical. We are constrained to believe them,

but like our poetical delusions better, and for the origin of the pearl

prefer the quaint fable of the Persians to the unpleasant fact of the

zoologist. A drop of water of ineffable purity falls from heaven to the

sea, an oyster gapes and swallows it, the drop hardens and ripens, and

becomes a pearl; and who is so devoid of the perception of purity, beauty

and worth as to despise a pearl?

Here about, pearls were found. We delight in them, though they prove the

previous existence of a filthy ailment. Any oyster may contain a pearl, a

pearl of great price--a thing of beauty, a joy for ever. Every gold-lip,

every black-lip oyster, is a chance in a lottery. Was there ever a

Beachcomber so pure and elevated of soul as to refuse the chances that

Nature proffers gratuitously? My meagre horde includes pearls of several

tints, black, pink, and white. They represent the paltriest prizes. in

the lottery that no Government, however paternal, may prohibit, being

mere "baroque," fit only to be pounded up as medicine for some Chinaman

luxuriously sick. Yet there is a chance. Some day the great prize may be

drawn. And then, "Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?" The

Beachcomber may be perverted into--well, the next best on the list. Yet

they say in pitiful tones, those who rake among the muck of the streets,

"What a dull life! What a hopeless existence! He is out of it all!" Yes,

with a gladsome mind, and all its sounds, if not forgotten, at least

muffled by music, soft as dawn, profound as the very sea.

Kennedy Shoal has been mentioned incidentally. Some miles further north

are two bare sandbanks. Prior to the year 1890 they were occupied by a

BECHE-DE-MER fisherman, whose headquarters were on the chief of the South

Barnard Islands--some 12 or 14 miles to the north. In fateful March of

that year a cyclone swooped down on this part of the coast with the

pent up fury of a century's restraint. The enormous bloodwood-trees torn

out by the roots on Dunk Island testified to the force and ferocity of

the storm. The sandbanks, are isolated, dreary spots, the highest portion

but 2 or 3 feet above the level reached by spring tides. A cutter--THE

DOLPHIN--with a crew of aboriginals, in charge of a couple of Kanakas, was

anchored at the shoal, and as the cyclone worked up, the Kanakas decided

that the one and only bid for life was to run before it to the mainland.

It was a forlorn hope--so forlorn that four or five of the aboriginals

declined to take part in it, deeming it safer to trust to the sandbank,

which they imagined could never be entirely swept by the besoms of the

sea. The cutter fled before the storm, only to capsize in the breakers

off the mouth of the Johnstone River. Clinging to the wreck until it

drifted a few miles south, the Kanakas and crew battled through the waves

and eventually reached the shore. Of those who placed their faith on the

sandbank not one was spared. The seas raced over it, pounded and

flattened it. The men upon it were unconsidered trifles.

The tall and handsome Scandinavian whose fortune thus assailed was at his

home with his wife and children and brother. His yacht--THE MAUD--in the

height of the storm, began to drag her anchor. He and his brother went

out in a dinghy to secure her. At dusk the wife, young, petite and

pretty, with strained anxiety watched the efforts of the men to beat back

to shelter. Darkness came, blotting out the scene and its climax. Never

after was anything seen or heard of the brothers or the yacht. And for

nearly a fortnight the disconsolate wife and her little ones were alone on

the island.

Ten years later, on one of the two bare patches of sand, another

BECHE-DE-MER smoke-house was built. While the owner a swarthy Arabian,

was out on the reef miles away, a phenomenally high tide occurred. His

wife--a comely girl of British descent--was alone on the shoal. She

watched the rising water apprehensively, until all the sand was covered

save the few feet on which the frail shelter stood. One more ripple and

the floor was swamped. Then, wading and swimming, she managed to reach a

punt, and so saved her life. Since then these patches of sand have not

been regarded as a safe outpost even by those most venturesome of

people--BECHE-DE-MER fishers.

This is not an apology, but a confession; not a plea of defence, but a

justification--a fair and free chronicle, a frank acknowledgment of the

tributes of impartial Neptune--Neptune who gives and who takes away--who

stealthily filches with tireless fingers, and who, when in the mood, robs

so remorselessly, and with such awful, such majestic violence, that it

were impious to whimper. Who beachcombed my three rudders, the one

toilfully adzed out in one piece from the beautiful heart of a bean-tree

log, another cunningly fitted with a sliding fin, and that of red cedar

with famous brass mountings? Who owns the pair of ballast tanks once

mine? Who the buoy deemed securely moored? Who the paddles and the

rowlocks and the signal halyards, lost because of Neptune's whims and

violence? Beachcombing is a nicely adjusted, if not quite an exact art.

Not once but several times has the libertine Neptune scandalously seduced

punts and dinghies from the respectable precincts of Brammo Bay, and

having philandered with them for a while, cynically abandoned them with a

bump on the mainland beach, and only once has he sent a punt in return--a

poor, soiled, tar-besmirched, disorderly waif that was reported to the

police and reluctantly claimed.

A mind inclined to casuistry, could it not defend Beachcombing? Does not

the law recognise it under the definition of trover? Why bother about the

law and the moralities when it is all so pleasing, so engrossing, and so

fair?

The Beachcomber wants no extensive establishment. His possessions need

never be mortgaged. The cost of living is measurable by a standard

adjustable to individual taste, wants and perceptions. The expenditure of

a little manual labour supplies the omissions of and compensates for

the undirected impulses which prevail, and the pursuit--not the

profession--leads one to ever-varying scenes, to the contemplation of many

of the moods of unaffected, unadvertised Nature. Ashore, one dallies

luxuriously with time, free from all the restrictions of streets, every

precious moment his very own; afloat in these calm and shallow waters

there is a never-ending panorama of entertainment. Coral gardens--gardens

of the sea nymphs, wherein fancy feigns cool, shy, chaste faces and

pliant forms half-revealed among gently swaying robes; a company of

porpoise, a herd of dugong; turtle, queer and familiar fish, occasionally

the spouting of a great whale, and always the company of swift and

graceful birds. Sometimes the whole expansive ocean is as calm as it can

only be in the tropics and bordered by the Barrier Reef--a shield of

shimmering silver from which the islands stand out as turquoise bosses.

Again, it is of cobalt blue, with changing bands of purple and gleaming

pink, or of grey blue--the reflection of a sky pallid and tremulous with

excess of light. Or myriad hosts of microscopic creatures--the Red Sea

owes to the tribe its name--the multitudinous sea dully incarnadine; or

the boat rides buoyantly on the shoulders of Neptune's white horses, while

funnel-shaped water spouts sway this way and that. Land is always near,

and the flotsam and jetsam, do they not supply that smack of

excitement--if not the boisterous hope--bereft of which life might seem

"always afternoon?"

These chronicles are toned from first to last by perceptions which came

to the Beachcomber--perceptions which lead, mayhap, to a subdued and sober

estimate of the purpose and bearing of the pilgrimage of life. Doubts

become exalted and glorified, hopes all rapture, when long serene days

are spent alone in the contemplation of the splendours of sky and sea,

and the enchantment of tropic shores.

TROPICAL INDUSTRIES

Was there not an explicit contract that some of the experiences and

events of a settler's life should be duly described and recorded? How to

fulfil that obligation and at the same time avoid what is ordinarily

regarded as the dull and prosaic, the stale, the flat, the unprofitable,

is the trouble. I would gladly shirk even this small responsibility, even

as greater ones have been outmanoeuvred, but a written promise

unfulfilled may be troublesome to a conscience, which, when reminiscent

of ante-beachcombing days, is not altogether unimpressionable.

Well, the life of a settler--the man who drags his sustenance, all and

every part of it, from the soil in tropical Queensland, as a mere settler

very closely resembles that of others who cultivate. If an abstract of

the universal experience were obtainable, it would very likely be found

to go towards the establishment of a standard from which many would

cheerfully desire many cheerful changes. After all, that represents a

condition not altogether monopolised by settlers.

Yet, when once the life is begun, how few there are who attempt to

withdraw from it? It grows on the senses and faculties. It appeals to the

emotional as well as to the stolid humours. The cares of this world as

expounded in town life, and the sinfulness of never-to-be-acquired riches

are foreign to the free, bland air which has filtered through the myriad

leaves of the mountain, and which smacks so strongly of freedom.

Sometimes the settler takes up studies and relieves the sameness of his

duties by pastimes. One never went to his maize field, along narrow

gloomy aisles through the jungle, without a net for the capture of

butterflies. His humble home was as resplendent as the show-cases of a

natural history museum. But he was singularly favoured. A lovely

waterfall was the jewel on his estate. That was the shape of beauty that

moved away the pall from his dark spirit and gave colour to his life and

actions. Another took to collecting birds' eggs; another to the study of

botany; another to photography. Each wreathed, according to his

predilections, a flowery band to bind him to the earth, finding that even

the life of a settler may be filled with "sweet dreams, and health and

quiet." But the great majority seem to have taken to the scrap heap of

Federal politics with such ardour that they clutch but the fag ends of

the poetry of life.

Many become great readers and are knowing and knowledgeable. Those who

drift away from country life are for the most part men who hustle after

the coy damsel fortune by searching for minerals, and just as many who

have succeeded in that arduous passion settle quietly on the land. Each

may and does desire amendments to and amelioration in his lot. There is

still left to all the healthy impulse of achievement, the desire for

something better, the noble and inspiriting virtue of discontent.

Rare is a deserted home. Even the first rough dwelling of a settler

possessing the slenderest resources is invested with tender sentiments.

There is his home--a poor one, perhaps, but his own, and to it he clings

with desperation, sees in and about it attractions and beauty where

others perceive nothing but untoned dreariness, unrelieved hopelessness.

His little bit of country may be remote and isolated, but Nature is warm

and encouraging, and profuse of her stimulants here. She responds

off-hand without pausing to reflect, but with an outburst of goodwill and

purpose to appeals for sustenance. She has no despondent moods. She never

lapses in prolific purposes. She may be wayward in accepting the

interferences of man, but all her vigorous impulses are expended in

productiveness. She cannot sulk or idle. Kill, burn and destroy her

primeval jungle, and she does not give way to sadness and despair, nor

are any of her infinite forces abated. Spontaneously she begins the work

of restoration, and as if by magic the scar is covered with as rich and

riotous a profusion of vegetation as ever. Nature needs only to be

restrained and schooled and her response is an abundance of various sorts

of food for man.

The routine that cultivators of the soil have to obey is diverse, but the

life of the dweller in the country in tropical Queensland can be asserted

with perfect safety to be more comfortable than that of the average

settler in any other part of Australia. There are no phases of

agricultural enterprise devoid of toil, save perhaps the growing of

vanilla, the very poetry of the oldest of pursuits, in which one has to

aid and abet in the loves and in the marriage of flowers. But vanilla

production is not one of the profitable branches of agriculture here yet.

We have to deal only with things that are at present practicable.

Whether the settler grows maize, or fruit or coffee, or as a collateral

exercise of industry gets log timber, or raises pigs or poultry, the life

has no great variations. If he farms sugar-cane, being resident within the

zone of influence of a mill, he belongs to a different order--an order

with which it is not intended to deal. My purpose refers only to men who

do not employ labour, who have to depend almost solely upon their own hard

hands. The conditions upon which the land is acquired demand personal

residence during a period of five years and the erection of permanent

improvements, such as fencing, thereon, and there are not many who take

up a selection who are in the position to pay wages. The selector must do

the clearing, and the preparation of the soil for whatever crop in his

experience or the experience of others is considered the most

remunerative. During this period his love for the particular piece of

land by-and-by to become his own begins. More realistically than anyone

else he knows the quantity of his energy and enthusiasm, his very life,

the land has absorbed. It becomes part of himself even in the early days

of toil, and though when in the fulness of time and the completion of

conditions he may lease the land to Chinese cultivators, and become a

resident landlord, he cannot leave the place even for the attraction of

town life, for possibly the rent he receives does not make him

independent quite. At any rate he lives on the land. The alien race does

the hard work, and takes the greater portion of profit; but he enjoys the

luxury of possession, and must make sacrifices accordingly.

I am fearful of entering upon a description of the cultivation of maize,

or bananas, or citrus fruits, or pineapples, or mangoes, or coffee, or

even sweet potatoes, because experience teaches me that others know of

all the details in a far more practical sense.

Would it not be presumptuous for a mere idler, an individual whose

enterprise and industry have been sapped by the insidious nonchalance of

the Beachcomber, to tell of practical details of cultural pursuits--the

enthusiasm, the disappointments, the glowing anticipations, the

realisation of inflexible facts, the plain emphatic truths which others

have reason to know ever so much more keenly?

But it may be forgiven if I generalise and say that the minor departments

of rural enterprise in North Queensland are in a peculiar stage--a stage

of transition and uncertainty. Coloured labour has been depended upon to

a large extent. Even the poorest settler has had the aid of aboriginals.

But with the passing of that race, and prohibition against the employment

of any sort of coloured labour, the question is to be asked, Can tropical

products be grown profitably unless consumers are willing to pay a

largely increased price--a price equivalent to the difference between the

earnings of those who toil in other tropical countries and the living

wage of a white man in Australia?

Fruit of many acceptable varieties can be grown to perfection with little

labour in immense quantities. Coffee is one of the most prolific of

crops. Timber is obtainable in magnificent assortment and unrealisable

quantities. Poultry and pigs multiply extraordinarily. Apart from bananas

the fruit trade is shifty and treacherous. The markets are far away and

inconstant, the means of transport not yet perfect. Many assert that not

half the pine-apples and oranges, and not one-hundredth part of the

mangoes produced in North Queensland are consumed. That the quantity

grown is trivial in comparison with what would be, were the demand

regular and consistent, is self-evident. We want population to eat our

produce, and then there will be no complaint.

In the case of coffee a plentiful supply of cheap labour is essential to

success. Those who by judicious treatment of the aboriginals command

their services have so far made profit. A coffee plantation suggests

pleasant, picturesque and spicy things. The orderly lines of the plants,

in glossy green adorned for a brief space with white, frail, fugitive

flowers distilling a deliciously sweet and grateful odour, the branches

crowded with gleaming berries, green, pink and red, present pleasing

aspect. As a change to the scenery of the jungle, a coffee estate has a

garden-like relief. But picking berry by berry is slow and monotonous

work, vexatious, too, to those mortals whose skin is sensitive to the

attacks of green ants. Then comes the various processes of the removal of

the pulp, first by machinery, finally by the fermentation of the still

adhering slimy residuum; then the drying and saving by exposure to the

sun on trays or on tarpaulins until all moisture is expelled; and the

hulling which disintegrates the parchment from the twin berries; then

winnowing, and finally the polishing. Do drinkers of the fragrant and

exhilarating beverage realise the amount of labour and care involved

before the crop is taken off and preserved from deterioration and decay?

A few berries that may have become mildewed during the slow, tedious and

anxious process of drying in the sun, may violate the delicate flavour

and aroma which the grower has been at pains to secure and fix. In coffee

it is as with many other features of rural life in Australia. The men who

undertake the production are for the most part those who have gained

their knowledge by personal experience on the spot. Reading and the

advice of experts who have graduated in countries where climatic

conditions are diverse and where the labour is cheap, yet skilled by

reason of generation after generation of occupation in it, do not

complete necessary knowledge. Problems have to be faced that have no

theoretical nor official solution, and blunders paid for, until by the

process of the elimination of mistakes the right way is discovered.

Losses mount up until either patience and means are exhausted, or success

crowns the application of intelligent enterprise. Then, when the coffee

planter, self-taught, in each and all of the departments of culture and

preparation, glories in the assurance of his capabilities to offer to the

world an article of indubitable character, he discovers that the vulgar

world, for the most part, prefers its coffee duly adulterated; indeed has

become so warped and perverted in perception that the pure and undefiled

article is looked upon with suspicion and distaste. Its flavour and aroma

are quite foreign to the ordinary coffee drinker. The contaminated

beverage is regarded as pure, and the genuine article is soundly

condemned as an imposition, and the seller of it is liable to be accused

of fraud. It is in a similar position to the good grape brandy which

Victorians produce, and which drinkers of some imported stuff (described

as one part cognac and three parts silent spirit) fail to recognise as

real brandy. If coffee is not muddy and thick and does not possess a

mawkish twang of liquorice, it is suspected. The delicate aromatic

flavour, the fragrant odour, the genial and stimulant effects are now

almost unknown, except in limited circles. North Queensland is capable of

growing far more than sufficient coffee for the Commonwealth, but coffee

is not a popular Australian beverage, and as it entirely loses its

specific balsam and identity under the manipulation of manufacturers, it

cannot get the chance of becoming popular. Australian wines, Australian

spirits and Australian coffee might well be the popular beverages of

Australians. But preference is given to foreign importations, of the

genuineness of some of which there are strong grounds for suspicion; or

in the case of coffee its elements are so disguised by adulteration that

a revolution in public taste must take place before it can possibly find

general favour.

But there are other branches of tropical agriculture to which the settler

may devote himself. Rubber offers belated fortune. Cotton, rice, tobacco

and fibre--plants flourish exceedingly, and in the production of ginger

and some sort of spices and medicinal gums, profit may be possible. The

manufacture of manilla rope from the fibre of the easily cultivated MUSA

TEXTILIS may be a remunerative industry. It is amply demonstrated that

butter quite up to the standard of exportation is to be manufactured in

tropical Queensland.

No one need starve or pine for lack of wholesome appetising and

nutritious food while the banana grows as it does in North Queensland,

and common as it is, the banana is one of the curiosities of the

vegetable world. One writer says: "It is not a tree, a palm, a bush, a

vegetable, nor a herb; it is simply a herbaceous plant with the stature

of tree, and is perennial." He adds that the fruit contains no seed,

though he qualifies the latter statement by remarking that he has heard

of fully developed seeds occasionally appearing in the cultivated fruit

"when left to ripen on the tree," and further that wild varieties of the

banana which propagate themselves by seed are reported to be found in

some parts of Eastern Asia. A high botanical authority includes in his

description of the species indigenous to Queensland, "Fruit oblong,

succulent, indehiscent; seed numerous; tree-like herbs. Herbs with

perennial rhizome."

There are three if not more species of bananas native to Queensland, and

they form a conspicuous feature of the jungle. With remarkable rapidity

one of the species shoots up a ruddy symmetrical, slightly tapering

stem--smooth and polished where the old leaf-sheaths have been shed--to a

height of 20 and 30 feet, producing leaves 15 feet long and 2 feet broad,

small and crude flowers, and bunches of dwarf fruit containing little but

shot-like seeds. The energy of these plants seems to be concentrated in

the production of an elegant and proud form, the fruit being a mere

afterthought. But the effect of the broad pale green leaves, even when

frayed and ragged at the edges in and among the dark entanglement of the

jungle is so fine that the absence of edible fruit may be almost

forgiven.

In the most popular of the cultivated varieties, the far famed MUSA

CAVENDISHII, there is little of graceful form, save the broad leaves

mottled with brown. All the vitality of the plant is expended in

astonishing results. A comparatively lowly plant, its productions

in suitable soil are prodigious. In nine or ten months after the

planting of the rhizome, it bears under favourable conditions a bunch

weighing as much as 120 lb. to 160 lb. and comprising as many as

forty-eight dozen individual bananas. So great is the weight that to

prevent the downfall of the plant a stake sharpened at each end--one to

stick in the ground and the other into the soft stem--is needed to

buttress it. Before the fruit has fully developed, other shoots have

appeared; but each plant bears but one bunch, and when that is removed

the plant is decapitated and slowly decays, and the second and third and

fourth shoots from the rhizome successively arrive at the bearing stage

and are permitted to mature each its bunch and then fated to suffer

immediate decapitation. And so the process goes on for five or seven

years, by which time the vigour of the soil has been exhausted, and

moreover the rhizomes, originally planted about a foot deep, have grown up

to the surface, and are no longer capable of supporting a plant upright.

Then a fresh planting of rhizomes elsewhere takes place. It must not be

thought that the banana defertilises the soil. Phenomenal crops of sugar

cane are produced on a "banana-sick" land.

A traveller relating his tropical experiences glorifies the banana,

stating that he has eaten it "ripe and luscious from the tree!" In

North Queensland bananas ripening on the plant frequently split, and

seldom attain perfect flavour. The ripening process takes place after the

fully developed bunch is removed and hung up in a cool, shady, well-aired

locality. Then the fruit acquires its true lusciousness and aroma. Other

climes, other results, perhaps; but a banana, "ripe and luscious from the

tree," is not generally expected in North Queensland. The fruit may

mature until it falls to the ground, yellow and soft, yet lack that

delicate finish, that benign essential, the craft of man bestows. It

would seem that the plant has been cultivated for so long a period that

it has become dependent upon man not only for its existence but for the

excellence of its crowning effort. An abandoned banana grove soon

disappears, for although seeds are undoubtedly produced, the occasions

are so rare that the reproduction of the cultivated varieties depends

solely upon the rhizome, and these very speedily deteriorate if

neglected. Another feature of the banana, of which man takes full

advantage, is that though the bunch be removed before the fruit is

matured as to size, the ripening process proceeds, just as though there

had been no untimely interference. The bananas may be small, but will, as

a rule, be almost as sweetly flavoured as those allowed to develop on the

plant. Yet the superfine aesthetic essence is not for the delight of

those to whom the fruit is tendered after it has undergone a sea voyage.

Let there be no misunderstanding with respect to the desirableness of the

coastal tract of North Queensland as a territory capable of supporting a

large, prosperous and healthful population. It is no part of the present

purpose to extol the mineral or the pastoral districts. They lie apart.

But in North Queensland agriculture is almost solely confined to the

coast and is essentially tropical. The tropics represent that portion of

the earth's surface wherein man may live with the minimum of exertion,

where actual wants are few, and wherein ample comforts may be enjoyed by

those who seek them with a quiet mind and easy understanding. Although

the question may be perhaps beyond proof, it might be safely asserted

that a larger proportion of men of the yeomen class, represented by those

who have succeeded in tropical agriculture in North Queensland, are

independent to-day, than of the men in Victoria and New South Wales, who

devoted their energies to sheep-farming, wheat-growing and dairying. Out

of the comparatively few sugar-cane farmers in North Queensland, a

considerable percentage have acquired independence, and many wealth. Few

have failed. Fortunes have been made and are being made out of sugar

lands; immense profits have been earned and are being earned in the

production of bananas, and from other easily grown tropical fruits, good

incomes are realised. When private enterprise invests many thousands of

pounds in the building of jetties and tram-lines to facilitate the

shipment of fruit, evidence in support of these statements is

unnecessary.

The prosperity of the farmer and fruit-grower in North Queensland does

not unhaply depend upon himself, but upon the existence of large

populations within reasonable range. Land of unsurpassed fertility and

meteorological conditions which represent perfection for the growth of

all fruits, ranging from the tomato to the mango, and, with few

exceptions, all the commoner as well as all the more delicate, but none

the less desirable vegetables are the heritage of the people. If the

coast of North Queensland does not in a few years support a large,

well-to-do, lusty, and therefore contented population, it will not be

because of the lack of any of the essentials, but because the population

has failed elsewhere, and that consequently there is no demand for the

easily grown fruits of the earth.

Each and all of the branches of cultured industry mentioned (with the

exception of the growth of sugar-cane) were at disposal for trial here.

Soil, climate and aspect are extremely favourable when not approaching

absolute perfection, while the advantages of direct communication with

the markets are unique. But my disposition, "that rash humour which my

mother gave," impelled me to disregard all the encouraging prospects of

fortune, and to easily tolerate circumstances and conditions under which

few would remain content. True it is that some few acres of jungle have

been cleared and various sorts of fruit-trees planted, that corn and

potatoes are grown, and that there are evidences of work; but no one is

better qualified than I to realise the insignificance of the results of

my labours in comparison with what they might have been, had the

accomplishment of them been undertaken with harder hands and more

determined purpose.

SOME DIFFERENCES

"The weather may be extremely fine; but not without such varieties as

shall hinder it from being tiresome."

What higher or better reward could be desired than the reflection that

one had attempted to assist in the dispersion of the mists of ignorance

which obscure some of the aspects of the land of his adoption? Australia

is vast and of infinite variety. The efforts of an individual isolated by

remoteness and the sea, must necessarily be circumscribed.

No Australian is able to affirm that his knowledge of the country is

entirely satisfactory to himself. There are some points upon which the

best informed stand to the correction of others whose general knowledge

may be admittedly inadequate. We who are scattered about in odd and

out-of-the-way corners, pick up in the school of experience scraps of

local knowledge, and may without presumption present them to others to

confirm and to conjure with.

The term "Australia" as generally used ignores most of the continent out

of sight of Melbourne and Sydney, though both Victoria and New South

Wales could be stowed away in little more than half the area of

Queensland. Do we reflect that Australia includes some of the driest

tracts in the world, as well as areas in which the rainfall approaches

the phenomenal--that not very much more than half of the territory of the

Commonwealth lies within the temperate zone--that there are as marked

differences between Tasmania and North Queensland as between the South of

England and Ceylon? That the one is the land of the potato, apple,

apricot, cherry, strawberry and blackberry, and the other the land of

sugar-cane, coffee, the pine-apple, mango, vanilla and cocoa; that though

there exist no imposing geographical boundaries, such as chains of lofty

mountains or great rivers to emphasise climatic distinctions, these

distinctions nevertheless exist, and that they imply special policies on

the parts of Government and Administrations.

Do we realise that the voice of the tropic half of Australia is drowned

in the torrent of the temperate? It may be possible to misrepresent

opinions and to obscure the fair view of things, to defeat aspirations;

but are we to be denied the right of being heard and of explaining

ourselves. Politicians to whose loud and profane voices electors listen,

have declared that North Queensland shall become a desolate and silent

wilderness, rather than that their views shall be gainsaid. Do such as

these reflect that North Queensland is a fruitful country, capable of

producing food and immense wealth, and giving employment to millions, and

that other nations will not stand idly by and see the worth of so much

land wasted because of the vanity of men who do not, and who apparently

will not, endeavour to comprehend the magnificence of its extent and the

width of its capabilities. The world is not so vast that any part of

it--still less a part so situated and so highly favoured as this--can be

left unpeopled. If not peopled by Australians or those of British blood,

it will assuredly be by people for whom the average Australian entertains

but scant respect.

Australians cannot with justice complain when the good old folks at home

blunder in their geography and perceptions, the while that so much local

misapprehension prevails.

Error was ingrained in the youthful days of middle-aged Australians. Their

school-books told them in swinging rhyme that they lived in a world of

undiscovered souls, that 'twas Heaven's decree to have these lost souls

brought forth; that man should assert his dignity and not allow "brutes"

to look upon him. Discoveries are still being made. Heaven's decree is

replaced by the decree of wild talkers, the dignity of man is found to be

the vanity of a paid politician, and but few of the "brutes" of Australia

are left to look down upon anything. But there are some of saving grace

who frankly acknowledge shame upon finding how little they really know

of their native country.

Young Australians were once taught that Australian trees cast no

shade--that the edges of the leaves were presented to the sun to avoid the

heat of the cruel luminary; that Australian flowers had no scent, and

Australian birds no song; that the stones of Australian cherries grew on

the outside of the fruit, that the bees had no sting, and that the dogs

did not bark. In those days a gentleman with a military title improved

upon the then popular list of contradictions by asserting that in

Australia the compass points to the south, the valleys are cold, the

mountain-tops warm, the eagles are white, and so on. Many accordingly

took their natural science as "Tomlinson" did his God--from a printed

book--and that compiled in England. Until they began to investigate they

were puzzled by contradictions. The first prompt bee-bite--there are many

varieties of Australian bees, some pugnacious and pungent--diverted

attention from the school-book romances. It was discovered that thousands

of square miles of Australian soil never catch glimpses of the sun in

consequence of the impenetrableness of the shade of Australian trees;

that the scent of the wattles, the eucalypts, the boronias, the hoyas,

the gardenias, the lotus, etc., etc., are among the sweetest and

cleanest, most powerful and most varied in the world; that many of the

birds of Australia have songs full of melody; that the so-called

Australian cherry is no more a cherry than an acorn; that the Australian

dog (though "the only true wild dog in the world") is deemed to be a

comparatively recent introduction--a new chum of Asiatic origin who

entered the glorious constellation of the State something before the era

of exclusive legislation--so naturally he does not bark, for barking is an

evidence of civilisation; but he soon learns the universal language of

the dog.

Many years ago most of this gross and superficial ignorance was brushed

away here, though now and again evidence crops up that a good deal yet

adheres in the old country. Australian school-books of the present day

contain so much that is grossly false and misleading of the natural

conditions of certain portions of the Commonwealth as to leave no room to

doubt the present duty. We are continually making mutually beneficial

discoveries, and may it be granted these efforts be blessed with happy

purpose. All is not known yet even in Australia. The number of

"observers" who believe that snakes swallow their young in time of

danger, and allow them to emerge when it is past, and that the end of the

death adder to avoid is the tail, which is fitted with a slightly curved

spur, become fewer every year; but we are still sincere in many of the

honourable points of ignorance. Some discredit such facts as climbing

fish, oysters "growing" on living trees, birds hatching eggs without

sitting on them, egg-laying mammals and mammals producing young from eggs

within their bodies, plants that sow the seed of continents to be--yet

these facts are of everyday occurrence here.

As to climate, will general credence be given to the statement that Dunk

Island is more "temperate" than Melbourne? We experience neither the

extreme heat nor the extreme cold of the metropolis of Victoria--nearly

2000 miles to the south; we have four or five times the volume of rain,

yet a greater number of fine days--days without rain. The general

principle that where the rainy days are fewest the amount of rain is

greatest, is apt to be forgotten. During 1903 the rainfall of Dunk Island

amounted to 153 inches. What is meant (to follow the phrase of Huxley)

when one says in technical language that the rainfall of a place was 153

inches for a certain year? Such a statement means simply that if all the

rain which fell on any level piece of ground in that place could be

collected--none being lost by drying up, none running off the soil and

none soaking into it--then at the end of the year it would form a layer

covering that piece of ground to the uniform depth of 12 feet 9 inches!

An inch of rain signifies 114 tons, or 27,000 gallons per acre!

Let me repeat that in 1903 the rainfall here totalled 153 inches. During

the same period the mean rainfall of the State of Victoria was 27.36

inches. In one locality, reputed to be the wettest, 42.11 inches were

registered, and occasioned no little surprise. In another Australian

state, among the natural advantages of land offered for close settlement,

was catalogued an annual rainfall of 18 inches; in another an official

inducement of an average rainfall of 27 inches was offered, in yet

another 24 inches, with a not too shrewd note that 15 inches of rain was

ample.

Some of the denizens of a dry area in Victoria find it hard to credit the

simple facts recorded by my rain-gauge. The rainfall for the month of

January 1903, on Dunk Island was 26.60 inches, only 0.76 inches short of

the mean for the whole year in Victoria, and more than twice the quantity

that blessed the thirsty soil in some parts of Queensland. The total

rainfall of the wettest locality in Victoria was 42.11 inches. Here the

month of March alone gave 44.90 inches.

At Thargomindah (South-Western Queensland) 11.37 inches were registered

for 1903, and 9.82 inches for 1904. The two driest months of Dunk Island

fell short by a trifle more than 2 inches of the total fall for 1904 for

that parched area. At Eulolo (Mid-Western Queensland) 13.68 inches

represented the sum of the blessing for 1903, while during 24 hours in

December that year the Dunk Island gauge registered just 11 inches, and

that quantity was 3 inches more than could he spared for Eulolo for the

whole of 1904.

During 1904 Cape Otway Forest (Victoria), registered 40.92 inches,

Townsville (North Queensland) 26.32 inches, and Dunk Island--only 110

miles from Townsville--94.14 inches. That was a dry year with us. What

is known in this neighbourhood as "the drought year" gave just 60 inches.

Plants unaccustomed to such hardship, and therefore devoid of inherent

powers of resistance, then gave way with pitiful lack of resource, and as

speedily recovered on the return of normal conditions. Yet the 60 inches

of "the drought year" represented more than twice the average rainfall of

London.

The average annual rainfall for the State of Victoria during the last

thirty years has been 26.68 inches. Townsville (considered to be one of

the driest places on the coast of North Queensland) averaged 45.54 inches

during the period of thirty-four years.

Twenty-five miles further north the rainfall for 1904 exceeded that of

Dunk Island by 6 inches more than the average rainfall of the upper basin

of the Thames Valley, which is given as 28 inches. Australia is big--there

is bigness in our differences.

Here in the tropics we have the finer weather--no excess of either heat or

cold, no sudden, constitution-shattering changes. At Wood's Point

(Victoria) rain fell on 185 days in 1903, and on 166 days in 1904. At

Dunk Island rain occurred on 107 days in 1903 and On 92 days in 1904. We

had many more days of picnic weather, notwithstanding our overwhelming

superiority in quantity of rain. Moreover, in the tropics the bulk of the

rain falls after sundown. After a really fine day in the wet season the

hours of darkness may account for several inches of rain. Here over 12

inches have been collected between sundown and nine o'clock the following

morning.

Particular references are confined to seasons three or four years past

because recent official data, necessary for enlightening comparisons are

not available, but in confirmation of statements concerning the

meteorological conditions of the coast of tropical Queensland, the

record of rainfall at Dunk Island since 1903 may be quoted:

1904 94.41 inches.

1905 89.06 "

First nine months of 1906 134.70 "

Of the latter total, 56 inches occurred in February, two days (6th and

18th), accounting for 22.95 inches--more than half the average rainfall of

the State of Queensland.

An illustration--homely but graphic--of climatic differences may be

given. During the first five months of 1904 the rainfall of Dunk Island

amounted to 75.15 inches, the lowest monthly record being May (5.30

inches) and the highest March (29.05 inches). At the end of May on the

Burdekin Delta--150 miles to the south--the sugarcane was beginning to be

affected by the hot, dry weather, and irrigation was about to be resorted

to. Here in January it became necessary to repair the roof of the

boat-shed, and to keep the ridge covering of paper-bark in position,

two long saplings were tied parallel with the ridge pole. At the end

of May these saplings were taken down in order that the whole of the

thatch might be renovated, when it was found that both had started to

grow, several of the shoots being 8 and 10 inches long. While sugarcane

was languishing for lack of moisture, 150 miles away down the coast,

a roughly-cut sapling exposed on the roof of a building found the

conditions for the beginning of a new existence so favourable and

stimulative that it had budded as freely as Aaron's rod. "Through the

scent of water it had budded and brought forth boughs like a plant."

Nearly as much misapprehension prevails in the Southern States of the

Commonwealth as to the characteristics of North Queensland as seems to

prevail among the good old folks "at home" as to Australia generally. If

the few facts presented excite even mild surprise, they will not be

altogether out of place in these pages.

Dunk Island has a mean temperature of about 69 deg.; January is the

hottest month with a mean of 87 deg, and July the coolest, mean 57 deg.

Taking the official readings of Cardwell (20 miles to the south), I find

the greatest extremes on record occurred in one year, when the highest

temperature was 103.3 deg. and the lowest 36.2 deg. At Geraldton (25

miles to the north) the extremes were 96 deg. and 43.4 deg.

Rainfall and temperature, the proportion of clear to cloudy skies, calms,

the direction, strength and the duration of winds, do not wholly

comprehend distinctive climatic features. There are other conditions of

more or less character and note, some hard to define, yet ever present.

Here the air is warm and soothing, seldom is it crisp and never really

bracing. Hot dry winds are unknown, but in the height of the wet

season--which coincides with the dry season of the Southern States--the

moisture-laden air may be likened to the vapour of a steam bath. While

the rain thunders on the roof at the rate of an inch per hour, inside the

house it may be perspiringly hot. After a fortnight's rain the damp

saturates everything. Neglected boots and shoes grow a rich crop of

mould, guns demand constant attention to prevent rust, and clothes packed

tight in chests of drawers smell and feel damp. But the atmosphere is so

wholesome that ordinary precautions for the prevention of sickness are

generally neglected without any fear of ill consequence.

However sharply defined by reason of the personal discomfort it inflicts,

this steamy feature of the wet season is no more a general characteristic

than the hot winds are of Victoria. Warm as the rains are, they bring to

the air coolness and refreshment. Clear, calm, bright days, days of even

and not high temperature, and of pure delight, dovetail with the hot and

steamy ones. The prolifigacy of vegetation is a perpetual marvel; the

loveliness of the land, the ineffable purity of the sky, the glorious

tints of the sea--green and gold at sunrise, silvery blue at noon, purple

pink and lilac during the all too brief twilight, a perpetual feast.

For six months it may be said the prevailing wind is the south-east,

followed by gentle breezes from the east and north-east. North-easters

begin in September and are intermittent until the beginning of the wet

season. The south-east monsoons are regular and consistent; the

north-east, which precede the rainy monsoon, fitful and wayward, never

continuing long in one stay, and lasting but four out of the twelve

months. Rare is the wind from the west, rarer from the south-west.

North-easters are a pronounced feature. They work up by diurnal and

easy grades from gentleness to strength, thunder coming as a climax.

After a succession of calm days and days of gentle breezes from the

east-south-east and east, the north-easter begins softly, and daily

gathers courage and assumption, to find in the course of a week or

two its haughty spirit subdued by thunder and rain showers. Calms

prevail for a few days. Easterly breezes come, to give way to the

north-east again, and so the programme is repeated with variations

which none may foresee, and which set at naught the lengthiest experience.

At last, at Christmas or the New Year, the rains come with a boisterous

beginning. A north-easter accompanied by thunder lasted a whole July

afternoon. It was as strange as a crop of mangoes would have been at

that time of year.

During the cool season--a generous half of the year--dews are common--not

the trivial barely perceptible moisture called dew in some parts, but most

ungentle dew, which saturates everything and drips from the under sides

of verandahs as the sun warms the air; dew which bows the grass with its

weight, soaks through your dungarees to the hips, and soddens your thick

bluchers, until you feel and appear as though you had waded through a

swamp; dew which releases the prisoned odour of flowers irresponsive to

the heat of the sun, which keeps the night cool and sweet, which with the

first gleam of the sun makes the air soft and spicy and buoyant, and

inspires thankfulness for the joy of life.

Are we not all apt to fall into the error of estimating the character of

a country by its extravagances rather than its average and general

qualities?

North Queensland has the reputation of being the home of malaria and the

special sport of any cyclone that may have mischief in view. Being

tropical, we have malaria, but it is of no more serious consequence than

any one of the ills to which human flesh is heir in temperate climes. It

does not exact such a toll of suffering and death as influenza, nor as

typhoid used to do in crowded cities; nor is it as common as rheumatism

in damp and blustering New Zealand, where the thermometer ranges from 100

deg. in the shade to 24 deg. of frost. Malaria touches us lightly, and it

is chosen as a bugbear with which to scare people away. A southern

critic, honestly pitiful of our ill state, urges that the experiment of

destroying those mosquitoes which disseminate the germ of malaria, by

sealing up lagoons and swamps with kerosene, is worthy the attention of

town and country residents in tropical Queensland, "where attacks of

malaria are felt every summer." Mere idle words of pernicious

consequence. Many a wretch who has done less mischief than "these

utterers of forged tales, coiners of scandal and clippers of reputation,"

has had his liberty restricted. But a small and an annually lessening

proportion of our population suffers from malaria, and yet all have the

renown of an annual attack! In that case the writer ought to have had

twenty-five attacks, and thousands of others, lusty and toneful fellows,

forty and forty-five attacks. With as much claim upon reason might

one say that because of the sudden jerks of their climate (40 deg.

of difference within twelve hours) all Victorians have to make

three changes of raiment every day in order to avoid ill consequences;

or that every man, woman and child in merry England has had instead

of expects or dreads or hopes to have appendicitis, since King

Edward the Peacemaker suffered, and renown came upon that disorder.

Malaria is fleeing before civilisation. It cannot--at any rate in North

Queensland--long endure the presence of the white man.

Unfeigned pity is bestowed upon the denizens of North Queensland on

account of the pains and penalties and discomforts alleged to be the

sentence of all who dare select it as home. We who know can but smile and

wait; and ever call call to mind pleasant and happy experiences,

everlasting truths and "the falsehood of extremes."

Even in the matter of cyclones--often quoted as one of its

detriments--North Queensland has nothing to hide. At intervals Nature

does indulge in a reckless and violent outburst, but not more frequently

here than in other parts of the world. Year after year the seasons are

passive and pleasant, and in every respect considerate of humanity and

encouraging to humanity's undertakings. Then, abandoning for a few hours

her orderly and kindly ways, Nature runs amok, raving and shrieking. Her

transient irresponsibleness and mischievousness are then cited as

everyday, persistent vices. Not so. Nature is rational even in her most

passionate moments. Vegetation, rank and gross as in an unweeded garden,

requires vigorous lopping and pruning. These twenty-year-interval storms

comb out superfluous leaves and branches, cut out dead wood, send to the

ground decayed and weakly shoots, and scrub and cleanse trunks and

branches of parasitic growths. All is done boldly, yet with such skill

that in a few weeks losses are hidden under masses of clean, insectless,

healthy, bright foliage. The soil has received a luxurious top-dressing.

Trees and plants respond to the stimulus with magical vigour, for lazy,

slumbering forces have been roused into efforts so splendid that the

realism of tropical vegetation is to be appreciated only after Nature has

swept and sweetened her garden.

A more vivid and more idealised medium than the poor one which with

diffidence I employ were essential if entertainment alone were sought in

these pages; but even faint and imperfect etching of one Australian

scene, little known even to Australians, may in some degree tend to

enlightenment.

Many have told of the thin forests of Queensland, the open plains, and

the interminable downs whereon the mirage plays with the fancies of

wayfarers; and of the dust, heat and sweat of cattle stations. Has not

the "Never Never Country" inspired many a traveller and more than one

poet? It is well to realise that we have such bountiful land, and to be

proud of the men capable of investing its vastness, monotony and prosaic

wealth with poetic imagery. Is it not also wise to remember now aagain

that Queensland possesses two types of tropical climate, accentuated by

boundaries having far great significance than those which divide tropical

from temperate Australia, and worlds apart in their distinctions? Is not

the land of the banana, the palm and the cedar, entitled to recognition,

as well as the land of the gidyea, the boree, and the bottle-tree? Who

has yet said or sung of the mystery of the half-lit jungles of our coast,

in contrast to the vivid boldness of the sun-sought, shadeless western

plains; of our green, moist mountains, seamed with gloomy ravines, the

sources of perennial streams; of the vast fertile lowlands in which the

republic of vegetation is as an unruly, ungoverned mob, clamouring for

topmost places in unrestrained excess of energy; of still lagoons, where

the sacred pink lotus and the blue and white water-lily are rivals in

grace of form, in tint and in perfume?

If I am successful in convincing that North Queensland is neither a

burning fiery furnace nor yet a sweltering steamy swamp; that the country

is not completely saturated with malaria; that there are vast areas which

no drought can tinge with grey or brown, where there are never-failing

streams, where cool fresh water trickles among the shale and shattered

coral on the beaches, where sweet-voiced birds sport and resplendent

butterflies flicker, then these writings will have been to some purpose.

ISLAND FAUNA

While the bird life of our island is plentiful and varied, mammalian is

insignificant in number. The echidna, two species of rats, a flying fox

(PTEROPUS FUNEREUS) and two bats, comprise the list. Although across a

narrow channel marsupials are plentiful, there is no representative of

that typical Australian order here, and the Dunk Island blacks have no

legends of the existence of either kangaroos, wallabies, kangaroo rats or

bandicoots in times past. But there are circumstantial details extant,

that the island of Timana was an outpost of the wallaby until quite a

recent date. A gin (the last female native of Dunk Island) who died in

1900 was wont to tell of the final battue at Timana, and the feast that

followed, in which she took part as a child. This island, which has an

area of about 20 acres, bears a resemblance to a jockey's cap--the sand

spit towards the setting sun forming the peak, a precipice covered with

scrub and jungle, the back. Here, long ago, a great gathering from the

neighbouring islands and the mainland took place. Early in the morning

all formed up in line on the sand spit. Diverging, but maintaining order,

men, gins, piccaninnies, shouting, yelling, and screaming, and clashing

nulla-nullas (throwing-sticks), supported by barking and yelping dogs

swept the timid wallabies up through the tangle of jungle, until like the

Gaderene swine they ran, or rather hopped, down a steep place into the

sea, or fell on fatal rocks laid bare by the ebb-tide. Those who partook

of the last of the wallabies have gone the way of all flesh, and the

incident is instructive only as an illustration of the manner in which

animals may suddenly disappear from confined localities, leaving no relic

of previous existence. Considering the bulk of Dunk Island (3 1/2 square

miles), and recognising the rule that islands are necessarily poorer in

species than continents, it is yet remarkable that no evidence of

marsupials is to be found, and that the oldest blacks maintain that none

of the type ever existed here.

Though the drawings in caves depict lizards, echidna, turtle and men,

there is no representation of kangaroo or wallaby. It is highly probable

that if such had been common, the black artists would have chosen them as

subjects, since nearly all their studies are from Nature.

The largest and heaviest four-footed creature now existent on Dunk Island

is the so-called porcupine (spiny ant-eater or echidna). An animal which

possesses some of the features of the hedgehog of old England, and

resembles in others that distinctly Australian paradox, the platypus,

which has a mouth which it cannot open--a mere tube through which the

tongue is thrust, which in the production of its young combines the

hatching of an egg as of a bird, with the suckling of a mammal, and which

also has some of the characteristics of a reptile, cannot fail to be an

interesting object to every student of the marvels of Nature. When

disturbed, the echidna resolves itself into a ball, tucking its long

snout between its forelegs, and packing its barely perceptible tail close

between the hind ones, presenting an array of menacing prickles

whencesoever attacked. While in this ball-like posture, the animal, as

chance affords, digs with its short strong legs and steel-like claws,

tearing asunder roots, and casting aside stones, and the ease and

rapidity with which it disappears in soft soil are astonishing. The

horrific array of prickles presented as it digs an undignified retreat,

and the tenacity with which it holds the ground, have given rise to the

fiction that no dog is capable of killing an echidna. No ordinary dog is.

He must be cunning, daring, brave, insensible to pain, and resourceful.

Then the feat is quite ordinary. Indeed, once the trick is learned, the

trouble is to keep the dog from attacking its innocent, useful and most

retiring enemy. The echidna has the ill-luck to possess certain subtle

qualities, which excite terrific enthusiasm for its destruction on the

part of the dog. Either there is an hereditary feud between the dog and

the echidna, which the former is bound in honour to push to the last

extremity, or else the dog regards the prickly creature as a perpetual

affront, or specially created to provide opportunities for displaying

fanatic hatred and hostility. No dog of healthy instinct is able to pass

an echidna without some sort of an attempt upon its life. The long

tubular nose of the echidna is the vital spot. This is guarded with such

shrewdness and determination as to be impregnable. But the dog which

pursues the proper tactics, and is wily and patient, sooner or

later-regardless of the alleged poisonous spur--seizes one of the hind

legs, and the conflict quickly comes to an end.

By the blacks the echidna, which is known as "Coombee-yan," is placed on

the very top of the list of those dainties which the crafty old men

reserve for themselves under awe-inspiring penalties.

Next in size to the echidna is the white-tipped rat (UROMYS HIRSUTIS?),

water-loving, nocturnal in its habits, fierce and destructive. A

collateral circumstance revealed absolute proof of its existence, which

had previously depended upon vague statements of the blacks. Cutting

firewood in the forest one morning, I came across a carpet snake, 12 feet

long, laid out and asleep in a series of easy curves, with the sun

revealing unexpected beauty in the tints and in the patterns of the skin.

Midway of its length was a tell-tale bulge, and before the axe shortened

it by a head, I was convinced that here was a serpent that had waylaid

and surprised or beguiled a fowl. Post-mortem examination, however,

proved once more the unreliability of uncorroborated circumstantial

evidence. The snake had done good and friendly service instead of ill,

for it had swallowed a white-tailed rat--the only specimen that I have

seen on the island.

Next comes the little frugivorous rat of russet brown, with a glint of

gold on its fur tips. A delicate, graceful creature, nice in its habits,

with a plaintive call like the cheep of a chicken; preferring ripe

bananas and pine-apple, but consenting to nibble at other fruits, as well

as grain. The mother carries her young crouched on her haunches, clinging

to her fur apparently with teeth as well as claws, and she manages to

scuttle along fairly fast, in spite of her encumbrances. The first that I

saw bearing away her family to a place of refuge was deemed to be

troubled with some hideous deformity aft, but inspection at close

quarters showed how she had converted herself into a novel perambulator.

I am told that no other rodent has been observed to carry its young in

this fashion. Perhaps the habit has been acquired as a result of insular

peculiarities, the animal, unconscious of the way of its kind on the

mainland, having invented a style of its own, "ages ahead of the

fashion."

Mr C. W. de Vis, M.A., of the Queensland Museum, who has considerately

examined specimens of this rat, pronounces it to be extraordinary, in

that it combines types of three genera--the teeth of the mus, the mammae

of the mastacomys and the scales on the tail of the genus UROMYS. In the

bestowal of a name he has favoured the latter genus. The animal has been

introduced to the scientific world under the title UROMYS BANFIELDI, by

Mr de Vis, who, referring to it as "eccentric," says, "The female first

sent to us as an example of the species had no young with her, nor were

her mammae much in evidence; consequently, the advent of a specimen

caught in the act of carrying young was awaited with interest. Fortune at

length favoured our correspondent with an opportunity of placing the

correctness of his observation beyond question. (A mother with a pair of

infants attached to the teats was chloroformed and sent to Brisbane). On

arrival, the young were found detached. The conical corrugated nipples

are, compared with the size of the animal, very long; one, especially,

20 mm. in length, calls to mind a marsupial teat."

By the examination of adult specimens the age at which the young

disassociate themselves from the mother has been ascertained. Long after

the time of life at which other species of rats are nibbling an

independent way through the world, U. BANFIELDI clings resolutely to its

parent, obtaining from her its sole sustenance. Not until the "infant" is

nearly half the size of the mother does it begin to earn its living and

trust to its own means of locomotion.

The presence of the echidna in three colours--black, grey, and straw--and

two species of rats emphasises the absence of marsupials, unaccountable

unless on the theory of extermination by the original inhabitants in the

remote past.