New South Wales.
SURVEY OF THE COLONY--SYDNEY AND ITS HARBOUR--THE GREAT WEST--THE
BLUE MOUNTAINS--THEIR GRAND SCENERY--AN AUSTRALIAN SHOW PLACE--THE
FISH RIVER CAVES--DUBBO TO THE DARLING--THE GREAT PASTURES--THE
NORTHERN TABLELAND--THE BIG SCRUB COUNTRY--TROPICAL VEGETATION.
[Illustration: VIEWS IN SYDNEY: GOVERNMENT HOUSE, THE CATHEDRAL,
AND SYDNEY HEADS.]
[Illustration: GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS, MACQUARIE STREET, SYDNEY.]
New South Wales is the mother colony of Australia, and though, after the
gold discovery, she was for a time thrown into the shade by the prowess
of her former dependency, Victoria, she is making rapid strides to
recover; in fact, she may be said to have regained her old premier
position. Her eastern boundary is the Pacific Ocean, which washes a
coast-line of 800 miles, bold in its outline and studded with numerous
harbours. Imaginary lines divide her from Victoria to the south,
Queensland to the north, and South Australia to the west. The greatest
length of New South Wales is 900 miles; its greatest breadth about 850
miles; mean breadth, 600 miles. The superficial area is 309,100 square
miles. That is to say, the colony is as extensive as the German Empire
and Italy combined, or as France and the United Kingdom. The million of
population which the colony contains is thinly scattered about this vast
territory, the country districts obtaining the less, because more than a
third of the people are congregated at Sydney, the capital, and at
Newcastle, the coal port adjacent to the metropolis. High mountain
ranges are found in New South Wales, lofty table-land, and vast
low-lying plains, with the result that great variety of climate is
obtained. For instance, on a certain day in November, 1885, the
newspapers state that between the Warrego and the Paroo, north of the
Darling, one thousand out of five thousand sheep had dropped dead upon a
rough day's journey, wasted by the hunger and drought, and killed by
heat; that two out of a party of three travellers perished of thirst in
the Lechlan back blocks, and the third alone, naked and half mad,
reached a station to tell the tale; that on the lower reaches of
Clarence and Richmond rivers travellers saw cattle in the last stages of
starvation, dying in the mud of the river banks, while down upon the
Shorehaven a roaring spate was heaving haystacks to the sea; that while
enterprising tourists were chilled with ice and sleet upon Ben Lomond,
and snow was flattening crops of wheat in the gullies above Tumat,
Sydney, despite the coolness of the daily inflow of ocean water, was
suffering under a heavy sweltering heat. And while variations like these
are the exception and not the rule, yet all these varied experiences may
be endured in the colony on one and the same day.
New South Wales was discovered and named by Captain Cook, who landed in
Botany Bay, a few miles north of Port Jackson, on the 28th of April,
1770. A penal settlement was formed the following year, and four days
after the arrival of the little fleet, a French expedition, under the
ill-fated M. de la Perouse, cast anchor in the bay. The officer in
command, Captain Arthur Phillip, soon recognised that Botany Bay was in
many respects unsuitable for a principal settlement; and having examined
Port Jackson, and found it to be 'one of the finest harbours in the
world,' he did not hesitate to substitute it as the position from which
to commence Australian colonisation. On the 26th of January, 1788, the
fleet and all the people were transferred to Port Jackson; a landing was
made at the head of Sydney Cove (the Circular Quay), and the colony of
New South Wales was formally declared to be founded. The first settlers
in all numbered 1030, of whom 504 were male exiles and 192 female
exiles. On the 7th of February Arthur Phillip, Captain-General and
Governor-in-Chief of the new territory, established a regular form of
government; and, in his address to the assembled colonists, expressed
his conviction that the State, of which he had laid the foundation,
would, ere many generations passed away, become the 'centre of the
southern hemisphere--the brightest gem of the Southern Ocean.' The
peculiar audience which he addressed did not share his enthusiasm, but
the prediction has been abundantly realised. The convict stage is now
forgotten as a dream. To-day New South Wales contains almost a third of
the population of all the colonies, has an annual import and export
trade of nearly L50,000,000, and raises annually L9,000,000 of revenue.
The colony has already constructed 1727 miles of railway, and is
constructing 416 miles, and Parliament has authorised the construction
of 1282 miles, and there are 19,000 miles of telegraph wires open. The
value of its annual export of wool is, in normal seasons, worth
L10,000,000; its sheep number 35,000,000; its horses, 350,000; its
horned cattle, 1,500,000; and its swine, 220,000. The land under crop is
1,000,000 acres; the annual out-put of coal is 3,000,000 tons, of which
nearly two-thirds are exported. The mines of gold, silver, tin, copper,
and manganese, are also very rich, and their export is great. The city
of Sydney and its suburbs have a population of 270,000.
[Illustration: STATUE OF CAPTAIN COOK AT SYDNEY.]
The following general description of Sydney and the colony is
contributed by Mr. F. H. Myers:--
'Naturally any notice of the colony of New South Wales begins with
Sydney and its harbour--
"Like some dark beauteous bird whose plumes
Are sparkling with unnumbered eyes,"
wrote Moore, as he looked up aloft at the sky by night, and found
companionship in the soul of beauty there. Often has the image occurred
to me when entering, on a summer's night, the harbour gates of Beautiful
Sydney, or looking down upon the stillness of the sleeping coves from
any of the surrounding hills. Lights are spread upon the blackness of
the hills--straight lines, crescents, squares, and marvellous
configurations--lights rise up from the harbour depths, straight shafts
and twisted columns, pillars and spires and trees of light, wherever
from ship's mast, or yard, or port, rays of white or blue or red strike
the waters, and straightway seem to grow as plants of fire. Along the
shores may be seen the blue gleams of electric fire, the duller green
and red of the oil lamps on the ships, still and bright in the quiet
water; alternating, mingling, shifting, blending, as the surface is only
slightly stirred. Every calm night brings such illumination.
'A traveller entering Sydney Harbour upon any still night sees this
panorama opening to him; and if he have the good fortune to be detained
in quarantine till morning, he may see a far more beautiful picture by
rising with the rising sun. The city and the harbour lie spread out
before him, the spires and towers standing out in the distance, clear
and shining in the morning sunlight. The long land arms run out on
either hand, while the blue sea, unruffled and smooth, forms a fine
contrast to rock and foliage and sky.
'To see Sydney well in the clear broad daylight, it is needful to travel
by the cable tram to the heights of North Shore, and walk thence by the
military road to the head of Morsman's Bay. A splendid view point is
thus obtained, above and opposite to the length and breadth of the city.
You see the light-tower upon the Moth Head, and following the coast-line
south you look along all the heights of Woolahra, Waverly, and
Paddington to Randwick. Between that ocean coast and the inner line of
the harbour are the homes of a quarter of a million of people. You may
see thence the spires of St. Philip's, and St. James', and St. David's,
and St. Patrick's, the towers of St. Andrew's Cathedral, and, through
the heavy foliaged trees of the domain, the high walls of the yet
unfinished St. Mary's. In the distance, and partly obscured by the smoke
of the University buildings, the various colleges are grouped, almost
joined by the distance. Near them are the Prince Alfred Hospital, and
the deaf, dumb, and blind institutions.
[Illustration: SYDNEY HARBOUR.]
[Illustration: THE POST OFFICE, GEORGE STREET, SYDNEY.]
[Illustration: MACQUARIE STREET, SYDNEY.]
'In the dense centre of city buildings rises the new tower of the
General Post Office. It overlooks everything, and waves its flag of
practical utility in the sight of the whole city. Very near to it
appears the Town Hall, small by comparison, though more elaborate, and
between them and the water the heavy masses of commercial buildings
fringed by the unbroken line of masts. The city yet to be on the North
Shore looks very small, and you are not surprised that no suspension
bridge overhangs the water. You must look into the future for that.
'Complete your picture of the present by a glance up the long estuaries
of the Paramatta and Lane Cove rivers, and a look across the rolling
woodlands westward to the giant barrier of the Blue Mountains. Look also
across the harbour, where right below you the round tower of Fort
Dennison stands in mid-channel, and a little lower down the perfect half
moon of Rose Bay, blue as the sky above. Look down to the Heads, where a
dozen craft are entering upon the long huge rollers which break upon
bluff Dobroyd opposite, or die down to ripples upon the innumerable
beaches of Middle Harbour. Watch the many lights and colours of the
water, the ultramarine of the mid-channel, the indigo in the shadow of
the hills, the emerald of a strip close beneath the cliff, where no wind
moves, nor any pulse of tide or ocean stir is felt; the glories of opal
and amber, where fierce sun rays burn about rocky shores.
'Take in all the greatness and beauty of the present, and then try to
realise the picture in the square miles of buildings already raised. You
can see how they are growing, how far away to south and west, and
through the forest and beside the waters of the north coast, houses and
establishments of various kinds are rising like _avant couriers_ of the
compact masses whose advance is by no means slow. Look from them to a
point of the city where roofs and chimneys are most closely packed,
where the smoke of the labour of human life seems ascending perpetually,
and you may see a succession of white puffs, and hear a louder, sharper
pulse of toil pierce the low murmur of distant and multitudinous sounds,
and you know that you look upon the present centre of the railway system
of the colony; you have fixed your eye upon the focussing point of two
thousand miles of railways. These are the feeders of the city; these
reaching out divide and grip and drain the colony. They gather its
produce, the results of its labour, and bring them down to this city,
which stands without rival or competitor along 800 miles of coast.
[Illustration: THE TOWN HALL, SYDNEY.]
'Let us travel along each of these lines, radiating somewhat as the
fingers of a spread hand from south to north.
'The South Coast Railway, the most recently opened and not yet completed
line, runs down the south coast to Kiama. This line is a purveyor of
many luxuries and necessaries of life, leading out first to broad
suburban breathing grounds on the country between the southern bank of
Port Jackson and Botany Bay, making a hundred square miles of good
building country accessible, crossing the historic bay three miles up
the tidal estuary of George River, crossing a somewhat barren plateau,
and arriving at the National Park. It penetrates next vast forests and
overruns tremendous gorges, winding about precipices, and getting down
by a way of its own to the country at the foot of the Bulb Pass. All the
seaward slopes and ravines of this pass are as a vast natural
conservatory. They take all the morning sun, they are never touched by
western or southern wind, they are plentifully watered with regular
rains, and they nurse and produce a beauty unfamiliar to the latitude.
Take a few steps over the brow of the hill on the old road, and look
down. You see tropical verdure and bloom, palms rising a hundred feet,
and spreading feathery plumes upon lance-like stems; myrtle and coral
trees, figs and lily-pillies, with a sheen upon their leaves like the
light on a summer sea; bowers and arches and impenetrable jungles of
great vines, trailing tendrils fifty feet long, and swinging masses of
perfumed bloom a hundred feet from the ground. There is nothing of the
old familiar Australian bush about it. You are 1,200 feet above the sea,
which stretches away to the world's rim beneath and before you. Below,
past all the wonderland of the bush, is the white tower of Woolongong,
and beyond that the fringe of white beach and snowy breakers, the Fern
Islands, set in sapphire. Far, far away goes the coast land.
'Between coast-line and mountains lies the fertile land, the strip of
country that serves and feeds the great city. The train comes here to be
laden with the rich produce--milk, butter, and cheese--which by tons
upon tons is taken in and distributed in Sydney every day. Out of the
bowels of the mountains the line brings also coal and iron and shale and
other mineral products, and from the dense forest pour down the little
coast rivers.
[Illustration: EMU PLAINS.]
'Halting at Kiama first, it will render all the beauties of the
Illawarra district proper accessible, as all its rich products
available; but in a very few years it must pass on across Shoalhaven and
Bega, and over the rugged country of the Victorian border beyond Eden
and Boyd Town.
'Our next finger, The Great West, is a mighty one in every sense, 574
miles in length, and crossing in that length a fair section of the whole
colony, and enclosing in the triangle of which it forms the northern
side, with the Southern and South-Western line and Murrumbidgee river
opposite, and the Darling for base, the wildest mountains, the richest
agricultural acres, and the broadest pastures of the colony. By
Paramatta, Castle Hill, and Toongabbie, the earliest agricultural
settlements the colony knew, which, however, seem rather to have reached
senility than perfect development, the North-Western line strikes out
for the rampart of the famous Blue Mountains--now one of the show-places
of Australia. Very soon the traveller perceives the great barrier
stretched right across the plain. Behind the dark green trees of the
middle distance it looms as the wall of some forbidden land. And nearer
the deep blue river at its feet looks like a moat specially made for
purposes of defence. Long indeed was the barrier effective, before the
strong right arm of civilization put down the stone pillars and carried
over the platform of the railway-bridge across which the train thunders
now, the great engines puffing and snorting, their force conserved for
the present, but ready to be expended by-and-by in the charge up the
mountain.
[Illustration: THE VALLEY OF THE GROSE.]
'The upward view from that bridge should never be missed. It is a long
glassy sheet of water, coming from the bold and densely timbered gate of
the hilly shore miles away, and flowing down to the bridge, past the
sleepy old town, between grassy banks or drooping willows, or groves of
whispering oaks. There is no perceptible current, the water-lilies sleep
on the surface, and if a boat be pulling upwards the ripples of the
water break gently on either bank. You may note so much in the rapid
transit of the train, which ten minutes after its departure from Penrith
station is fairly at the feet of the mountains. There are little knolls
there, lightly grassed and gracefully timbered, looking down upon
"Long fields of barley and of rye."
Very soon we pass these fields; we are rising fast. The plains sink and
extend beneath us. The white stones of the little grave-garden at Emu
Plains glisten beside the tall black cypress trees, the river shines
like a band of steel, and the reflection of the willows and oaks are
faintly seen.'
Penrith looks as a child's toy village; and Windsor and Richmond, far
away, are but indistinct white dots. All quiet, tame, prosperous, and
very simply beautiful below; all above and beyond wild and rugged, and,
in the commercial sense, unprofitable. As marvellous a contrast as could
be imagined, the beginning and the end apparently of new orders, the
results of different forces, the work of the earth spent in opposite
moods. One must needs marvel in contrasting such scenes, and more
profound becomes the marvel and the wonderment, as with every mile a
vaster, wilder, grander region is found. Cliff-faces leagues long, and a
thousand feet perpendicular; huge basins, like veritable gulfs in space,
where a firmament of blue gathers between the rocky mountain head and
the forest growth below, isolated rocks that dwarf all monuments reared
in any city of old; deep calling unto deep in innumerable waterfalls,
and through all the summer months frequent thunder, as if the spirits
who had wrought their marvels below were still toiling at some other
labour in mid-air. The meanest mind becomes expanded in wonder, and the
least philosophical instinct begins to speculate and inquire. There has,
indeed, been much deep speculation, much zealous and competent inquiry
as to the phenomena of these mountains, and the startling contrast upon
their southern front. Tennison-Woods studied and wrote of them, and more
recently Dr. J. E. Taylor has, in a few graphic sentences, expressed his
opinions of the geological changes which have taken place, particularly
of the changes and causes which have produced the fertile plains and the
hills, whose chief present product is ozone, with the river rolling
between. Having touched lightly upon the facts generally known of the
Hawkesbury sandstone formation, overlaid on a great breadth of the
county of Cumberland by the Wianamatta shales, he says:--
'But the continuity of both the Hawkesbury sandstones and the overlying
and usually accompanying Wianamatta shales is interfered with on a
magnificent scale at Emu Plains. The entire country from this point to
Sydney Heads has been slowly let down by one of those great earth
movements known as a "downthrow fault." The downthrow was not the work
of one single act of disturbance--it went on for ages. Meantime the
Wianamatta shales, which overlaid the Hawkesbury sandstones of the Blue
Mountains, were denuded off, or nearly so, for there is only a small
patch now remaining, right on the top, after we have ascended by the
first zigzag, to show that they were once continuous with those of the
plains more than 2,000 feet below.'
There is infinite variety in the mountains. Even though wearied of the
grandeur and wildness of the gorges, the vastness of the basins, whose
great forest carpets appear but as robes of green evenly spread, or the
grotesquely piled rocks, and the bold and beautiful flora of the
table-lands and mountain heads, the traveller need not hasten back to
town, imagining he has seen all. Let him find his way down from
Blackheath to the entrance of a valley known as the Mermaid's Cave--a
great grey rock that juts out and almost blocks the valley, dividing a
somewhat arid gorge above from a lovely dell below. He passes through a
rock-cleft, and there before him is a scene beautiful as new. There
indeed,--
'A vale of beauty, lovelier
Than all the valleys of the greater hills.'
Yes, this is the fairy land of the mountains. Tall, feathery-foliaged,
golden-blossomed wattles rise side by side with the olive-green
turpentines, and through them runs the mountain brook in cataract after
cataract. Upon the edge of the wattle-grove the tree-ferns grow, and
beyond them is a carpet of bracken--a broad slope at the hill-foot, rich
dark green with tips of pink, and shadows and hollows of russet and
brown, where new growths display yet their dainty shades, or dead leaves
have taken the rich autumnal brown. There is deep, grateful shade here
in the heat of the day, for no sunbeam penetrates the roof of wattle and
palm-like fern, and the water seems to bring down coolness from its
higher springs.
[Illustration: ZIGZAG RAILWAY IN THE BLUE MOUNTAINS.]
A bolder valley, one of the great gorges of the world, is the Lithgow,
the road to the western slopes and the long-locked interior. It was down
this great ravine that the first explorers looked awe-stricken at the
marvellous road that nature had prepared for them; and who can gaze
without awe and wonder and broadening conceptions of nature and nature's
work as he looks down that entrance way to Australia's heart, and
realizes the manner and the period of its making? The ages that have
clothed the mountain sides with forests are but as seconds to years by
comparison with those which have worn the world's crust away, and by
comparison with these stupendous results of natural forces, what pigmy
work appears the zigzag down which goes the inland train! This Lithgow
Vale is usually considered the western limit of the Blue Mountains,
though in their further northward range, notably about Capertee on the
Mudgee line, they rise again and display forms of rugged grandeur.
[Illustration: FISH RIVER CAVE.]
Beyond the mountains the artistic surveyor may travel fast. Branching
off at Walerawang, he may find the mountain scenery he has just left
repeated on the line to Mudgee, but there is another turn, and not by
rail, which he must not miss. It is at Tarana, in the Fish River Caves,
newly christened Jenola. The road runs off to the southward, a distance
of forty miles, to the west of a wild country on the western slopes of
the Blue Mountains, and then by a grim cavern in the hillside is entry
found to a natural temple, which travellers affirm has no equal in the
wide, wide world. The old guardian and guide of the place, who alone can
walk safely amid the labyrinth, tells us that we have hardly begun to
explore the caves so far, for every year some new grotto is discovered.
He plods his careful way along some dripping track through the tall
stalagmites, standing as monuments of the dead in fairy-land, feels some
fissure in the mountain side, works the point of his staff through, and
discovers--vacuity; makes carefully a small hole, introduces a thread of
magnesium wire, sets it ablaze, and in the long glow learns that he has
discovered another cathedral vaster than St. Peter's, with a dome that
mocks St. Paul's. By-and-by he will open a way to it; will add it to his
catalogue; will say to a party of visitors: 'I have found another cave,
and will flash light upon the glory which, could it be transported to
London or Paris, would be worth a million sterling.' How many more caves
remain to be discovered it is impossible to say; they may run miles into
the mountains. Future days may see mimic electric cars running through
the caves, and brilliant globes of light flashing like suns upon the
summits of tall lone columns ten miles from the entrance. Now there is
no tramway nor riding way whatever within the caves, but difficult
foot-paths and painful steps, and slightly hazardous creeping places,
and ladders to ascend, and narrow parts to pass, and a good deal of
labour to be performed to see even a little of the treasures which have
so far been unlocked. There are, to the traveller who has leisure and
who is content to live hard and sleep hard, so that he may delight his
more refined faculties, four days' good sight-seeing in the caves--four
days through which the world and all the things therein may be left
behind, and glories as of a kingdom of old may be fully enjoyed--four
days through which he may imagine himself entering into such a land as
that held by Lytton's 'Coming Race,' domes of the world above you vast
as the dome of heaven without. Far down below the strange black river,
running--
'Through measureless caverns to the sea;'
mysterious echoes meeting you, great white ghostly figures appearing
suddenly in the fitful illumination, alabaster lakes, pools, baths,
spotless, stainless marble sanctuaries, and palace halls, which, lit by
the sudden flash from the magnesium wire, seem bespangled more thickly
and gorgeously than any royal crown with glittering jewels. You are
filled rather with wonderment than admiration, and the whole world
without seems utterly contemptible to you, whenever you return to the
cave's mouth.
[Illustration: WATERFALL AT GOVETT.]
There are green fields at the bases of great timbered hills all the way
to Bathurst, where the oldest and most considerable of all inland cities
of the colony sits beside the Macquarie river, on the crown of the down
country which rolls, rich with grass or grain, for leagues around. On
the long north-eastern flight we may hover a while over Bathurst, may
note with pleasure the fair country homes amongst the gardens and
bowers, the church spires of the city, and the many fair buildings. We
shall not find another such town as Bathurst, though country fair enough
is beneath us by Blayney and Orange, and southward thence through many
villages and little mining towns to Forbes. And almost due north to the
Wellington valley, and out to Dubbo, which is the gate of the great
pastures, the country is of the same character.
On leaving Dubbo we reach the magnificent distances of Australia, the
land of the mirage and the great drought, the land of marvellous flocks
and herds. There on the vast bush plain or amongst the box forest are
great hosts of cattle, one or two or three thousand head, already six or
nine months on the road, hoping to make the port or the trucking station
in three months more. Strange men are with them, white as to colour--as
white in pluck and endurance, but as uncivilised as the one or two
trackers who watch the horses. In this region during the bad seasons you
cross bare and bone-strewn plains. At a wretched homestead you may find
a man in the lowest deep of despair. Well-to-do a couple of years ago,
hoping to be rich before the decade had closed, he is lord now of twenty
thousand skeletons lying upon the soil, which looks as if indeed cursed,
and so effectively that it will never bear grass or herb again. You may
see river-beds of baked mud, and glistening veins of sand that once were
running creeks. Here grow brigalow and mulga, gaunt and weird as the
dragon-tree of the Soudan. Hundreds of miles stretches this dreary land,
the Lachlan winding through it from east to west, the least significant
stream in a dry or ordinary season that ever served as the watercourse
for so broad a land.
Out in its centre lies a village, Cohan, grown about a mountain of
copper, and along the Darling are other villages, Bourke, Bremoroma,
Welcanna, Wentworth, lingering on when no rain falls, and blossoming
with a dripping month as rapidly almost as the herbage of the black
flats. I never saw anything beautiful in them except the self-devotion
of some few good women who shine as stars amongst the general blackness.
But when the rain has fallen, particularly in the pleasant winter after
a genial autumn, it cannot be said that the land lacks beauty. I
remember winter days a hundred miles north and south from the Darling
river at Bourke, when the face of nature seemed to shine in open placid
beauty and to break into the tenderest imaginable smile with each dying
day; mornings in June, when, awakened by the glowing log to see the
flush of dawn through an oak hut or over a pine-ridge that seemed to
rise mysteriously with the sun, and, as though actually molten down by
the increasing heat, to vanish utterly in the full glow of day. There
was no painful mockery in the mirage that hung at noon on the horizon,
with its flat-crowned trees rooted apparently in the still blue
water--for by any clump of broad-leaved colane or drooping myall there
was water in abundance, water clear and cool in every hollow; and grass,
herbage and flowers knee-deep over all the land, when the spotted leaf
and trees were all abloom and the quandongs were heavily fruited, and
the nardoo with its life-saving seed ripened and decayed unheeded. Often
at eventide in that winter did the whole landscape seem pure and perfect
as a single crystal, the sky just after sunset of the palest primrose or
the colour of the neck of a wheat-stalk when the ear is just ripe; the
flood water through the lignum bushes glassy still; not a leaf of any
tree stirring nor a grass-blade or herb-bloom moving upon all the plain.
From the multitudinous flowers of the sand-ridge comes a rare sweet
fragrance mingling with the balsamic odour of the pines. There would be
noise and tumult a little later, as the crested galahs came cackling
homeward to rest, and then the long and solemn hush of night, with sound
enough and yet no lack of peace. The whistle of the wild duck's wing and
sharp blow of her descent on the water, the dull thunder of the wings of
great birds--pelicans, native companions, swan, ibis, and crane--rising
in hurried flight, scared by some movement of 'possum or night-feeding
kangaroo. Always the tinkle of the horse-bell and the prattle of the
flame-tongues within the little circle of heat and light. Beauty enough
in the inner lands in such a year, a marvellous contrast to the
ghostliness, the abomination of desolation, of the year when no rain
falls and all life dies.
The northern table-land is intersected by the Great Northern Railway,
and is bounded by the Pacific Ocean, the Macpherson range, the
Dumaresque and Darling rivers, and the Great Western line. The third
division of the colony contains upwards of 100,000 square miles of
country, of mountain and plain and wild forest and fertile down, and
infinite variety of scenery. Near to the coast, and south and west from
the line leaving Newcastle for the north, such country as we have seen
about Orange and Albany, but with the green in foliage and verdure which
comes from a somewhat warmer and more genial climate. Farther inland
there are more of the great pastures, and in the extreme north a
prosperous agriculture and a beginning of tropical industry, which
afford a pleasant contrast to all that we have seen before. We shall not
linger long here to look upon any New England villages or prosperous
towns. We shall not concern ourselves with the marvellous richness of
the Breeza plains--where in the wet summers grass grows so tall that
horses and bullocks are lost; and stockmen tell of patches where they
have had the long seed-stalks above their heads, and they on
horseback--but visit the north-eastern corner of the colony, where the
three sugar rivers come down from the mountains.
All their surroundings are tropical and rich, and never so rich perhaps
as in the heart of the country lying about the heads of the Richmond,
and northward towards the Tweed River. There we find the vegetation
whose density and glory and magnificence must be seen to be realised. It
is the country known as the Big Scrub, where everything is gigantic,
compared with ordinary Australian vegetation. The river flows deep and
navigable for small craft between low banks of rich deep soil,
chocolate loam, decomposed trap rock, spouted in remote ages from the
mountains whose high wild crests overlook the Queensland country, a
hundred miles to the north. The dense scrub growth covered all a
half-century ago, and the huge cedar-trees towering above the jungle
overhung the river; but now along many a mile the scrub has been cleared
away, and the cane-fields surround the settlers' houses. Wonderfully
delicate and fair look the canes beside the dark scrub, bright green or
pale yellow, as varied in tint as wheat-fields between the time of the
bloom and the harvest. They give grand evidence of the power of the
soil, and fully justify the wisdom of those bold speculators who built
the great mills lower down.
Quickly changes the foliage as the ascent to the table-land is made;
vines and flowers and orchids are left behind. Pine and cedar give place
to gum, box, and ironbark, while in the gullies are ferns of a hardier
growth, and trickling water that seems of near relationship to the
mountain snows. Higher and higher, and colder and fresher becomes the
air; and, turning now, the panoramic view below spreads broad and fair,
the half-dozen branches of the Richmond seen flashing at times through
the trees, the corn and cane patches but bright green dots in the dense
forest, and braids of a lighter green beside the broader stream, a
reflection of the ocean upon the farthest sky; and last, upon the
heights the distant northern mountains are seen the giant warders of the
Great Divide. Mount Lindsay is the grandest of all, lifting crags and
ramparts more than 5,000 feet from the downs below, as rugged in
appearance as any escarpment of the Blue Mountains, and of a vaster
height and bulk. The rich pasture-lands about his feet are buried in
haze, and occasional lagoons sparkle like flakes of silver or eyes of a
well-contented earth-spirit looking up to the sky. Waiting there till
evening, you may see Mount Lindsay afire with the floods of light which
catch his summit when all the trees below are dark; and farther south,
where the Clarence River springs, the tall gaunt peak of the Nightcap
will only lose the light before the mightier mountain. Both stand out
above all neighbours, though joining them is a mighty chain, with
beauties innumerable, stretching right along the line which separates
the tropic land of Queensland from the beautiful and prosperous colony
of New South Wales.