BRISBANE, THE QUEEN CITY OF THE NORTH
From Victoria to Queensland is an ascent in many ways. To begin with,
it means a railway journey of nearly thirteen hundred miles from south
to north. Each mile brings one nearer the tropics. Each hour the heat
grows more intense; each day the sky bluer and brighter. I travelled
from Sydney by steamer and made the ascent by sea. Even then there was
the experience of expansion; of greater warmth, and the first faint
perfume of the Lotus land. I returned by railway, and thus completed
the circuit.
The approach to Brisbane by sea creates a curious impression upon the
Englishman who sees Queensland for the first time. The city unveils
itself as an entirely foreign city. In the disposition of its houses,
as well as in their style, there is something quite new. The roofs
present a curious appearance. Their colour is drab, or grey, or white,
the very colours which intensify the blinding light of a tropical
climate. Tall palms raise their graceful heads to the sky. Strange
plants and flowers and shrubs begin to appear. Conspicuous above
everything else is the brilliant and majestic jackaranda tree. Imagine
a young English elm tree, of ten years’ growth, without a leaf upon
its branches, but entirely covered, in place of leaf, with large thick
blue flowers--that is the jackaranda. It is a tree of amazing beauty--a
quaint flower, elevated to the dimensions of a tree. And with the
spectacle of palm, jackaranda, camphor-tree, and banana, there also
greets one a blend of subtle perfumes and spices. When the breeze
springs up, one dominating, overpowering scent is borne upon its wings,
and brain and mind are oppressed with its heaviness.
This approach to Brisbane by water is very beautiful and impressive.
The steamer proceeds up a long and winding river decked on both sides
with picturesque gardens and houses, and having for an ultimate
background a line of dark, solemn-looking hills. The “city of villas”
Brisbane undoubtedly is. One would hardly be surprised to behold at
the wharf a population of coloured people. The foreign-looking houses,
the tropical surroundings, the warm, voluptuous atmosphere, and this
breath of spicy perfumes, together suggest the dreamy East. And one day
there _will_ be a population of coloured people in Brisbane, despite
the fact that they will be British. For the sun, which respects the
skin of none, is slowly bronzing the faces of the inhabitants. “A white
Australia!” There can never be a pure white Northern Australia while
residence continues and the sun retains its heat. The whitest man must,
in course of time, become dark. Why complain of degrees of darkness;
for what is black but bronze and duskiness brought to perfection?
The houses of Brisbane have one striking peculiarity--they are built
upon wooden piles, the highest of which stand perhaps five or six feet
from the ground. The general effect is, to say the least, odd. It is
Venice, without the lagoons. And the reason for this peculiarity is the
presence of that terrible enemy, the white ant. The base of the piles
is immersed in tar, while the crown is capped with a kind of inverted
tin plate--a child’s dinner-plate. And the piles themselves are often
poisoned. Every precaution has to be taken against the ravages of
the white ant. The tar discourages it at the base, the poisoned wood
discourages it on the ascent, and the inverted plates foil it at the
top. Within the houses similar precautions are taken. The legs of the
tables are planted in double earthenware pots, so that the invader may
be repulsed. For woe betide the householder who suffers a successful
invasion of the white ant! The dreadful enemy is never seen; he works
entirely in the dark. His presence is never suspected until the unhappy
moment when the once solid piece of furniture suddenly collapses, a
total wreck--silently but surely gnawed by the teeth of the concealed
foe. Amazing stories are told of the devastation wrought by the white
ant. Men out in the country have placed strong boxes in a secure
place--secure, as they thought, and then, one day, presuming upon their
supposed strength, they have essayed to use the boxes as seats, only
to discover themselves suddenly precipitated to the ground, and mixed
with the debris of the collapsed trunk. In a church in Brisbane one
of the elders, when treading the aisles one day, thought he detected a
slight softness in the floor under his feet. Pursuing his inquiries,
he discovered, to his dismay, that the white ants had managed to gnaw
their way into the floor, despite the fact that a mass of concrete lay
between it and the ground below. But there was one fatal flaw, and
through a tiny hole the invaders had poured in and commenced their work
of undermining. Listening, the elder could hear the chisels of this
terrible army of workmen, surely chipping away the wood of the floor.
At one house I visited a wooden pile was shown me, nearly eaten through
by these creatures. By mere accident the trouble was discovered, and
the pile removed. The ordinary householder is not always competent to
track the white ant. There may be nothing wrong to his vision, yet all
the while the secret work of destruction may be proceeding apace. Hence
experts make periodical visits to houses, and discover in time any
mischief that may be brewing.
Brisbane is, to all intents and purposes, a smokeless city. The new
factory chimneys, of course, contribute smoke to the fair atmosphere,
but so far as the private houses are concerned, few wreaths of smoke
ascend, for the reason that few fires are burned. In many houses there
are no fireplaces at all, save in the kitchen, and there the gas-stove
is generally in operation. This absence of smoke is a veritable
pleasure. In this particular Brisbane resembles Florence. It is a
suggestion also. Not every climate is so warm as this, but in colder
climes, where artificial heating is necessary, the smoke nuisance
might well be reduced by the use, as here, of gas and electricity.
Brisbane claims to be the most picturesque city in the Commonwealth,
and with reason. Its natural situation is not so fine as that of
Sydney. It has no harbour comparable with Sydney Harbour. But the
city itself is more eastern, more tropical than the southern cities.
Its death-rate is the lowest in all the Commonwealth, and that speaks
volumes for the climate. The weather is nearly always bright. The
winter is one prolonged delight. It equals Hastings, say, in May or
June. The spoiled children of Southern Australia who find their winter
“cold” come up north and spend the “chilly” months in sunny Queensland.
The climate is much warmer than that of Victoria, and it is much more
equable. In Brisbane they know nothing of those startling changes in
temperature to which men are accustomed in Melbourne. A Brisbane man
shudders when we tell him that in Melbourne the thermometer sometimes
drops forty degrees in half an hour. But if Brisbane heat is greater
than the heat in Victoria, it is tempered by a delicious breeze which
springs up every morning with the utmost regularity about eleven
o’clock.
Insect life, white ants excepted, is most fascinating in Brisbane. The
moths and butterflies are gorgeous to the last degree. They flash in
the sunlight, living rainbows, displaying the most ravishing colours.
In these semi-tropical regions the colours of nature seem to reach
absolute perfection. Sky, flowers, and insects all match. There is
no blue so wonderful as that of these skies, and no colours more soft
and subduing than those which overspread the heavens at the moment of
sunset.
While here I have had the experience, twice repeated, of a tropical
thunderstorm. Nothing can approach this in majesty and terrifying
power, unless it be a storm in the Alps. There, the feature of the
storm lies in the long-continued reverberations of the thunder crashing
amongst the mountains. Here the thunderstorm is marked by a terrible
display of lightning, and by the appalling colour of the sky. The storm
gathers in an incredibly short period of time. After a day or two of
abnormal heat, radiated from a pellucid atmosphere, the clouds suddenly
appear. In an hour the heavens assume a slaty appearance, a ghastly
colour that speaks of anguish and coming dissolution. Everything grows
dark. It seems as if the hour of the traditional judgment had arrived.
An ominous wind sweeps over the country, bending stately palms beneath
its fury and threatening to uproot smaller trees. And then from afar
comes the muffled roar of the storm. It is like the march of a hostile
army. Great guns seem to boom, gatling and quick-firers rattle their
shot across the plain. And then, for an hour or more, the heavens
become alive with light. The lightning appears in a dozen places at
once, stabbing, tearing, exploding. The thunder is awful. And then
the rain descends, as no Englishman who knows but his own land has
ever seen it fall. Not in drops, but in sheets, it pours down until
every street becomes a river. It is useless to attempt to speak while
the flood is upon us. It is the din of a battle at its height, for
the roofs of the houses in Brisbane are made of corrugated iron, and
the rain falling upon this resounding substance produces a terrifying
effect. And amid the tempest, while human voices are hushed, there is
one glad note heard. One creature is excited to delirious pleasure
through the storm. Silent as the grave while the tempest gathers, this
creature chants in triumph while the storm rages. It is the frog. No
man knows the vocal capacities of the frog until he hears it croak in
one vast chorus during a tropical storm.