Frank Fox

“ It is wise when out for a picnic in Australia to camp in some spot away from ant-beds, for the ant, being such an industrious creature, seems to take a malicious delight in spoiling the day for pleasure-seekers.
In one respect, the ant, unwillingly enough, contributes to the pleasure and amusement of the Australian people. In the dry country it would not be possible to keep grass lawns for tennis. But an excellent substitute has been found in the earth taken from ant-beds. This earth, which has been ground fine by the industrious little insects, makes a beautifully firm tennis-court. ”

“ In this railway trip across the continent you are being introduced to all the main features of Australian life, so that you will have some solid knowledge of the conditions of the country, and can, later on, in chapters which will follow, learn of the Bush, the natives, the birds and beasts and flowers, the games of Australia.
Leaving Melbourne, a fast and luxurious train takes you through the farming districts of Victoria, past many smiling towns, growing rich from the industry of men who graze cattle, grow wheat and oats and barley, make butter, or pasture sheep. ”

“ Fishing for a cod is not an occupation calling for very much industry. The fisherman baits his line, ties it to a stake fixed on the river bank, and on the stake hangs a bell. Then the fisherman gets under the shadow of a gum-tree and enjoys a quiet life, reading or just lazing. ”

“ Whilst you have been hearing all this about the rabbit the train has climbed up from the plains to the Blue Mountains and is rushing down the coast slope towards Sydney, the capital of New South Wales, the chief commercial city of Australia, and one of the great ports of the Empire. Sydney is, I do really think, the pleasantest place in the world for a child to live in, though two hot, muggy months of the year are to be avoided for health’s sake. ”

“ The Australian child wakens very often to the fact that “to-day is a holiday.” The people of the sunny southern continent work very hard indeed, but they know that “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”; and Jill a dull girl too. So they have very frequent holidays—far more frequent than in Great Britain. The Australian child, rising on a holiday morning, and finding it fine and bright—very rarely is he disappointed in the weather of his sunny climate—gives a whoop of joy as he remembers that he is going on a picnic into the forest, or the “Bush,” as it is called invariably in Australia. ”

“ The koala is the quaintest little creature imaginable. It is quite harmless, and only asks to be let alone and allowed to browse on gum-leaves. Its flesh is uneatable except by an aboriginal or a victim to famine. Its fur is difficult to manipulate, as it will not lie flat, so the koala should have been left in peace. But its confiding and somewhat stupid nature, and the senseless desire of small boys and “children of larger growth” to kill something wild just for the sake of killing, has led to the koala being almost exterminated in many places. ”

“ Try to kill the bulldog ant with a stick, and it will face you and try to bite back until the very last gasp, never thinking of running away. The bulldog ant has a liking for the careless picnicker, whom she—the male ant, like the male bee, is not a worker—bites with a fierce energy that suggests to the victim that his flesh is being torn with red-hot pincers. I have heard it said that but for the fact that Australia is so large an island, a great proportion of its population would by this time have been lost through bounding into the surrounding sea when bitten by bulldog ants. ”

“ And certainly in the very early days of the gold-digging rushes, much harm was done to the settled industries of the land through everybody rushing away to the diggings. Farms were abandoned, workshops deserted, the sailors left their ships, the shepherds their sheep, the shop-keepers their shops—all with the gold fever. But that early madness soon passed away, and Australia got the benefit of the gold discoverers in a great increase of population. Most of those who came to dig gold remained to dig potatoes and other more certain wealth out of the land. ”

“ Indeed, Australia, as regards its fauna, may be considered as a museum, with the animals of old times alive instead of in skeleton form.
The kangaroo is always taken as a type of Australian animal life. When an Australian cricket team succeeds in vanquishing in a Test Match an English one (which happens now and again) , the comic papers may be always expected to print a picture of a lion looking sad and sorry, and a kangaroo proudly elate. The kangaroo, like practically all Australian animals, is a marsupial, carrying its young about in a pouch after their birth until they reach maturity. ”

“ In the west, around the great goldfields, where water is very scarce, white explorers have sometimes adopted a way to get help which is far more objectionable. The natives in those regions are very reluctant to show the locality of the waterholes. The supply is scanty, and they have learned to regard the white man as wasteful and inconsiderate in regard to water. But a white explorer or traveller has been known to catch a native, and, filling his mouth with salt, to expose him to the heat of the sun until the tortures of thirst forced him to lead the white party to a native well. ”

“ This evil bird will attack weak sheep and young lambs, tearing out their eyes and leaving them to perish miserably. There have even been terrible cases where men lost in the Bush and perishing of thirst have been attacked by crows and have been found still alive, but with their eyes gone.
It is no wonder that there is a deadly feud between man and crow. But the crow is so cunning as to be able to overmatch man’s superior strength. A crow knows when a man is carrying a gun, and will keep out of range then; if a man is without a gun the crow will let him approach quite near. ”

“ When the yields from the alluvial goldfields decreased there was a great demand from the out-of-work diggers and others for land for farming, and the agricultural era began in Australia. Since then the growth of the country has been sound, and, if a little slow, sure. It has been slow because the ideal of the people has always been a sound and a general well-being rather than a too-quick growth. “Slow and steady” is a good motto for a nation as well as an individual. ”

“ The race seems doomed to perish. Something can be done to prolong their life, to make it more pleasant; but they will never be a people, never take any share in the development of the continent which was once their own.
A quite different type of native comes under the rule of the Australian Commonwealth—the Papuan. [43] Though Papua, or New Guinea, as it was once called, is only a few miles from the north coast of Australia, its race is distinct, belonging to the Polynesian or Kanaka type, and resembling the natives of Fiji and Tahiti. ”

“ The States were like children of one family, all engaged as partners in one business, who, growing up, decided to set up housekeeping each for himself, but neglected to arrange for some means by which they could meet together now and again and decide on matters which were of common interest to all of them. The separated States of Australia were, all alike, interested in making Australia great and prosperous, and keeping her safe ”

“ All the usual British games are played in Australia: tops, hoops, marbles among the younger children; cricket, football, lawn-tennis among their elders. The climate is especially suited for cricket, as it is warm and bright and sunny for so long a term of the year. On a holiday in the parks around the Australian cities may be seen many hundreds of cricket matches. All the schools have their teams. Most of the shops and factories keep up teams among the employees. These teams play in competitions with all the earnestness of big cricket. As the players grow better they join the electorate clubs. ”

“ The natives, therefore, have always had plenty of food, and they reached a higher stage of civilization than the Australian aborigines. But their food came too easily to allow them to go very far forward. “Civilization is impossible where the banana grows,” some observer has remarked. He meant that since the banana gave food without any culture or call on human energy, the people in banana-growing countries would be lazy, and would not have the stimulus to improve themselves that is necessary for progress. To get a good type of man he must have the need to work. ”

“ But let us tear ourselves away from Sydney, and go on to Brisbane, passing on the way through Kurringai Chase, one of the great National Parks of New South Wales; along the fertile Hawkesbury and Hunter valleys, which grow Indian corn and lucerne, and oranges and melons, and men who are mostly over six feet high; up the New England Mountains, through a country which owes its name to the fact that the high elevation gives it a climate somewhat like that of England; then into Queensland along the rich Darling Down studded with wheat-farms, dairy-farms, and cattle-ranches ”

“ When Captain Cook landed at Botany Bay probably there were not 500,000 natives in all Australia. And if the white man had not come, there probably would never have been any progress among the blacks. As they were then they had been for countless centuries, and in all likelihood would have remained for countless centuries more. They had never, like the Chinese, the Hindus, the Peruvians, the Mexicans, evolved a civilization of their own. ”

“ I may be quite wrong in this, but I think that most of the folk-stories coming from the natives are just their attempts to imitate white-man stories, and not original ideas of their own. The conditions or life in Australia for the aboriginal were so harsh, the struggle for existence was so keen, that he had not much time to cultivate ideas. Life to him was centred around the camp-fire, the baked ’possum, and a few crude tribal ceremonies.
Usually the Australian black is altogether spoilt by civilization. ”

“ The rabbit in Australia increases its numbers very quickly: the doe will have up to eighty or ninety young in a year. There is no natural check to this; no winter spell of bitter cold to kill off the young and feeble. The only limit to the rabbit life is the food-supply, and that does not fail until the pasturage intended for the sheep is eaten bare. Not only is the grass eaten, but also the roots of the grass, and the rabbit is a further nuisance because sheep dislike to eat grass at which bunny has been nibbling. ”

“ Nowadays, when the Blue Mountains have been conquered, and they are [9] traversed by roads and railways, tourists from all parts of the world find great joy in looking upon these wonderful gorges; but in the days of the explorers they were the cause of many disappointments—indeed, of many tragedies. Men escaping from the prisons (Australia was first used as a reformatory by Great Britain) would attempt to cross the Blue Mountains on their way, as they thought, to China and freedom, always to perish miserably in the wild gorges. ”

“ The State will carry the children to school on its railways free. If there is no railway it will send a ’bus round to collect children in scattered localities. Failing that, in the case of families which are quite isolated, and which are poor, the State will try to persuade the parents to keep a governess or tutor, and will help to pay the cost of this. The effect of all this effort is that in Australia almost every child can read and write.
Going to school in the Bush parts of Australia is sometimes great fun. ”

“ It is only on the hot plains that the merino sheep flourishes to perfection. If he is brought to cold hill-country in Australia his coat at once begins to coarsen, and his wool is therefore not so good.
As you pass the sheep-runs in the train you will probably notice that they are divided into paddocks by fine-mesh wire-netting. That is to keep the rabbits out. The rabbit is accounted rather a desirable little creature in Great Britain. A rabbit-warren on an estate is a source of good sport and good food, and the complaint is sometimes of too few rabbits rather than too many. ”

“ Some people sneer at the idea of a “Bush capital,” but I think, and perhaps you will think with me, that there is something very pleasant and very promising of profit in the idea of the country’s rulers meeting somewhere in the pure air of a quiet little city surrounded by the great Australian forest. And as things are now, the population of Australia is too [26] much centralized in the big cities, and it will be a good thing to have another centre of population. ”

“ The passing of the Blue Mountains opened up to Australia the great tableland, on which the chief mineral discoveries were to be made, and the vast interior plains, which were to produce merino wool of such quality as no other land can equal.
From that onwards exploration was steadily pushed on. Sometimes the explorers went out into the wilderness with horses, sometimes with camels; other tracts of land were explored by boat expeditions, following the track of one of the slow rivers. The perils always were of thirst and hunger. Very rarely did the blacks give any serious trouble. ”

“ Australia is very well provided with serpents—rather too well provided—and the Bush child has to be careful in regard to putting his hand into rabbit burrows or walking barefoot, as there are several varieties of venomous snake. But the snakes are not at all the great danger that some imagine. You might live all your life in Australia and never see one; but in a few country parts it has been found necessary to enclose the homesteads on the stations with snake-proof wire-fencing, so as to make some place of safety in which young children may play. ”

“ The brolga has a taste for dancing; flocks of this bird may be seen solemnly going through quadrilles and lancers—of their own invention—on the plains.
Another strange Australian bird is called the bower-bird, because when a bower-bird wishes to go courting he builds in the Bush a little pavilion, and adorns it with all the gay, bright objects he can—bits of rag or metal, feathers from other birds, coloured stones and flowers. In this he sets himself to dancing until some lady bower-bird is attracted, and they set up housekeeping together. ”

“ There are two fine cockatoos also in Australia—the white with a yellow crest, and the black, which has a beautiful red lining to its sable wings. A flock of black cockatoos in flight gives an impression of a sunset cloud, its under surface shot with crimson.
Cockatoos can be very destructive to crops, especially to maize, so the farmers have declared war upon them. The birds seem to be able to hold their own pretty well in this campaign, for they are of wonderful cunning. When a crowd of cockatoos has designs on a farmer’s maize-patch, the leader seems to prospect the place thoroughly ”