Howard Willoughby

“ It is a pleasant thing to attend a rural service on a typical Australian day, when the sun is hot and the sky cloudless, and the whole landscape steeped in peace and quiet. Driving along the road, we see the sheep couched in the grass, or we pass a clearing where wheat and oats are growing among the blackened stumps of fallen trees; and nothing disturbs the stillness of the scene save, perhaps, the lazy motion of a crow, or the rush of a startled native bear, a sleepy, gentle, little animal, an enlarged edition of the opossum. ”

“ The diversified surface of the ground over which the town of Brisbane has spread itself, the broad noble river which winds through it, doubling back almost on itself, as if loth to quit the city it has called into existence, and the picturesque range of wooded hills which closes the view to the westward, constitute a scene of great beauty. An artist roaming round the town would find objects of interest everywhere. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The belt of reserves—5,000 acres in all—is secure, and it must grow in beauty yearly, continually adding to the attractions of the town. As it is within a stone's throw of city life, you can wander into cool glens and sequestered shades, and hear the thrush sing, or study the beauties of a fern gully. To the pedestrian the walk to business in the morning or from it in the evening is thus rendered delightful; but if the ordinary Australian can possibly avoid it he never does walk. ”

“ The soil is a deep alluvial deposit; and the close-growing trees on it spring straight and tall in the struggle to reach the upper atmosphere and light, for the leafy roof allows no sun to penetrate to the damp ground, soft with mouldering leaves, but makes a cool green gloom even on the most fiery summer day. There is something very solemn in the quietude of a scrub untouched by the axe of the lumberer or settler. There is no undergrowth, properly speaking, though delicate little ferns and fairy-like mosses nestle close to the feet of the trees. But there is a wealth of parasitical life. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The ranges are few in number, and are of no great elevation. But the grass plains and the scrub plains are immense. Gazing round from an eminence, the impression produced by the equal height of the vegetation, and the dull glaucous colour of the foliage, is that you are looking upon the open rolling illimitable ocean. South Australia contains whole principalities of the ordinary park-like bush of Australia; the eucalypts standing in grass without any undergrowth, either singly or in clumps, as though planted by a landscape gardener. ”

“ It runs through rich country, where settlement has become permanent, down to New Norfolk, where it bends and twists, and skirts lofty cliffs, passes through hop-fields, whose golden crops in the autumn make the landscape beautiful and the air fragrant, develops into a noble course a little farther on, and at Hobart is in some places seven miles in width, and in no place less than a mile. ”

“ He has been tracked to the banks of the Flinders, in Northern Australia, but his fate is unknown. The disappearance of his party has been absolute, and the Australian imagination has dwelt long, anxiously and lovingly upon the mystery. No theory has been so wild but that it has found some eager adherents; every straw of hope has been grasped at. Expedition after expedition has sallied forth to rescue the living or to bury the dead, but all in vain: the tales have proved false, and slowly hope has faded away. ”

“ On the other side, the mountains of the coast range approach closely to the shore, sometimes apparently springing upwards from the very beach; and their imposing masses, clothed with dense vegetation to the very summits, smile rather than frown on the blue sparkling wavelets of the sheltered water, which seems to lave their feet. At various points the mountains fall back, opening, as it were, avenues to the interior of the country. ”

“ Next to the eucalypt the tree most prized in Australia is the graceful acacia, varieties of which flourish throughout the continent. The tall slender stem of the 'wattle'—as the tree is termed—supporting a feathery foliage is everywhere to be met with in the south-eastern colonies. In the spring-time the valleys and their river-courses are lit up with the golden bloom which the tree bears in rare profusion, and the perfume scents the air. In a room the odour of a mere twig of the wattle will often be found to be overpowering. ”

“ Sailing boats and rowing boats are plentiful; in little punts fishermen are bobbing for perch. This is a lung which gives health and happiness to the inhabitants of Ballarat. And when, after crossing the lake, you land under the shade of English oak trees, and the air is perfumed with the scent of new-mown hay, you feel that in no other mining community in the world have the people such privileges as here. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ From Bowen northward the coast of Queensland is sheltered by the line of the Barrier Reef and a long chain of romantic and beautiful islands. The traveller on this coast enjoys a perpetual feast of the eye. On the one side the islands in the line of reef present every variety of form and colour—the green of the timber or vegetation clothing them, the varying lines of their fantastic, weather-beaten, rocky cliffs, and the dazzling white coral sand of their beaches. ”

“ Of the succeeding ages, when the craters, cooled and filled by springs, for century after century, shone in all their glory of lake and tarn under the actinic rays of the morning sun, which darkened the skin of the few black fellows camped on their banks. Now Coc Coc Coine, last King of the Warrions, has gone. We possess the land, with none to dispute our right to this earthly paradise. ”

“ I did not find the feverish, brand-new, shifting and disjointed communities of a wealthy colony, but I found a people amongst whom ties of kindred are numerous and much thought of, who have dwelt side by side with each other all their lives, and who have preserved among themselves a unity and friendly feeling most pleasant to encounter, and social characteristics natural and agreeable in their unaffectedness, simplicity and heartiness. ”

“ Ahead there is a lighthouse, a signal post, a few houses embowered in trees, high cliffs of white limestone or dark basalt, and then, as we round the promontory into the harbour, the quaint yet lovely town is all before us, extending along the bluffs above the shore, the only natural depression being where a stream flows into the sea from a lagoon in a valley at the back of the town. ”

“ Such a mingling of night and day as the sunlight lighting the pitchy blackness of the landscape, as far as the eye can reach, is indescribably grotesque and desolate. It is hard to conceive anything like this contrast of the sunshine sparkling brightly upon the wide, inky, silent waste. It is almost like a smile upon a ghastly death's-head. There is not a bird to flutter a wing or to break the oppressive silence with a single note. There is no sign of life or what has been life, except here and there the roasted carcase of a wallaby or kangaroo. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The picture on page 16 of the Gippsland railway running through a cleared track gives some idea of a primæval forest in Victoria.
Mention has been made of the silver columns of the giant gum. The tree sheds its bark annually, and the new skin is of a pure and dazzling whiteness. As the stem is perfectly cylindrical, and as the huge fabric towers 200 and 250 feet high without a branch, the sight of a group of these monarchs is at these times especially beautiful. Below are the tree-ferns and a lovely bush undisturbed by the wind, which may be heard rustling the far-off tops of the grove. ”

“ Another bird peculiar to Australia is the 'giant kingfisher,' or 'piping crow,' or 'musical magpie,' or 'settler's clock,' or, to use the term everywhere applied, 'the laughing jackass.' Its extraordinary note, and insane and yet good-humoured prolonged and loud cachinnation is unique, and so is the appearance of the bird. It is a great Australian favourite, is never shot, and as a consequence is tolerant of man. ”

“ Brisbane grew slowly. There was no special attraction to induce people to leave the more populated districts of New South Wales, and bury themselves in so remote a settlement. There was the fever which attacks settlers in all newly opened settlements, the blacks were dangerous, and that the place was a station for doubly and trebly convicted felons told against it. But the rich Darling Downs came to be regarded as a pastoral paradise, and squatting occupation spread rapidly in the interior, so that its expansion told slowly but surely on the outpost. ”

“ The 'old man,' when finally run down, backs like a stag into a convenient corner, perhaps the hollow of a great gum-tree, the trunk of which has been partly burned away with a bush fire, and there, with a calm no-surrender expression in his mute face, and just the merest blaze in the big deer-like eyes, waits for the enemy like the splendidly resolute old veteran he is. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The plumage of other birds is often of the gayest type. Thus, the blue wren is common about Nutbourne; and this bird, says Gould, is hardly surpassed by any of the feathered tribe, certainly by none but the humming-birds of America. The cockatoo, with white, black, or rosy crest, flies in flocks, and few sights in the world are prettier than one of these flights. When they finally settle on a tree, they cover it as with a snow-drift. Noisy they are, and clever, never feeding in the settled districts without posting sentinels to warn the rest of the approach of the human enemy. ”

“ Walk up Sturt Street, or along Lydiard Street, and one sees nothing but substantial buildings and avenues of trees. The mines are in the suburbs, and do not deface the town, as at Sandhurst. After an experience of the plains the city is a perfect Arcadia. Embowered in trees, the homes of the people are surrounded with gardens. There is verdure and vegetation in every street. One mentally associates an amount of roughness and coarseness with a mining town. Here it is quite other than so. There is everything to bring light and culture and sweetness home to the people. ”

“ The central desert, that bugbear of a past generation, has an existence, but man is pushing it farther and farther back. Where the explorer perished through thirst a few years ago we now have the homestead and the township; water is conserved, flocks are fed, the property, if it has to be offered for sale, is described as 'that valuable and well-known squatting block.' The tales that were first told were true enough, but man, as he advances, subdues the country and ameliorates the climate. ”