Australasia

“ But in regard to the landing of Europeans and the order of its exploration, Borneo, like the Philippines, forms part of that "Australasia" which was first reached (1521) from the direction of the Pacific Ocean.
Australasia (it is necessary, if wearisome, to repeat) consists of islands, great, small, and very small; Australia being so large an island that it ranks as the fifth and smallest of the continents. The insular character of Australasia has caused most of the great adventures connected with its discovery and colonization to be extraordinary feats of ocean rather than of land travel. ”

“ Australasia has the lowest death-rate of the world, a significant fact in the health record of a nation. A nation of athletes! Swift runners, fast swimmers, tall lean men whose movements are made with incredible and deceptive swiftness, inured to the saddle and to long marches under a tropical sun. ”

“ In 1756 the word "Australasia" was coined. Charles de Brosses, in his Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes, wanted a word to signify a new division of the globe. The maps marked off Europe, Asia, Africa and America, but the vast region to the south of Asia required a name likewise. De Brosses simply added "Austral" to "Asia," and printed "Australasia" upon his map.
The earliest use of the word Australia that I have been able to find, occurs in the index to the Dutch Generale Beschrijvinge van Indien (General Description of the Indies) published at Batavia in 1638. ”

“ Before leaving Australia (though politics are not within my province) , I must say that throughout Australasia there is a strong feeling among all classes for a closer union with the mother country. The loyalty of the people to the Crown and the Empire is unbounded; but Australia finds herself strong, and should any coldness be displayed by the Home Government, a cry for separation may soon be raised, and we should never forget that, "as a field for British [199] trade, as an outlet for our surplus population, and as producers of our food, our colonies are to us indispensable." ”

“ The term is so far justified in that it harmonizes better than Oceania did with the names of the other continents, and also embodies the two essential facts that it is a south-eastern extension of Asia, and that its central and most important division is the great island-continent of Australia. In a more restricted sense the term Australasia corresponds to the large division including Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand. ”

“ Not only has the federal feeling in Australasia witnessed a wonderful growth of recent years, but the interest in and desire for knowledge about the Australasian colonies has been quickened to at least an equal extent at the centre of the empire. ”

“ Of the two names—Australia and Australasia—suggested in the opening of the quotation, to take the place of New Holland, Shaw evidently favoured Australia, while Smith, in the `Transactions of the Linnaean Society,' vol. iv. p. 213 (1798) , uses Australasia for the continent several times. Neither name, however, passed then into general use. In 1814, Robert Brown the Botanist speaks of "Terra Australis," not of "Australia." "Australia" was reinvented by Flinders. ”

“ What must not be omitted is mention of the deep and abiding feeling of the love for and the loyalty to the dear old land manifested by everybody, affection which coexists most comfortably with an almost passionate devotion to the new land which is, indeed, their own. No other passport to their hearts is needed than the fact that the visitor comes from the Homeland and loves it, he only is disliked and discredited who is ready to decry and belittle Britain in all things after the fashion of many curiously-minded folks at home. My best love and best wishes for Australasia. ”

“ Australasia is building up a splendid Mercantile Marine of her own, she lays heavy burdens upon the Old Country shipowner as well as the foreigner who wishes to trade upon her coasts, for the benefit of her home-bred sailor-citizens; but as far as any ordinary eye can see she begrudges a penny for national insurance in case the Old [Pg 46] Country gets her hands full at any time, as she may most easily do.
However, let us hope that Australasia will be wise in time and recognise the possibility of the Labour party in England taking the same sort of view as the regnant party in Australasia. ”

“ I have to explain, that when the name Australasia is used in the following pages, it is intended to include Tasmania (Van Diemen's Land) and all the islands in the vicinity of the Australian continent. ”

“ This country is in fact a continent. With its dependencies of Tasmania, New Zealand and Jiji it makes up what the English call Australasia — that is to say a new, a southern, an Austral-Asia. It is rich in minerals, especially gold, tin, iron, zinc, antimony, lead and copper. ”

“ But the truth—that Australasia produces at a high rate mental as well as physical energy—could have been proved categorically.
The Australian is not only a pioneer wrestling with the wilderness. He is a creature of restless mental energy, keenly (perhaps with something of a spirit of vanity) eager to keep in the current of world-thought, following closely not only his own politics but also British and international politics; a good patron of the arts; a fertile producer and exporter of poetasters, minor philosophers, scientists, writers, and artists. ”

“ Why should not Australia, New Ireland, all that the English geographers call Australasia, joined to the Archipelagoes of the Pacific Ocean, have formed in times past a sixth part of the world as important as Europe or Asia, Africa or the two Americas. ”

“ In 1878 Wallace wrote a volume on Australasia for Stanford's "Compendium of Geography and Travel." A later edition was published in 1893, which contained in addition to the physical geography, natural history, and geology of Australia, a much fuller account of the natives of Australia, showing that they are really a primitive type of the great Caucasian family of mankind, and are by no means so low in intellect as had been usually believed. ”

“ There are now five of these colonies, which, in their order as to time of establishment, are as follows:—New South Wales, West Australia, South Australia, Victoria, and Queensland. We confine ourselves to a consideration of Australia, without alluding to Tasmania, New Zealand, and other adjacent islands that are comprised under the wider area of Australasia.
Year.
DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION.
1601.—Earliest authenticated discovery of Australia, by Manoel Godinho de Heredia, a Portuguese. ”

“ The position of the British in the South Seas demands special consideration, as being immediately related to our subject. In 1800 the only part of Australasia occupied by white people was Norfolk Island and the small area at Port Jackson shut in between the sea and a precipitous range of mountains that for thirteen years to come presented an unconquerable barrier to inland exploration, despite repeated endeavours to find a way across them. ”

“ Because if there had been any such continuous land connection within the last two hundred thousand years, sufficient to effect the peopling of Australasia by the human species without the need of crossing straits and narrow seas, there would have come into these regions as well as Man many examples of the modern animals of Asia. ”

“ Stories of Australasia is evidently a success, possessing simplicity and life. It is a difficult thing to get down to the plane of child life and comprehension without devitalizing matter and style. You have done it without loss of freshness. ”

“ It has been said, and I believe with truth, that the vast majority of the Australasian population is to be found in the cities and towns on the seaboard, engaged in the work of distributing the imports and exports. ”

“ They all seem to realise that it is nothing short of ridiculous to expect this vast country to hold its own with such a trifling population as it possesses. With an area much larger than that of the United States, and a population of only one-seventeenth roughly, of that of the great Republic, while the two great cities of Sydney and Melbourne between them absorb almost one-fourth of the entire population of Australasia, it must indeed be a hard task to avoid seeing what an enormous waste of opportunities for men to rise and hew out fortune and position is going on. ”

“ The narrative of the crossing of these mountains, and the chain of events that led up to the successful attempt is widely known, but only in a general way. It is for this reason that a longer and more detailed account is given in these pages; and as the expedition was successful in opening up a way to the interior of the Continent, it is fitting that its leader and originator, Gregory Blaxland, should be classed amongst the makers of Australasia. ”

“ There are many varieties in New Zealand and Australia, especially in the former colony, and the authorities differ as to whether some should be classed as distinct species. Some are common to Australasia, others endemic in New Zealand or Australia ”

“ I have made passing mention, a moment ago, of the native Australasian's custom of speaking of England as "home." It was always pretty to hear it, and often it was said in an unconsciously caressing way that made it touching; in a way which transmuted a sentiment into an embodiment, and made one seem to see Australasia as a young girl stroking mother England's old gray head. ”

“ That they may treat Britain in the matter of trade no better than any foreign nation, while at the same time enjoying as of right all the protection that the British Empire is capable of affording them, for which they do not consider it incumbent upon them to give anything in return. I asked a prominent editor out here the other day, who was very strong in his remarks about the Old Country, what benefit he supposed she derived from the Australasian Colonies. ”

“ I cannot honestly say that this tends to narrowness of mind or outlook either, because so many of the members of these societies, both male and female, have travelled, if not at Home—as I gratefully note the Motherland is still called—to India, to Japan, or throughout the Australasian States. In fact, extended travel prevails here to an extent which is amazing compared with that of people with the same incomes and of the same class at home. ”

“ The conclusion of all this is, therefore, that in another hundred years the average Australasian will be a tall, coarse, strong-jawed, greedy, pushing, talented man, excelling in swimming and horsemanship. ”

“ These demands were favoured by successive Colonial Governments, which have [Pg 130] always had the interests of the workers at heart, being usually composed of men who had been hand-workers themselves. Of course, in the result the workers always won, amid the plaints of the shipowners who predicted ruin to their enterprises if such wages and such food were made compulsory. But the lugubrious prophecies of evil have not been fulfilled, even in the remotest sense, for to-day the coastal trade of Australasia is without a parallel in the world. ”

“ In this description of the condition of man in Oceania I have made no allusion to Australia and Tasmania, for the reason that the natives of the southern continent (of which Tasmania recently formed an outlying peninsula) differed so remarkably from the peoples of the Malay islands, New Guinea, Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia (including New Zealand) as to require separate treatment.
The aboriginal Australoids are the most primitive, the least improved of existing human races: although peculiarly developed in some points, they are the lowliest form of real mankind known to us. ”

“ There is an abundance of fine country in Western Australia. There are splendid forests in the south-west, and excellent pasture lands in the west and north. An American visitor once said that Western Australia had been run through an hour-glass, alluding to the great number of sandy regions in the limits of the territory. Of course we have considerable areas of desert, but his remark is unfair as a general description. We could support a large population, and when our advantages become better known we shall have it too. ”

“ Then the Australasian has the fighting equipment. He is superbly healthy, in spite of his leanness and the drawn look due to the lines that life bites into the faces of even the young men. These men of the sun-dried plains and the rocky ranges look upon illness as something unnatural, something to be ashamed of and concealed ”

“ There is so much territory in Australia that it is not likely the capabilities or disadvantages of all parts of it will be thoroughly known for many years to come.
AUSTRALIAN LYRE BIRDS.
"And now," he continued, as he glanced at a book he held in his hand, "let us read what an English author has written concerning this strange country:
"'Almost everything in nature is, in Australia, the reverse of what it is in England. When we have winter they have summer; when we have day they have night; we have our feet pressing nearly opposite to their feet. ”

“ Australia was originally peopled by two distinct types of men: the Australoids and the negroid Tasmanians. These last had the curly black hair and depressed noses of Negroes, though they were also akin to the Australoids; which last people, except that they are dark-skinned and brutish-looking, are remarkably like savage white men! They have head-hair which is neither lank like that of the Mongolian nor frizzly or tightly curled like the "wool" of Negroes and Papuans. ”