Australia

“ I took you from near Sydney to see the Australian forest and to learn something of its trees and flowers, because that part I know best, and its beauties are the typical beauties of the Bush. Almost anywhere else in the continent where settlement is, something of the same can be enjoyed. A Hobart picnic-party would turn its face towards Mount Wellington, and after passing over the foothills devoted to orchards, scale the great gum-forested mountain, and thus have added to the delights of the woods the beautiful landscape which the height affords. ”

“ I have never yet met a British man or boy who was of the right manly type who did not love Australian life after a little experience. The great distances, the cheery hospitality, the sunny climate, the sense of social freedom, the generous return which Nature gives to the man who offers her honest service—all these appeal and make up the sum of that strong attraction Australia has to her own children and to colonists from the Motherland. ”

“ The scenery of Australia partakes of all characters. Sometimes miles of swamp reminds one of the Lincolnshire fens; at other times it assumes quite a park-like appearance, though the effect is greatly injured by the want of freshness about the foliage, which always looks of a dirty, dingy green. The native trees in Australia never shed their leaves, never have that exquisite young tint which makes an English spring in the country so delicious. ”

“ His flashing eyes scan the earth, the woods, the sky, and peer among the trees, and over the long stretches of Australian country, for sign of game. No human being observes him; the whole active world is far away. ”

“ Australia has acquired her territory under the aegis of the Union Jack, and that cheaply and without contest. The great motherland flag, fluttering over this great island—or continent, shall I call it?—ensures peace and prosperity to her inhabitants. No other country in the world enjoys such freedom, without preliminary expense in blood and treasure, as does this land of Australia. The great mother country is lenient with her fair daughter in her woman-like perverse moods. ”

“ As a matter of fact, I had conceived a very clear mental picture of Australia as a burly, farmer-like person, with one hand outstretched in welcome, the other filled with desirable billets of all sorts, which awaited some new-comer, with that wide outlook possible only to one who has rubbed shoulders with the oldest civilization, the completest culture. ”

“ Australia especially seems the very land of uniformity and monotony, the same dull and sombre vegetation, the same marsupial type of animals, spread over the whole, land from the gloomy capes of the south coast of Tasmania, and the stormy Leeuwin, to the cloudless and burning skies of Torres Straits and Port Essington. ”

“ To my mind the exterior aspects and character of Australia are fascinating things to look at and think about, they are so strange, so weird, so new, so uncommonplace, such a startling and interesting contrast to the other sections of the planet, the sections that are known to us all, familiar to us all. ”

“ Australia is the corpus vile on which England makes her legislative experiments. In this direction there is a great deal of useful information in the study of our politics to an outsider; but to go into the question at large would take up a three-volume publication instead of a short letter, and my present purpose is merely to give an outline of the existing situation in each colony, only touching upon so much of their past history as is necessary for the understanding of their present position. ”

“ The next position in which we find the future inhabitant of Australia is the land of promise gained, roaming delighted among the thick forests and the delightful valleys, of which he is thereafter to be lord and master. ”

“ Let any man lay the map of Australia before him, and regard the blank upon its surface, and then let me ask him if it would not be an honourable achievement to be the first to place foot in its centre. ”

“ People with admirable intentions have recommended Australia, as an escape from mere frivolous amusements, to cultivate various forms of the strenuous life—for example, the life in barracks, the life in libraries, the life on the intellectual mountain top, the life in the home. It is unquestionable that a new development of some kind is badly needed. ”

“ The coming Australian is to enter upon the stage freed from all the wretched impedimenta of the historic past. His advent is to mark an entirely new era. When he takes over his patrimony, Australia, from his father, the "foreigner," the astonished Old World will see something very like a new revelation upon this earth. ”

“ Of later date, and still more rapid in development, Australia rises, a triumphant proof of England's power to rescue wild lands from barrenness; to wrest from utter savagedom those mighty tracts of the earth's surface wasted from the creation of the world,—a darkness to be enlightened by English colonization. ”

“ Then this year, 1963, I came to Australia to take part in Canberra's 50th anniversary celebration. These are all vitally important milestones in Australia's history because they represent progressive steps.
The rivalry between the States, the intense local patriotism of cities and districts is a typical sign of a healthy and vigorous democratic people, but Australia's future and prospects turn on the whole Australian nation.
Of all the continents, Australia has the unique distinction and advantage of being one people under one Government. ”

“ The early settlers brought with them to their new home that passion for the romance of the sea which was peculiar to the days of long sailing voyages. They still delight in the old sea chanties. Australia, sprung from the loins of the sea, has the same love for the element, the same longing for sea-power which characterizes Britannia. ”

“ To-day, to-morrow, and henceforward Western Australia is not the forgotten, the despised, and the rejected amidst the colonies of Australasia, but the one most likely to take the leading place in material wealth and prosperity. No longer the land of sand and sorrow, Western Australia has become an auriferous empire, which the British peoples may well be proud to possess for a heritage. ”

“ There are certain qualities—virtues, they may be called—that come prominently under notice in Australia and appear, from their habit of repeating themselves, to form some integral part of the life of the community. The foremost of these good qualities is that of hospitality. And here a singular anomaly presents itself. Politically the Australians are the most exclusive and the most inhospitable race on earth. ”

“ Western Australia, in effect, is a colony which has been brought very prominently under the notice of the English public during the past four or five years, on account of the remarkable gold discoveries which have taken place there. But no traveller, who is not also an explorer and is prepared to devote years to the task, can hope to take anything but a hasty glance here and there in passing at this great area, which comprises nearly one-third of the whole Australian continent, and is equal to one-fourth of Europe, with Great Britain and Ireland included. ”

“ Western Australia, as its name implies, is the tract of country lying upon the western side of the great island continent of the south. A glance at the map shows that the eastern side of the island, and much of the southern, is occupied by the colonies of South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland, the land in which is taken up by squatters, by agriculturists and miners for hundreds of miles inland, while the coast-line is studded with large cities, like Melbourne, Sydney, and Adelaide, and with numerous flourishing settlements. ”

“ It was really the outward sign of the affection and love for the Old Country and home inherited by the colonists. Indeed, the rising Australian generation realized what a glorious and magnificent heritage the Mother Country had so generously and freely entrusted to the care of the early pioneers, their forbears. From the day when the first Englishman set 189 foot in Australia and the first settlement was founded, right up to the year 1884, when the offer was made, no enemy had ever threatened Australia’s shores.
Australians rejoice that theirs is the only “virgin” continent in this world. ”

“ On the same line of reasoning, if Australians were to be Australians, or rather if Australians were as separate from any other nation as Australia from any other land, there would be no jealousy between them on England’s account. ”

“ And it must be remembered that if Australia, with all its effervescence of youth and ambition, has not yet found its intellectual footing, it is merely exemplifying a familiar stage in the life of man, which has a counterpart and analogy in the larger life of a nation. ”

“ AN OUTLINE OF AUSTRALIAN HISTORY The history of Australia illustrates in broad outlines how a continent inhabited by a most primitive race of men becomes known to the Europeans, how the latter colonise the country and drive the natives before them, and how the new community is organised and developed. ”

“ Wherever I went, I perceived that Western Australia, though not a country of richness, was nevertheless a land in which an honest worker of shrewd wit has rarely failed to gather round him, as years went on, the possessions which constitute a modest competence, and perhaps something more, enjoyed amidst the affections and the ties of a home in which he can take life easily in the evening of his days, and from which he can see his children marry and go forth to such other homes of their own. ”

“ Think of Australia alone—parts of which I have seen grow under my own eyes, and have even known some of the first white men who ever set foot on a part of its shores—the now colony of Victoria—and made of it in such a short space of time so great a land. The story of that fine race, the Hentys, ought to stimulate any one. ”

“ What, then, will a new survey of mankind from the Linnaean point of view teach us?
The great antipodal block of land we call Australia has, speaking roughly, the form of a vast quadrangle, 2,000 miles on the side, and extends from the hottest tropical, to the middle of the temperate, zone. Setting aside the foreign colonists introduced within the last century, it is inhabited by people no less remarkable for the uniformity, than for the singularity, of their physical characters and social state. ”

“ Australia, though a continent, is a part of the Empire of Great Britain. A few years ago it was a wild country, where no white people lived, filled with Blacks, who were man-eating savages. These are fast dying out, but in this story you will learn something about them, and of the lives of your Australian Cousins. ”

“ And so Australia. No meadows and fields showing fair down to the sea, nor aught, as in other lands, to hint of the great wealth of love and riches within her. Shelving rock coast, capped with hopeless and forbidding, dry coastal scrub - you'd never dream of what was behind and within. Australia, my Australia; and I hold her mine as no man ever did, or ever shall.
This work is in the public domain in Australia because it was created in Australia and the term of copyright has expired. ”

“ Australia.—From Africa let us take a steamship and go east across the Indian ocean. We come to Australia, the smallest of the continents. It is partly in the South Temperate zone and partly in the Torrid.
When it was discovered only black savages lived there, but now most of its people are English. The plants and animals of Australia are unlike those of any other continent. The leaves of some of the trees are turned edgewise. Many trees shed their bark instead of their leaves. Australia produces a great amount of wool, wheat, and gold. ”

“ Judging from the experience I have had in travelling through the Continent of Australia for the last twenty-two years, and also from the description that other explorers have given of the different portions they have examined in their journeys, I have no hesitation in saying, that the country that I have discovered on and around the banks of the Adelaide River is more favourable than any other part of the continent for the formation of a new colony. ”

“ Australia so much mention has been made, had waited weather-bound on a lonely coast, never before trodden by the foot of civilised man, until eight days had been consumed in watching to no purpose the winds and the waves,—when, at a distance of thousands of miles from their native country, and many hundreds of miles from the nearest English colony, he and his little party were wasting strength and provisions in a desert spot ”

“ Though Australia calls up no historical recollections, no classical associations of ideas, it has other, and not less valid titles to our attention. It is a new and vast country, over the largest portion of which a veil of mystery still hangs; many of its productions vary in a singular manner, from those in other parts of the world; within the memory of man one British colony has risen there, in spite of adverse circumstances, to a high degree of prosperity; others have been founded, which promise to be equally successful ”

“ On the borders of the “Australian continent,” and reaching back long hundreds of miles, there was much beautiful country, but there was a vast interior, which, though red on the map, was almost too thin even to hold the paint.
As a fact, much of the surface of Australia was afflicted, like many of her people, with an insatiable thirst. To the uninformed, this “dry” and hot interior gave Australia a “bad name,” as people are usually influenced by “sound,” and they rarely stop to reflect how many grand empires might be carved out from these fertile borders and plains. ”