Australian

“ Now, this is the state of things that the Australians, on the very threshold of their existence as a people, have to face. So long as the Irish-Australian flocks slavishly obey their priests, there must be this great bar and division between what I have called the two races in Australia. ”

“ Each Australian acting on his own initiative, and all in their togetherness, created the Australian spirit, which again reacting upon each Australian induced him to act in accordance with that spirit. And so in time Australia, assimilating individuals from outside and absorbing them into its texture, and imbuing them with the Australian spirit, grew up into manhood in the Great War and astonished the world by its strong individuality, its character, intelligence, determination, and good comradeship. ”

“ The Australian temperament is not one which buries its grievances or harbors ill-feeling. The Australian speaks right out that which is on his mind. And though much must be discounted because of this bubbling personality, almost primitive in its extremes, nothing that affects Australia can long be ignored by us. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The descriptions of Australian life in the early colonial days are marked by an unmistakable touch of reality and personal experience. A book which the public will be more inclined to read than to criticise, and we commend, them to each other.’ —Athenæum. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For the Australian here has plunged straight into an existence more like that of a duck in a farmyard drain than to any other condition known or dreamed of in his own sunny land. He is resisting it not only passably but well. And if you want to know the reason—as far as any general reason can be given—the motive, which [Pg 190] keeps him trying day after day, is the desire that no man shall say a word against Australia. ”

“ The spirit of Australia can best be gauged by reading an extract from a letter written to the Australian wounded by a young lady who is a teacher at the High School in Ballarat, and which was cabled all over the world, since it echoes truly the pride of Australia in its heroes, and the determination of the Commonwealth that all shall be worthy of their devotion and grand patriotism. ”

“ The Australian national character is the English national character of, say, seventy or eighty years ago, subjected to isolation from all foreign influences, and to general conditions much easier and milder than those of England; given unlimited breathing-space, and freed from all pressure of confined population; cut off also, to a very great extent, from the influence of tradition and ancient institutions. For the lover of our British stock and the student of racial problems, I always think that Australia and its people offer a field of unique interest. ”

“ Australian, like the greatest of living poets in his youth, had, as we have seen, "dipped into the future far as human eye could see;" and perhaps, if one may be allowed to say so, somewhat further. The old Pioneer, after the pathetic manner of men who have turned the solemn side of fifty, prefers to look in the opposite direction. ”

“ Viewed in this light the sympathetic comprehension displayed by the Australian politician towards America is perhaps a fore-glimpse of the time when the various communities of the Old and the New Worlds, which speak the English tongue, and are mainly of English race, shall, under whatever number of local governments, be as one people and as one nation. ”

“ Born on the same stream, or tending the same herds, shall be those whose every waking thought is more or less connected with books; to whom the unvisited regions of the Old World, through such glorious guides, are rendered common and familiar. There is no generic native Australian definition, such as we carelessly apply to Englishmen, Americans, Frenchmen, or Germans, when we call the first practical, the second 'go-ahead,' the third gay, the fourth solid. The Australian, perhaps, more nearly resembles the Briton, from whom he has chiefly sprung, than any other sub-variety of mankind. ”

“ The Australian colonies may well be congratulated not only upon their taking upon themselves the entire cost and management of the exploration of this part of the empire, but upon the vigour with which they are prosecuting their exploratory duties—a vigour that promises ere long to make the whole of Australia about as familiar to us as the other parts of the colonial empire. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With equal heartiness we can appreciate and we can reciprocate the feelings of brotherliness and of respect and esteem, we for the Australians, that the Australians through his lips have told us they have for us, and when he goes back to Australia, after having seen something of our country, and speaks to his own kin there, he can carry to them just as warm appreciations from Canada as his eloquent can tongue put into language. ”

“ There are a number of local causes, a number of nationalities, a number of racial prejudices helping to build up the little Australian. But for the present the Imperialists of the continent can afford to smile at him. They know that his day is not yet. ”

“ I am proud that I am an Australian, a daughter of the Southern Cross, a child of the mighty bush. I am thankful I am a peasant, a part of the bone and muscle of my nation, and earn my bread by the sweat of my brow, as man was meant to do. I rejoice I was not born a parasite, one of the blood-suckers who loll on velvet and satin, crushed from the proceeds of human sweat and blood and souls. ”

“ The little Australian, despite his name, is not a product of the soil. He is manufactured abroad. In the main, he is the outcome of English criticism and of English public opinion. He is the result of influences at work outside Australia. Very often he is born with an Imperialistic, or it may be a jingoistic, temperament. But circumstances tend to drive him in upon himself ”

“ The only vocabulary of Australia, where the numerals run beyond five, is that of King George's Sound, as given in Mitchell's Australia.
The political constitution (if so it can be called) of the Australians is preeminently simple, exhibiting a society of families rather than of tribes; and one of the facts connected with the evidence in favour of the unity of the Australian division of mankind is the remarkable distribution of families bearing the same name. ”

“ My wife insists on considering Australia tropical!
“Do they wear gloves, do you suppose, in this place?” she said, taking a long pair of grey ones off the cabin sofa, with a somewhat scornful emphasis on the “this place” which expressed her private feeling about Australia generally.
“Of course they do; life in Australian towns is the same as life anywhere else,” I said, proud of my information, derived from the blue-books of the Agent-General. ”

“ For Australia, if the fact were only recognised, is a country in which it is possible to enjoy oneself finely, or to deny oneself greatly, as the mood pleases, independently of the world.
One characteristic of Australian society is its vulgarity ”

“ A further corroboration of the extreme importance of this element to the Western Australian is, that a native, in describing a fine country, always opens his narrative by stating the important fact--plenty water. ”

“ Australia is vast and of infinite variety. The efforts of an individual isolated by remoteness and the sea, must necessarily be circumscribed.
No Australian is able to affirm that his knowledge of the country is entirely satisfactory to himself. ”

“ The staple of our Australian colonies, but more particularly of New South Wales, the climate and the soil of which are peculiarly suited to its production,—is fine wool. ”

“ Such pictures of human life enable us to understand the condition of savagery, the grade of its usages, the degree of material development, and the low level of the mental and moral life of the people. Australian humanity, as seen in their cannibal customs, stands on as low a plane as it has been known to touch on the earth. And yet the Australians possessed an area of continental dimensions, rich in minerals, not uncongenial in climate, and fairly supplied with the means of subsistence. ”

“ Their intellectual capacity appears to be very small, and their physical structure is extremely feeble. In some respects the Australian peculiarly assimilates to two of the five varieties of the human race. ”

“ The character of the Australian natives is frank, open, and confiding. In a short intercourse they are easily made friends, and when such terms are once established, they associate with strangers with a freedom and fearlessness, that would give little countenance to the impression so generally entertained of their treachery. ”

“ Still less does the Australian show any resemblance to the Polynesian, the Malayan, or the Chinese. He is darker, and his eyes are horizontal. If he has not a better head, he has probably, from what is known of him, a brain of a different quality. ”

“ The native-born Australian, approaching the land of his fathers for the first time, comes to it with a mass of cherished lore and associations at least equal in weight and effect to my childhood's knowledge and experience of England. He very often comes also to relatives. ”

“ A long array of tautological detail is inseparable from the records of Australian, as well as any other exploration, because it must be remembered that others, who come after, must be guided by the experiences and led to places, and waters, that the first traveller discovers ”

“ No, no, the flimsy hills of Australia were like a new world, and the frail inconspicuousness of the landscape, that was still so clear and clean, clean of all fogginess or confusion: but the frail, aloof, inconspicuous clarity of the landscape was like a sort of heaven—bungalows, shacks, corrugated iron and all. No wonder Australians love Australia. It is the land that as yet has made no great mistake, humanly. The horrible human mistakes of Europe. ”

“ For the first time in history, as Sir Edmund Barton pointed out with apt terseness during the campaign for federation, there has been 'a continent for a nation and a nation for a continent.'
Such a country, so situated and with these resources, should have a great destiny, provided that its people are well directed and possess a clear conception of their public duty. What, then, is the Australian people? And what the aims and methods of its politics?
The Reaction.
English sentiment toward Australia is suffering from a cold fit. People are a little 'tired' of her! ”

“ For the British reader to be able to grapple with these Australian problems, it is, above all things, necessary that he should keep steadily before his mind the utterly different social conditions of the two communities. ”

“ The young Australian was constantly referred to as though he could already be differentiated from the Anglo-Saxon. The youths were described as tall, loose-limbed and fair, with small features, and though strong, not so athletic looking as Englishmen. ”

“ Broadly speaking, what was represented in the noble assemblage was worth. The worthiest of Australia were there—the men who hold their distinguished positions because they have won them, and because they deserve them. All that is best in politics, in commerce, in industry, in the arts, in the Church, in the school, in the public service of Australia was represented there, and every heart beat high with pride and with hope. ”

“ I say this to show that there is more to be said for the Australian point of view than some people are inclined to suppose. Of course a great deal depends upon whether the huge northern territory can be populated by white men. ”

“ We as Australians delighting in the glorious climate of this favoured land, rejoice at, and, with all our energy and all our strength, standing shoulder to shoulder in muscular rivalry with our fellow colonists, assist in every work for the advancement of our adopted country, loyally striving for and proud of its progress, the report of which reads like a chapter of romance. ”

“ I was welcomed to Australia by a hospitable letter from the Premier, Mr. Hughes, who assured me that he would do what he could to make our visit a pleasant one, and added, "I hope you will see Australia as it is, for I want you to tell the world about us. We are a very young country, we have a very big and very rich heritage, and the great war has made us realise that we are Australians, proud to belong to the Empire, but proud too of our own country." ”

“ Our South Australian farmers left their holdings in the hands of their wives and children too young to take with them, but almost all of them returned to grow grain and produce to send to Victoria. ”

“ Then will our destinies be in the hands of men who will be influenced only by a sincere and creditable amor patriæ, whose united cry may be earnestly resounded from York to Otway, from Perth to Brisbane—Australia for the Australians! ”