Part 5

Some of the railways have done more than develop the mining areas; they have been pushed westward into the pastoral country on the long inland slopes of Queensland. We have already followed the southern lines for some distance, and we must now carry our exploration beyond the railway zone, for a very large area in the State is as yet quite untouched by railways. This area will be greatly reduced by the execution of the scheme contemplated by the State Government for linking up all the railways both along the coast and inland. First there is the country in the basin of the Flinders River, round the southern end of the Gulf of Carpentaria; this is being opened up slowly from the sea. It contains much good pasture land, and already feeds a large number of cattle. Further south is the drier country where the streams drain towards the Lake Eyre basin; this is part of the Rolling Plains which occupy West and South-West Queensland and the north-west corner of New South Wales. This area is most interesting owing to the possibility of obtaining water from beneath the ground.

The rainfall is somewhat scanty, and in the dry weather the creeks lose themselves in the desert sands or become mere strings of waterholes. There may be enough food for the cattle or sheep, but they must have water also, and this can only be found underground. In the higher country to the east, where the rains are relatively heavy, are large areas where the water sinks readily into the ground, as the rock is porous. A long way below the surface it is held up by impervious strata of clay or rock and begins to creep away downhill towards the west and the Gulf of Carpentaria. To the west the surface also becomes impermeable, so that the water is confined between the two layers, and can be reached anywhere by boring through the top covering. Sometimes in these boreholes the water does not rise as far as the surface of 58 the ground, and so must be pumped up; but more often it spouts out with great force, as we see it here. Some of these artesian wells give over a million gallons a day, and penetrate for three or four thousand feet into the earth. The water is often warm and charged with salts; but this does not seem to harm the cattle. The water from the bore is run off into trenches extending perhaps for miles, so that there is plenty of room for the cattle to drink. By the aid of these wells cattle can live in the country all the year round; and even the desert stock-route from South Australia to Queensland can be kept open in the dry season. The utilisation of a simple geological fact is changing the whole face of the country.

We have already seen that most of the chief towns of Queensland lie on or near the coast, and that there are many harbours, often protected by islands. The towns are there because the country was developed for the most part from the sea, and in fact settlement inland is still confined to the neighbourhood of the railways running up-country from these coast towns. The harbours are there because the land has sunk and the coast is partly drowned, giving deep sea-inlets, often where the sea has flooded some old river valley. As the coast gradually sank, the coral builders were at work, piling up their reefs in the warm shallows. So we get the Great Barrier Reef, stretching for fifteen hundred miles along 59 the coast and leaving a calm though rather dangerous channel between itself and the mainland. The reef is really a series of reefs, resting on a platform of older rock, and pierced with numerous openings, especially where the larger rivers enter the sea; for the coral will not grow in fresh water. In the neighbourhood of this reef, especially in the north, towards Thursday Island, fishing for pearl oysters is largely carried on. The oysters are valuable for the mother of pearl, rather than for the pearls themselves, which are very small. Here, too, is found in great quantity the trepang, or sea slug as it is sometimes 60 called, looking like millions of brown cucumbers crawling over the reef. Here is a portrait of one kind of the trepang; it does 61 not seem very appetising, but the Chinese consider it a great delicacy. Nearly the whole of the trepang gathered in this region is exported to China, after being first cooked and dried. The rest is eaten by the natives, as it does not appeal to European tastes.

In New South Wales we did not encounter the aboriginal Australian, since there he has practically disappeared. But he still survives in considerable numbers in parts of Queensland, where the country is less favourable for white occupation or has been settled for a shorter period. Government at the present day protects the aborigines as far as possible; but none the less they are steadily dying out and do not count in the future development of the country. We have already seen how, for the hard work of the plantations, the brown men from the islands of the Pacific were brought in, as there was no native labour available. The Kanaka has now been rejected, and Australia steadily refuses to admit the Chinese, who seem to be able to adapt themselves to any country and any climate. So the future of this northern part of the continent depends largely on the extent to which the natural resources of the country, as distinct from its minerals, can be exploited by purely white labour. Some parts of the coastlands are clearly not fitted for European occupation, and the policy of a White Australia is only rendered possible by the fact that the elevation of much of the country within the Tropic greatly modifies the climatic conditions. If Northern Australia had been a great lowland, its history must have been far different.

LECTURE IV

VICTORIA AND TASMANIA

Following the example of the original settlers, we will approach Melbourne from the sea, as in this way we shall perhaps get the 1 clearest view of the peculiarities of the State of Victoria. From Sydney to Cape Howe, we are still following the coastal plain of New South Wales, with the plateau edge in the background. But when we round Cape Howe and turn westward the coast changes: a series of mountain ridges runs down to the sea, ending in promontories with fiord-like inlets between them. The eastern end of Victoria is occupied by an irregular mountain mass, trending on the whole north and south. West of the mouth of the Snowy River, the coast scenery changes again, and we have Ninety Mile Beach. Here long banks of sand, brought by the strong currents from the west, have silted up the mouth of an old river valley. The water is thus held up and spreads out into lagoons, which 2 communicate with the sea here and there through narrow channels. Further west still are isolated mountain ranges, one of which ends at Wilson Promontory, the southernmost point of the mainland of Australia. In the bight between this promontory and Cape Otway, lie Western Port and Port Phillip, wide bays with narrow entrances. Beyond Port Phillip the coast is fringed by the Otway ranges; and then follows a low plain, with few inlets or good harbours, a region of lakes and swamps. So we see three great irregular curves or bights, with great variety of coast-line; Port Phillip lies at the top of the middle curve. It is a 3 drowned valley, like the lagoons further east, and is almost blocked at the mouth by the drifting sands. It is the only good natural harbour on this part of the coast, and is still the centre of settlement and of the area of densest population.

Though the harbour of Port Phillip was discovered at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was over thirty years before a permanent settlement was planted on its shores. Something was learnt of the country in 1824, when Hume and Hovell, travelling overland from New South Wales along the route now partly followed by the railway, reached the spot where Geelong now stands. The coast at that time was unoccupied, except for a few whalers who were settled at Portland in the far west. The real occupation of Victoria was brought about by the fusion of two distinct streams of immigrants, one coming by land, the other by sea. In 1836 Sir Thomas Mitchell, one of the greatest of the New South Wales explorers, came over from the Murray basin and discovered the fertile plains at the back of Port Phillip; Australia Felix he named this country of promise. His report on the country led to a rapid movement from New South Wales over the border southward. But the journey from Sydney by land was long and arduous, and the southern part of Victoria, like the coast region of New South Wales, was most easily and naturally settled from the sea.

In 1835 a Tasmanian, John Batman, representing a syndicate of Tasmanians, surveyed the site of Melbourne and tried to buy it from the natives; but the New South Wales Government refused to sanction the arrangement. Still other Tasmanians followed, and a body led by Fawkner actually settled on the Yarra in 1835. The two parties naturally quarrelled and the matter was complicated by the fact that New South Wales claimed the whole territory. The British Government supported this claim, and, as a result, in spite of the difficulty of communication, the people of Melbourne had to send their parliamentary representative to Sydney for some years. At length, in 1851, the Port Phillip district became independent and was re-named Victoria. The name of the State and its capital easily remind us of its history; for the official founding of Melbourne was in 1837, when Queen Victoria came to the throne and Lord Melbourne was Prime Minister.

Melbourne and Port Phillip have not the picturesque appearance of Port Jackson and Sydney; the broad, lagoon-like harbour does not lend itself to scenic effects, and we have not the deep-water inlets penetrating the heart of the city which add so much to the beauty and utility of Sydney. Melbourne is built on the level, with broad, straight streets and fine buildings, modern and handsome, a typical Australian city. Here are Collins Street and 4,5 Bourke Street. Here again are some of the Government offices; the 6 statue in the foreground is one of General Gordon.

Melbourne is a true city of the plains; we have already noticed that Port Phillip itself is merely part of a drowned plain. On either side of Melbourne, between the mountains on the north, which form a continuous wall from east to west of the State, and the broken ranges of the coast lies a great lowland, a series of plains dotted with marshes and detached hills. This is the Great Valley of Victoria. In the west it is largely covered with lavas, poured out from volcanoes now extinct. We can trace many of the old craters, especially in the district round Ballarat. 7 Here is one of them from the inside; notice the shape of the rocks. It is the lava and the river alluvium which have made the Great Valley the most fertile area of the whole State. Eastward the plain narrows for a space and then broadens out again in the valley of the Latrobe, behind the lagoons and the Ninety Mile Beach. The early settlers were quick to notice the fine grasses on these open plains; they started with sheep, but with the growth of communications dairy farming and butter making have increased greatly. Here we have a typical view on the plains, not far from the great Lake Korangamite. It is open rolling country, 8 and the building in the foreground is a large dairy. We may see the butter being brought in from a branch factory to the central collecting station, and can watch the latest methods of working it by machinery. We shall find the same scenery and the same industry all over this area.

Here is another typical scene: a string of draught horses is 9 being brought in for sale, and we can follow them back to their feeding ground on the rich grass of the open country. Victoria, 10 with a much smaller area, values her horses at about four-fifths of the total value of those of New South Wales. They are not raised only for farm purposes as the picture before us proves. It is a race meeting, and we might imagine ourselves in England but 11 for the strange shape of some of the carriages.

We have had a glimpse of one aspect of Victoria; the port, the city, and the plain. Now let us turn to the mountains. We have seen that the east end of the State is almost filled up by a mass 12 of highland, and we may notice that the railways only touch the outer fringe of this district. It is out of the world and thinly peopled, though much of it is well fitted for cattle. Westward the highland becomes narrower and sends out spurs on either side, leaving the Great Valley on the south, and on the north and north-west a broad plain sloping down to the Murray River. This corresponds somewhat to the slope west of the Divide in New South Wales, but the climate, as we shall see, is not the same.

As we leave Melbourne and follow the Yarra up-stream we soon 13 notice a change of scenery. At Warburton, the rail head, we are well within the highlands. The river runs through forests of eucalyptus and fern, and we notice rapids below the primitive 14 bridge. It is evidently a mountain stream. This district is one of the playgrounds of Melbourne, and we stumble on the Christmas 15 camp of the Boy Scouts, who are known in Australia as well as in our own part of the Empire. A few miles away to the north is 16 Healesville. We notice here, as we drive through, that there are some trees which seem to have shed their leaves. Perhaps these 17 are some English trees of which many have been imported, and they find the weather too dry and hot; for close by we find the native forest with trees in full leaf. In spite of the presence of English trees, we may easily recognise the country as Australia by the great gum trees, with their bare trunks, and the thorny acacia growing below. The gums and the tree ferns are everywhere 18 on the hillsides. Even the house and garden, which we see here, have a slightly foreign look, and do not seem adapted for the 19 conditions of an English winter. In fact, there is no winter, as we understand it, in this part of Victoria, though snow may lie for months on the heights of the Alps to the north-east. We must remember that Melbourne lies in nearly the same latitude as Seville. In the hills to the north of Melbourne we find the same scenery, with its abundance of streams and trees. Here is a woodland scene not far from Mount Macedon in this district, where 20 the Governor of Victoria has his summer home.

* * * * *

Let us now travel westward by the railway to Ballarat, which lies on the south face of the narrow ridge which forms the water-parting between the Victorian Valley and the north-western plains. Ballarat is a fine town, second only to Melbourne, and planted in far more picturesque surroundings. Here is Sturt 21 Street, named after one of Australia’s greatest explorers; 22 looking down it we can just see Mount Warrenheit in the distance. We can wander in the Botanical Gardens where the aloe is in 23 flower, or stroll by the lake and admire the black swans. But we have not come here only for the scenery. Ballarat represents the second great factor in the development of Victoria: gold.

Within ten years of 1851, when gold was discovered here in paying quantities, all the chief fields of Victoria were opened up, and there was a sudden rush of settlers to the country. Many of the goldfields are so near Melbourne that it may be considered as a centre of mining as well as of pastoral industries. Thus we may account for the fact that it has to-day concentrated in its neighbourhood nearly half of the total population of the State. The gold most easily reached was in the underground leads, the channels of old streams, or fissures in the rock. In these were found nuggets and gold dust. Here we see the primitive methods of mining. A group of miners is sinking a simple shaft and raising 24 the soil in buckets, while another washes it in a pan to separate the heavier gold dust. The pick and shovel and the strong arm 25 of the miner are the chief instruments needed for this form of mining; and the fact that the goldfields are in the midst of fertile country, with farms all around them, makes the life much less hard than in some of the fields of the far interior of Australia which we shall visit later.

The modern method of mining is to attack the quartz rock by the aid of machinery; and the shafts are often carried to a great depth. Here, instead of the tents of the miners, we see what might be the top of a coal mine, with elaborate machinery for 26 winding. We shall examine this type of mine elsewhere; for though gold has made Victoria in the past, it is not now the chief gold-producing State in the Commonwealth. So we pass on, after a glance at a quartz reef cropping out from the ground--a sign that 27 has often guided the prospector in his search.

We have seen that as we travel eastward along the ridge on which we are standing, the forest grows more dense and settlement thinner, while roads and railways disappear. But the greatest change is found as we travel north and north-west from Ballarat. We have crossed to the inner slope of the highlands and are entering a very dry country. In the districts which we have visited the rainfall is not unlike that of the Midlands of 28 England, though most comes in the winter time from the westerly winds. The extreme east of the State has also, like Sydney, a good deal of rain in summer from the Pacific. But the great plain sloping to the Murray is cut off by the highlands from the moist winds of the oceans and exposed to dry hot winds sweeping down from the deserts of the interior. The rivers end in shallow lakes and marshes on the arid plain; and we may notice that the railways push out into this district and stop in similar fashion. It is a region of sandhills, heaths, and a dense scrub, called _mallee_; dreary and desolate at first sight, but not altogether without promise. The soil is very fertile, being composed of the old river silts, and with light rains at the right season, or by the aid of irrigation, it will grow fine crops. Here we see the beginning of the process of cultivation, by the rolling down of 29 the _mallee_ scrub.

With large areas of fertile land lying waste for want of water, and water in abundance in the rivers, we should expect that attempts would be made to bring the two together. In New South Wales, near Yass on the Murrumbidgee, a great scheme is in progress. The Barren Jack dam, when finished next year, will hold up and make available for agriculture, a mass of water comparable to that of the Nile at Assuan. It will preserve, for the dry season, the water from the winter rains and the melting snows of spring. Other schemes are proposed for the Lachlan and Murray; up to the present, however, the chief development of irrigation has been in Victoria, on the streams flowing into the Murray and on the main river itself. Here we see the process of impounding 30 the water; notice the woods in the background which show that we are on the upper course of the stream, near the hills and the region of heavier rainfall. Here again is a great reservoir being 31 excavated, to hold the flood water; and next we may see the water flowing out into the irrigation channel. In another place the 32 water is being pumped up into high-level tanks for distribution. 33 The river has gradually built up a flood plain at a higher level than its usual channel; so that the water must be raised before it will flow over the fields. At Mildura and Renmark, the latter in South Australia, a large fruit-growing industry has been developed on the basis of irrigation. So we find lemons and apricots, and above all the currant and the vine which give us our dried currants and raisins.

But the supply of water in the rivers is limited, for the rivers are not broad or deep, in spite of their great length. One of the chief difficulties of all irrigation schemes is to avoid damage to the interests of people living lower down the stream, or interference with the navigation. In this matter the interests of all three States of the Commonwealth must be considered, since the Murray basin is divided among them. As we have already noticed in the case of Queensland and New South Wales, the State boundaries only coincide in part with natural features of the country.

The whole character of the river basin depends on the distribution of the rainfall. In the case of all three States there is a similar arrangement: first the coast belt, which is more varied and irregular in Queensland and Victoria than in New South Wales; then the highland edge, and then the back slope with a zone of moderate rainfall which shades off gradually into desert conditions. This zone narrows as we come southwards until it almost disappears in South Australia. But before following it out into this last State we will cross Bass Strait to visit Tasmania. Victoria, though a mere corner of the Australian continent, is about the size of Great Britain, while Tasmania is not very much smaller than Ireland, and both could support a very dense population. We must bear these facts in mind during our rapid journey through the country, since the maps in our atlases, for the most part, give us utterly wrong impressions as to the area of Australia.

If we look at a chart showing the depths of the sea, we may 34 notice that Bass Strait is shallow while the surrounding seas are deep. From Wilson Promontory we can trace a connexion through Flinders and Cape Barren Islands, to the north-east horn of the curved coast of Tasmania. A similar bridge runs through from the north-west horn, through the Hunter Islands and King Island. We may be reminded of the shallows of the English Channel and the North Sea, and can easily imagine that Tasmania, like England, at some very remote period formed part of the neighbouring continental mainland. We find, moreover, a general similarity between the plants and animals on the opposite sides of the Strait; but there are also some marked differences which suggest that Tasmania was separated very long ago and so has had a peculiar and isolated development.