Part 7

We have already seen how, on the constitution of Queensland as a separate State in 1859, the country to the west was left as 25 a detached portion of New South Wales. In 1855, Gregory had crossed what is now the Northern Territory, from the Victoria River in the west to the Flinders River, and so through North Queensland to Brisbane, following the line taken earlier by the explorer Leichhardt, but further inland. At the same time, various explorers had been following up Eyre’s discoveries in South Australia, and miners and shepherds were pushing steadily northwards from Yorke Peninsula along the line of the present railway. In 1859, South Australia offered a prize for the first explorer to cross the continent from south to north, urged on by the proposal to connect Australia with England by a cable which must be landed somewhere on the north coast. A party from Victoria, under Burke, started first, and following roughly the western boundaries of New South Wales and Queensland, came out by way of the Flinders River to the Gulf of Carpentaria. But on their return Burke and Wills perished at Cooper’s Creek of starvation, and only one member of the party was rescued.

In 1862, Stuart, for South Australia, succeeded in crossing to the north coast and returning to Adelaide by the route west of Lake Eyre which is now followed by the railway and telegraph. The immediate result was that the Northern Territory became politically part of South Australia, instead of being an annex to New South Wales; but it has recently been transferred to the Commonwealth Government by which it is now administered. By 1872, the telegraph line was completed to Palmerston, the northern capital, on Port Darwin, where the cable is landed. By 1889, the railway from the south had been pushed forward to Oodnadatta, nearly seven hundred miles from Adelaide; while in the north one hundred and fifty miles of line was built southwards. Some day, probably in the near future, the rail will stretch from shore to shore, but there still remains a gap of over a thousand miles.

North of Lake Eyre, and on the Tropic, the Territory is crossed by the Macdonell Ranges, running east and west. Then comes a stretch of five hundred miles of sandy plains, with scrub and spinifex, and then the peninsula of Arnhem Land, a low plateau with a considerable rainfall. Right on the coast are mangrove swamps and tropical rainfall, as in North Queensland. Though some of this country is suited to cattle, and gold has also been discovered, progress has not been very rapid, in spite of the importance of the magnificent harbour of Port Darwin. The population consists of a few hundred Europeans, as many Asiatics, mainly Chinese, and some thousands of aborigines.

After Stuart’s journey there remained only to complete the conquest of the desert from east to west. In 1840, Eyre had succeeded in travelling from Adelaide to West Australia along the shores of the Great Australian Bight. It was 1870 before Sir John Forrest traversed the same route in the opposite direction. The result was the occupation of Eucla, in the middle of the Bight, and the completion of the overland wire from Adelaide to Albany in 1877. Finally, in 1874, Forrest crossed the middle of the great plateau, from Geraldton to the north-south telegraph line. A few daring journeys and the two telegraph lines still represent the only land links between the detached areas of settlement which fringe the central plateau block; but a stronger link will soon be forged. Already the work is in hand. A survey of the route was completed in 1909 by the Federal Government; and at the end of 1911 a Bill was passed for the construction of a railway from Port Augusta to Kalgoorlie, a distance of over 1000 miles. This line will not only shorten the mail route to the eastern States, but may also lead to some pastoral settlement, as not all the country traversed is desert.

South and Western Australia, with the Northern Territory, together include nearly two-thirds of the continent. Western Australia alone includes nearly a third. It is rather more than five times the size of Spain, but its population is smaller than that of any of the States of the mainland. The reason for this contrast is partly a matter of history, as the State is comparatively young, and partly due to geographical causes, as we shall see when we have examined the country.

The map shows Western Australia stretching from north to south, 26 across the whole breadth of the continent, with the Tropic running through the middle. It corresponds in position to Queensland and New South Wales; for Cape Londonderry is in the same latitude as the middle of Cape York Peninsula in Queensland, while Albany is a little south of Sydney. The greater part of the State is occupied by a broad plateau, from a thousand to fifteen hundred feet high; between this and the sea is a narrow coastal plain, irregular and deeply indented in the north, narrower and more uniform towards the south, and disappearing in the south-west corner where the plateau edge approaches the sea. We may notice a certain likeness here to the structure of the eastern end of the continent. We shall find nearly the whole of the agricultural population collected along a comparatively narrow belt of country from Geraldton to Albany, with Perth, the capital, in the middle. On the plateau there are no great rivers, but many short streams run down from its western edge to the sea; and though the map shows large lakes in the interior we shall find that in this case the map is not entirely to be trusted.

The Swan River was discovered by Captain Stirling on his exploring mission from Sydney in 1827. Two years later Captain Fremantle took formal possession, and the Swan River Settlement was founded. The Home Government was at first doubtful about the project, but was urged on to the settlement through fear of French occupation. Perth itself lies twelve miles up the river; 27 its port is Fremantle, at the mouth of the river, on a deep and safe harbour, crowded with wharves and shipping. It is the main 28 outlet for the trade of all this part of Western Australia.

Instead of taking the train we will travel by launch up the Swan River; on our way we notice the large flocks of black swans 29 which are now collected here and preserved by the Government. The city of Perth is smaller and more irregular than Adelaide or Melbourne, and we see it at its best as we approach by the river. It lies rather in a hollow, and from the higher land in 30 the King’s Park we get a fine view along the river front. The main streets differ little from those of other Australian cities; but in St. George’s Terrace they are working on the road, and 31 we notice that the old tree stumps are not yet removed. Although Perth is making very rapid progress, everything is as yet somewhat quieter, more picturesque and on a smaller scale than in the great capitals of the eastern States. On the outskirts of the city, especially overlooking the river, are the gardens and houses of the wealthier residents. Here is one of these; notice 32 the lemon trees laden with fruit, although it is winter. In the country round we shall feel quite at home. Here we have a picture with pasture and scattered trees and fat cattle; and we pass a 33 poultry farm which might well be in a corner of Surrey.

Let us follow the Swan, now become the Avon River, inland. First we come to Newcastle, where there are many orange orchards in the broad valley; then we pass the township of Northam, where we meet a native woman on the road, and finally we reach York. From 34 one of the surrounding hills we look down on a broad expanse of plain, dotted with farmhouses, and with a background of hills in 35 the distance. There is a flour mill which might be in our own Yorkshire, and a very English-looking church on the sloping bank 36 above the river. All looks settled and civilised. On the other 37 hand, the King’s Head hotel is entirely primitive, and carries 38 us back to the days of the early settlers, as it is one of the oldest buildings in the State. As we cross the bridge we notice that the trees are standing in the water, for the river is in flood.

We have here a country full of English place-names, and with scenery which often reminds us of England; but at the same time we find wheat and oranges growing side by side, and trees in fruit and flower in the winter. This suggests something very different from our own climate. We must remember that Perth is in latitude 32° S. and that this district therefore corresponds to Egypt or Morocco. It is a land where frosts are unknown in the lowlands and valleys near the sea, and where the summers are hot and dry, though tempered by the sea breezes. Most of the rain falls in the winter, which is therefore the growing time; we have already noticed the Avon in flood. Even in the winter there is plenty of sun, as the rain falls largely in heavy showers at night.

If we travel eastward from York we shall soon find a change 39 in the face of the country, as the rainfall decreases quickly towards the interior. But for the present we will keep within the zone of moderate rainfall, not far from the coast, and continue our journey southwards. Much of the land round Perth has been cleared for agriculture, though it was formerly covered with forest. Beginning north of Perth, and stretching southwards at a distance of twenty to thirty miles from the coast, is a long belt of timber-country, marking the zone of heaviest rainfall. This belt broadens out and fills the whole peninsula in the south-west corner, between Flinders Bay and Geographe Bay, and finally disappears a few miles to the north-east of Albany. The dense forest clothes the western face of the plateau, and thins out eastward to open scrub country with scattered gum trees of various kinds. It consists in the main of Jarrah, with some blocks of Karri in the south and south-west.

Jarrah is a very hard red-coloured wood which is useful for jetties, railway sleepers and all other work where there is great exposure to damp and weather. We may often walk over it in the streets of our cities, as it makes an excellent pavement. Here we see the appearance of the original tree: it is tall, perhaps 40 a hundred feet high, with a trunk a yard or more thick and a dark-grey furrowed bark.

With the Jarrah is found the Karri, of much the same character but less durable. It is one of the finest and tallest trees of the Australian forest. Its bark is yellowish white, and peels off, leaving the tree clean, so that the Karri is sometimes called the white gum. The tree sometimes grows to a height of 41 three hundred feet, and is far too large to handle; while even the smaller specimens need a whole team to haul a single log. So that, although there is a very large area of forest land, we can understand that cutting only goes on within easy reach of one of the short branch railway lines running down to the sea. The forests of Western Australia have recently been estimated to contain two hundred and twenty million tons of valuable timber, worth about three hundred million pounds sterling.

Where the forest thins out eastward the red gum is one of the most useful trees, as it is spreading and branched, and so gives 42 more shade than the other gum trees. This is important for the stockowner in a dry, hot country.

We have already seen something of the agricultural district round York; and we shall find little difference as we follow the railway southwards to Albany, keeping always about a hundred miles from the coast. There are the same wheatfields and sheep and occasional orchards; it is not very different from the country round Perth, except that it is rather cooler as we travel southwards. In the summer, especially on the eastern edge of this belt, it is very dry and parched; but after the winter rains, though there is too little water for trees, the flowers and grasses spring up everywhere, especially everlasting flowers which grow in great profusion, as we see from the picture before 43 us.

So we have a coast belt associated with timber, and a parallel belt inland where agriculture is developing along the track of the railway. The southern terminus of the railway is Albany, on 44 King George’s Sound, one of the best harbours of the Australian 45 continent. Albany is a fortified coaling port, and is likely to grow in importance with the organisation of Australian defence in the future. This seems a small corner on the map, yet the area available for agriculture is considerably larger than the total area under cultivation in Great Britain; while beyond it, in the region of lessening rainfall, is a wide belt suited for sheep-raising. Further eastward still, beyond this belt, we enter another type of country. The railway from Northam Junction carries us across the dry country and through Southern Cross to the mining centre of Coolgardie. A little further on, at Kalgoorlie, it turns northward, to end at Laverton, about four hundred miles from Perth and the same distance from the sea to the south. This is the limit of that part of West Australian settlement which is based on gold.

The gold-bearing country is in two bands, running north and south, through Southern Cross and Kalgoorlie; and we find quite a large population in the midst of waterless country. Here is a view of Kalgoorlie, a prosperous-looking town, in spite of 46 its arid surroundings. This is the region of Australia where gold-mining has developed most rapidly in recent years. It is very different from Ballarat or the Queensland mines, where the gold lies in the midst of a fertile agricultural country, easily reached from the sea.

After leaving the agricultural belt we pass through a stony country with low hills covered with deadwood and scrub. Yet the map shows us many lakes and pools, and as it is winter we shall find them according to our expectations. Here is a pool of fresh 47 water just after the rains; notice that it even has trees growing round it. Here again is one of the larger lakes; though there 48 seems to be plenty of water here it is really only a flat clay marsh, flooded to the depth of a few inches. Notice the gold mine in the distance. In the hot weather the water in these shallow lakes soon evaporates, often leaving a deposit of salt, so that in place of a sheet of water there is a dreary clay flat covered with stones. On these flats near the shrunken lakes the only 49 vegetation is the salt-bush, with occasional patches of very dry scrub.

There is nothing to attract the settler to country such as this, except gold. There is little water, and that mostly salt or brackish, so that in the early days of the mines it was distilled and sold by the gallon at a high price. There was none available for washing the gold, so that it had to be separated from the earth and rock by the method known as dry-blowing. Now all this has been changed. The mines are supplied with water from far away in the Perth district, where the rainfall is heavy. The whole river is held up at Mundaring, twenty-one miles from Perth, by 50 a gigantic weir, and the water is raised at one pumping station after another, and so carried up and over the plateau to the mining districts. The pipes are laid along the railway and the water is carried for about three hundred and fifty miles, or rather further than from London to Berwick. Without this great work, the Coolgardie region, with its large mining population, could not exist.

Let us now examine the mining. Here we see its primitive methods in the bush. There is probably alluvial gold in the bed of a 51 stream, buried under the surface sand and clay. The stuff is merely hauled up in buckets and thrown out on to the “dump” to 52 await further treatment. Here again, instead of sinking a shaft, the miners have burrowed into the bare hillside. In some places, 53 where water is to be had for a short time after the rains, the miners contrive a primitive washing machine such as we see here. 54 The large trough is merely a hollow log, where the gold-bearing dirt is washed to free it from clay, while the larger stones are picked out. Then it is put into the long trough and sluiced, so that the gold settles among the small stones while the lighter stuff is carried away. The troughs are of wood and the pump is distinctly home made; the water is used again and again until it becomes too thick or evaporates altogether.

Now let us turn to another picture. Here is an up-to-date mine, with machinery and tanks for the chemical extraction of the last 55 atom of gold, after the mass has already been treated in great 56 batteries. There is a deep shaft here with mechanical winding as in a coal mine; but often the gold-bearing quartz is near the surface, and we have an “open cut,” or practically a quarry. 57 Here is one showing the rock at close quarters: the white is the rock which contains the gold, while the dark is the “mullock,” 58 or “country” rock, as the miners style it. There are other goldfields nearer the coast, in the district north-east of Perth. Although near the sea this is a very dry country with much mulga scrub; for, as we go northwards, the scanty rainfall is more and more limited to a very narrow strip along the coast. We have noticed already that the forest zone ends not far north of Perth.

The rest of the interior in this part of the State is a stony desert whose chief product is the spinifex, or porcupine grass, which we have seen before. This often forms an impenetrable scrub, as many explorers have found to their cost. Over very large areas the surface is covered with great boulders; these may be troublesome to the traveller, but they are not without their uses. The storm water runs off them and does not contain salt, so that it can be caught in a tank for the cattle on the stock 59 routes, as we see in this picture.

In the south-east, towards the great Australian Bight, there is a change. There is much limestone country here, with pasture, but the water sinks away through the porous rock. Access, too, is difficult, owing to the cliff barrier stretching for fifteen hundred miles unbroken by any stream or gap. Here is a view of 60 these cliffs; sometimes they come down to the sea, sometimes they lie some distance inland, but they are always present. Here, too, we find the water, which sank into the plateau above, breaking 61 out at the foot of the cliffs and giving us unexpected vegetation.

One part of West Australia we have not visited, that beyond the Tropic to the north. Here is a moderate rainfall similar to that in the Northern Territory and in Queensland; while in the extreme north we meet the heavy downpour of the Tropics. Much of it is well suited for cattle, but at present it is hardly touched, and it is separated from the populous district of the south by a wide stretch of dry and inhospitable country.

LECTURE VI

NEW ZEALAND--SOUTH ISLAND

We now return to the east and leave Hobart, with a westerly wind astern, and following the course of the great Dutch navigator Tasman, steam south-eastward across the deep sea which still bears his name. We are bound for the southern end of New Zealand.

The islands of New Zealand are often compared to the British Islands, but we must be careful not to press this comparison too far. We must notice that their position on the globe corresponds not to that of Britain, but to that of Italy; while the long toe to the north is even nearer to the equator than the toe of Italy. In shape, too, the main islands remind us somewhat of Italy; for Cook Strait is shallow, and we may think of them as forming one continuous land mass. We may notice also that Stewart Island lies on a bank which extends from the mainland southwards as far as the Auckland Islands. There are similar shallows to the northward, with island points upon them projecting above the surface of the sea; so that we may think of the whole area as one great bank below the water, with the higher parts showing as land, while east and west of it lie the deep abysses of the Tasman Sea and the Pacific. So though we have at first sight a group of scattered islands, they have a certain unity if we look at the under-sea platform on which they stand. There are also certain scattered islands, more remote from the New Zealand group, but dependent politically on the Dominion. Of these the chief are the Chatham Islands, 500 miles east of Lyttelton, the Kermadecs, 600 miles north-east of Auckland, and beyond them the Cook Islands, far out in the Pacific.

Though in shape and position New Zealand may resemble Italy, in one important respect it differs alike from Italy and the British Islands. It is surrounded by the open ocean, and there is no great continent near enough to affect its climate or the life of its people. Its plants and animals are largely peculiar to itself; its native races are widely different from the aborigines of Australia; its past development has been on independent lines, and we may remember that it still remains outside the circle of Australian Federation. We may contrast the position of Italy, in a land-locked sea and with a continental frontier; or the close connexion with the neighbouring mainland which has affected all the past history of our own islands.

We are visiting South Island first, since its geography is more simple and easier to grasp than that of the North Island; we shall find, too, that some of the conditions are not unlike those which we have lately seen in Tasmania. Our steamer will land us 1 at Bluff Harbour, in the extreme south of the island. Fifteen miles away, across Foveaux Strait, we can distinguish the hills of Stewart Island, famous for its oysters. Bluff is the port of Invercargill which lies some distance up the estuary of the New River, and is not visited by large vessels. It is a busy little town, and here we see the steamers loading wool, frozen meat, and perhaps oats. The tall chimney in the background belongs to one of the largest meat-freezing factories in the colony, while that smooth green mass is the Bluff itself. The wharves of a seaport are an excellent guide to the district which it serves; and wool, meat, and oats may suggest to us the nature of the country which we are about to visit.