CHAPTER VIII

BRISBANE, THE QUEEN CITY OF THE NORTH

From Victoria to Queensland is an ascent in many ways. To begin with, it means a railway journey of nearly thirteen hundred miles from south to north. Each mile brings one nearer the tropics. Each hour the heat grows more intense; each day the sky bluer and brighter. I travelled from Sydney by steamer and made the ascent by sea. Even then there was the experience of expansion; of greater warmth, and the first faint perfume of the Lotus land. I returned by railway, and thus completed the circuit.

The approach to Brisbane by sea creates a curious impression upon the Englishman who sees Queensland for the first time. The city unveils itself as an entirely foreign city. In the disposition of its houses, as well as in their style, there is something quite new. The roofs present a curious appearance. Their colour is drab, or grey, or white, the very colours which intensify the blinding light of a tropical climate. Tall palms raise their graceful heads to the sky. Strange plants and flowers and shrubs begin to appear. Conspicuous above everything else is the brilliant and majestic jackaranda tree. Imagine a young English elm tree, of ten years’ growth, without a leaf upon its branches, but entirely covered, in place of leaf, with large thick blue flowers--that is the jackaranda. It is a tree of amazing beauty--a quaint flower, elevated to the dimensions of a tree. And with the spectacle of palm, jackaranda, camphor-tree, and banana, there also greets one a blend of subtle perfumes and spices. When the breeze springs up, one dominating, overpowering scent is borne upon its wings, and brain and mind are oppressed with its heaviness.

This approach to Brisbane by water is very beautiful and impressive. The steamer proceeds up a long and winding river decked on both sides with picturesque gardens and houses, and having for an ultimate background a line of dark, solemn-looking hills. The “city of villas” Brisbane undoubtedly is. One would hardly be surprised to behold at the wharf a population of coloured people. The foreign-looking houses, the tropical surroundings, the warm, voluptuous atmosphere, and this breath of spicy perfumes, together suggest the dreamy East. And one day there _will_ be a population of coloured people in Brisbane, despite the fact that they will be British. For the sun, which respects the skin of none, is slowly bronzing the faces of the inhabitants. “A white Australia!” There can never be a pure white Northern Australia while residence continues and the sun retains its heat. The whitest man must, in course of time, become dark. Why complain of degrees of darkness; for what is black but bronze and duskiness brought to perfection?

The houses of Brisbane have one striking peculiarity--they are built upon wooden piles, the highest of which stand perhaps five or six feet from the ground. The general effect is, to say the least, odd. It is Venice, without the lagoons. And the reason for this peculiarity is the presence of that terrible enemy, the white ant. The base of the piles is immersed in tar, while the crown is capped with a kind of inverted tin plate--a child’s dinner-plate. And the piles themselves are often poisoned. Every precaution has to be taken against the ravages of the white ant. The tar discourages it at the base, the poisoned wood discourages it on the ascent, and the inverted plates foil it at the top. Within the houses similar precautions are taken. The legs of the tables are planted in double earthenware pots, so that the invader may be repulsed. For woe betide the householder who suffers a successful invasion of the white ant! The dreadful enemy is never seen; he works entirely in the dark. His presence is never suspected until the unhappy moment when the once solid piece of furniture suddenly collapses, a total wreck--silently but surely gnawed by the teeth of the concealed foe. Amazing stories are told of the devastation wrought by the white ant. Men out in the country have placed strong boxes in a secure place--secure, as they thought, and then, one day, presuming upon their supposed strength, they have essayed to use the boxes as seats, only to discover themselves suddenly precipitated to the ground, and mixed with the debris of the collapsed trunk. In a church in Brisbane one of the elders, when treading the aisles one day, thought he detected a slight softness in the floor under his feet. Pursuing his inquiries, he discovered, to his dismay, that the white ants had managed to gnaw their way into the floor, despite the fact that a mass of concrete lay between it and the ground below. But there was one fatal flaw, and through a tiny hole the invaders had poured in and commenced their work of undermining. Listening, the elder could hear the chisels of this terrible army of workmen, surely chipping away the wood of the floor. At one house I visited a wooden pile was shown me, nearly eaten through by these creatures. By mere accident the trouble was discovered, and the pile removed. The ordinary householder is not always competent to track the white ant. There may be nothing wrong to his vision, yet all the while the secret work of destruction may be proceeding apace. Hence experts make periodical visits to houses, and discover in time any mischief that may be brewing.

Brisbane is, to all intents and purposes, a smokeless city. The new factory chimneys, of course, contribute smoke to the fair atmosphere, but so far as the private houses are concerned, few wreaths of smoke ascend, for the reason that few fires are burned. In many houses there are no fireplaces at all, save in the kitchen, and there the gas-stove is generally in operation. This absence of smoke is a veritable pleasure. In this particular Brisbane resembles Florence. It is a suggestion also. Not every climate is so warm as this, but in colder climes, where artificial heating is necessary, the smoke nuisance might well be reduced by the use, as here, of gas and electricity.

Brisbane claims to be the most picturesque city in the Commonwealth, and with reason. Its natural situation is not so fine as that of Sydney. It has no harbour comparable with Sydney Harbour. But the city itself is more eastern, more tropical than the southern cities. Its death-rate is the lowest in all the Commonwealth, and that speaks volumes for the climate. The weather is nearly always bright. The winter is one prolonged delight. It equals Hastings, say, in May or June. The spoiled children of Southern Australia who find their winter “cold” come up north and spend the “chilly” months in sunny Queensland. The climate is much warmer than that of Victoria, and it is much more equable. In Brisbane they know nothing of those startling changes in temperature to which men are accustomed in Melbourne. A Brisbane man shudders when we tell him that in Melbourne the thermometer sometimes drops forty degrees in half an hour. But if Brisbane heat is greater than the heat in Victoria, it is tempered by a delicious breeze which springs up every morning with the utmost regularity about eleven o’clock.

Insect life, white ants excepted, is most fascinating in Brisbane. The moths and butterflies are gorgeous to the last degree. They flash in the sunlight, living rainbows, displaying the most ravishing colours. In these semi-tropical regions the colours of nature seem to reach absolute perfection. Sky, flowers, and insects all match. There is no blue so wonderful as that of these skies, and no colours more soft and subduing than those which overspread the heavens at the moment of sunset.

While here I have had the experience, twice repeated, of a tropical thunderstorm. Nothing can approach this in majesty and terrifying power, unless it be a storm in the Alps. There, the feature of the storm lies in the long-continued reverberations of the thunder crashing amongst the mountains. Here the thunderstorm is marked by a terrible display of lightning, and by the appalling colour of the sky. The storm gathers in an incredibly short period of time. After a day or two of abnormal heat, radiated from a pellucid atmosphere, the clouds suddenly appear. In an hour the heavens assume a slaty appearance, a ghastly colour that speaks of anguish and coming dissolution. Everything grows dark. It seems as if the hour of the traditional judgment had arrived. An ominous wind sweeps over the country, bending stately palms beneath its fury and threatening to uproot smaller trees. And then from afar comes the muffled roar of the storm. It is like the march of a hostile army. Great guns seem to boom, gatling and quick-firers rattle their shot across the plain. And then, for an hour or more, the heavens become alive with light. The lightning appears in a dozen places at once, stabbing, tearing, exploding. The thunder is awful. And then the rain descends, as no Englishman who knows but his own land has ever seen it fall. Not in drops, but in sheets, it pours down until every street becomes a river. It is useless to attempt to speak while the flood is upon us. It is the din of a battle at its height, for the roofs of the houses in Brisbane are made of corrugated iron, and the rain falling upon this resounding substance produces a terrifying effect. And amid the tempest, while human voices are hushed, there is one glad note heard. One creature is excited to delirious pleasure through the storm. Silent as the grave while the tempest gathers, this creature chants in triumph while the storm rages. It is the frog. No man knows the vocal capacities of the frog until he hears it croak in one vast chorus during a tropical storm.