FOREWORD
AUSTRALIA’S PLACE IN THE EMPIRE

The average Englishman and the average Australian have at least one thing in common: each of them is profoundly ignorant of the inner life of that country in which his fellow-subjects, separated from him by a distance of twelve thousand miles, dwell.

The average Australian knows by name the chief cities of Britain; he knows a little about British exports and imports; he knows as much of English politics as scanty cables and the letters of special correspondents inform him. If he is a religious man he knows also the names of the outstanding preachers of various churches. Beyond this he has only the haziest ideas of the conditions of life in the Mother Country. When a cable message informs him that London is enveloped in a thick fog, or that Britain is frost-bound, he fervently thanks God that his lot has been cast in a country where “the amount of bright sunshine” has not to be registered each day in the winter-time. Of the inner life of the Old Land he knows nothing at all, nor can he grasp, unless he is particularly well informed, the true meaning of current political and social movements. For this he is in no way to be censured; it is the fatality of distance that weighs upon him. I am speaking of the average, untravelled Australian. It is very different, of course, with those persons who have visited the Homeland, and who, open-eyed and impressionable, have come to understand what English life stands for. When such travellers return to Australia they rarely speak of the Old Country as “having seen its best days.” While they very properly deplore the overcrowding of English towns and cities, and in particular are aghast at the alarming development of slumdom, they also recognise that the energy of Britain is more than equal to that social regeneration for which the new time calls. In my judgment, Australians need a much fuller and a much fairer statement, continually renewed, of the actual condition of things in the Motherland. It should be possible, for example, to describe the course of British politics in an impartial manner, leaving Australians to form their own judgment upon the undoubted facts supplied to them. At present this is rarely done.

On the other hand, what does the average Englishman know about Australia? In his mind it is connected with a big export trade in apples, wool, wheat, meat, rabbits, and butter. He reads of the “Bush” and of the aborigines, of the kangaroo, and of the laughing jackass. He knows the names of its chief cities—Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane. He has heard also that Australia is the working man’s paradise; that legislation tends in the direction of Socialism; that in Parliament there are often some lively scenes, and that in summer the heat is intense. For the rest, Australia is to him a vast, lone country situated at the Antipodes, a long, long way off across the seas, and a place to which, if a man goes, he must suffer the inconvenience of being cut off from the rest of the world. “Australia? Yes! One of our colonies under the Southern Cross!” Now it is time that the abysmal ignorance which prevails concerning this great country should, once for all, be dissipated. Englishmen ought to realise that Australia, so far from being a vast, lone land situated in a corner of the world, difficult of access, is in reality situated in the very centre of the British Empire, and that, because of this situation, it is destined to play a great part in the coming life of that Empire.

Let me try to make this point abundantly clear.

The British Empire consists of the United Kingdom, India, parts of Africa, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and a number of small islands, fortified rocks, coaling stations, and the like. The population of the whole Empire is well over four hundred millions—representing one-quarter of the entire population of the world. Great Britain itself—the Motherland, the centre of government—has less than one-eighth of the population of the Empire. The other seven-eighths are far nearer to Australia than to Great Britain. That is the great point to be observed. In other words, Australia is in closer physical touch with India than is England, while it is quite as near to Africa (nearer, indeed, to Eastern Africa) and Western Canada as is England.

Let the reader procure a map of the globe and carefully examine the situation of Australia from this point of view; and if he has never observed it before, it will probably come home to him with something of a shock. From Adelaide to Capetown or Durban is a matter of fourteen or fifteen days’ good steaming. From London to Capetown is no quicker, if as quick. And that the present average rate of steaming between Durban and Australia can easily be accelerated is clearly proved by the fact that the new White Star steamer Ceramic recently accomplished the journey from Liverpool to Melbourne via the Cape in two days less than an Orient steamer which left London on the same day and proceeded by the Suez route. It is all a question of coal, and in time of need the consumption of coal would not be a primary consideration.

Still follow the map, and observe that the distance between Sydney and Vancouver is little greater than that between England and Vancouver. The whole of Western Canada is open to traffic with Australia, and there is no great stretch of country to cross by rail. Here, again, an accelerated steamer service would bring Sydney and Vancouver within fifteen or sixteen days of each other.

Continuing with the map, it will be seen that between Fremantle, in Western Australia, and Colombo or Bombay there lies the open stretch of water known as the Indian Ocean. The usual time allowed by the mail steamers for crossing between these two points is nine to ten days. The S.S. Maloja, in which I travelled to England last year, accomplished the voyage between Fremantle and Colombo in seven and a half days, Bombay being two days farther north. That is to say, by an ordinary mail steamer, Fremantle and Bombay lie within ten days of each other. This time could easily be reduced by a day or a day and a half. There are three hundred millions of the subjects of the King in India. These are ruled from England. Bombay, “the gate of India,” cannot be reached from England in less than fourteen days, travelling overland from London to Brindisi, and thence by sea. And there is the narrow Suez Canal to traverse, a piece of water that an enemy could in an hour render impossible for traffic. From Australia to India there is one great piece of open sea; there is no canal liable to be blocked; and Bombay is nearer to Australia than to England by four or five days.

These are simple facts, verifiable by any person who will give himself a little trouble. And do they not show that Australia, so far from being in a corner, out of the way—an appendage, as it were, to the Empire—is in reality situated in the centre of the Empire, within almost equal distance of India, Africa, and Canada?

But there is something far more important than this. Unfold the map once more, and it will be clearly seen that Australia is not only in the centre of our own Empire, it is also in close touch with those countries whose awakening and rise to importance constitute a new and grave problem for the lands of the West and for America. Three decades ago Japan was known as “the hermit nation.” Its people lived in a long, narrow island, far enough removed from the important countries of the West to cause them any anxiety. They were a remote people, these Japanese; close in their habits, clever with their fingers, tinted with yellow on their skins, and for the rest—“heathen.” But they did not “reckon” in the councils of the West. And then suddenly there came a bolt from the blue—this small, remote people went to war with the biggest nation in Europe, and beat them. That was the surprise. In a day the prestige of the hermit nation was established. The triumph of Japan, it is not too much to say, served to disquiet the whole world of the West and America. A new problem arose. All eyes were fixed upon the Pacific. What ferment was at work in the distant East? And to what extent would it spread? From the East all the wisdom of the West had originally come. But for many centuries the East had been asleep, while the West marched on. Was a new epoch dawning? Was this victory of Japan an affair of chance, or did it indicate the appearance of a new era and a new order? Was time, with its whirligig, bringing things back to their beginning, and once more thrusting the East into the first place? Was Bismarck, after all, a true seer when he spoke of the coming “Yellow peril”?

After Japan came the awakening of China. Wise men from that country, impressed with the victory of Japan, and well knowing that Japan owed her position to the knowledge she had gained from Western civilisation, came over to Britain to study the state of affairs in the West. The mission bore immediate fruit. China began to turn over in her sleep, and eventually she awoke. In a day an ancient dynasty was overturned and a republic set up. The ways of the “foreign devils” were no longer resisted, they were accepted. Railways were laid down in all directions; a new army was created; the ancient skirts of the soldiers were exchanged for British khaki; the pigtail disappeared; Western education became common. The Pekin of to-day, with its railway stations and bustling Western life, would astound any person who saw it, say, ten short years ago. China is awake; she is strong; she is numerous; within her territory there live one-quarter of the world’s population. The West has for long enough insulted China. It has contemptuously spoken of the “heathen Chinee.” The odious opium traffic was forced upon her—shame to record—by British India. When insulted people turn, they are apt to become dangerous. If the four hundred millions of Chinese turn, and bear down upon the West, they can, as Bismarck said, crush, with the sheer force of millions of massed men, their opponents. There is a possible “Yellow peril.” It may not take much to make it actual.

There is a third factor, upon which it may not be advisable to dwell at length—the disquiet of India. It is a species of madness to pooh-pooh the outbursts of rebellion, the attempted assassinations, the inflammatory articles in native papers, and other symptoms of unrest as being mere local and unmeaning disturbances. The truth is, there is, or has been until the war, widespread discontent in India. Into the causes of this it is not proposed to enter here and now. Sufficient for the present purpose to take note of the fact and to treat it seriously.

Now, these three nations, between them, contain more than one-half of the world’s entire population. They are the nations of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. Australia lies within easy touch of them all. She is much nearer to them than is England, and if trouble broke out she might be the very first of the British possessions to feel it. Australia means that Britain is already in the Pacific—upon the spot, so to speak, where the trouble is gathering.

The creation of a new and a final factor in the situation is due to the opening of the Panama Canal. This mighty engineering work has now been completed, and the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans at last mingle. The canal has primarily, so the majority seem to think, a mercantile importance. It has brought the eastern coastline of the United States into direct and rapid communication by water with Australia, China, the islands of the Pacific, and a rich tropical zone, the exploiting of which, commercially, will mean much for American, British, and other markets. For purposes of trade, the canal is one of the most important water highways ever constructed. A new centre of shipping activity has been opened up, with consequences the extent of which at present can hardly be computed.

The canal, however, has a political importance which surpasses all else. To use the words of an American statesman, “this canal means infinitely more than the opening of a passage between one sea and another; it may yet mean the transference of international interests from the Mediterranean to the Pacific.”A What part the canal will play in such an event need not be discussed here. The point is that a displacement of political power—an entire change of interests—is by no means improbable; and, indeed, if the East, awakening, comes into the possession of its proper inheritance, it is more than likely to happen. What, then, of our relative interests in the North Sea and in the Indian Ocean? We British are so accustomed to the idea of government from a centre in a little island called “Britain” that we should probably scoff at the suggestion that one day, owing to a change of interests and the presenting of new aspects of powerful Eastern life, we might find it convenient and necessary to make Australia and not Britain the governmental centre of the Empire. But the idea may be worth thinking over for all that. Similar things have happened to other peoples before, and they may happen again. Putting aside all opinions and predictions, the simple facts remain that Australia at present is situated in the very centre of the British Empire, and that it is within easy touch of those nations which, by every sign, have to be seriously reckoned with in the near future.

Australia is in the possession of the British people. This is a trite enough remark to make, but the remarkable thing, when we really think about it, is that the remark can be so easily made. The wonder is that it is not Dutch or Spanish or French. Explorers from each of these lands discovered it, and left it unoccupied. When the Dutch were foraging in Southern waters, they were the finest seamen of their time. Small as a nation, they were great business people and fine colonists. Yet they left Australia behind, after a passing acquaintance with its coast. It was reserved for Captain Cook to claim the hitherto terra incognita in the name of the people of Britain. To people who recognise in historical events nothing but the collisions of chance, the exploit of Captain Cook was a lucky adventure. To those of us who try to look below the surface of things, the event was a providence. Let the enemies of Britain say their worst of us—and they can point to many a discreditable thing in our history—it remains true that British sentiment, enlightened by Christianity, has more and more tended towards liberty and justice for all the people who come under her sway. Under any other flag would Australia, with all its faults, have become the country that it is?

If Divine destiny, and not blind chance, has reserved for the British race this immense country of Australia, and the British people faithfully fulfil their Divine and human mission in the world, then it is easy to perceive that this new land in the Southern Ocean will become a centre of healthful influence for the entire Pacific. And if to British influence in the South there is joined—through the medium of the Panama Canal—a powerful American influence of the highest quality, the Pacific may yet lead the world’s future, as the Mediterranean has for hundreds of years led the past.

To the Australian shores there pass, in ever-increasing numbers, steamers of every size and of every nationality. They go from America, from India, from Japan, from China, from France, and from Britain. The world has discovered Australia to be a fine continent for business. Year by year the tonnage of steamers grows. It is a far cry from the little cockle-boat of 300 tons which touched at Sydney Harbour a century ago to the new majestic liners of 13,000 tons which now ply between Tilbury and Sydney. The limitations of the Suez Canal seem to have determined the size of the largest steamers outward bound by that route. Via the Cape, there are no such restrictions; hence the White Star Company has been able to place its steamer, the Ceramic, a vessel of 18,000 tons, on the Australian trade, and the limit is not yet reached. There is no reason why steamers equal to the Atlantic greyhounds should not yet ply between Britain and Melbourne. The twin difficulties would be, obviously, fuel and food. The shorter journeys between England and Canada, England and the States, or England and the Mediterranean, offer no difficulty in the way of coal or provisions. But what of a voyage of six or seven weeks? The present arrangements are marvellous enough. Passengers pass from port to port without anxiety. Their table is always well spread. There is enough and to spare. Even at the end of a long voyage English sole and salmon appear on the menu for dinner. How is it all accomplished? The ease of working means that behind all there is a perfect organisation, which for the average passenger, however, remains enveloped in mystery. The varied menus at table indicate the existence of an immense reserve somewhere in the ship. I determine, if possible, to fathom the secret of a ship’s working. The man who knows everything is the purser, but previous experience makes me shy of pursers—at least, some of them. I remember the uniform, the haughty manners, the snobbishness, the air of condescension, the impression that a god had descended to earth and taken to the career of a purser. Is our purser of this type? I wonder! I approach him, and find him to be a splendid fellow—dignified, kind, courteous, and ready to do all in his power to satisfy my request. He places in my hands a book of romance. In point of fact, it is a book of quantities and prices, of descriptions and instructions; page after page deals with edibles of all kinds. To the purser all this is business; to me it is romance and miracle, for it represents the arrangements made to feed a little world, cut off from the rest of men, and launched upon the immense waters of the ocean.

These pages of dry figures, matter-of-fact as they are, simple as they are, represent years of experience and experiment. There is no likelihood of passengers ever starving; a generous margin is allowed, over and above actual needs, for eventualities. Nor is there likelihood of monotony in menus. The variety of provisions is astounding. These pages, dealing with the commissariat of the ship, contain a list of thirty-eight different kinds of soup, nearly 100 varieties of fish, entrées and sauces galore. The fundamentals of eating and drinking bulk more largely, of course, than anything else. Thus this ship started on its voyage with 1,400 lbs. of biscuits, 76 barrels and 216 bags of flour, 5,000 lbs. of butter, 10,000 eggs, 1,500 lbs. of coffee, and 10,000 lbs. of beef. Sugar is the heaviest item of all, being 12,000 lbs. Then follow hundreds of bottles of preserved fruit, poultry and game of all kinds, dried fruits of every description, jams, jellies, and marmalade to repletion, tinned meats and fish, raisins, currants, salt, milk, bacon, and vegetables of all kinds. Nothing seems missing. The list is prodigious. Not a taste is left unprovided for. At every port fresh provisions are taken in. The purser has a list of tradesmen at every place of call. He knows exactly what can be obtained, where it can be obtained, when, and at what price. His book informs him that it is not advisable to procure certain things at certain places. There are regular providers who undertake to furnish the ship with provisions. Woe to any of these men if they play tricks with the company; if for once only they supply inferior food their names are forthwith struck off the list, and no amount of pleading will succeed in having them replaced there. It is the unpardonable sin to supply stuff of inferior quality. I noted a line in the instructions which means much: “The company pay full price (for articles), and they expect none but the best quality.”

So this is how the purchasing and storing are done. Everything is reduced to an exact science. There is no experimenting, no guessing. The steamers leave the home ports ready for all demands likely to be made upon them.

The next question is that of storage. How is all the fresh food—meat, vegetables, poultry, fish, etc.—kept? Even a child to-day would reply in a word—“cold storage.” But this means much more than it seems to mean. Cold storage is a fine art, and a still finer art is that of thawing. It would appear to be a perfectly simple thing to remove a piece of meat or some poultry from the cold chamber and roast it for the table. But it is far from simple. Unless the thawing is properly done, the joint is ruined. Hence, elaborate instructions are issued both for freezing and for thawing fresh foods. It is really wonderful, when one comes to think of it, that food can be preserved from corruption by the application of cold; but the cold must be scientifically applied. In the refrigerating chamber the temperature is kept from 20 degrees to 25 degrees—“It snows there.” Stewards who enter the chamber for business purposes are compelled to dress in special garments, so as to avoid a sudden chill, with its possible fatal consequences. The air in the cold chamber is changed three times a week. And so it is all a miracle of atmosphere, regulated at will.

The practical work of preparing meals for passengers is very fascinating. The kitchens are models of cleanliness. No slovenliness is permitted. Most of the food is untouched by hand. Dough is mixed by a machine. Bread and cakes are cut by a patent knife. Potatoes are peeled by a huge “peeler,” which removes only the minimum of skin. There are enormous roasters and steam cookers, which perform their work with absolute precision. The kitchen of a great liner is a place of wonder, and the scullery is only second to it. Here labour is saved at every turn. Knives are cleaned in a new and expeditious manner; plates are washed by steam and dried in a whirling machine turned by electricity at a terrific rate of speed. Science operates everywhere. There is no chance for germs to develop. Every man has his place and his duty. Galley fires must be lighted at 4 A.M.; cooks must be on duty at a certain fixed hour. Stewards have their duties clearly defined. Nothing is left to chance. The discipline of the ship is perfect.

But while we examine this fascinating department of ship life, we become aware of an increasing throb in the engines. The boat is rolling heavily. The sea is behaving badly; and we are seized with a desire to go below and see life in the nethermost regions of the boat. It has been represented to us as a kind of inferno, in which men work naked. In company with the “chief” we descend to the engine-room. Here four powerful engines turn the steel shafts, which in turn move the propellers. At last we arrive at the ultimate expression of force in this wonderful ship. All is now left behind, save the thick steel shafts which run horizontally through the stern of the vessel. Silently and swiftly they move round, forcing the propellers outside to displace the waters of the ocean, and so urge forward the steamer. It is a weird experience to descend to the very bottom of the steamer, into its uttermost corner, where the boat is narrowest, and to watch the steel shafts ever turn round. The mighty vessel above us depends in reality upon these shafts. If they broke, and could not be replaced, the steamer would lie upon the bosom of the water a helpless mass of iron and steel. One frail plate of steel between us and destruction! The idea is chilling.

I dreaded the furnaces—the satanic stokehole, where men suffer in the presence of broiling heat. But when we pass into this region of the ship, where is the inferno? To my utter astonishment, the stokehole is cooler than the engine-room. A pleasant draught of cool air plays around the stokers, who are not naked nor perspiring. Despite roaring fires and enormous boilers, the room is pleasantly cool. Thus another illusion has disappeared. The old order of things has changed. Science has rendered service more humane. The terrors of life are one by one departing.

Passengers from England to Australia via the Cape generally touch Australian soil first at Albany. They thus miss the true “gateway” into the country, Fremantle. This latter city is the port for Perth; it is the traveller’s first introduction to Australia if he travels via the Suez and Ceylon. And glad is he to behold land once more after the monotonous voyage of ten days across the Indian Ocean. A languid air steals over the ship during the time it is in the region of the Equator. At night the decks are strewn with mattresses for the accommodation of passengers who prefer to “sleep out” rather than be stifled in intolerable cabins. Then, if the season be that of the Australian winter (June to August), the heat gradually moderates, and by the time the boat reaches Fremantle all white clothing has been discarded, and men are thankful once more to take to blankets and heavier dress.

The development of Western Australia has been remarkable. For many years it lay practically stagnant; then in a moment its progress commenced. The discovery of gold made all the difference. Twenty years ago Perth was a mere village, with all the disadvantages of a village. Many of its houses were primitive and ugly. A few relics of that period still survive. Certain houses were built of kerosene tins; many more of wood. A neglected look characterised the place. “Squalid,” one old inhabitant calls it; but that is probably an exaggeration. It had a beautiful natural situation, being built upon a slope of the lovely Swan River. Yet the city at that time was badly lighted and badly drained. It brought little credit to its fair surroundings. In the long ago the French, the Portuguese, and the Dutch had in turn visited the West, named it, and then passed on. And now it seemed but a few years ago as if the British, in the persons of their Australian children, had determined to leave no mark upon the same West.

It was the discovery of gold, I say, that made the difference. Just twenty years ago Coolgardie was a desert. But into its wilds two men had penetrated, prospecting for gold. There came a day when, quite suddenly, the desert was transformed into a treasure house. In one evening these men possessed themselves of 500 ounces of pure gold. Aladdin’s chamber had been found at last. The news of the discovery spread with amazing rapidity. A frenzy seized the people. Men threw down their tools, broke up their homes, abandoned their situations, and proceeded in a mad rush to the goldfields. There was no road for them to travel over, nothing but a wild track. Each man made his own path. Whatever conveyance happened to be within reach was requisitioned for the conveyance of such conveniences as the goldfields might require. One man, unable to procure anything better, seized a wheel-barrow, in which he pushed his few goods along the terrible 350 miles of desert. From every State steamers brought hundreds and thousands of men who were seized with the lust of gold. Australia turned out its gamblers into the desert. A city soon sprang up; a strange medley of human elements. Land which yesterday was worse than worthless now fetched pounds per foot. Saloon keepers made easy fortunes by selling drink at fancy prices. Houses of every kind sprang up like mushrooms. The most curious house of all was built of bottles, cemented together with some kind of mortar. A year later Kalgoorlie was discovered—an earlier Klondyke. The new field speedily eclipsed the old. Coolgardie lost its prestige, and, while it continues to thrive in certain directions, it has given place to its brilliant rival. A splendid story this, of the discovery of gold, and as sordid as it is splendid. In the easy gaining of gold men have lost themselves. The stories I have heard from men who were on the fields cannot be set down in print; no newspaper or book dare give publicity to them. This camp of men, with no idea but that of gaining as much gold as possible, men without ideals and often without pity, with the beauty of humanity crushed out of them, as the machinery of the goldfields crushes to dust the quartz that passes beneath its wheels, living only for gold, spending much of it in drink and lust, consumed with the fever of getting—ah! the story of the world’s goldfields is largely a story of hell upon earth, of the abasement of the soul to the lust of the eye and the pride of life. There is another side to it, and that is the prodigious folly of allowing this precious metal—the standard for the world’s commerce—to be scrambled for by the first-comers, upon conditions that are as economically ridiculous as they are morally pernicious....

After the frenzy, the reaction. After the rush to the goldfields, the cultivation of the land. The real prosperity of the Golden West lies not in the quantity of gold secured by adventurers, but in the honest work put into the soil. Prospecting continues all the time. Old reefs are still being worked and new ones sought for. In these vast spaces there is hidden an enormous quantity of gold. At any moment some new reef may come to light, and then will follow a new rush to the fields; yet another outbreak of the fever which renders men delirious, and for the time destroys all their higher ideals of life. Meanwhile, Australia is becoming golden in another and a better sense. By means of honest labour its millions of acres are yielding the most remarkable crops of cereals, roots, and fruits. Gradually the enormous spaces are being subdued and inhabited by a race of men and women who rejoice in the golden sunshine, and who abandon themselves with the zest of children to the magic of life.

And it is in this direction that the West is now prospering. The people generally are really well off. The State revenue for last year was about four millions sterling. These 300,000 people have invested in the State Savings Bank no less a sum than £4,387,639. This means an average per head of the population of £14 10s. 4d., and an average per depositor of £45 8s. 9d. Such figures are eloquent of what may be called the general prosperity of the community. The real source of wealth, however, is the land. This year there are more than one million acres of ground under crop. More than a quarter of a million acres have been “cleared” and prepared for ploughing and sowing during the present year. There are 788,349 acres of wheat and 77,488 acres of oats growing at the present time. Last year nearly four and a half million bushels of wheat and a million bushels of oats were produced from the land. This means immense prosperity. The State is rich enough to spend much money in reclaiming waste land and in rebuilding the old houses. During the last twenty years Perth has been practically rebuilt. I was astonished to behold its beautiful buildings. It possesses splendid Government offices, a fine museum and art gallery, a noble Mint, and almost palatial public buildings. Warehouses and stores, suites of offices, banks, insurance buildings, business premises, and the like, are imposing. Perth promises to be one day a great and noble city. Already the capital is extending. Within a radius of twelve miles one-third of the entire population of the West resides. Sir John Forrest declared that the time would come when Perth and Fremantle and all between would become one vast city. I can quite believe it. Perth is the San Francisco of Australia.

As another evidence of prosperity, the following wages table may be adduced: Bakers get 63s. per week; barbers 55s.; barmen and barmaids 65s.; bootmakers 13½d. an hour; carpenters 1s. 6d. an hour; butchers’ shopmen 60s. to 80s. per week; drapers’ assistants (at Coolgardie) 70s. per week; engine-drivers 1s. 6d. an hour; night watchmen 54s. per week; tailors 70s. per week; and waiters 25s. a week and board. It is all very attractive, but on the other side let these facts be considered: Potatoes are 4d. per lb.; peas 9d. per lb.; cauliflowers from 1s. to 2s. 6d. each; apples (grown on the spot) 6d. and 7d. per lb.—at the present time. One needs a large income to keep pace with these ridiculous prices, which are due largely, I understand, to the manipulations of a “ring.”

And yet, with it all, life here for working men is infinitely more tolerable than in England. It is in truth an El Dorado.

The story of this Golden West is thus a veritable romance. Yet this State has the smallest population of all the States, fewer than 300,000 people covering its million square miles. Its territory is eighteen times as large as that of England and Wales. Imagine this enormous space occupied by a handful of people, about as many as are found in the single city of Bradford, Yorkshire. And these 300,000 people are confined to one or two places in the State. For the rest, there are vast and terrible deserts awaiting the exploring skill of man. Already, in the remarkable water scheme undertaken on behalf of the goldfields, it is demonstrated that science can overcome the almost insuperable difficulties presented by Nature in these deserted regions.

In Western Australia nearly every variety of climate is experienced, from the insufferable tropical heat of the North to the delightful cool of the South. At the seaboard the sky and the climate are delightful. Winters are practically unknown. Children born in the land have no idea what snow is like. Even in the depth of winter the days are warm, and often hot. Overcoats are used only as a protection against rain, and when rain falls protection is needed. The water descends, not in drops, but in bucketfuls. Here Nature seems partial and extreme. The rainy season is well defined, and when it ends it ends. Not a drop of rain falls between October and May. There is need, therefore, for the exercise of human science in order to conserve the precious liquid which descends so plentifully in the season for use in the arid season of the year.

And yet Western Australia is at present cut off from the rest of Australia. To reach Adelaide, the capital of the neighbouring State, it is necessary to voyage by steamer across the dreaded “Bight”—a journey of five or more days. In two or three years, however, this isolation will be ended.

A wonderful forward step was taken in 1912 by the cutting of the first sod of the Trans-Continental Railway. The line begins at Port Augusta, in South Australia, and ends at Kalgoorlie, on the goldfield in Western Australia. In length it is over 1,000 miles, and when it is completed there will be direct railway communication between Queensland and Fremantle—a line of 3,000 miles. But if Australia as a whole is to benefit by it there must be a uniform gauge of rail. Insensate jealousy between the States, and a short-sighted policy on the part of the leaders, resulted, in earlier days, in the establishment of various gauges on the different railways, with the result that there can be no through service of trains from the North-East to the West without change of carriage. This, however, will certainly be remedied. When all is completed, and a fast service of trains established, England and Australia will be brought much nearer to each other than they are at present. With an accelerated speed of steamers across the Indian Ocean, it ought to be possible to bring Fremantle and Marseilles within three weeks of each other.

The problem of obtaining water, of conserving it, and of distributing it, is the problem of Western Australia. In the Eastern States there are many natural waterways, which in part solve the question of irrigation. In the West there are few or none. Until a year or two ago Nature wore a stern aspect outside the few inhabited spots in the West. The desert stretched for hundreds of miles. The country was trackless. Transit was accomplished by the aid of camels. There were no wells or oases to relieve the monotony of the everlasting sand dunes. For the greater part of the year rain does not fall, and when it does it penetrates the sand and rapidly disappears beneath the surface. Water is the need of these great areas. Wherever men have obtained and conserved water, there, as by magic, the face of Nature has been changed. And one day, by the help of science, the transformation will be complete: the desert will blossom as the rose; in the wilderness will springs of water be found.

When the goldfields were opened up the first demand was for water. It was more precious than wine. The gold reefs were situated in the midst of a sterile region entirely inhospitable for man. Water in small quantities was gained and jealously kept. Superfluous baths were not permitted. Photographs of the early scenes in the goldfields suggest the lack of cleanliness. To-day all this is changed. In that former desert settlement there are green lawns and flower gardens. The hard lines on the face of Nature have been softened. The beauty of virginal youth is lacking, but it is much to have gained what has already been won. Five million gallons of pure water are pumped daily a distance of 350 miles, from the coast to the goldfields. It is a triumph of engineering, one of the marvels of the modern world. It was to the scene of the Mani reservoir at Mundaring that we were conveyed by the courtesy of the Government officials, who placed at our disposal an automobile. The “Bush” in every part of Australia possesses certain common features. There are the interminable stretches of wild country, heavily timbered with every variety of eucalyptus tree; the glorious splashes of brilliant yellow wattle; the “clearings” here and there, where settlers transform the unruly riot of Nature’s wild life into the beautiful order of cultivated gardens; the isolated church and school-house; and charred stumps of trees reduced to desolation by the all-devouring forest fires. In the world of animal and bird life there are the wallaby, the kangaroo, the dingo, the treacherous snake, the impudent magpie, the destructive parrot, and the clown of the bush—the laughing jackass. All these we encounter on our journey.

Twenty Miles toYorkbizarre