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Climate of Australia—Sites for
a sanatorium—Start for Mount Wilson—My host—The road-side publican—Types of
colonial character—The parvenu—Vulgarity and boorishness—"Young Australia "
in the bush—Domestic servants—Argument on the subject—The beauty of Mount
Wilson—General description— Luxuriance of the vegetation—The tree-ferns and
scrub— Sassafras and messmate—Wild fruits, mosses, and plants— Clearing—A
Bush store—Cascade—Opinion on the climate by one of the leading Sydney
physicians—Prospecting for a section —Forest scenery and denizens—Wild
indigo —Plants that might be introduced—Casting about for water—Lunch in the
bush— The awful silence—Forest leeches—Wynn's Bocks—Grandeur and sublimity
of the desolation—A magnificent panorama—What a country for game !—The
mountain land—Timber clearing— A Field for labour—False ideas of speedily
acquiring riches—A bush interior—Prodigality—The kind of labour we want—How
men can rise—Advice to the new-comer.
The climate of Australia, it
need hardly be said, is exceedingly varied. At Orange, for instance, or on
the Blue Mountains, one may sit cowering over a fire, with snow mantling the
ground outside, while down in Sydney the city lies sweltering under almost a
torrid heat. The variations in the weather are exceedingly sudden, and
consequently very trying to weakly invalids. Sydney, with its quick changes
in temperature, is a bad place for consumptive or rheumatic patients.
Toothaches and neuralgic affections are very common, and dentistry, judging
by the numbers of practitioners, seems to be a lucrative profession.
Away up on the table-lands of
the interior, however, where there is an equable bracing atmosphere, the
consumptive patient rallies rapidly, appetite and strength are restored and
renewed, the hectic flush disappears, the hacking cough ceases, and the
racking pain is quickly alleviated by the fine temperate bracing mountain
air of Australia. It is a mistake for the consumptive patient to remain in
Sydney. "Away, away, to the mountain's brow!" should be their cry.
The mountain air in'Australia
is a real miracle-worker; and when the apathy and sloth of Sydney
capitalists shall awake to the fact that we have here one of the finest
opportunities ever given to a country for attracting wealthy sufferers,
perhaps in some sheltered snug retreat, amid the heathy dells and lovely
gorges of Rydal or Wallerawang, or amid the tropical magnificence and
surpassing beauty of Mount Wilson, we shall found a sanatorium that will
attract visitors from all countries, and in time every hill and valley shall
be studded with villas; while our hydropathic establishments and sanatoria
shall equal, if they do not excel, the vaunted virtues of Malvern, Ben
Rhydding, or any other of the famous summer resorts of tourists and patients
in England, or even in Switzerland, Algeria, or Southern Italy.
One other great advantage we
have over other resorts, is the marvellous cures said to be effected by the
exhalations from our boundless eucalyptus forests. This is really, in the
opinion of some of our best physicians, one of the chief causes of many of
the wonderful curative effects of our air which have been chronicled. To
Bournemouth, in England, for instance, patients are often sent as the scent
emitted from the fir-trees there have a salutary effect in some disorders.
I shall never forget my first
trip to Mount Wilson. I shared the hospitality of one of our oldest and most
respected colonists'; one who had sprung from an English family of ancient
lineage, whose name is honourably associated with the history of our
settlement and administration of the great province of Scinde and our
frontier policy in India, one of his brothers- having been Commissioner of
Scinde for many years. My host had himself been associated with many of the
successive Governors of New South Wales, in high and confidential
capacities, and his mind was a very treasure-house of racy recollections and
rich memories of men, manners, and measures, reaching back even to the times
when responsible government by Parliaments was unknown in the colony. He had
erected a magnificent mansion, of solid freestone, on one of the loveliest
sites on the mountain, and delighted to get away from the oppressive
atmosphere and coaly surroundings of the grimy black country about
Newcastle, to revel in the cool pure air and gorgeous scenery of Mount
Wilson. On the mountain, a slight tendency to asthma which troubled him in
the plains completely leaves him. This result is by no means singular.
The first part of the journey
is by rail, which I have described in the account of my visit to Govett's
Leap. Nowhere on any line of railway have I seen such magnificent wildness
as is presented to the view of the traveller over the Blue Mountains line,
except perhaps the Western Ghauts on the route from Jubbulpore to Bombay.
Far away to the distant horizon on every side, spreads the still ocean of
dull dead greenery.
There are no abrupt peaks or
bold, rugged outlines, it is true; but deep gorges filled with an intense
blue like the smoke of wood fires, and tumbled ridges, piled and jumbled
together, all clothed with gnarled vegetation and studded with mighty
boulders, recal to the imagination the descriptions of primeval chaos, ere
yet the creative hand had brought order out of the pristine medley of piled
material, from which the world was built. The country looks like a giant's
workshop, like the playground of Titans and Genii. What a wilderness of
desolation ! Yet every gorge is rich in mineral treasures, and it wants but
capital and man's intelligence to unlock the treasury, and transform the
solitary barren wastes into busy haunts of active industry and teeming
wealth.
At one station we are
accosted by a burly, thick-set, coatless, unshaven old roadside publican,
who has grown rich by the sale of liquors and successful land-jobbing; but
who, with an affectation which is not exclusively colonial, professes to
despise the conventionalities, and shows his independence by a profusion of
strange oaths and a studied bluntness, which only provokes an amused smile
from those who are in the secret. He excited my secret hilarity by a long
disquisition on his own wealth and importance, his political influence in
high quarters, and his ability to be or do anything if he had a mind to.
This is a very common type of
the successful colonist. Such men are proud of their success, but they feel
their own want of refinement. They are anxious to see their children
provided with the refinements of life, and fitted to take a place in
society, to which they themselves feel they can never attain; but they vent
their dissatisfaction with themselves, by sneering at everything polite, and
affect to despise what they would give a good part of their wealth to
possess themselves. Wealth has been acquired by ways and means that are
better left uninvestigated. Grog and land-jobbing, successful mining
speculations, cattle-dealing, money-lending, often no doubt downright hard
plodding industry and honest thrift, but the "trail of the serpent" is still
over all, and the speech of the shebeen, the stock-yard, and the
bush-shanty, will often be ostentatiously obtruded, when, if the luckless
tongue would but preserve a discreet silence, the possessor of the massive
watch-chain and bejewelled fingers might pass muster, if not for a
Chesterfield, at least for a respectable wealthy citizen. They cannot eschew
the old domineering bounce, however; and, judging all men by their former
experiences, and present comfortable balance at the bank, they are apt to
apply merely a metallic test to all accomplishments. Many of these men,
itching for notoriety, push their way into parliament, into municipal
councils, sit at the board tables of public institutions, and one is puzzled
whether to condemn most their offensive dogmatic purse-pride, their vulgar
affectation of independence, or be amused at their egregious self-conceit.
If they would only use their wealth more to forward schemes of public good,
and exert what talents and influence they possess in helping forward
projects that would tend to develope their country, and advance her national
progress and prosperity, their blunt speech and manner might be forgiven.
But most of them show no conception whatever of patriotism, and their public
spirit is concentred in narrow cupidity and selfishness almost superhuman.
They are very fond of getting their names paraded in print on every
conceivable occasion, yet they would feel contaminated by the presence of a
newspaper reporter at the same tables. As a Yankee friend remarked to me on
seeing a few specimens of the reigning tribe in Newcastle, "This town 'll
never go ahead, I guess, till you have a few dozen respectable funerals."
They are continually
"blowing" about their wealth, but if you want a subscription for an
hospital, a church, a school of arts, or any similar institution, or if you
want to get up a fresh food company, a water-supply, an experimental farm, a
town clock, or village drinking-fountain, their pockets are hermetically
sealed, and they will expend a great deal of vigorous profanity in the
attempt to show that all these and similar public movements should be got
up, paid for, and maintained by government.
In sober truth, the honest
critic must perforce be chary in pronouncing a favourable verdict on
colonial manners. This assumption of bluff independence borders closely on
the offensive. You rarely hear any one addressed as Mr., by the common run
of colonial cousins. Even their public men are dubbed "Bob this," or
"Charley that," and the late Premier is always very irreverently addressed
as "Old Jack." Respect for age or parental authority is not so deep or so
general as at home. On a country road, if you pass the compliments of the
day to any young bush hand you meet, ten to one but you are answered with
some offensive impertinence, or at best a loutish stare of uncourteous
surprise. Boys and lads in the country are slouching in dress and gait,
awkward and clumsy in a room, uncouth in conversation, and where at all at
their ease, they are rude and boisterous in their mirth.
The best place to see a young
colonial bumpkin is in the saddle. He sits like a centaur and is in every
respect an accomplished horseman. He is suspicious of new acquaintances. Yet
withal he is good grit at bottom, and only wants education, travel, and more
frequent contact with outside influences and intelligent minds to make a
fine man. At present the average colonial country youth, although he fancies
himself a very smart fellow indeed, is cramped and rustic, both in thought,
speech, and behaviour. In the bush, where he is undisputed " cock of the
walk," he is apt to look with undisguised contempt on everything cultured
and refined as womanish and feeble. Let us hope he will improve as time
rolls on.
Parents in many respects are
much to blame. They hear their hopeful young progeny speak disrespectfully
of their superiors in station, forwardly criticize and impertinently
contradict their elders, and pass malicious, unkind and sneering comments on
their neighbours and their neighbours' doings, and never deem it their duty
to correct such precocious insolence and forwardness. Nay, in nine cases out
of ten, young-Hopeful is considered a prodigy of smartness, and is
encouraged by the cynical encouragement of his democratic sire and
sun-hardened money-saving mother.
Domestic servants are a
terrible trouble to the young housewife. Indeed the lamentations over this
affliction are universal. I could fill volumes with instances of insolence,
insubordination, malicious carelessness, and stupidity; all of course from
the mistress's point of view.
Yet I should like to put in a
word on the other side for the universally execrated maid-servants. In all
my observations of Australian home-life I am irresistibly forced to this
conclusion, that the belief in money being omnipotent is all prevalent. In
the relations between master and servant there seems to be incessantly put
forward the idea, that everything is to be reduced to a money test. The
hire, wage, or pay is brought into undue prominence. The servant thinks, if
she earns her pay, that is all she has to study. The employer fancies that
if he or she pays the servant the stipulated wage, then she or he has only
to see that the worth of the money is rendered in return. Need I say that
this is a totally false view to take of all service, and especially of
domestic service. I firmly believe this lies at the root of the whole
difficulty, this habit of regarding the relationship between mistress and
maid as a mere mercenary compact. The importation of a living, mutual
kindliness and sympathy, into the connexion, is deprecated on both sides;
the servant is looked on merely as a hired assistant, or worker, the master
or mistress as a convenient milch cow, and the element of mutual
interdependence is scouted by both parties. The servant in my estimation
should be made to feel that she is one of the family; that the service is
not alone .mercenary, but is domestic in character as well as in name. So
far then I believe nearly as much blame lies at the door of the mistress as
of the servant.
Mistresses come less into
contact with their servants than formerly; are less in the kitchen; give
less actual manual aid with their own hands than the housewives of old. This
is, again, perhaps, a direct result of democratic institutions. Absolute
equality of political rights infallibly produces a feeling of social
equality, and in cases, too, where many wealthy mistresses do not belong to
old, wealthy, or aristocratic families, servants are apt to reflect that not
very long ago the mistress rose, perhaps, from a lower social stratum than
she now occupies, and respect and deference are on that account somewhat
weakened. On the other hand, the reports of immigration agents disclose the
fact that, out of the hundreds of domestic servants imported into this
colony, but very few represent the best of their class. The difficulty of
getting good servants in England is now one of the most serious drawbacks to
life there. It is, therefore, highly improbable that we get the best
material here. The percentage of what are called " objectionable characters"
is frequently very high, and it is to be feared the experiences of the
emigrant ship are not of an elevating character. With increased education
and increased intelligence, too, on the part of servants, their
sensitiveness has not unnaturally kept pace in a corresponding degree. They
are better fed, clothed, housed, and paid than of yore, for the general
increase of luxury in living has affected even the kitchen and servants'
hall. In many cases, like Jeshurun, they have waxed fat and kicked, and a
corresponding degree of resentment is generated in the minds of the
mistresses.
The fact of the demand being
greater than the supply naturally makes the girls feel independent, as they
know they need never want a situation.
The good old-fashioned plan
of having servants in at least once a day to unite with the family in
worship and prayer is sneered at as vulgar, behind the times, ridiculous,
subversive of discipline, and goodness knows what else. In many cases it is
doubtless due to the preponderance of Roman Catholic domestics in Protestant
households. Yet, where both are of the same faith, surely a common creed
should be an additional argument in favour of this good old family custom.
What was implied in the fine old custom was this:— it was an acknowledgment
that mistress and maid, master and man, were of one blood and of equal value
before tlie Almighty Maker; that their interests were in common; and as they
mingled their prayers together, it begat a feeling of mutual sympathy. There
was a feeling of community, and though some may scout the idea as
sentimental, it will be found that after all sentiment is a much more
important factor in the affairs of daily household life than most people
imagine.
Meantime, during this long
digression, we have lost sight of our fern-clad retreat, the peerless Mount
Wilson.
The beauty of the mountain
bursts upon one with all the suddenness of a change of theatrical scene. We
have to drive nearly nine miles from the solitary road-side station where
the train drops us, and the road, the whole distance, runs through an
intensely arid, barren, uninteresting country. The soil seems barely
sufficient to support the hardy, heathy-looking plants, all of whom in the
season bear beautiful but scentless flowers. The formation here is all of
the prevailing sandstone, but nearing the mountain we dash through a tiny
rivulet, and lo ! we are at once in fairyland. The mountain is an outcrop of
volcanic trap formation. It bursts clear through the sandstone, and must
have been an overflow in some far back geologic age, of the fiery pent-up
mass of molten fluid surging deep in the bowels of the earth. It reminded
me, for all the world, of a gigantic conical wedding-cake. Corresponding to
the sugar and almond paste is a rich, loamy, chocolate-coloured soil, which
encrusts the mountain over all its extent to a depth varying from eighty
inches to eighty feet.
In this rich soil vegetation
on the most varied and luxuriant scale finds a congenial nursery. It is but
a step from the arid, heath-covered, rocky slopes, on which gnarled and
stunted white gums struggle for existence, into a very wilderness of
luxuriant, tropical vegetation. I have never in all my wanderings seen such
a sudden change in natural scenery. It is as if one stepped from a bare,
bleak, gravelly yard into the most magnificently-furnished fernery or
greenhouse. The air is loaded with the dank, humid odour of a forcing-house,
and on every side the beauties of the vegetable world are scattered with a
lavish profusion that the finest artificial herbarium could never equal. The
tree-ferns at once arrest the eye. What words can picture their matchless
grace and beauty! What countless multitudes raise their feathery fronds and
display their loveliness on every side ! Tall sassafras and messmate-trees
tower straight up like a forest of masts, and their glossy green curling
leaves are inexpressibly grateful to the eye, wearied and sated with the
eternal dull dead drapery of the rugged mountain gums.
The sassafras is a
noble-looking tree. It bears a white blossom in the spring, and the wood,
when cut, emits an agreeable scent. The messmate seems to be a kind of
stringy bark. The wood is hard and durable, and yields a valuable timber.
Never, even in the Indian jungles, have I seen more luxuriant vegetation.
From every chink in the soil spring forth ferns and trailing mosses. Many of
the tree-ferns are ten, fifteen, twenty feet high. How beautifully their
delicate green Mild feathery tracery contrast with the glossy dark green
mass of foliage that drapes the sassafras scrub. The lawyer vine festoons
every tree, and I can at once detect various plants that bear undoubted
testimony to the wonderful richness and fecundity of the soil. I noted
several varieties of the Solanacea, wild blackberries, raspberries, wild
tobacco—a tall broad-leafed shrub with a leaf not unlike the oleander, but
the branches crowded with berries of all tints, from shining green, olive,
yellow, crimson, scarlet, down to cherry black. Mosses carpet the jutting
rocks, and silvery tufts drape the trunks of the trees. The Blue Mountain
parrots dart in and out, and round about among the trees, flashing past like
animated fireworks. Indeed, the scene as it bursts upon the gaze is very
lovely, and the most eloquent tongue would be beggared to fluid words
adequately to .describe the exuberant wealth of beauty which is here spread
before us.
On the brow of the hill we
come on to a clearing of some ten acres belonging to my friend, on which has
been erected a neat weatherboard cottage. All the tall timber has been cut
down, but the tree-ferns have been left. Can you imagine ten acres of
magnificent tree-ferns ? Nothing else to be seen!—they are as plentiful as
cabbages in a garden bed. The sight was to me as rare as it was surpassingly
beautiful. On the opposite side of the road, beside a rudely-fenced paddock,
and overlooking the bleak tumbled wilderness of distant arid hills, stands a
rough log cabin of a primitive bush style. This is inhabited by a decent old
Irishwoman, who keeps a store for the accommodation of the parties of
bushmen, sawyers, rail-splitters, and road-makers that are at work on the
various properties on the mountain.
Several large clearings have
been already made. My friend has a magnificent mansion of hewn stone, with
every convenience of a first-class modern gentleman's seat, erected on one
of the most lovely sites in the place. The cost of the house was over 5000Z.
Other nice houses, though chiefly of wood, are being put up on various parts
of the mountain. An accurate survey has been made, roads mapped out, and
this beauteous retreat promises by-and-by to become a favourite summer
resort for the elite of Sydney. In the most centrally situated part of the
surveyed land there is a beautifully clear running stream of water, as cold
as ice. It rises in an outcrop of the original sandstone, which seems
somehow to have been embraced in the invading overflow of trapstone, and
after a merry, bubbling, purling journey of some few furlongs through the
ferns and mosses, it suddenly plunges sheer down a giddy leap of some eighty
or one hundred feet. With a larger volume of water, this would form a
magnificent cascade. As it is, once one has forced his way through the
almost impenetrable undergrowth, the scene amply repays him for his trouble.
The brawling little brooklet tumbles headlong down, scattering its showers
of broken spray from shelf to shelf of the mossy, water-worn rocks, until it
is dissipated in mist far below. Dewy globules glisten on every leaf. The
foliage is exquisite in its freshness and vivid greenness. A monster
tree-fern stands still and motionless, like a sentinel, in the hazy gloom
beneath; and the rugged, precipitous sides of the cleft abyss are literally
loaded with all the rarest forms of fern-life, and the most beautiful
mosses, orchids, heaths, and living greenery of all kinds.
What a site for a sanatorium,
for a hydropathic establishment, or for a Trossach's Hotel! In the freo,
fresh air here the lungs expand, the relaxed frame acquires fresh vigour,
and the breath of the asthmatic patient comes freely and easily, after the
heavy, moist atmosphere of the plains.
Writing to me on this
subject, one of the leading physicians of Sydney says: "The atmosphere of
Sydney and the eastern seaboard generally, for the greater part of the year,
is warm and moist; but as you travel westward, and pass the coast-range, the
air becomes dry and rarefied on the table-land, which lies between two and
three thousand feet above the sea-level. Prolonged residence on the
coast-line has a relaxing and enervating effect upon the system. The blood
becomes thin, and hence the inhabitants are predisposed to the varied forms
of neuralgic and nervous dyspepsia. Patients troubled in this way derive
immense benefit by removal to the dry, light, and pure air of the mountains
or table-land.
" New South Wales has long been known as a health-resort for consumptive
invalids; but it is not on the seaboard that they derive benefit, but on the
elevated plateaus to the west and south-west, in and near the Bathurst,
Orange, and Goulburn districts. It is a matter of constant observation, that
those coming here with consumptive disease, or in whom the disease has here
originated, only get worse until their removal to the inland air. In the
first stage of the disease, if the patient seek such change, adopt a country
outdoor life on a c station,' or such-like restoration to perfect health
often ensues. Many hundreds of lives have been saved in this way. Indeed, it
is quite a common thing to meet with people who tell you, ' I came out here
on account of weakness of the lungs; I spat blood at homo. 1 went up into
the bush, and have now been in perfect health for years.'
"On the other hand, I have
seen scores of patients who, having arrived in Sydney well advanced in the
second stage of the disease, have become rapidly worse in the moist and warm
atmosphere which prevails near the coast. The practical deduction from these
facts is, that physicians in Europe should advise their patients to come
here in the first stage of the disease, and not wait until the second, or
softening, stage has commenced; and, further, that the towns on the coast of
New South Wales should be avoided, and the sufferers should pass at any rate
nine months of the year on the elevated table-land, and, if possible, adopt
a bush life.
"There is another class of
patients whose sufferings are remarkably alleviated, and often entirely
removed, by residence in an inland district. I refer to asthma-tical
patients. It is well known to all physicians in Sydney that this affection
is frequently entirely absent, as long as the individual remains at an
elevation of two or three thousand feet, and at a distance of 100 or 150
miles from the coast-line. Many a time has a patient left Sydney terminus
suffering acutely from the dreadful cough and oppression of breathing which
characterizes this disease, and on reaching the summits of the Blue Mountain
range the trouble has vanished.
"Children, too, suffering
from mesenteric disease have often been restored to health, mainly by
removal to the mountain air, or that of the elevated plains."
The above opinion is amply
endorsed by most of the Sydney medical men of my acquaintance. A
convalescent home, say at Mount Wilson or Wallerawang, would doubtless
attract crowds of inmates. There is a fortune in the idea, if capital and
enterprise would but embark in the work.
My friend having purchased
several sections on a spur running from the other side of the mountain, we
set off early one day to try and discover the locality. We soon left the
clearings, and plunged into the tangled bush. The only guide we had was the
infrequent blazings on the trees, made by the surveyor's party who had
mapped out the ground. The woodland scenery was magnificent. On every hand
rose the primeval giants of the forest, and the varieties of ferns were
legion. Huge prostrate trunks of trees lay rotting in. the hollows, and
mixed inextricably in a bewildering maze. We toiled and clambered and
ploughed our way among bushes and creepers and ferns reaching waist-high.
Occasionally we disturbed a snake, or flushed a flock of parrots or beach
cockatoos. Once we witnessed the antics of a male lyre-bird, ruffling his
plumes and strutting proudly round, drum-major fashion, to the delectation
of two hens, who watched him from the altitude of a creeper-festooned
eucalyptus. Thorny pliant vines and thick undergrowth started up at every
step to impede our path, and over all the bush thick serried rows of
withered stocks of indigo made our progress laborious in the extreme. The
indigo here grows in most marvellous profusion. I firmly believe an indigo
factory might be here profitably started. I fancy coffee might be grown, and
vanilla, cardamoms, and other valuable plants might be introduced. After
three hours' incessant labour and severe exertion, we found by our plot-map
and compass that we had advanced barely over a mile. As the point of our
quest was yet two miles distant, we owned ourselves beaten, and, as the
copious perspiration had made us thirsty, we cast about for signs of water.
My comrade was an experienced
old bushman, and, guided by indications which smacked somewhat of mystery to
me, he led straight down a precipitous gully, bordered by beetling crags on
either hand, and densely shaded by the most tangle-matted undergrowth I have
ever seen, and we soon came to a mossy wall of rock, from every crevice of
which tiny pearl-drops of icy cold water trickled incessantly. Selecting the
rib of a tree-fern, he trimmed it, sharpened one end, and inserted it into a
crack in the rock. It acted as a funnel, and from its outer projecting end
we soon had a tiny trickling rill of clear, deliciously cool water. Here we
sat and munched our mid-day meal. An awful stillness reigned around. Far
down the ravine seemed to lose itself in utter gloom and blackness. There
was no twitter of bird nor hum of insect. Even the mosquitoes were silent.
The advent of man was too unwonted an event and luxury for them to lose time
over a musical prelude, and they attacked us with silent but indomitable
ardour. The soothing smoke of tobacco failed to put them to flight, and we
were fairly forced to beat a retreat. It was evening ere we got home. The
forest-leech is here met with. They reminded me of their Nepaul congeners.
From every leaf in some of the moist hollows they stretched their long,
slender, swaying, thread-like bodies. If there was ever a chink in all your
habiliments, they were sure to find it, and the traveller has often to pick
their bloated unsightly carcases from legs and neck, and even from his
armpits, when he reaches home.
If any one doubts the
fertility of the Australian soil, and the luxuriance of bush vegetation, let
him visit Mount Wilson. If he be a drawing-room knight, and not accustomed
to plunge through thorny brakes and tangled wildernesses, let him accept my
description and rest satisfied. Tearing and plunging through such bush as
that on Mount Wilson is a very muscular exercise.
Another day we went to a
bald, rocky promontory, overlooking one of the most majestic scenes of wild
desolate grandeur I have ever looked upon in all my wanderings. The locality
is known as Wynn's rocks. A good road has been cut through the forest, and
ladies can be driven to within a short distance of the jutting cliffs. As we
paced along the sylvan track, numerous lyre-birds and the gorgeous Blue
Mountain parrots flitted noiselessly or ran rapidly across the path. The
mountain is the seat of surprises. Through a dense belt of tangled
forest-scrub we emerge on to a huge tabular rock, and the full awfulness of
the scene bursts at once on the view. It realizes to the life the very ideal
of savage and chaotic desolation. Sheer down from your feet, you look into a
yawning valley hundreds of feet below you. The trees look like tiny shrubs.
The sun sends back no cheerful rays from the piled-up rocky cairns, but the
rugged walls impress one with the feeling of profound loneliness and
inaccessibility. Immense yawning chasms gape up at you, their every cranny
clad thickly with dwarfed gnarled trees, fit only for firewood. On all hands
you see the traces of the devastating bush-fires. No hoof or horn is to be
seen. Deep down in the bottoms, where concealed waters noiselessly steal
along, and whose rugged barrenness is softened by the intense blue haze of
the wonderfully-coloured atmosphere, there are occasional patches of greener
verdure, where the succulent valley-grass and the lovely tree-ferns feel the
influence of the trickling mountain spring. Great buttresses of seamed,
scarred, rugged rock frown above the valleys. Their outlines assume
fantastic shapes, and seem like a phalanx of Gorgons.
Casting our eyes across the
intervening, chasmlike valley, we see in the far distance, like a spider's
thread, the track leading from the railway station, and for the moment we
experience a sense of relief to see the white shining hotel and buildings of
Mount Victoria, speaking of life and settled habitation. To the left we see
Bell's line of road, winding like a serpent's track along the face of the
crags, and in and out among the hills. This line was shown to Bell, an
exploring surveyor, by a black gin, and it forms a droving road through the
mountains, debouching somewhere near Lake Macquarie.
On the flanks of the hills,
which are inexpressibly barren-looking and desolate, occasional green
patches show out at intervals, agreeably relieving the dull dead monotone of
colour. The air is surpassingly clear, and so exhilarating and pure that the
lungs expand, and the spirits become buoyant, as if under the influence of
nitrous oxide.
On the left, a little farther
round, a hill called from its form the Haystack, proudly rears its head.
Beyond it Mount Thamar rises, surmounted by a fringe of dreamy-looking
withered trees, done to death by the murderous custom of ring barking. These
withered sentinels give to the bold summit of the mountain a still deeper
aspect of desolate wildness. The mountain country lies spread out before us
like a panorama. There stands Mount St. George in front—an isolated rounded
mass, the sandstone strata ringing it round "with circling belts of
inaccessible precipices. Far beyond, where earth and sky melt into a blue,
blurred, wavy outline, the eternal ocean spreads out towards the verge of
infinity. In the deep valley below, straight as a plummet down, the moaning
wind sways the gum-tree tops, and a sighing, wailing sound seems to rise
from the desolate valley, as if the genius of solitude were crooning the
death keene over the grave of buried joys and stifled hopes. I held my
breath and felt inclined to greet.
In one deep, gloomy defile to
the right, where the soil was volcanic, the contrast in the foliage from
that of the sandstone foundation was most marked. The trees were clad in a
deep, vivid, intense green, showing the difference between the
neutral-tinted sombre gums and the dark glossy verdure of the mimosas,
wattles, messmates, and other similar trees that delight in shade and
moisture. But now the lengthening shadows come creeping slowly down the
valleys. We aroused from our contemplative mood and retraced our steps.
There are numerous clearing
parties ou the hill. The clearing is let out by contract. Twenty-seven
pounds an acre is about the average cost. Sometimes it goes as high as
thirty-seven, and even forty pounds. The contractor gets what he can make
out of the timber. We have sawyers, rail-splitters, draymen, quarrymen, and
various artisans, all at work here on plentiful wages. There is ample room
here for steady, willing men, and this locality is but the counterpart of
countless others in the colony.
Yet something is wrong, or we
should not hear so much of men being deluded out under false promises and
fraudulent representations. The fact is, that young fellows form too exalted
an estimate of what lies before them. They think wealth is to be acquired
swiftly and without effort. Here as elsewhere they need to practise
persistent effort. Frugality and thrift allied to industry will infallibly
produce money here. Let us look into this timber-cutter's hut. It is rude
and dirty, and discomfort is on every side suggested. But this is not all.
Everywhere are the evidences of lavish prodigality. Flour sacks lumber the
shelves. Sardine boxes, jam tins by the score, pickles, butter, ay, even
candied fruits and fig boxes, are in the shanty-man's stores. Chunks of
tobacco are here, of course, and an assortment of pipes. Gaudy Crimean
shirts, bacon, cheese, and, most mournfully suggestive of all, rum and gin
bottles, show that work is plentiful and wages high. I maintain without fear
of contradiction, that, compared with the average style of life of an
English peasant or Scotch labourer, the bushman in Australia fares like
Dives, "sumptuously every day." He has always a cheque to cash when he
reaches the towns. Does the publican or the savings' bank see most of the
colour of his money ? This is the question to which the answer reveals much
that is ominous, when we begin' to speculate on the future of our race here.
Apart from want of frugality
and thrift, we get out scores of the wrong class of emigrants. "We do hot
want men who will loaf about the towns. We want unskilled labour; men to hew
wood and draw water, who will be content to wait a little and accumulate
their savings. After five years of contract work in the bush or in the
interior—and, mark this, such work is always procurable at highly
remunerative prices—if men will exercise self-denial, the labourer may
become master of his own holding, and found a home such as the labour of a
lifetime would never acquire in England. If all the money goes in periodical
sprees and in lavish expenditure on luxuries, of course the man will never
rise; but it is not the government or the colony that he need rail against.
Many of our best and most
successful bushmen, who gradually win their way to comfortable home life and
independent settlement, are thrifty, prudent, plodding Germans. Scotchmen,
too, stand out very favourably. But any man, if he be industrious, plodding,
frugal, after some years—not by bounds, not all at once, but by honest,
painstaking diligence—may "see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied."
It is only "the hand of the diligent that maketh rich" in New South AVales
as elsewhere.
To the new comer who is
willing to work I would say, shun the towns. Take the first billet that
offers. Put what little money you may have into the savings' bank. By the
first year you will have acquired enough of what is called colonial
experience to be able to find the best market for your labour. You can save
half your wages every year if you are careful, and by the end of five years
you may be in a position to clear for yourself on your own selection, and
found a homestead of your own. You won't do it by having an annual
"flare-up" at the nearest bush public, or by running into debt to solace
yourself with jams, preserved fruits, and pickles.
Had we, too, a better land
system, the task of settlement might be even much easier than it is, and the
right stamp of men would be attracted to our shores. Corrupt government and
a vile land system are the rot of Australia; and ere I close my book I must
devote a chapter or two to a consideration of the quality of our
legislators, and the results of their wisdom. |
