Five Years Under the Southern Cross: Experiences and Impressions. Frederic C. Spurr
is now done in pearl fishing, and this, too, can be increased; while in certain places the turtle abounds. The turtle industry is capable of great extension. One can imagine even a M. Louis de Rougemont quite contented with the size of these strange creatures. Fishing, pearling, and turtling offer great openings. All kinds of citrus fruits flourish in the State, together with the Smyrna fig, which reaches a state of perfection.
The commercial value of timber in this Golden West is enormous. The sandal wood grows in the north, and the jarrah hard wood in abundance everywhere. In other States there has been a cruel and wicked waste of valuable timber. The beautiful blackwood has been thrown in hundreds of tons to the flames; it “did not pay” to remove it to the coast. Surely Western Australia will never repeat this supreme folly! I have heard a whisper that some valuable ebony has been recently found in an out-of-the-way corner, but inquiries concerning it have elicited only the vaguest information.
What, then, with agriculture, gold mining, general minerals—including coal—pearling, fishing, timber, turtles, and fruit, the State has a reserve of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.
Water is always a difficulty in a country like this. Heaven is generous in its bountiful supplies of rain and springs, but man has not yet been wise enough to treasure the gifts so lavishly sent. There are rivers hundreds of miles long which have yet to be utilised for the necessary work of irrigation. Already the West, by its provision of water for the arid goldfields, has shown what can be done in the way of using to the best advantage the natural supplies which are confined to certain areas. And this country of young people, with the success of Coolgardie under its eyes, will know how to confer a like benefit upon other districts. With the practice of complete irrigation, the success of the country, agriculturally, is assured.
Passing from commerce to education, there is great promise for the West. Primary education is compulsory and free. The curriculum includes Nature study and practical instruction in such arts and crafts as will need to be practised by youths and maidens whose lot is cast, not in dense manufacturing centres, but in the midst of a laughing and fertile Nature. The education department provides systematic medical examination for all State school children. It is gratifying to observe how the best models are being followed in Australian education. There may be less of the academic polish associated with our English schools, but the pupils, when they leave the hands of their masters, will, at least, know sufficient to enable them to gain an honest living in a practical manner. For teachers, free education is given at the training colleges, together with board, when necessary, and pocket money. Nearly every child living near the coast, or in the vicinity of a river, can swim. In the summer-time children practically live in the water.
That there should be a wonderful future for the great West no reasonable man can doubt. But before that future can be assured the people must be possessed of higher ideals than those associated with money-making and pleasure-seeking. The foundations of a nation must be moral and religious, or it can be certain of nothing worthy of its true life. The obstacles to the laying of such foundations will be considered in due course.
CHAPTER IV
ADELAIDE, THE QUEEN CITY OF AUSTRALIA
No person could desire a better introduction to Australia than that which the city of Adelaide affords. It is the port where passengers, weary of the long sea voyage from England, disembark, to entrain for Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane. Adelaide is a true garden city on an extensive scale. Less compact, and containing fewer noble buildings than Melbourne, it excels that city in the beauty of its situation and in the ample verdure which everywhere abounds. Around it, guarding it, lies a ring of mountains. From one point of view the situation resembles certain parts of the Jura. There is the same immense stretch of plain, crowned with tree-clad slopes. From the highest point of the city a ravishing view of the country is obtained. The city at one’s feet is less a city than an immense countryside, where men have built houses and mansions, and where they transact business. No need for artist or architect to write “Amplius” over the natural picture. The streets are remarkably wide—wider than any we have in London—and they are planned with a view to development. However much Adelaide may grow, there cannot be, so far as municipal foresight may guarantee it, the creation of slums. Whatever slums appear in the future will be due to men with base souls and not to municipal bungling, as in the case of many of our English towns and cities. If London had only been planned upon some such model as Adelaide, it might be a paradise of God for residence. Gardens! Gardens everywhere. Bungalows! Bungalows everywhere. The bungalow, or the villa, as they call it in Adelaide, is the prevailing type of residence. Everything on one floor. Think of it, housewives who live in “basement” houses, dull and dimly lighted. The veranda encloses the house; to nearly every residence there is a garden. Wandering along the residential part of the city is not unlike an excursion into the country. But how shall I describe the gardens? They are sub-tropical. There grow in them, in the heart of Adelaide, the eucalyptus tree, the banana tree, the orange and the lemon trees, the palm-tree, and the passion fruit vine. And in the midst of these surroundings, made still more gladsome by a perfect atmosphere, I think of grimy London and its fogs, and wish that the central city of the world might share the delights of a city which knows not the meaning of a fog and which unites city and country in a perfect blend.
One of the glories of suburban Adelaide consists in its wealth of fruit orchards. Oranges and lemons grow in profusion. In the suburbs every little cottage garden has its orange and lemon trees. A friend of mine, who has just bought a modest villa outside the city, finds himself in possession of a garden which is stocked with vines, lemons, and oranges. He has so much fruit that he does not know what to do with it. I undertook a part solution of this delicate problem, and showed him a way out of his distress—to my advantage. The house, which is surrounded by this beautiful fruit garden, would be rented in England, in a town equal in size to Adelaide, at a sum not exceeding £35 per annum. Think of a house, with such delicacies as Muscat grapes and citrons ad lib. thrown in, and all for £35 a year!
The South Australian oranges are admittedly amongst the very finest produced in the Commonwealth. The famous “navels” have no superior in the world, if they have an equal. In London they fetch, retail, 4d. and 5d. each. Even in Adelaide they sell at 1½d. and 2d. each, retail. But there is all the difference imaginable between these “navels,” freshly plucked from the tree when ripe, and the “navels” which, gathered when green, ripen on the way home. To understand the attractiveness of an orange, the fruit must be eaten when it is just ripe and newly plucked from the branch.
The orange groves in “Paradise” (a suburb of Adelaide—well-named) are spectacles to remember. We were conducted over one of the largest of these by the proprietor himself. The story of this gentleman’s career and success sounds like a romance. Twenty years ago he left Manchester for Australia to try to better his position. He had little or no capital. In company with his brother, he went up country, acquired a little land, and the pair set to work to make it productive. In their case there was conscience in the work. No days allowed off for drinking; no limitation of the hours of labour; the brothers worked as hard as they could, in the belief that work “pays” in the best sense. When the profits came in they invested them in more land. Nothing was spent upon luxuries; nothing upon pleasures. For seven years the brothers lived in tents, thus saving the cost of building a house. There was little hardship, however, in that mode of life. In a warm country it is better to live outside than inside the house. Houses are merely places of refuge when the weather is bad; the “open” is the true place of abode. After a period of work up country one of the brothers came down to Adelaide and bought a piece of land measuring seventy or eighty acres. To-day that estate is one magnificent fruit orchard. Five thousand orange trees grow thereon, and each tree averages from 800 to 1,000 oranges per season. Besides this there are many lemon trees, extensive vines, peach, apricot, and apple trees, to say nothing of ten thousand orange “slips” which are already sold, and which will in due time be planted out all over the district.
The appearance of an immense orange grove of this extent is very impressive. Avenues of trees, all laden with golden fruit, run in every direction. Under the light of an afternoon