Travel
[We publish on this page articles and notes which may help our readers in making their plans for travel at home and abroad. They are written by correspondents who have visited the places described. We shall be glad to answer questions arising out of the Travel articles published in our columns. Inquiries should be addressed to the Travel Manager, The SPECTATOR, 99 Gower Street, w.c.1.1 Australia THE majority of well-educated Englishmen know that Summer in Australia is Winter over here ; that in area it is equal to the United States, and in population smaller than London. Many could mention several of the States ; some, even their capitals. Within the last few months we have struck up a nodding, though hardly cordial acquaint- anceship with the names of one or two Australian politicians, for true to the shareholders' code, we favour the general meetings in hard times with a critical attendance, and in good times with an unconcerned absence.
Most of us, then, have a fair working idea of the dullest knowledge procurable about Australia, embellished perhaps with a thin veneer of spurious information in the form of ghastly droughts, raging bush fires, rising taxes, Wing interest, and dinner at 7 p.m.
Australia is far from Europe, but the journey offers a very wide choice of routes, by which much of the world can he comfortably and conveniently seen on the way. The distance, however, can be the only excuse for our ignorance, for Australia is anything but dull. A continent seldom provides that concentrated variety of scenery to which we are accustomed in England. But to imagine the Commonwealth, as so many do, to be a large, flat, arid plain is very wide of the mark. -In places it is indeed flat, and strangely fascinating that country is ; country where a man's hat is the highest point from horizon to horizon, where illimitable distance is so like the open sea that it must be crossed by compass and stars and sun. But there is every gradation between the two extremes of great plains and rugged mountains. Scenery Alpine, scenery English, scrub and towering timber, snow and steam, great rivers and dry creeks, mile upon mile of shivering wheat and mile upon mile of lush pasture. Beware of thinking that Australia Jacks variety ! She has indeed her links of similarity. Her native animals are predominantly Marsupial—kangaroos and wallabys, bandicoots, opossums, wombats, flying squirrels, duck-billed platypi, and most entrancing of all, koalas, the original and only genuine live "teddy bears." So with the trees—the gum, in one of its innumerable species is the link between all the soils, altitudes and climates of the Continent. Many of these Eucalypts bear flowers, particularly in Western Australia, where there is also great profusion of wild flowers in the Spring. The other States too have their own favourites —boronia, wattle, magnolia, and the scarlet trumpeted hibiscus.
Just as Marsupials and Eucalypts link up the various Australian mammals and trees, so the atmosphere and scat- tered peoples of the Continent are homogeneous, for all is instinct with youth and progress. Pioneering still continues. Malice scrub is being crushed under giant rollers to make room for wheat ; timber felled for sheepruns ; bores sunk for water, and man spreads ever farther from the coast into the interior. This is no mushroom growth, for it is based on solid foundations of great agricultural and mineral wealth. It is not easy to realize how young the country is. In 1836 the police magistrate reports that "Melbourne consists of three weather-boarded, two slab, and eight turf huts." Ninety years later Melbourne had a population of over a million, and the city covered two hundred and fifty square miles. These Australian cities are well laid out—full of fine parks and tree-lined streets and gardens. Sydney, lying around the broken shores of its vast harbour, is pecu- liarly blessed by nature, and in the naming of its countless bays, in its Rushcutter's, Double, Elizabeth, Parsley, and Rose, there is an added human delight.
Fine though her cities are, however, perhaps the greatest charm of Australia lies in her country and its life. It cannot be described ; it must be experienced, but thanks to an almost boundless hospitality it is not difficult to get a taste of how the squatter lives. Sport is good. The trout fishing, particularly in Tasmania, is superlatively fine. Duck and quail are the chief game birds. There are several packs of hounds which show excellent sport near Melbourne and Adelaide, while it is no secret that it is probably more com- fortable, easier and altogether more delightful to back losers on an Australian racecourse than anywhere else in the world.
Not a word has been said of surfing, the universal summer sport of the great cities, of ski-ing, big game fishing, sailing, golf, or many other of the pastimes which are practised in really first class conditions in the Commonwealth. He is a dull visitor indeed whose last au revoir to Australian shores is not made both with a full appreciation of its literal meaning, and with a wish that the bows of his ship were
heading the other way. D. F. A.
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