# The Boy Travellers in Australasia/Chapter 14

CHAPTER XIV.
A COASTING steamer carried Doctor Bronson and his young companions to Newcastle, a town which resembles the English one of the same name in being an important centre of the coal-trade. The distance from Sydney is about seventy-five miles, and consequently the voyage was of only a few hours' duration; even this limited time was utilized by a conversation about the political divisions of Australia and the relations between the colonies.
INTERIOR OF A COAL-BREAKER.
​"We have read to you our notes," said he, "about the settlement of New South Wales by the fleet of ships that came out from England by order of the Government. New South Wales was thus the parent colony, and the others, with one exception, are offshoots from it. In 1790 New South Wales established a penal colony on Norfolk Island, which has since been given up to the Pitcairn Islanders, descendants of the mutineers of the Bounty. Van Dieman's Land, or Tasmania, was settled as a penal colony in 1803, by Lieutenant Bowen, who was sent from Sydney with a few convicts and their guards, and formed a settlement near the spot where the city of Hobart now stands. Queensland, under the name of Moreton Bay District, was settled in 1825 from Sydney, and became a separate colony in 1859. Victoria, then known as Port Phillip, and forming part of New South Wales, was colonized in 1803, and afterwards abandoned; it was permanently settled from Tasmania in 1835, and on July 1, 1851, the colony was separated from New South Wales and became independent.
"South Australia was colonized by emigrants from Great Britain in 1836, and West Australia by a detachment of soldiers and convicts from Sydney in 1826. New South Wales can thus claim the parentage of all the colonies of the continent and its adjacent island, Tasmania, with the single exception of South Australia.
"West, or Western, Australia is described by its name, as it occupies the entire western part of the continent. South Australia is a misnomer; the parent colony is in the southern part of the continent, but its jurisdiction extends from ocean to ocean to the northern shore, and includes the so-called Northern Territory, or Alexandra Land, which will one day, no doubt, form an independent government. To the eastward of the Northern Territory and South Australia is Queensland, and south of Queensland and eastward of South Australia is the parent colony of New South Wales. Then comes the colony of Victoria, south of New South Wales; territorially it is the smallest of all the colonies, but it isn't small in any other way. Tasmania is a hundred and fifty miles south of Victoria, from which it is separated by Bass's Strait, which preserves, the name of its discoverer, Dr. George Bass of the Royal Navy."
GOLD-FIELDS OF MOUNT ALEXANDER, AUSTRALIA.
​boy. They narrowly escaped being drowned in the sea, and later in being killed by the natives when the wind drove them ashore. In the following year Doctor Bass went in a whale-boat, with a crew of six men and provisions for six weeks, and found that the coast trended so far to the west as to indicate the separation of Tasmania from the mainland, and in the next year (1798) he obtained a sloop, and in company with Captain Flinders actually sailed through the strait and determined the question."
"I see you have been reading to advantage," the Doctor remarked. "And please add to your notes that this same Doctor Bass is supposed to have died a slave in the mines of Chili. He was arrested at Valparaiso in consequence of a dispute with the authorities, and was never again seen or heard of by his friends. There was a rumor that he had been sent to the mines, and that was all."
"If the Australian continent were divided into one hundred equal parts," said Frank, "Victoria would include three, New South Wales ten, Queensland twenty-three. South Australia thirty, and West Australia thirty-four. The greatest length of Australia is about 2400 miles, and its greatest width, between Cape York on the north and Wilson's Promontory on the south, is 1971 miles. It has about 7750 miles of coast-line, and an area of 2,944,628 square miles. A good idea of the extent of Australia may be had by comparing it with other countries. It is about twenty-six times the area of Great Britain and Ireland, fifteen times the size of France, about one-sixth smaller than the whole of the United States of America, and only about one-fifth smaller than the whole of Europe."
Fred asked who gave it the appellation of Australia.
"The name was given by Captain Flinders, of whom we were speaking a few moments ago," replied the Doctor. "His memory is preserved in a river and a mountain-range of the continent whose coast he explored. On his return to Europe he was captured by the French, and was held a prisoner from 1806 to 1810. He died in England in 1814, shortly after publishing his book, 'A Voyage to Terra Australis.'"
"There is a great part of the country not yet explored," said Frank, as the Doctor paused. "A writer on this subject says that the unexplored region of the present day is almost entirely confined to Western Australia and a large part of the northern territory of South Australia. New South Wales and Victoria have an area of four hundred thousand square miles, almost every mile of which is fairly known; Queensland may still have a small extent of unknown land in the far northern ​peninsula; South Australia has at least two hundred and fifty thousand miles unexplored or but little known; and West Australia has fully half a million square miles that have been crossed at intervals by the tracks of a few explorers. In round figures, the extent of unexplored or partially known country in Australia is more than double that of the thoroughly known portion. The continent is almost fairly bisected by the overland telegraph line, which follows closely the track of Macdouall Stuart, the explorer, and the telegraph may be considered a line of demarcation between the explored and unexplored portions."
"And have you ascertained why the continent has not yet been thoroughly examined?" Doctor Bronson queried.
CLEARING IN AN AUSTRALIAN FOREST.
"I read about that too," said Frank; "the Murray and its ​tributaries, the Lachlan and Murrumbidgee, are lasting streams; but the Darling, a river of considerable size, flowing into the Murray from the north, has the Australian peculiarity of disappearing into quicksands and marshes. With the exception of the Murray, all the other permanent streams of Australia are short, and of little consequence; and, like the rivers of New Zealand, they have been clogged with water-cress, which was introduced from England in the expectation that it would be a great luxury."
A WATERLESS REGION.
"You have hit exactly upon the obstacle which has baffled Australian explorers," said the Doctor. "All who have sought to penetrate the interior have suffered terribly from thirst, and some expeditions that have never been heard from are supposed to have perished from the same cause. The rainfall in the interior of the continent is slight, the heat in summer is intense, and even in winter the thermometer sometimes runs to a high figure."
"Then it is fair to suppose that the interior of Australia is practically of no use," Frank remarked.
"It is fair to suppose so," was the reply; "but some scientists ​believe that good pasture-land and habitable country will yet be found in the interior, where the few explorers who have been there report only a desert unfit to sustain human life and impracticable for settlement. Artesian wells have been bored in many places, and a fair proportion of them have succeeded in finding water. There is so much territory in Australia that it is not likely the capabilities or disadvantages of all parts of it will be thoroughly known for many years to come.
AUSTRALIAN LYRE BIRDS.
"'Taken as a whole, the country, as far as explored, exhibits less hill and dale, with less compact vegetation, than in most other parts of the world. In the interior there is a bare, barren, stony desert, totally unfit for man or beast. A more or less broken chain of mountains extends from Spencer Gulf, round the south coast, all along the eastern coast, and round the northern coast, nearly to Limming's Bight. The rivers are few in number; the watercourses are very low in summer, and frequently dried up; no dense forest exists, as in America; the herbage generally is thin, the grasses, although highly nutritious, growing in patches. The highest peak is Mount Kosciusko, 6510 feet above sea, at the head of the Murray, which is the largest Australian river, 2500 miles long.
"We shall have an opportunity to verify many of these statements," said the Doctor, "when we travel in the interior." Then, turning to Frank, he asked that youth what he had learned concerning the government of the colonies.
"I learned that they are wholly independent of each other," was the reply, "and furthermore, that there is great jealousy between them. Each of the colonies must be considered in many respects a distinct province, having its own government, local laws, and customs regulations. With the exception of West Australia, they all enjoy responsible government, and that colony will no doubt have the same constitutional privileges as the others before many years. The form of government is a modification of the British Constitution, the sovereign being represented by the Governor, who is appointed by the Crown; the House of Lords by the legislative council, nominated or elected; and the House of Commons by the legislative assembly, elected by the people.
"The imperial laws are in force unless superseded by local enactments, and all acts passed by the colonial legislatures must receive the assent of the sovereign before they can become laws. In each of the colonies the qualifications for exercising the franchise are placed very low, and manhood suffrage is practically the rule. An effort has been made to league the Australian colonies into one great confederation; ​the friends of the movement are confident of its success in course of time, but local jealousies have thus far prevented it."
"It doesn't take long to find out that the colonies are very jealous of one another," Fred remarked. "It's a pity that this state of affairs exists; but after all, it has done a great deal towards the development and population of the country. Jealousy between communities and colonies is the basis of enterprise, and many things have been done here in consequence of competition that without it would never have been done at all. When one colony sends out an exploring expedition another does the same; when one establishes a system of cheap emigration the rest will not be left behind. And so it goes through all their enterprises. It is exactly like the rivalry that existed between our Western States and cities twenty years ago, and still exists to some extent."
A MEMBER OF THE LEGISLATURE.
"Spoken like a statesman," said the Doctor, as he nodded approvingly towards his nephew. "Put your remarks on paper and send them home; they may be beneficial to some of our friends in St. Louis and Chicago."
​Fred promised to do so, and when some time later he wrote out his views he added the following:
"It's very funny to hear the people of one city or colony talk about those of another. Each decries all the rest, and represents his own region as the only perfect one. Talking about the climate, a Sydney man will tell you that the capital of New South Wales is quite exempt from the cold winds that make life unbearable in Melbourne and Adelaide. The Melbourne man tells how you suffer from 'brickfielders' (hot and dusty winds from the interior) at Sydney, and how the poor wretches in Adelaide are perspiring at every pore with a temperature and humidity like those of a Russian bath.
"Each colony has its own postal regulations, its own postage-stamps, and its own rates for letters and other mail matter. New South Wales is a land of free-trade, while Victoria, its neighbor, is a land of protective tariffs; each can demonstrate the advantages of its particular system, and on the other hand each has a minority party that wants its laws patterned after those of its rival. The gauges of the railways are different, so that there is a break at every frontier; consequently passengers are obliged to change trains, and all freights bound across the line must be transshipped. The enactments of the colonial legislatures are often hostile to one another, and sometimes the rivalry expresses itself so strongly that it seems unfortunate that the colonies have a common language.
"None of the colonies has any State Church, and all religions are placed on the same footing. The Episcopalians are the dominant body so far as numbers are concerned, the Roman Catholics are next, and then come the Presbyterians, and after them the Methodists. These are the four great denominations; far below them in numbers and in their order of strength are the Lutherans and German-Protestants, Baptists, Congregationalists, Jews, Bible Christians, Church of Christ, Unitarians, and Free Presbyterians. The Asiatic proportion of the population adds Moslems, Confucians, and Pagans to the list of religionists. Considering the recent settlement of the colonies, the proportion of places of worship to the population will compare favorably with other countries.
"There is a tendency to exclude religious teaching from the public schools, and in place of this there is a wide-spread interest in Sunday-schools, which abound all over the continent wherever it has been settled. In the matter of education the colonies are happily actuated by the same impulse, all believing that it is one of the vital principles ​of good government. The children are taught either wholly or partially by the aid of the State funds of each province, and in nearly all the colonies a separate department, under a minister of the Crown, controls the machinery of education.
INFANT CLASS IN AN INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL.
"The leading principles of education in Australia are that it is free, or very nearly so. It is compulsory, and it is secular, though not in all cases, to the absolute exclusion of Bible-reading. The latest reports at hand show that there are 5844 State schools in Australia, with 553,191 pupils and 11,890 teachers. There are numerous high-schools, academies, and denominational schools in the cities and larger towns, and there are colleges and universities at Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide."
​We will now drop the journals and statistics of Frank and Fred, and attend to what they saw and heard on their journey.
We left them on their way to Newcastle, which they reached without mishap. A fellow-passenger told them that several disastrous wrecks had occurred at the entrance of Newcastle Harbor, which was formerly very dangerous when the wind blew heavily from the southeast. A breakwater has been constructed that greatly diminishes the danger, as it protects the bar from the heavy seas which formerly swept over it. Newcastle is the outlet of a considerable extent of country, but its principal business is in coal, of which it ships more than two million tons annually. The town has many evidences of prosperity, and its appliances for handling coal are extensive and excellent.
One of the citizens volunteered to show our friends the coal-mines. While they were making the round of the place he said that a careful estimate showed that the coal-seams now being worked contained enough coal to keep up the present rate of production for five hundred and twelve years. There are thirty-five seams of coal, varying from five to twelve feet in thickness, and one seam—the Greta—is twenty-one feet thick. Nearly five thousand miners are employed underground, and one thousand at the mouths of the mines. The deepest workings are those of the Greta, four hundred and fifty feet, and the Stockton, three hundred and eighty feet. The authorities of Newcastle believe they have the finest appliances for handling coal that are to be found anywhere, and Doctor Bronson said he certainly did not know of any that surpassed them.
Since the visit of our friends we are told that the railway from Sydney to Newcastle has been completed, and also the line which connects with the one from Brisbane, at the frontier between New South Wales and Queensland. From Newcastle they went by land to Brisbane; near Tenterfield they left the railway for a coach-ride of forty miles, which brought them to Stanthorpe, where they found a train to carry them to their destination. At several points on their coach-ride they saw the working-parties making cuttings and fillings along the route for the railway that now completes the connection between the capitals of the colonies of Queensland and New South Wales. There is now continuous railway communication from Brisbane to Adelaide, a distance of very nearly eighteen hundred miles.
The train left Newcastle at 7.15 in the morning, and brought them to Tenterfield at a little past midnight, the distance being three hundred and eighty-one miles. It carried them through a country of ​varied characteristics—hill, valley, plain, mountain, forest, and open country presenting themselves in succession. "It can be briefly described," said Frank, "as an agricultural, pastoral, and mining region, some of it being of great value, and other parts quite forbidding in aspect, owing to the scarcity of water. We passed through some of the gold-fields of New South Wales, but did not stop to visit them. We were told that considerable quantities of diamonds had been obtained near Bingera, one hundred and ten miles north from Tamworth. an important town on the railway, about half-way between Newcastle and Tenterfield.
COMPLETING THE RAILWAY.
"Occasionally we saw herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, and were not surprised to learn that the country is considered an excellent region for raising those animals. We passed through forests of ​gum-trees, as they are called here, the ordinary appellation of the Eucalyptus, of which there are many varieties. Compared with the trees of England and America, the gum-tree is not beautiful, and no one would think of growing it for ornament alone, but on the whole it is by no means ill-looking. The leaves do not spread out horizontally, but depend vertically from the boughs. Consequently the tree gives little shade in the daytime, but the traveller who passes through a gum forest at night blesses this peculiarity of the tree, as it admits the light of the moon and stars, to the great advantage of the wayfarer. Compared with European trees, the verdure of the Eucalyptus is scanty, and its green is rather sombre. Some of the varieties of this tree are far more attractive than others, the handsomest of all being the Banksia, named after Sir Joseph Banks.
A FALLEN GIANT.
​"The Eucalyptus has been carried to other countries, and it seems to do well all over the world where the climate is not too cold for it. It grows rapidly, and is said to prevent malaria and fevers; we asked Doctor Bronson about the latter statement, and he said he was greatly inclined to believe it. The French introduced it into Algeria, and found that fevers diminished rapidly or disappeared altogether where it grew, and they are so thoroughly convinced of its utility that they have planted great numbers of Eucalypti. Mr. Bosisto, commissioner for Victoria at the colonial exhibition in London, 1886, discusses this subject thoroughly, and says that malarious diseases are not native to Australia, and imported fevers diminish in violence. He thinks this effect is caused by the Eucalyptus, which is evergreen and constantly exhausting humidity from the earth, and throwing off oil and acid from its leaf. A small quantity of Eucalyptus-oil sprinkled in a sick-room improves the air at once and renders breathing easier. Mr. Bosisto contends that the volatile oil thrown off by the leaf absorbs atmospheric oxygen and transforms it into ozone.
"The giant gums are sometimes called 'silver stems,' for the reason that after they have annually shed their bark—they shed their bark and not their leaves—the new skin is of the whiteness of silver. As the trunk is perfectly round, and the lowest limbs are often two hundred feet and more from the ground, the sight of a group of these enormous trees is a very fine one. The giant gums are more slender than the Big Trees of California; the former are the tallest in the world, but the latter have the greater diameter in proportion to their height.
"Next to the giant gum is the red gum, or Eucalyptus rostrata, and next to that is the blue gum, or Eucalyptus globus. The former is the finest timber-tree, while the latter is the most favored for its anti-fever qualities and is the tree most frequently carried to foreign lands. Don't expect me to go through the whole catalogue of Eucalypti, as there are fully two hundred of them, according to the botanists; the lowest and most wide-spread is the Eucalyptus dumosa, or mallee scrub, and you may judge of its extent when I tell you that a single tract of mallee scrub shared between South Australia and Victoria covers an area of nearly nine thousand square miles. 'And it isn't the largest area of scrub, either,' says an Australian at my elbow.
"Well, the mallee is a strange-looking plant, and I can compare it to nothing better than the frame of an umbrella turned bottom up and without any handle in the centre. It has a globular mass at its base, with a few horizontal roots, and then a long tap-root that goes down ​to a great depth till it reaches moisture. Above-ground there are a lot of shoots, or stalks, from a foot up to twenty feet long, each of them having a tuft of leaves at the top.
SILVER-STEM EUCALYPTI.
It was after midnight when our friends reached Tenterfield, and at nine o'clock the next morning they were on the coach and dashing away towards Stanthorpe. Over the plains and hills they went at good ​speed, and were reminded of previous rides in the newly opened regions of the Rocky Mountains and in California. Coaching in Australia is less famous than formerly, owing to the rapid extension of the railway, but there are still many interior lines where the old system is maintained. Coaching in Australia owes its development to some enterprising Americans—Cobb & Company—who went there in the times of the gold discoveries, and established lines over all the principal roads, from the coast ports to the auriferous districts. The wonderful tales of coaching west of the Missouri River a quarter of a century ago might be repeated concerning the same business in Australia.
Doctor Bronson and his companions had no time to examine the mineral and other attractions of Tenterfield, though they were invited to do so. Gold, silver, tin, antimony, plumbago, and other minerals are found in the region round about the town, at distances varying from five up to forty miles. Some mining localities were pointed out along the coach-road, and rich specimens of gold-bearing quartz were shown by the fortunate possessors.
FROM TENTERFIELD TO STANTHORPE.
They spent the night at Stanthorpe in a fairly comfortable hotel, ​and at nine o'clock on the following morning left by train for Brisbane—two hundred and seven miles—where they arrived at half-past ten in the evening.
Frank and Fred were out the next morning at an early hour to see the sights of the capital of Queensland. They found it smaller than Sydney, the total population within a radius of five miles of the centre of the city being less than a hundred thousand. It is on the river Brisbane; river and city were named after Sir Thomas Brisbane, the governor of the colony of New South Wales in 1825, the year when the city was founded as a penal settlement. The river surrounds it on two sides, and gives it an excellent water frontage; from the city to the debouchement of the river into Moreton Bay is about twenty-five miles by the course of the stream, though not more than half that distance overland.
Their walk took them along Queen Street, the principal avenue, to Victoria Bridge, a fine structure of iron which spans the river between North and South Brisbane. The bridge is more than one thousand feet in length, and divided into thirteen spans, with a swing in the centre to permit the passage of vessels. Like most works of the kind, it is said to have cost more than double the original estimates of the engineers who planned it.
The youths were not favorably impressed with the streets of Brisbane, on account of their narrowness, Queen Street being little more than sixty feet wide, and the others in the same proportion. They asked why the streets were made so narrow, when there was such an abundance of land in Australia at the time the place was founded, and were told that it was due to the orders of one of the early governors, Sir George Gipps, who wished to be economical with the land of the Government. But if Queen Street is narrow it is by no means unattractive, as it can boast of many fine shops and substantial buildings, including several belonging to the Government. Frank called Fred's attention to the verandas that on one side of the street ran almost from one end to the other, and extended quite across the sidewalk. Fred rightly conjectured that they were intended to screen pedestrians and goods from the heat and glare of the sun, Brisbane being blessed with a climate of tropical character.
A policeman of whom they made inquiry pointed out the post-office, town-hall, and exchange, the two last-named being in one building, which also contains the chamber of commerce and the council-chamber, and also the court-house and other public edifices. They were ​all fine buildings with the exception of the court-house, which is a low, solid-looking structure of stone, two stories in height, and of unattractive appearance. Fred asked the policeman the reason of the difference in these buildings.
"The court-house is one of the old prisons of the days of the convict system," was the reply; "it was the female penitentiary and workshop, and at one time was crowded with women who had been transported from England to spend the rest of their lives in Australia. A BALCONY.It will probably be torn down before many years, as the people want to get rid of everything that can remind them of the convict system."
Turning to the right at the end of Queen Street, and close to Victoria Bridge, they walked along William Street, past the museum, and the Houses of Parliament, till they came to the Government Domain, which contains the residence of the colonial governor. Close by are Queen's Park and the Botanical Gardens, and here they lingered until it was time to return to the hotel and meet Doctor Bronson, who had announced his intention of sleeping till a late hour.
The river makes a sharp bend around a balcony. Brisbane, and the Government Domain, Botanical Gardens, and Queen's Park are prettily situated at the end of the point of land enclosed in the bend. In colonial parlance it is called a "pocket," and Queen Street may be said to run across the top of the pocket, as it extends from the river to the river again, just as the numbered streets of New York go from the water on one side of Manhattan Island to the water on the other.
PALM-TREES IN THE BOTANICAL GARDENS.
On their way back to the hotel the youths again encountered the communicative policeman. Pointing in the direction of a round building similar to a windmill and supporting a signal-mast, he said,
"NO MORE TRICKS AT THE WHEEL."