The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-07-22
PESTS OF AUSTRALIA.
The Rustic SundOWleT and the UT-
ban LaTrikil.


ket, Billy, and Damper-His City
Rival-A Full Account of the Habits
of the Typical Australian Tough
How He Got His Title-A Descend
ant OF the Convict Settler.
From the New York Times.
Melbourne, July I.-While the towns,
and particularly those OF Victoria, are
full of idle men, the country roads swarm
with variety of tramp known as the
''sundowner." 1t seems to be an unwrit-
ten law of the country that any man
travelling on foot who reaches a sheep
station or farm house before shutdown in
the afternoon is entitled to be cared for
till the following morning. And so it has
come about that single men out of work,
and even married men whose presence
can bring no help to their families, have
become professional sundowners, who
sooner or later must degenerate into
loafers or something worse.
The climate is conductive to shutdown
ing, if there is such a word, for frost and
snow, excepting in the unsettled high
lands, are things unseen, and so the
tramp can sleep outdoors without run
| ming the risk of rheumatism. l have
seen many of these men, and sturdy,
picturesque-looking fellows they are as
class. They carry a blanket, soldier
| fashion, over the shoulder, and never
met one who did not have billy" and
the materials for a "damper" and
smoke. The billy is black tin pot used
| for making tea, tea being as essen lal To
| these gentry as coffee was to our soldiers
in the civil war. The damper is
| cake made from -four and water
md '1AA I'd on 6n n dIFflaTs
and more unpalaJable compound it would
be difficult TO imagine, yet these fellows
are pictures of heal n and must have the
! digestion o. ostriches. They are experts
at sharing rabbits, one of the country'S
curses. and so, as long as they keep away
| from the cities, they need not go hungry.
| Some day the sundowner, who is an ever
increasing quantity, may make himself
| felt in a more disagreeable way than i'm
posing his company on stationkeepers and
| farmers.
While the sundowner is becoming the
| curse of the rural districts, the larrlkln,
| or Australian tough, has already made
| himself the curse Of the cities: He is
seen in his greatest power and highest
state of development in Sydney, but down
! here in Melbourne he fourishes in the
most offensive luxuriance.
The toughs of New York, the hoodlums
| of San Francisco, the desperadoes of our
western mining towns, and the loud
mouthed ''pistol toters' of the southern
states are splendid examples of debase-
ment, but in intelligence and a readiness
to help the helpless particularly of the
| other sex, they are admirable Crichtons
| and models of chivalry compared with the
| Australian larrikin.
The traveller who reaches this land by
way of Hawaii, Samoa, FIJI and New
Zealand looks backs upon the naked South
IanTVon
when contrasted with the Australian lar
rikin.
1t would be an insult to the degraded,
grub-eating black fellow for the American
to imagine that the larrikin is an abort
| CINE; no, he is the liberal descendant of
the convict settlers, which, for nearly
! three-uuarters of a century, England
dumped into this favored LAND. He has
been reinforced by the idle and lawless
until to-day he has grown to be a power
that jails cannot weaken nor police intim-
| idate.
The origin of the word larrikin is said
to be as follows: An Irish policeman in
the early days of Sydney, or it may have
| been Melbourne, was forced to arrest a
young man who had started in to run the
city. The next morning the policeman,
| having in the meantime been seen by
| the mans friends, was anxious that he
should go free. SO, in response to the
question of the police magistrate as to
what the prisoner had been doing, he
said: 'Well, thought he was sarchin'
| for throuble, yer honor, but now I'm sure
he was only a,larrikin"-a -larking
But no matter about the etymology of
| the name, it has come to be descriptive.
! and the social rebels to whom it applies
have come to regard the appellation as
| one of honor. They have even gone so
| far, wherever they can afford it, as to
| adopt distinguishing costume, which
| consists of a loud shirt, a soft felt hat set
rakishly on the head, and bell-buttoned
trousers; but men so arrayed are the
| swells of the order, who depend on their
| uniforms on the larrikineSS, for the
women of this class are quite as numerous
and quite as degraded as the men.
| All the Australian cities are famed for
| their beautiful parks, but at night, and
| frequently during the day, these choice
places are regarded by the larrakin as mis-
| own private preser es. Here he loafs by
| day to pass vulgar comments on better
dressed people, whom he regards as tres
passers, and here he sleeps or makes his
headquarters oy night.
| The larrikin has been known to work
but it was under the duress of the prison
| or TO crafty hunger, never from choice,
! for he would rather steal penny than
earn POUND.
In land whose public schools are quite
as good as, and far more expensive, than
those of New England, and where educa-
| ton is supposed TO be compulsory, the
larrikin remains ignorant from incapacity
or choice Unframed to any calling all
| his inherited tendencies are TO deceit and
| cunning He is the Ishmaelite of Austria
| liau civilization, and as he multiplies even
fas .er than the toilers on whom he lives,
his eradication may soon become as essen
tial to the cities as the destruction of the
rabbit pest is TO the country.
| He drinks, smokes and swears. but
| these are minor vices. A coward by in
stinct, he moves in gangs or pushes as
they are called here, and in sheer wan
tonness they have been known TO stone or
! kick TO death citizens who refused to give
them money and their treatment of help
! less women who have fallen into their
hands exceeds in any brutality the
! charges made against our own nomad In
oians.
Long-sufering though the people of the
! United States are, if the laws did not pro-
tect them against such a curse as the lar
rikin, il self-defense they would take the
! law into their own hands and destroy
! them root and branch, or relegate them,
! in the language of famous American, TO
| a condition of innocuous desuetude.
The police in the Australian cities are
| numerous enough and brave enough to
I