THE AUSTRALIAN OF TO-DAY.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 4, Issue 360, 30 December 1879, Page 2

THE AUSTRALIAN OF TO-DAY.

In " The Countries, of the World," fey Dr Robert Brown, we find the following: " The typical Australian, is.in mahy t& spects much dike the i American, though, again, in many other respects he differs widely from him. - -He has the sanpe self-reliance, and the same loud' selfassertion, which, correctly or incorrectly, we are in the habit of assbciatting with our Transatlantic cousins ; but it is .a self-assertion and a self-reliance" smacking of the land whence he came. No man is more hospitable than the well-to-do Australian. A visitor arriving well introduced, will be passed on from villa to villa, from country-house to crountry- , house, and from run to run, sharing^^

everywhere the most profuse kindness, Until in a few weeks he will hardly know who first started him on *c progress .he is making.- Ther* is little snobbery in the but'as most of the people are ' self-made/ the parvenu is, of course, not an unknown personage, though the circumstances of the country and of the people prevent him—or her— becoming quite so objectionable as he or she would be in. an older condition of society. The squatters or graziers are the aristocrats of the country, though some 'of the successful of them have been butchers and drovers, possibly even of humbler or less reputable antecedents. They are imbued with extremely territorial ihstinctSj and will refer to the small farmer, who c selects ' under the Colonial land laws a bit of a run he leases from ' the Government, or the irreverential gold-digger, as an English squire would speak of a poacher, or a many-acred peer of the 'city man' who builds a ' snug box ' overlooking his park wall. Yet while the English squire is likely to talk of everything rather than of his rent-roll or the balance he has at his banker's, the squatter will hardly fail to tell his visitor of what he-got last summer for his wool, or what he expects to get this winter for his fat oxen which are grazing in the pretty, but roughlykept paddock you can see from the , verandah surrounding the country house which he built when he got beyond the ' hut' stage of bush-struggling existence. The ladies are well-educated, but, though charming company for a visitor, they are, as a rule, somewhat' loud,' and inclined to exact the utmost deference from all the male world around them, and to repay it with as little veneration as possible. Nobody awes them. As are the mistresses, so are the maids, who have much of the pertness of such young persons as exhibited in plays and on the stage generally.