Sunny Australia

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 153, 24 March 1939, Page 5 (Supplement)

Sunny Australia

LAND OF MANIFOLD VARIETY

SUNNY Australia, the fifth continent, is linked by ocean liner routes with England, South Africa and New Zealand. To the out-door man or woman it is the greatest holiday resort in the whole world, astonishing and delighting the traveller with the immense variety of its charms. Gay and noble cities, vast loiests, snowy mountains, tropical islets, holiday 7 beaches and ciuising wateis, every sport from horse-racing to-ski-ing or surfing, hospitality unstinted, and a friendliness no other nation knows, are among the manifold attractions Australia offers to her guests.

OLDEST continent in geological formation, youngest in man’s endeavour, Australia for thousands of years lay waste—desert and jungle, saltbush plain and eucalyptus forest, snowy mountain and coral reef, unclaimed under the hot blue sky. Centuries more only the primitive aborigine possessed it, living on roots and seeds and reptiles and whatever wild animals he could snare or spear, sleeping naked on the bare earth, under the stars, trampling barefoot over precious lodes of copper, silver and gold which were to him of as little value as the arid sands themselves.

7’he navigator-explorers, questing new worlds, passed Australia by. The crab-claw lateen mat-sails of the Polynesians, the bleached canvas ,of Spanish and Dutch argosies, drifted like blown leaves along dim horizons, dwindled and were gone

before the wondering black man had realized what they were. Lhe boldest captains turned aside from reefs so intricate and cruel, shores so barren and inhospitable, people so uncouth and barbarous.

Not till intrepid and far-sighted Captain James Cook came to land at Botany Bay, and carried word again of the fine harbours and potential wealth of the new ■ South Land, was anybody interested in Australia. Then the British Government bestirred itself, and empowered Captain Arthur Phillip—not to found the nation of which he dreamed, but to establish a convict settlement there at the world’s

end 1 And so Australian history began. The unhandy wooden sailing ships cast anchor, then, in the calm and beautiful immensity of Port Jackson, finest harbour in the world. The rabble of bluejackets and

thieves and murderers landed at Sydney Cove. Out of -the virgin forest they hewed a clearing which was to be the site of the queen city of the South Seas.

Through famine, adversity, faction and civil strife, neglect and discouragement, lawlessness and rebellion, grew up a nation of adventurers. Their pioneers pushed inland into forest and desert. Their bones bleached between the waterholes, their blood stained the spears of the blacks. Dingo and cassowary scattered their mortal remains, but their spirits were an inspiration and their footprints a guide to those who followed after them. Came at their heels the squatters, prospectors, miners, sundowners, came the pioneers of settlement and civilization. Such was the childhood of the nation that came of age with the Federation of the States at the turn of the century, won her spurs in the bloody battles of the last Great War, was received as a peer among the peoples of the British Commonwealth by the Statute of Westminster.

Today that nation has a population of seven million people. Australia is the second greatest sheepowner among the nations, second only to Russia in the number of her flocks, and world’s greatest grower of wool. She farms 110,250,000 sheep, 13,500,000 cattle, and nearly 2,000,000 horses. She is one of the principal wheat-producing countries of the world; yearly the last fleet of squarerigged windjammers race home with South Australian grain to be ground for Europe’s bread. She is rich in gold and mineral resources.

And now visitors from all the world over are journeying in in-

creasing numbers to Australia,, to see for themselves her beautiful young cities and her wide pastures. Two million people walk , the streets of Sydney, oldest, gayest, greatest city of the South, standing on that great and lovely harbour spanned by its gigantic bridge of steel. Perth and Adelaide, Melbourne* and Sydney and Brisbane, and the Federal garden city of Canberra, are such towns as you will not find in the old world. They are the .essence of modernity, clean and virile, and lovely as the people who built them. This is a land of immense contrasts, unbelievable extremes. Hobart, historic city of Tasmania, recaptures the atmosphere of old Plymouth, with the ketches riding to the Derwent River tides. Broome and Darwin present another extreme. Darwin, under a blazing tropic sky, watches the great air liners winging in across the Timor Sea, welcomes the pearling luggers back from the coral waters, sees the whaling fleets cruising offshore. Frangipanni and tamarind and coconut palm grow along the foreshore. All the polyglot population of the Orient wanders along the beach.

In the arid deserts inland the Stone Age blacks live, following their immemorial customs, naked and untamed. But along the Bondi, Manly, Coogee beaches march bronzed battalions of surf-bathers, such glorious youth as no other country

in the world can boast. And while, on the Australian Alps, ski-runners flash across the glittering snowfields, bathers on the Queensland coast ride the green turtles through the surf that runs as hot as blood, and yachts cruise among the tiny tropic islets that dot the Barrier Reef. Australia has creatures man cannot see elsewhere. The sluggish, snuffling wombat, the shy teddy bear, the quaint platypus, are unique Australians. The enigmatic platypus has the broad bill of a shoveller duck, and its webbed feet; it has the furry body of a cat or

Koala, the Australian Native bear, opossum, and the flat leathery tail of a beaver; it burrows like a waterrat, lays eggs, and suckles its young —so what? The kookaburra, loveliest of kingfishers, gives vent to uproarious laughter at sight of the

1 visitor, that dies to a chuckle of mirth as he beats a retreat. The jumping kangaroo, baby in pocket, flits across the sunburnt plains at forty miles an hour, fast as a horse can gallop. Buffalo roam the rank grass plains of the northland. Crocodiles haunt the northern rivers. Like flamboyant tropical flowers, flocks of parrots and cockatoos sit in hundreds on the trees of the back country, and fly up in screaming clouds before the explorer. Far cry from the petrol traffic of the smooth and splendid motor roads of the settled country, camel caravans thread along the lonely tracks of the interior. Country of many contrasts, indeed! Finally, from the holiday-making point of view, Australia offers something rarer than fine scenery, or strange birds and animals—openhearted and friendly hospitality extended to all who enter the Commonwealth. In no other country does the chance traveller come’into such intimate contact, make friends so quickly, ■with the the people of the land. And they are gay, hearty, outdoor, sport-loving people, good companions for a backblocks jaunt, or a coastal yachting trip, or just a day at Randwick races, horse racing being a national sport. They are waiting to bid you welcome, when you cross the Tasman in the Dominion Monarch, Homeward bound, and they will give you the best of good times as long as you care to stay.