Through the Land of Gum and Home Again.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5379, 25 January 1929, Page 1

Through the Land of Gum and Home Again.

(By

C. W. Malcolm.)

(The opinions and criticisms expressed here are; not necessarily those of the Editor.) It is one of the ameliorating characteristics of Providence that yob awake; as the misty dawn is breaking, and gaze through your port-hole to see the; S«ufh Head light blinking watchfully through the thin fog. For close on four days the merciless heaving of the Tasman, the monotonous clank of the engines, the childish routine of deck tejnnis and deck billiards and quoits; wandering from bow to stern ; crouching miserably in a deck-chair or stretching lazily on the hatches of the sundeck ; paying threepences for the ship’s newspaper, containing two to three inches of most uninteresting wireless news,, have all played their part in bringing the landman to a spirit of patient submission. As the shore lights fade in the rapidly spreading dawn the Australian eoast looms ruggedly out of toe swell, and pine wonders at the possibility of a world-famed harbour lying beyond the shut-off cliff-protected entrance ahead. There is; no indication from seaward of the existence of Sydney Harbour, and the pilot ship emerging from the mass, arrests the eye. , Nothing short of “Magnificent I” caff describe the scene As one sails placidly up that sheltered refuge. It must be one of the sights that the world offers —and it is wqil Australia possesses it, for tone’s first impression generally remains, and* there is nothing else after that but gum trees and boulders and heat and ejvery other, device to make the wanderer secure an early berth back to God s Own Country.

Sydney Harbour by morning, gunshine is truly one of. the? grjandburg of the globe; neither the pen nor the camera can hope to describe it. The rocks standing out in clear-cut parallel strata, by a flood of green glittering foliage, nestle between the green of the sea and •clioud-flecked azure of the morning sky. The] ferry boats are already sparkling white in the golden track ; a' plane is circling overhead, and we move on past the clustering piles of red-tilejd roofs, even forgetting to be annoyed by the apparent farce ptf medic.al inspection? on, on up the harbpiur, gazing at the shining buildings that rise ampng the trees to ten and more storeys, awed at the tr.emendousness of the great steel bridge which is daily creeping to a centre from either .side <of the watejr, until, like the sudden unveiling of 'the skeleton in the perfumed wardrobe, we round) a point and hit the waterfront. Ah! This is part of Sydney Harbour, tod, you must remeinber—one caiinot pick and This IS Sydney Harbour,, and I longed for' the .cleanness and the openness and the loveliness of. Auckland, put all that this offered offepded) the eye ; and we berthed ait Npl 5 Darling Harbour, the name being treated with all due sarcasm by the biassed New Zealand-tourist. The| Customs officials signed our baggage without looking into anything whatsoever, their methods being a puzzle to me > for when we returned to New Zealand with a fifty PW cent, garbage of dirty clothes the Auckland detachment of that very valuable department of the Crown insisted! on turning everything out on to tables. That is ope thing 1 shall always remejmber with pleasing gratitude about Australia : they recognise an hopiest face. We cross a street in. which worry considerably the traveller who. has both hands engaged, and openmouthedi persons gaze at us as) We adjust our .overcoats. It has not rained here for some Steven months, and the only moisture stands in beads upon the forehead of the palpitating New Zealander. We climb some hundreds of thousands of steps, and after dragging over hills and) intersections of dirty, black, narrow streets the tourist finds himself in Gcjorge Street, perspiring as never, before and cursing the flies: and praying for Auckland with its mildness and' its proximity of waterfront to bus and tram and train services. But this is Sydney.

George Street is a calamity, as are nearly all the streets of that great throbbing city. There is no hope;, unless ybu lie on the broad of your back, of. seeing the tops of buil4in*s> for the. tragedy, of those narrow alleys—holt streets —is sickening to the' ordered mind. The traffic is enormous, yet I noticed that its regulation was slack to a degree. Trams in endless succession lurched: wildly along the metals, roaring; out deafening defiance to, the re-echoing slabs of that commercialised canpjn. We miss, two trams owing to the fact that before you can g,et through the mad rush of traffic to the footboard the thing is again carjeering wildly down the road without you. And when you do get a seat you) wish to bqaveri you had walked. The trams are built to shift the masses, and they do. The seats run across the car, facing in pairs. You enter at the side, and the conductor, Who needs to have previous circus experience, earns a precarious living by crawling, along the outside runningboard, collecting fajres and! blowing whistles. Usually there are two tr ; ams connected together, and when a traffic jamb occurs the double barricade makes a more effective obstruction in the thptro ughfare. The motorman usually sits on the frpnt sea,t with the pass,en,gei?s and) spits on your boots.

(To be continued on. Monday-)