The Typical Australian.

Manawatu Herald, 12 February 1903, Page 3

The Typical Australian.

From the crowded battalions of the figures in Mr Coghlan’s “ Seven Colonies of Australasia for 19011902" there emerges the figure of the typical Australian—including the New Zealander—about whom all sorts of interesting details are ascertained. The average Australian is a singularly healthy human being, with a singularly vigorous appetite, much physical energy, and a decent number of coins in his pocket. He marries at 29 years of age a bride four years younger than himself, and has a family of 4.29 children. Hia capital consists of £248; he owes to foreign lenders cn average sum of £B4; it costa him £BB Os 6d per year to provide for his physical wants; he smokes on an average more than lb of tobacco a year, or twice as much as an Englishman, but if he is a West Australian he smokes twice as much as even this. He drinks 12 gallons of beer—though here again, if he be a West Australian, he manages to swallow twice this amount —a little less than a gallon of spirits, and a little more than a gallon of wine; uses 41b of soap to wash himself, and expends 111 working days every year to provide the cost of his food. Perhaps the moat astonishing statistics in Mr Coghlan’s book are those that describe what the average Australian eats and drinks. Apparently he has the best appetite, if fenot the best digestion, of any human Bheing on the planet. He eats every ■" yup 8641 b of meat, which works out an average of two sheep and one-fifth of a bullock for every man, woman Jnltoty b Australasia) fto

fcralian’s master passion is apparently a hunger for meat! He eats more than twice as much meat as the average Englishman, three times as much as the averse Frenchman, and four times as much as the average German or Swiss. He eats, in addition, about 8£ cwt of wheat, 2£ cwt of potatoes, and almost 1 cwt of sugar. If he is a Tasmanian, he eats a J ton of potatoes in a year—a quite surprising feat. The food the average Australian eats daily is equivalent to 4,199 foot-tons of work. Here is a volume of mechanical energy surely sufficient to accomplish quite astonishing results!