MISTAKEN IDEAS.

Patea Mail, Volume IX, Issue 1134, 4 January 1884, Page 3

MISTAKEN IDEAS.

English people have (writes the Geelong Times') queer ideas of Australia, and they can never appear to divest themselves of the conviction that we are a lot of wealthy barbarians, living in a most extraordinary fashion and subsisting on the very gold of the earth itself. And indeed, for that matter, not only are these peculiar ideas entertained amongst the lower or ignorant classes, but amongst the wealthy and well-to-do. This is well exemplified once more in a letter sent by a leading London house, the centre of a large frrn doing business all over the world. Writing on the subject of frozen mutton, the commercial scribe says :—“ I have dined to-day off the meat, and find it good indeed, as it always is. The meat trade would pay here, as it fetches a good price, and profits might be made if we could only buy cheaply. Could you not see some of the farmers—f ‘Cockatoos’ yon call them—who kill the sheep for the sake of the wool and hides, and buy the carcases? They would sell cheap, as they are no use to them, and a mutual profit might bo 1 made.” The same gentleman states that he has been informed that brandy is consumed in large quantities by the diggers, who find by taking it- in large quantities that they in time become impervious to the bites of venomous creatures with which the country is filled.” That sort of thing may be accepted in England, but for us people out hero—well, we can only smile at the dense ignorance of things colonial displayed in it.