An Unflattering Picture of Australia. Strange Statements.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 115, 15 August 1885, Page 5

An Unflattering Picture of Australia. Strange Statements.

Tiie following strange paragraph is clipped from the Inverness " Advertiser" of May 15. It is signed " A Be'anly Boy," and is dated from 'Frisco :— " Melbourne possesses about the finest climate in Australia. , . But in the cattle districts in a dry season the 1 rainfall for a year does not exceed half an inch, and the thermometer averages 90de'g., in the 'shade ior nine months a year, the air being thick with swarms of flies 'and grasshoppers and the stench of dead cattl f <e and horses. . . If it should happen to be raining when the stranger arrives in Melbourne, he will soon find the streets about a foot deep in water from pavement to pavement, which rushes down the steep streets in a resistless volume. If there should happen to be any demonstration at the time of his landing, the stranger will not fail ( to observe the large number of persons whta have been celebrating the occasion in the~ most approved colonial style —i.e., filling themselves with beer; and the gangs 'of young larrikins who parade the streets, insulting all the women they meet, and filling the air with blasphemy, profanity, and indecency. . . The Australians are loyal by force of circumstances, because they cannot defend themselves. If Australia possessed one-half the natural advantages of the United States, she would have renounced allegiance to the mother country, and established a republic. The origin of many prominent public men can be traced without trouble to the days when the most desperate of Britain's criminals were * lagged ' to Australia. Many of the most wealthy fanners in Australia were evicted from the old country . . . The Duke of Edinburgh wasshot at in Sydney and robbed in Adelaide— two trifling circumstances indicating loyalty."