The Daily News. MONDAY, MAY 22, 1922. AUSTRALIA’S EMPTY NORTH

Taranaki Daily News, 22 May 1922, Page 4

The Daily News. MONDAY, MAY 22, 1922. AUSTRALIA’S EMPTY NORTH

Lord Northcliffe’s remarks about the peril of a Japanese invasion of Australia has once more brought into prominence the problem of the settlement of the vast areas in tropical Australia, that are practically as uninhabited to-day as when Captain Cook sailed into Botany Bay. At present a Federal Parliamentary Committee is seeking a solution, and has been taking evidence from all and sundry in regard to the possibility of keeping this enormous stretch of country “white.” .Scientists have drawn deductions, often diametrically opposed, though from the same data, as to the possibility of white men and women living a healthy life in these tropical regions, and, what is more important, of i earing therein a virile race. On the whole the consensus of experienced opinion is that the climate will not permit this. When the Federal Government extended the railway in the Northern Territory the work was carried out entirely by European labor (if Levantines may be classed as Europeans), and it is on record that the percentage of illhealth amongst these workers was actually less than amongst those employed on the East-West railway in the Southern States. The same applied to the large number of white men employed in the erection of freezing works at Wyndham and Darwin within the past five years. The problem is economic, not climatic. The works referred to provided higher rates of pay than any other in Australia. Therefore, plenty were found ready to risk a sojourn in the tropics, and wives and families accompanied many of them. In regard to the economic possibilities of North Australia, the conflict of opinion is even more marked than in regard, to its climate. It is perfectly clear, however, that in millions of acres the soil is too poor for anything like closer settlement as understood in New Zealand. There are areas of good country, but they are a small percentage of the whole, and in this may lie the explanation of the emptiness of the country as a whole. Any nation finding itself forced to attempt the colossal undertaking of seizing a country by force because of its need of land for expansion, is hardly likely to choose one that will provide, in addition to enormous military costs, the never-ending series of economic difficulties which must attend the use of poor soil to feed a large population. Whilst from some points of view the emptiness of Northern Australia may appear deplorable, from another it may prove a bulwark against encroachment by any other nation.