ABOUT AUSTRALIA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9041, 28 January 1908, Page 3

ABOUT AUSTRALIA.

By W.B.

Having been approached about sixty-nine times, more or less, by reporters for some "items" about Australia, I will roughly jot down a few and hand them to your reporter, as I am satisfied the "Age" has the widest circulation in the Wairarapa, and, if others require information or "items" it will be a simple matter to "hook them" from your hewspaper. Well, to commence, we left the Northern city, Auckland, in the Mokoia for Sydney, and after an uneventful voyage of four days and four hours arrived about 3 a.m. at the Union Company's wharf in Sydney. Sydney harbour, with all its beauty and ugliness combined, has been so often described that I will pass lightly over that part of my narrative. It does not resemble Waitemata harbour, because the harbour Auckland stands on the shores of, has numerous islands at its entrance; neither does it resemble Queen Charlotte Sound (Picton harbour) because the mountains are absent and Picton has two entrances and consequently an island, but once inside, and eliminating the mountains, it more resembles the latter harbour with its numerous bays and indentations. Briefly speaking, I should say Sydney harbour was in the distant past a gorge like that south of Katoomba, on the Blue Mountains, and has become a harbour through the country as far inland as the Blue Mountains subsiding. Sydney is a straggling city enclosing the upper part of the harbour around and extending a considerable distance inland, and contains upwards of 500,000 inhabitants. It also has numerous suburbs. It has good accommodation and facilities for shipping; but the water is not very deep. There is no harbour in Australasia containing a town of any importance, that can approach our Port Nicholson. Re the city: The streets in the older portions of the city ara very narrow and crooked; but in the newer parts they are fairly wide. The city is well lit up, has its trams and trains and boasts of the finest railway station in the Southern Hemisphere. Its buildings, especially the newer, are very good, itft parks good and its botanical gardens kapai. It has a good zoologi- | cal gardens , a good art gallery and a first-class museum. The museum contains all Australasian animals, birds and reptiles and most New Zeabirds. The railway station has fine platforms, with room, if necess- j ary, for two trains each side of each i platform, or twenty trains in all. i They often get away a train every J three minutes on busy days, and at certain busy hours of the day they leave every few minutes. The yard around the station is enormous, and there is room for scores of trains to shunt at once. There are four sets of rails from Sydney to past Stratfield, then they branch north," west and south; most of the lines are duplicated, or duplicated in certain . districts. Trams run out to most of the suburbs also. As to the people: In Sydney you will see-representatives of every country under the sun. Japs, Chows, Lascars, Hindoos, Kanakas, Italians, Greeks, French, Germans, Danes, Norwegians and Swedes, Yankees, Britishers and Australians. The latter, on the aggregate,'have a manly look,' are lull of spirit.and vigour, neither- sunburned or withered, nor heavy and unwieldy, but of a form at once graceful and strong. The labourers, especially the miners, navvies, metal-woikers and railway surfacemen, are a fine boay of men. They have worked and sweated off all superfluous flesh, and only retained what is pure firm" and healthy. The Australian farmers are also a fine body of men, so that in spite of the climate with its extremes of heat and cold Australia has produced a native population, on the aggregate, of perfect symmetry of form and feature. Physically, the women of Australia compare favourably with those of New Zealand, their face and figure are quite as elevated and refined. On the low plains they lack the fresh full-blooded complexion of our women, hut, on the higher altitudes, their complexions are quite as fresh. They are quite as i diligent, if not more so than our v. and, in spite cf a hotter sun an., atmosphere, and a tinge of bronze al *; them, they at least can rival our wo.-'fn for strength of constitution and lov.aness of person. \ (To be continued.)