NEWS FROM HOME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 783, 23 July 1954, Page 20

NEWS FROM HOME

iby

SUNDOWNER

JULY 5

are smug in New Zealand. Every visitor says so, and it is only in our foolish moments that we do not agree. But I am not finding Australians wallowing in self-criticism. The people of the United States, when I was there, were not perpetually blushing with shame over individual and

national shortcomings. I saw no marked humility in the United Kingdom-

unless it is humility to abstain from "saying what you know to be true but count it bad form to confess. ("We know you can never be like us, but be as like us as you're able to be.’’) Seeing ourselves as others see us has never been common in man or beast. But if their newspapers express public opinion it is sobering to see ourselves as Queenslanders see us. In my first fortnight here New Zealand was not mentioned in the news. Then it was given one sentence-that ‘the Prime Minister of Australia would meet the Prime Minister of New Zealand after he had tried his luck at Taupo. Next day there was nothing; and the next. Then we earned a second sentence: that a man had been committed to an inebriates’ home in New Zealand for drinking methylated spirits in sauce. There was silence again for three days, and then at last we hit the headlines: 24 point, 16 point, 14 and 12. "Jolly Letty" was coming, the "Beautiful Fat Girl from New Zealand." She was "The Happiest, Fattest and Jolliest Girl Alive" (three exclamation marks). It would be missing a wonderful experience not to see her. I suppose I should have seen her: that New Zealanders away from home should stand together. It was tempting even at 4/-. But my native smugness saved me. Why encourage Australians to think that 22-stone girls excited comment in New Zealand or special notice? Whatever I owed to Letty herself, my duty to all other New Zealanders was

to pass by on the other side of the road. Even when I heard her announced as the lass from Paycockarick I did not turn my head. It was not the time of day when a rooster was likely to crow. ‘ % % *

JULY 6

‘THis surely is the most astonishing sentence I am likely to

read in AuSstralia, however long my

holiday lasts: Just as the Merino is making its last stand, so is the Corriedale destined to become the backbone of the Australian sheep industry. The italics are mine, but the words themselves are taken from a review of Sydney’s 55th Annual Sheep Show in the official organ of the Queensland Graziers’ Association. I don’t know whether the Association

itself takes that view or whether it would be endorsed by every Corriedale breeder. It is more likely, I think, that a journal which speaks for all graziers has no opinion about the future of one section of graziers, and that even Corriedale breeders would hesitate to say in Australia that Merinos have had their day. But it is a hair-raising statement with or without official endorsement, and I find it a strain to wait for another issue to see the skin and hair flying. % * *

JULY 11

[-ROM Bundaberg to Rockhampton is 250 miles, and all the way on both sides trees have been planted in memory of Matthew Flinders. I would like to live long enough to see those little trees big trees, but even a visitor passing along that way in his old age would

be a dull lump of dough if he felt no emotion. If I were an Australian I

would like to think that I had something to do with such a noble conception, and that my children would live to have the "large. and melodious thoughts" it. will inspire in the right places. But I am a New Zealander, and I can’t escape the sobering thought that Australians have been the same reckless vandals in their forests as we have been in ours. Flinders Avenue, even if all the young trees grow, will be robbed of more than half its impressiveness by the skeletons that enclose it on both sides, and at present make it almost ridiculous. In 50 or 100 years those eyesores will perhaps have been removed and the background on both sides been made to add its quota of dignity. But Australians could have had their avenue now, and Flinders his memorial, if the best trees originally lining the road had been left standing. They have, however, repented in Australia, and it is a magnificent repentance. I would like to think that there is imagination enough (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) in New Zealand to line the road from Christchurch to Dunedin with trees that no one would mutilate or destroy. a

JULY 12

O ask where the sheep go in Queensland is as useful as asking where the flies don’t go. It is not at present necessary for them to go anywhere to escape the eyes of travellers, since the grass is yellow and knee-high, and even calves

disappear in it when they lie down. In any case, a hundred sheep

usually have trom five hundred to a thousand acres to hide in. It is the story of our Mackenzie Country over again, with heat and drought substituted for wind and cold. I can’t: pretend to know how long such conditions will last here, but it is not merely a question of water. Ninety-five per cent of the sheep and cattle in Queensland are pastured on native grass. Necessarily the total is not large-half as many sheep and only a million more cattle than New Zealand runs on a sixth of the territory. But I have been long enough here already to see the signs of a change. Professors at the University are joining with the experts and field officers of the Department of Agriculture to point out that Queensland can’t continue in 1954 with the methods that were good enough in 1900. It is impossible to read the newspapers, particularly the weeklies and special. supplements produced for farmers, without noticing how often, and in how many different ways, graziers are being urged to make better use of the knowledge they already have and to give more generous assistance to the. research workers who are adding to that knowledge. Again, it is our own story with the telling trailing a little behind ours. The walls of Jericho seem stable enough in the meantime, but they will sooner or later crumble and fall before these loud trumpetings of science. It is, however, clear that one of the reasons why visitors see fewer sheep than they expect to see is that fewer sheep than they believed Queensland to _ possess have ever been here. (To be continued)