CARPENTER’S
WORLD TRAVELS

Familiar Talks About Countries
and Peoples

WITH THE AUTHOR ON THE SPOT AND
THE READER IN HIS HOME, BASED
ON THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND
MILES OF TRAVEL
OVER THE GLOBE

“READING CARPENTER IS SEEING THE WORLD”

IN AUSTRALIA

The “great white continent” in the midst of the teeming coloured races of the Orient, our Anglo-Saxon cousins are building a new empire of the Pacific.

CARPENTER’S WORLD TRAVELS

Australia, New Zealand
and
Some Islands of the South Seas

Australia, New Zealand, Thursday Island,
The Samoas, New Guinea, The Fijis,
and the Tongas

BY
FRANK G. CARPENTER
LITT.D., F.R.G.S.

WITH 126 ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHS

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1924

COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY
FRANK G. CARPENTER

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

First Edition

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

IN THE publication of this volume on my travels in Australia, New Zealand, and the South Seas, I wish to thank the Secretary of State for letters which have given me the assistance of our official representative in the countries visited. I thank also the Secretary of Agriculture and our Secretary of Labour for appointing me an Honorary Commissioner of their Departments in foreign lands. Their credentials have been of great value, making accessible sources of information seldom opened to the ordinary traveller.

To the officials of the Commonwealth of Australia and the Dominion of New Zealand I desire to express my thanks for exceptional courtesies which greatly aided me in my investigations.

I would also thank Mr. Dudley Harmon, my editor, and Miss Ellen McBryde Brown and Miss Josephine Lehmann, my associate editors, for their assistance and coöperation in the revision of notes dictated or penned by me on the ground.

While nearly all of the illustrations in Carpenter’s World Travels are from my own negatives, those in this book have been supplemented by photographs from the official collections of the State and Commonwealth governments of Australia, the Dominion of New Zealand, and the United States Department of Commerce.

F. G. C.

CONTENTS

CHAPTERPAGE
[I.]Just a Word before We Start1
[II.]The Giant of the South Seas3
[III.]Queensland10
[IV.]A Crown of Gold and a Cross of Cactus19
[V.]The Metropolis of the Antipodes24
[VI.]Walks about Sydney31
[VII.]The Land of the Golden Fleece37
[VIII.]In the Great Wool Market42
[IX.]Life on the Sheep Stations47
[X.]Rabbits and Dingoes56
[XI.]Water for Thirsty Lands62
[XII.]Melbourne72
[XIII.]In the Marts of the City80
[XIV.]The State-owned Railways85
[XV.]Gold Diggings in Creek and Desert95
[XVI.]A White Workers’ Continent104
[XVII.]The Three “R’s” in Australia113
[XVIII.]The Aborigines120
[XIX.]Kangaroos and Dancing Birds129
[XX.]Australia as Our Customer137
[XXI.]Tasmania144
[XXII.]The Pearl Fisheries of Thursday Island152
[XXIII.]Australia’s Island Wards159
[XXIV.]Across the Tasman Sea to Wellington165
[XXV.]The Dominion of New Zealand170
[XXVI.]“Social Pests”178
[XXVII.]The Women of the Dominion186
[XXVIII.]A Country without a Poorhouse194
[XXIX.]Where the Working Man Rules202
[XXX.]On the Government Railways213
[XXXI.]The Yellowstone of New Zealand220
[XXXII.]The Maoris227
[XXXIII.]Mutton and Butter for London Tables236
[XXXIV.]Some Freaks of Nature246
[XXXV.]American Goods in New Zealand255
[XXXVI.]The Fijis and the Tongas263
[XXXVII.]The Samoas273
See the World with Frank G. Carpenter [282]
[Index]287

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

In the “Great White Continent”[Frontispiece]
FACING PAGE
Crossing the Murray River[2]
The giant tree ferns[3]
Wheat going to market[6]
Wool for half the world[6]
On the Brisbane water front[7]
The Brisbane River[7]
Queensland sugar[14]
Pineapples[14]
Bottle trees[15]
A settler’s home[18]
The hill of gold and copper[19]
The sapphire mines[19]
Clearing off the scrub[22]
How the farmers live[22]
Down town in Sydney[23]
At Bondi Beach[30]
Airplane view of Sydney harbour[31]
Manly Beach[31]
Hauling the wool clip to market[38]
Some champion Merinos[38]
Winter sports on Mount Kosciusko[39]
Skating amid the green[39]
In the sheepfold[46]
To a tea party on horseback[47]
Home life on a sheep station[50]
The sheep shearers[51]
Sheep about to lose their wool[51]
Home of a station manager[54]
Boys who grow up on horseback[54]
The boundary rider[55]
Irrigating orchard[62]
Rabbit fences[63]
Packing rabbit skins for export[63]
A city on the reclaimed lands[66]
Breaking down the scrub[66]
Rescuing cattle from the drought[67]
How water is saved[67]
“Boiling the billy”[70]
Collins Street, Melbourne[71]
At the race track[78]
Melbourne city hall[78]
The Parliament House[79]
Alexandra Gardens[79]
Logging in the eucalyptus forest[86]
The Governor’s house at Perth[87]
Moving the wheat crop[87]
An artesian bore[94]
Panning gold[95]
The dry-blow process[98]
A camel train[99]
The sheep-shearers’ “smoker”[102]
The leather workers[102]
The drive across country[103]
Immigrants landing[110]
Girls learning to keep house[111]
The grammar school at Melbourne[114]
How some children get to school[115]
Where farm wives go to school[115]
Half-civilized aborigines[118]
The aborigines of the wilds[119]
Turkey shooting by airplane[126]
Kangaroo[127]
The Australian opossum[130]
Mother bear and her baby[131]
In Sydney’s business district[134]
Loading wheat for export[134]
American machinery in Australian mines[135]
Motor picnics in American cars[135]
The stripper harvester[142]
An Illinois harvester in Australia[142]
In Hobart, Tasmania[143]
Logging on a Tasmanian river[146]
Hobart and Derwent River[147]
Orchards of the “Apple Isle”[147]
Thursday Island[150]
Tattooed South Sea Island belles[150]
Opening the pearl oyster[151]
South Sea Islander[158]
A village house [159]
A South Sea warrior[162]
On the shores of the Tasman Sea[163]
Wellington harbour[163]
A New Zealand forest[170]
The beautiful coast of South Island[171]
Potential water power[178]
A New Zealand farm[179]
The crater of Mount Tarawera[179]
Developing new crops[182]
A settler’s home site[183]
A Maori belle[190]
Women hop pickers[191]
Beach at Napier[198]
The great Tasman glacier[199]
Christmas roses[206]
The wheat harvest[206]
The New Zealander’s favourite sport[207]
Sheep in a turnip field [214]
A private railroad[215]
At the Yellowstone of New Zealand[222]
Wairoa geyser[223]
The hot sulphur pit of White Island[226]
Maori house at Lake Taupo[226]
Poi dance[227]
Natural fireless cookers[227]
Bathers in the hot pools[230]
The Maori haka[231]
Grading butter for export[238]
The dying art of tattooing[239]
A New Zealand harbour[242]
The rabbit trappers’ catch[242]
Mount Egmont[243]
The totara tree[246]
On Mount Cook[247]
Kauri gum mines[254]
New Zealand flax[255]
Farming with tractor and gang ploughs[258]
A dairy herd[259]
London’s mutton chops[259]
Gathering coconuts[262]
Tree nursery on a rubber plantation[263]
Savaii in eruption[270]
Native church at Apia[271]
Native mission school[271]
A Samoan beauty[274]
Copra ready for shipment[275]

AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND
AND
SOME ISLANDS OF THE SOUTH SEAS