[See [page 60].
Copyright.]
[See [page 65].
We have already seen that most of the chief towns of Queensland lie on or near the coast, and that there are many harbours, often protected by islands. The towns are there because the country was developed for the most part from the sea, and in fact settlement inland is still confined to the neighbourhood of the railways running up-country from these coast towns. The harbours are there because the land has sunk and the coast is partly drowned, giving deep sea-inlets, often where the sea has flooded some old river valley. As the coast gradually sank, the coral builders were at work, piling up their reefs in the warm shallows. So we get the Great Barrier Reef, stretching for fifteen 59 hundred miles along the coast and leaving a calm though rather dangerous channel between itself and the mainland. The reef is really a series of reefs, resting on a platform of older rock, and pierced with numerous openings, especially where the larger rivers enter the sea; for the coral will not grow in fresh water. In the neighbourhood of this reef, especially in the north, towards Thursday Island, fishing for pearl oysters is largely carried on. The oysters are valuable for the mother of pearl, rather than for the pearls themselves, which are very small. Here, too, is found 60 in great quantity the trepang, or sea slug as it is sometimes called, looking like millions of brown cucumbers 61 crawling over the reef. Here is a portrait of one kind of the trepang; it does not seem very appetising, but the Chinese consider it a great delicacy. Nearly the whole of the trepang gathered in this region is exported to China, after being first cooked and dried. The rest is eaten by the natives, as it does not appeal to European tastes.
In New South Wales we did not encounter the aboriginal Australian, since there he has practically disappeared. But he still survives in considerable numbers in parts of Queensland, where the country is less favourable for white occupation or has been settled for a shorter period. Government at the present day protects the aborigines as far as possible; but none the less they are steadily dying out and do not count in the future development of the country. We have already seen how, for the hard work of the plantations, the brown men from the islands of the Pacific were brought in, as there was no native labour available. The Kanaka has now been rejected, and Australia steadily refuses to admit the Chinese, who seem to be able to adapt themselves to any country and any climate. So the future of this northern part of the continent depends largely on the extent to which the natural resources of the country, as distinct from its minerals, can be exploited by purely white labour. Some parts of the coastlands are clearly not fitted for European occupation, and the policy of a White Australia is only rendered possible by the fact that the elevation of much of the country within the Tropic greatly modifies the climatic conditions. If Northern Australia had been a great lowland, its history must have been far different.