As we leave Melbourne and follow the Yarra up-stream 13 we soon notice a change of scenery. At Warburton, the rail head, we are well within the highlands. The river runs through forests of eucalyptus and fern, and we notice rapids below the primitive bridge. It 14 is evidently a mountain stream. This district is one of the playgrounds of Melbourne, and we stumble on 15 the Christmas camp of the Boy Scouts, who are known in Australia as well as in our own part of the Empire. 16 A few miles away to the north is Healesville. We notice here, as we drive through, that there are some 17 trees which seem to have shed their leaves. Perhaps these are some English trees of which many have been imported, and they find the weather too dry and hot; for close by we find the native forest with trees in full leaf. In spite of the presence of English trees, we may easily recognise the country as Australia by the great gum trees, with their bare trunks, and the thorny acacia growing below. The gums and the 18 tree ferns are everywhere on the hillsides. Even the house and garden, which we see here, have a slightly 19 foreign look, and do not seem adapted for the conditions of an English winter. In fact, there is no winter, as we understand it, in this part of Victoria, though snow may lie for months on the heights of the Alps to the north-east. We must remember that Melbourne lies in nearly the same latitude as Seville. In the hills to the north of Melbourne we find the same scenery, with its abundance of streams and trees. Here is a woodland scene not far from Mount Macedon in this district, 20 where the Governor of Victoria has his summer home.
Let us now travel westward by the railway to Ballarat, which lies on the south face of the narrow ridge which forms the water-parting between the Victorian Valley and the north-western plains. Ballarat is a fine town, second only to Melbourne, and planted in far more picturesque surroundings. Here is Sturt 21 Street, named after one of Australia’s greatest explorers; looking down it we can just see Mount Warrenheit in 22 the distance. We can wander in the Botanical Gardens where the aloe is in flower, or stroll by the lake and 23 admire the black swans. But we have not come here only for the scenery. Ballarat represents the second great factor in the development of Victoria: gold.
Within ten years of 1851, when gold was discovered here in paying quantities, all the chief fields of Victoria were opened up, and there was a sudden rush of settlers to the country. Many of the goldfields are so near Melbourne that it may be considered as a centre of mining as well as of pastoral industries. Thus we may account for the fact that it has to-day concentrated in its neighbourhood nearly half of the total population of the State. The gold most easily reached was in the underground leads, the channels of old streams, or fissures in the rock. In these were found nuggets and gold dust. Here we see the primitive methods of mining. A group of miners is sinking a simple shaft and raising 24 the soil in buckets, while another washes it in a pan to separate the heavier gold dust. The pick and shovel 25 and the strong arm of the miner are the chief instruments needed for this form of mining; and the fact that the goldfields are in the midst of fertile country, with farms all around them, makes the life much less hard than in some of the fields of the far interior of Australia which we shall visit later.
The modern method of mining is to attack the quartz rock by the aid of machinery; and the shafts are often carried to a great depth. Here, instead of the tents of the miners, we see what might be the top 26 of a coal mine, with elaborate machinery for winding. We shall examine this type of mine elsewhere; for though gold has made Victoria in the past, it is not now the chief gold-producing State in the Commonwealth. So we pass on, after a glance at a quartz reef 27 cropping out from the ground—a sign that has often guided the prospector in his search.
We have seen that as we travel eastward along the ridge on which we are standing, the forest grows more dense and settlement thinner, while roads and railways disappear. But the greatest change is found as we travel north and north-west from Ballarat. We have crossed to the inner slope of the highlands and are entering a very dry country. In the districts which we have visited the rainfall is not unlike that of the 28 Midlands of England, though most comes in the winter time from the westerly winds. The extreme east of the State has also, like Sydney, a good deal of rain in summer from the Pacific. But the great plain sloping to the Murray is cut off by the highlands from the moist winds of the oceans and exposed to dry hot winds sweeping down from the deserts of the interior. The rivers end in shallow lakes and marshes on the arid plain; and we may notice that the railways push out into this district and stop in similar fashion. It is a region of sandhills, heaths, and a dense scrub, called mallee; dreary and desolate at first sight, but not altogether without promise. The soil is very fertile, being composed of the old river silts, and with light rains at the right season, or by the aid of irrigation, it will grow fine crops. Here we see the beginning of the process of cultivation, by the rolling down of 29 the mallee scrub.
With large areas of fertile land lying waste for want of water, and water in abundance in the rivers, we should expect that attempts would be made to bring the two together. In New South Wales, near Yass on the Murrumbidgee, a great scheme is in progress. The Barren Jack dam, when finished next year, will hold up and make available for agriculture, a mass of water comparable to that of the Nile at Assuan. It will preserve, for the dry season, the water from the winter rains and the melting snows of spring. Other schemes are proposed for the Lachlan and Murray; up to the present, however, the chief development of irrigation has been in Victoria, on the streams flowing into the Murray and on the main river itself. Here we see the process of impounding the water; notice the woods in the background 30 which show that we are on the upper course of the stream, near the hills and the region of heavier rainfall. Here again is a great reservoir being excavated, 31 to hold the flood water; and next we may see the water flowing out into the irrigation channel. 32 In another place the water is being pumped up into high-level tanks for distribution. The river has 33 gradually built up a flood plain at a higher level than its usual channel; so that the water must be raised before it will flow over the fields. At Mildura and Renmark, the latter in South Australia, a large fruit-growing industry has been developed on the basis of irrigation. So we find lemons and apricots, and above all the currant and the vine which give us our dried currants and raisins.
But the supply of water in the rivers is limited, for the rivers are not broad or deep, in spite of their great length. One of the chief difficulties of all irrigation schemes is to avoid damage to the interests of people living lower down the stream, or interference with the navigation. In this matter the interests of all three States of the Commonwealth must be considered, since the Murray basin is divided among them. As we have already noticed in the case of Queensland and New South Wales, the State boundaries only coincide in part with natural features of the country.
The whole character of the river basin depends on the distribution of the rainfall. In the case of all three States there is a similar arrangement: first the coast belt, which is more varied and irregular in Queensland and Victoria than in New South Wales; then the highland edge, and then the back slope with a zone of moderate rainfall which shades off gradually into desert conditions. This zone narrows as we come southwards until it almost disappears in South Australia. But before following it out into this last State we will cross Bass Strait to visit Tasmania. Victoria, though a mere corner of the Australian continent, is about the size of Great Britain, while Tasmania is not very much smaller than Ireland, and both could support a very dense population. We must bear these facts in mind during our rapid journey through the country, since the maps in our atlases, for the most part, give us utterly wrong impressions as to the area of Australia.
If we look at a chart showing the depths of the sea, 34 we may notice that Bass Strait is shallow while the surrounding seas are deep. From Wilson Promontory we can trace a connexion through Flinders and Cape Barren Islands, to the north-east horn of the curved coast of Tasmania. A similar bridge runs through from the north-west horn, through the Hunter Islands and King Island. We may be reminded of the shallows of the English Channel and the North Sea, and can easily imagine that Tasmania, like England, at some very remote period formed part of the neighbouring continental mainland. We find, moreover, a general similarity between the plants and animals on the opposite sides of the Strait; but there are also some marked differences which suggest that Tasmania was separated very long ago and so has had a peculiar and isolated development.