If a person comes from the busy and lively Melbourne, he may find Sydney sleepy and lazy, but it must not be considered a city of loafers. It is celebrated for its colossal wealth.
The lower class of the inhabitants seemed to me to be inquisitive and greedy; the cultivated classes, on the other hand, are engaging and hospitable, and make a most favourable impression.
Between Melbourne and Sydney there is great rivalry. “It is no exaggeration to say that New South Wales and Victoria are no less rivals than Germany and France,” said an Australian literary gentleman. How far he was right I cannot say. Meanwhile the following circumstance shows that the jealousy is very great. Immediately after Sydney, in the seventies, had had an international exhibition, Melbourne arranged a similar one, and though the two colonies were to be united by a railroad, the two cities could not agree on the width of the gauge, so that we have to change trains on the boundary.
THE BLUE MOUNTAINS.
By railroad we can make a very interesting excursion to the Blue Mountains, where the aristocracy have their villas. The railway runs zigzag up the mountains, and is regarded as a masterpiece of engineering, sometimes mounting a gradient of 1 in 30. On the way we get a splendid view of the landscape. The Parramatta river winds picturesquely through the plain, and is bordered on both sides by thriving dark orange-groves. The mountains, which are covered with trees but are not cultivated, consist of a series of parallel ridges of the same height, which are rent by deep ravines. One ridge rises beyond the other until the last is lost in the blue distance.
It is a journey of but little more than two days to Brisbane, the capital of Queensland. Not long after passing the boundaries of New South Wales, the southern entrance of Moreton Bay is reached, a large and shallow body of water not far from the city. When we neared the shore, the sea broke over the long sand bars, which it was very difficult to cross, but we soon afterwards found ourselves in the calm water of the bay. The sun set as a blood-red disc in tropical splendour. Immediately afterwards the full moon rose and shone on the beautiful banks of the Brisbane river, while we steamed slowly up between the forests of mangroves.
We now approached the land in whose solitary regions I was about to spend several years. I stood alone on deck in the sultry night, and my thoughts naturally turned to this strange country. What was I to find in Queensland? Was I perhaps to leave my bones in this land, slain by the blacks, bitten by a snake, or poisoned by malaria?
In Brisbane I met Mr. Archer, the Secretary of the Treasury of Queensland. I had a letter of introduction to him from the zoological professors of the University of Christiania, and was invited by him to make my headquarters on his estate near Rockhampton.
After a journey of two days we arrived at the mouth of Fitzroy river. Like all the rivers of Queensland, it is very shallow and not navigable for large vessels. This is at present a great drawback to the maritime commerce of the colony; but there are some good harbours, and efforts are continually being made to remove obstacles by dredging.