Rambles in Australia

by Edwin Sharpe Grew; Marion Sharpe Grew

From the primary schools children are drafted into the secondary schools, when they are able to profit by the advanced standard of teaching. There are also technical schools, where trades are taught, and a training college for teachers.

We visited one of the intermediary schools, the Perth Modern School, as it is called, at Leederville, a suburb between Perth and Cottesloe Beach. We found a handsome red brick building, looking like a Nonconformist college in one of our older Universities. In the large, well-kept grounds there is room for football, tennis, hockey, and a gymnasium is provided in a detached building.

The school is admirably constructed for its purpose, the classrooms opening out of a large central hall. We were unexpected and unannounced. In the course of our researches in pursuit of the headmaster we were impressed with the excellent discipline and tone of a school in which the children’s attention was not to be distracted by the presence of strangers glancing into their classrooms in passing. The teachers, masters, and mistresses, all wore university gowns. The headmaster, alert and enthusiastic, showed us over his spacious, airy school-buildings, including the well-equipped laboratory and the department of domestic economy. Western Australia does not neglect the practical side of its children’s education, and here the girls are taught dressmaking, millinery, and cooking. The dining-rooms of the staff, and those pupils whose homes are at a distance, had the air of a well-appointed restaurant, with its small tables daintily set out with clean linen, and fresh flowers brought by the children. We noticed among them what looked like a small edelweiss, the Australian “flannel flower.”

The period of education at these intermediate schools consists of a four years’ course lasting from 12 to 16. A “Leaving Certificate” on the completion of the four years’ course must be obtained by examination to enable the student to pass into the University. Some students are drafted into the Training College for Teachers, or, after the four years’ course is finished, students may stay on at the school to study special subjects. We were impressed with the appearance of the children. They were healthy, well-to-do, and attractive; their manners were frank and without self-consciousness.

One of the older girls, who was deputed by the headmaster to show us the way to the station, would have compared favourably with any English schoolgirl of the same age. Her father had visited England, “and you have no sand in England,” she added, half incredulously, “and father could not make them understand about the sand here.” She came from up-country, and was able to tell us that two handsome large grey and black birds with a singularly limpid note were “rain birds.” She also pointed out to us two large castor-oil trees, and told us that the magpies, predatory, knowing-looking birds, which are to be seen everywhere in Australia, are called “break o’ day boys” in the country, because, like our cocks, they call the neighbourhood.

It is only quite recently that Western Australia has acquired its University; it is in fact of such new foundation, that, like some of Perth itself, it is still housed in temporary buildings. Its professorial staff is appointed, and it confers degrees, but the scene of its labours is at present in a number of classrooms beneath a corrugated iron roof, opposite the charming gardens of Government House—Australia is very good to its governors in the matter of houses and gardens. But Perth is developing with great rapidity, and a probable permanent site for the University is already talked of, on the banks of the Swan River, in the National Reserve or King’s Park.[3]

If working-men are liberally treated by the state as regards education for their children, they are treated no less generously as regards housing accommodation.

One afternoon we visited, in company with the State Premier, some of the houses the state builds for working-men. The bungalows were built on the Western Australian plan on piles; one-storied verandahed houses each in its own palisaded plot of ground about a quarter of an acre in extent. Outhouses, including a washhouse, were at a little distance from the main building. The houses were pretty and picturesque; they were constructed of coloured “sand” bricks, made of cement and sand, and had corrugated iron roofs. They vary in type, and the intending purchaser can see the plans and make his own selection according to his taste and means. Those we visited were situated on the pleasant outskirts of Perth, with a view over the Swan River. We went over several in the course of construction, and then made our way to a street of occupied houses. We left the motor-car behind here, for the roads were of soft sand like a sea beach. The sand was held together by a low-growing plant, a kind of mesembryanthemum, locally known as “pig’s face.” It has very thick, succulent leaves and an attractive flower like a large primrose-coloured thistle. Sheep or cattle will eat it, and it is almost independent of moisture. We visited some new-comers who had lately taken one of the houses. The owner was a member of the Legislative Council, and had recently left the goldfields to come and live in Perth; for Western Australia holds that it pays its legislators to legislate, and requires of them whole-hearted devotion to the service of the state for their £300 a year salary. He had already made his garden. The front lawn was sown with grass and sanded over, and he was busied in making a vegetable garden in the sand, in which early spring flowers were showing even then.

Inside, the rooms were large and well furnished, the bedrooms opening on to the broad, shady verandah that faced what would eventually be the lawn. As we drove away the Premier pointed out a small wooden house in a tiny plot of ground—that, he said, is all a man can do without state aid for the same money.

As to the financial part of the scheme, it is regulated on no principle of extravagant philanthropy, but is conceived on a sound commercial basis, to repay the Government the interest of 4½% on the capital expended. The payments of the tenants are calculated on a basis of 5%, with a rebate of ½% on punctual payment. The land on which their houses stand is inalienable, that is, at the end of ninety-nine years it reverts to the state, and in the meantime the owner cannot dispose of it except to the Government, who will take it back on a valuation, allowing compensation on improvements, or making deductions from the original cost on depreciations. To be eligible as a tenant a man’s income must be under £400 a year, and he pays a small deposit. The most expensive houses vary from £600 to £700. The tenant’s weekly payments, which may be spread over a period of thirty years, eventually make the house his own; but his payments may vary in accordance with his means, and he can make his house his own at any point by paying off the balance. No wonder that with such inducements to linger in the neighbourhood of a town, men should shrink from the harder, more vigorous life up-country. Yet it is “up-country” men that Australia wants, to clear, sow, and till her rich, fertile soil; with enterprise and energy to win certain fortune, and courage to face the initial hardships and loneliness, which bring their own reward.