Rambles in Australia

by Edwin Sharpe Grew; Marion Sharpe Grew

THE PREMIER OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA.

This was the native camp we had come to see; it had been a camping-ground for the blacks from time immemorial, and the present owner of the estate leaves it free to those, whose camping-ground was formerly the whole vast continent. There are not very many natives in Australia now; it is supposed by some that they were never very numerous, that the struggle for existence on those arid plains and waterless hills was too severe for these hardy nomads. Be that as it may, they are dwindling, and in contact with the whites they lose the primitive virtues they possess. The natives we saw at the camping-ground near Perth certainly did not appear to have primitive, or any other virtues. They were, it is true, principally half-breeds, and whether regarded from the physiological or moral point of view, they were a depressing spectacle. They were provided with Government blankets, instead of kangaroo skins, and some form of a mission was singing hymns for their edification; but both men and women were a miserable, degenerate, apathetic looking crew. They talked English with a cockney accent. The strange mob of yapping, small dogs of indistinguishable breeds were the only thing that evinced much vitality.

There were, however, among them a few full-blooded blacks. One of these, a shrewd-looking old woman with a grizzled mop of hair, told us that when she was a baby, “the white people took me, but I lay in the wood and listened to my people talking till I learnt their language; then I ran away and went back to them.” We were anxious for an exhibition of throwing the boomerang, or “kyle,” as they call it, that curved stick, which, apparently missing its aim, describes an arc and returns to the hand that threw it. The half-castes have lost the art both of throwing and carving the kyle, and are too indolent to achieve either, but an old native stepped out from among them to show us how it was done. He had thick black hair, and his bright dark eyes gleamed in his flat, glistening, ebony face. It was very curious to watch him standing there turning his head about, sniffing and feeling the direction of the wind, and at last he threw the kyle, spinning, circling, returning, many times, while we watched him fascinated, and the motley crowd of half-breeds looked on too at the art they had no skill to practise. They have even lost the art of making fire with the hard fruit of the banksia, “mungite” is the native name for it. “Never go before a black,” they say in Western Australia; they can’t be trusted, apparently, not so much from their malevolence as a sort of light-hearted instinct of destruction. For instance, seeing a man standing by the wall of a small shed at a little distance from the camp, one of the blacks playfully let fly at him with a boomerang. He fortunately missed the man’s leg, but made a hole in the building.

We left the camp, for there appeared a pretty little English girl, who, having heard that there were visitors to the compound, had been sent by her mother to ask them to tea in the hospitable Australian fashion; so following a grassy track, we came to our great surprise upon a dignified old country house on a wooded promontory overlooking a higher reach of the Swan River. The owners of this beautiful estate belonged to one of the “Seven Families” of Western Australia; that is, they were descended from Australian grandparents on both sides. In Australia one says, “My grandmother came over in 1830,” as we should say in England, we came over with the Conqueror; for 1830 is in the West, at all events, the beginning of Australian civilised history, and those early settlers had a heroic struggle, and had to face every sort of hardship, hunger, and the want of any kind of comfort, in a way that settlers of to-day, even those who venture upon the strenuous life of the backwoods, can never experience. The details of the lives of these pioneers would form an extraordinarily interesting chapter in Australian history, and, as was the fashion at that time, they beguiled their loneliness with keeping diaries, a most valuable fashion to the historian, for even the dullest chronicler unconsciously throws light on manners and customs of the day, commonplaces to him, that the next generation has forgotten. But invaluable as these old diaries would be, they have unfortunately been in most cases destroyed.

Our hostess told us regretfully of several instances she had known of this being done by very old people. They were very small communities in those days, the life was rough and wild, and there was no public opinion to control it, and, for that very reason, these intimate records would have been all the more valuable and curious. As we sat at tea in the charming drawing-room, with something of an old-world atmosphere, somebody commented to our hostess on the extremely difficult approach. Yes, she said, matter-of-factly, I prefer to have no road to the house, it keeps “sundowners” away. The sundowner is the Australian tramp; he arrives at nightfall and demands food and lodging; if he does not get it, the householder pays the penalty in missing poultry, or burnt ricks. Of course he only extorts this toll in lonely places; but what a delightful career for a man of indolent habits, and sufficient obtuseness of feeling, to wander through that beautiful country, where the sun always seems to shine, sure, if not of a welcome, of supper, bed, and breakfast, where he would.

The golden light of the setting sun was flooding the river and the wooded hills, when we came away, our host and hostess pointing out to us sadly a noble English oak tree on their lawn, that the white ants had riddled through and through, reducing it to touchwood. We hurried back, entering once more, as we neared Perth among a crowd of returning cars, buggies, and bicycles, a haze of its soft red dust, while from its hills the city itself was wrapped in a mysterious dull grey twilight.

On one of our last days at Perth we paid a visit to the Parliament House. Only the back is finished, and is impressive in its simplicity of white freestone columns. The designs for the front are very effective, the interior simple and well proportioned. While as for the Upper House it is as luxurious as the council chamber of a medieval Dutch town hall. We observe in passing that they provide remarkably agreeable hot buttered toast there.

Our host on this occasion was an ex-Minister of Education, from whom we learned many interesting facts about the social and economic development of Western Australia. He was especially enthusiastic on the importance and good results of cadet training, which he had done much to promote. In the case of schoolboys of twelve to fourteen years old it consists mainly of physical training calculated to produce better development. This training carried out by the school teachers is given for not less than fifteen minutes a day, the boys learn marching, drill, and either first aid, swimming, or miniature rifle-shooting. Teachers are trained for the purpose of giving this special education in Government Schools of Instruction, where certificates of proficiency are conferred; but the whole subject of the complete and admirable system of Australian military training is dealt with in another chapter.

Soon after our arrival we were overtaken by rumours of European war, almost incredible, except that Europe seemed so remote. Then came the news that Germany had declared war on Russia and France. Great Britain, it was said, would stand aloof. Even so the news was sufficiently serious, and telegrams on the Perth post office were eagerly scanned. It was not till quite the end of our visit that definite intelligence arrived that England had joined the cause of the Allies, and even then nobody realised it in the least.