Rambles in Australia

by Edwin Sharpe Grew; Marion Sharpe Grew

Leura, on the other hand, gives the illusion of a Swiss village, with its background of high dark hills, large flourishing hotels, and rows of fir trees. Our destination was Katoomba. These hill settlements are on the way to becoming thriving towns. A large and excellent hotel already dominated the one main street of shops. The Blue Mountains are a popular week-end, or holiday resort for Sydney, whose residents can easily attain the pure mountain air, after the steamy heat which is said to be the normal condition of the city in summer. Katoomba could only boast of one modest street, but it supported two chemists’ shops, and a furnishing company, conducted by a man of unsurpassed initiative and a sense of the dramatic. One would not have supposed that there was scope for such a faculty in the furnishing trade. But in his shop window was represented not mere specimens of his wares, not merely pillow-slips and dining-tables to tempt the hardy pioneer from the backwoods, but that hardy pioneer himself. The whole shop front had been converted into a scene representing a sumptuously furnished hotel bedroom, in which a young man, a wax figure, had retired for the night. His clothes were thrown carelessly about the room, his boots and socks kicked off by the bedside, his gun leant in one corner, the contents of his small tin trunk were neatly arranged on the dressing-table. A small table, on which were a pack of cards and an empty champagne bottle, bore testimony to his gay bachelor habits, but before he went to bed his last thought had been otherwise, for open upon the writing-table was a letter written in a large bold hand to his “Dearest Henriette,” lamenting his loneliness, and asking when the happy day would come on which they should set up house together. The whole scene was so realistic that the youth of Katoomba could not linger long unmoved in contemplation of it.

We lunched at the large hotel of the little settlement, its verandah overlooking a fine vista of misty hills that must have been superb on a sunny day, but the rain clouds hung heavily over them, diffusing an exquisitely soft light under the low grey sky. After lunch we started on the top of a coach drawn by five horses to see some of the falls for which the neighbourhood is famous. It took skilled driving over the rough tracks that did duty for roads. We bumped up and down steep ascents and descents, swung round impossible corners with glimpses between the trees of range on range of misty blue mountains stretching away illimitable, mysterious, aloof, with no sign of life on their soft gum-clad slopes.

Occasionally the coach stopped, and we got down, while the guide who accompanied us pointed out some famous views or some especially beautiful fir-clad gully, with a little trickle of water falling from the rocks and tinkling away unseen. There seemed to be no birds or animals. The guide said that the foxes were killing off the small native animals in these gorges, and that of the koala bears, which were once numerous, there were very few left. A price is given for foxes’ skins in the hope of exterminating them. We were told in Melbourne that they fetched 10s. On one of these occasions we heard a curious noise, something like the gobbling of a turkey, made by a large brown bird, which the guide affirmed to be a lyre bird.

The Katoomba Falls, which we visited last, were on a much more imposing scale. The water comes down from a great height in a succession of falls. As a matter of fact an extra supply of water was turned on for the benefit of ourselves and some other visitors, so that altogether our impression of Katoomba was that of a very sophisticated spot. The excellent hotel and the soft sweet air, even in winter, though it is 3000 feet above sea level, would certainly make it an ideal place for rest, with an endless variety of delightful walks, which would reveal in their season all kinds of plants, animals, and insects, as well as the magnificent mountain views. It was dark when we started on the return journey, which seemed so interminable that we marvelled at the hardihood of the people who actually live at such places as Katoomba and go into Sydney for business, for such we were told there are. The lights of Sydney and a very belated dinner were more than welcome.

It is difficult in a new country to think in large enough terms—to realise, for instance, that New South Wales is more than two and a half times as large as the whole British Isles. In this vast expanse of country the climate varies greatly, from that of Mount Kosciusko in the south, where ski-ing and other Alpine sports are carried on in the winter, to the warm and humid districts of the north. There is thus a correspondingly great variety of products; from wheat, barley, and maize to sugar-canes and tobacco, cotton, and olives; from strawberries to that much over-rated tropical fruit, the mango.

SHEARING TIME, BURRAWONG STATION, NEW SOUTH WALES.

The state of New South Wales may be roughly divided, geographically, into three areas. A coastal district; plateaux or tablelands, of which the Blue Mountains form part; and the western or inland plains. Agricultural and pastoral production varies according to the character of these different areas.

Dairying is making rapid progress in the coastal districts of the north; the tablelands afford admirable conditions for mixed farming, in which the raising of sheep and cattle is combined with the growth of cereals; the western slopes are the centre of the wheat industry; while the vast area of level grass land in the far west give pasturage to 40,000,000 merino sheep.

For the chief contributing factor to the pastoral wealth of Australia has been wool. By far the greater part is exported, for though local woollen mills have been started they do not absorb much more than 1¼% of the whole clip. It was the introduction of the merino sheep from South Africa, through the agency of a Captain MacArthur in 1797, that laid the foundation of the Australian wool trade, for the merino unites the faculty of producing the finest wool with the capacity of seeking its food over the most extended areas, and of resisting drought.