Rambles in Australia

by Edwin Sharpe Grew; Marion Sharpe Grew

This was Port Darwin, where we had been told there was “nothing to see,” for it was only “an arid wilderness.” There is no sensation quite like that of steaming slowly into an unknown port, the future is so fraught with delightful and unusual possibilities. The shores take shape and colour, houses just descried with glasses become clear and distinct, people are seen on the beach, the vegetation can now be identified, and finally the ship draws up alongside of the wharf, or the tender has come to fetch us, and we set foot on a strange shore in quest of new adventure.

At Port Darwin adventure had come to us. It was the prettiest scene imaginable. The coming in of a boat is a gala day for Port Darwin. It brings letters, and newspapers, and butter, and contact with the outside world. So the rough wooden pier wore an air of some gay festival, for most of the European inhabitants had come down to welcome us on our arrival, and to claim those among us, who had had introductions to them from friends in the other states. The men were all in sun helmets and white ducks, the women in white linen, and the little pier, crowded with its throng of white figures in the strong sunshine, had for background the brilliant red and green of the shore. We were fortunate in falling to the share of an official who knew and cared for the district, and could tell us all we wanted to know about it. His wife was with him, and another lady, to whom we had had an introduction, and whose husband was kept busy by the incoming mail.

They are great organisers at Port Darwin. We were to be taken to a tea-party in the Botanical Gardens, and received there by the Administrator, as the Governor of the Northern Territory is called, and his wife; and an evening lecture was to be given by one of the passengers. With Australians you become friends in a very short space of time in their own country. Of their generous kindness and hospitality too much cannot be said, and the very fact that you are ignorant of all they know is a bond. At home it is different. They are often a little on the defensive, because they have an idea that we shall assume superior airs and consider them “colonial”—a vague term of opprobrium. Then, too, our ways chill them; their open-handed, open-hearted hospitality is the natural thing there. In a country, where there is a perennial shortage of servants, nobody minds or regards it, if the hostess and daughter of the house change the plates, except in the richest and most sophisticated circles. We should put off a dinner-party if our servants were ill, because we are so hampered by hard-and-fast conventions, not so much because we are inhospitable, but because we must maintain an accepted standard—it must be impossible for an Australian quite to understand this.

A little stuffy lumbering train takes passengers and merchandise from the wharf to the foot of a steep hill that leads up to Darwin. But it was too beautiful to immure ourselves in it, so we walked to the shore, where a Government horse and cart had been commandeered on our behalf. Its reins were held by “Tommy,” also in white ducks and all smiles. Tommy was the native servant who, with his “lubra” and a Chinese cook, ran our friend’s house. We got in and began the ascent of the steep red hill. The Government horse was tough but deliberate, and crawled leisurely through the thick red dust. The air was heavy with the sweet strong scent of a curiously twisted Japanese-looking tree, not unlike an olive. It was covered with small white flowers, and was called a milkwood tree. The natives say that the milky juice of the wood produces blindness.

At the entrance to Darwin is the Chinese quarter, all tumble-down tin shanties, unsightly and comfortless, and very poverty-stricken looking, with shrill children screaming and playing in the dust. Its appearance gave one an inkling why Australians would rather dispense with the cheap and efficient Chinese labour than leaven the population of their great clean land with people who could thrive contentedly in a little colony of pigsties. Here suddenly was a bullock cart laden with wood, the little Chinese driver in his immense flat hat, looking exactly as if he had just stepped off a valuable old tea-tray. It was the very soul of all Oriental picturesqueness. Leaving behind the comfortable verandahed houses of the European residents, we struck into a soft red road that led through the bush to the Botanical Gardens. It seems incongruous to talk of Botanical Gardens in a place that is yet hardly a town, but in a new country foresight is essential, and the Government has set apart here as elsewhere a reserve for the future, when Port Darwin shall be a great busy port crowded with shipping, and its lonely shores thronged with houses.

COCONUT GROVE, DARWIN.

It was just at the end of the dry season when we were there, and as we drove along between eucalyptus and coco palms, and all kinds of unfamiliar tropical plants, their vivid green contrasted oddly with the absolutely bare red soil—there was not a blade of grass or green upon it. This is its normal condition in the dry season, which occurs with perfect regularity from May to October. The rains are ushered in by violent thunderstorms and hurricanes, increasing in frequency till the end of November, when about an inch of rain falls nearly every day. In January the wet season has penetrated to the heart of the continent.

Of course, these climatic conditions do not exactly apply to the whole of a tract of country, which covers more than 500,000 square miles. From north to south the Territory extends for about 900 miles, and it is roughly divided into three areas, according to its climatic conditions. The northern coastal belt is well watered by numerous rivers, many of them navigable for some distance inland; the district is very fertile, especially in the neighbourhood of the rivers. It is described as “luxuriantly grassed” and well adapted for dairying, for intensive farming, which is, however, at present non-existent, and for the growth of many subtropical products.

Farther from the rivers the land is held to be suitable for agriculture and grazing. This tract of country stretches inland to the tablelands, where different conditions prevail, and which form the second climatic zone. The rainfall here is less than half that of the coastal area. The land rises to some fifteen hundred feet above the sea, and the sharp distinction between the wet and dry seasons is less strongly marked. In these tablelands, though there is a poor supply of surface water, subartesian water is available by shallow boring. The conditions here are admirable for stock raising. The third area stretches into the temperate latitudes of the South Australian border, where the rainfall is variable, but on the average low. Here are the McDonell Ranges, including fine tracts of country that compare favourably with any part of Southern Australia. But when all this has been said there remains at present the question of transport. The great transcontinental railway has now been extended from Pine Creek to Katherine River, and the Government has decided to construct another section from Katherine to Bitter Springs.