At last, however, a new policy has been instigated. In the future the distribution of water is to be controlled by State experts only, landowners who are within the irrigation area having to pay for it whether they use it or not, so that when holdings become smaller and settlers more plentiful there is every hope that the desert may indeed “blossom like a rose.” Æsculapius, in his “Birds,” tells us that it is from our enemies, not from our friends, that we must learn; and it is equally so with our failures. Australia has had a good many nasty jars, mostly caused by that impetuosity that is part of her political youth; but nobody can say that she does not profit by her mistakes, that she immortalizes them as some older countries do, or that she is willing for a moment to remain beaten.
Meanwhile, from the farmer’s point of view, comes the complaint that irrigation costs more than it is worth, and that he cannot get sufficient labourers to work irrigated land. But, with all due respect to the Australian farmer, this is mainly a case of having taken up more land than he can cultivate. He idealizes size. He would rather have a thousand acres of drought-stricken and useless land than he would have a hundred densely cultivated, and paying hand-over-hand. He himself will work incredibly hard in bursts, while his wife and children toil like slaves, but he does not care to face the constant, steady round demanded by what he would scornfully describe as a “pocket-handkerchief lot.”
The scarcity of labourers is indeed a difficulty, and it will remain a difficulty till the farmers provide more adequately for the comfort of their hands. The married man is altogether at a discount on the Australian station and farm. In the former the men, all more or less casual employees, live together in a large hut, served by a special cook; in the latter they live with their employer. Any accommodation for wife or family is very rare indeed, so that a married man who secures work in the country must, for the most part, maintain his belongings separately in lodgings in town. One hears a very great deal of virtuous indignation expressed in regard to the overcrowding of the towns, and the fact that men who are out of work there will not take billets as farm labourers. Also, on the other hand, that men do not marry as they should, that the legitimate birth-rate is so low and the percentage of illegitimate children so high. But if a man is normal and honest-minded, with a liking for clean living, he needs a wife and children and a home of his own. As a single man, wandering from station to station for shearing and harvesting, he has, on the whole, a very good time, plenty of company, plenty of money to spend, and no responsibilities. But the better sort of men do not fear responsibilities, and they want something more than a good time; so that, after a few years, they get sick of the wandering life and wish to settle down. In the country, however much they might desire it, there is, indeed, very little chance of this for farm labourers when once they are married.
They may, perhaps, have saved enough to start a tiny farm of their own, but it means ceaseless drudgery, and only too often a life of complete isolation both for husbands and wives, while the masters, whom they would be only too willing to continue to serve, have no place for them.
There is a great deal good in Australia that is not at all good in England, particularly in the life of the working-man; but I have found no parallel to the comfortable two-storied cottages, surrounded by good gardens, which one sees gathered round English farm-houses. When cottages such as these are built; when a labourer can settle down for life on one farm, and grow his own vegetables, keep poultry, and purchase a cow; and can see his own family growing up healthily and happily around him, then I believe that Victoria and her sister States will have no need to complain of her working-people all flocking to the big towns; while a new generation of agricultural labourers, bred and born to country life, will thus be insured, the number of illegitimate children be lessened, and emigration bear a more tempting face to the English labourer than it has done heretofore—so far, at least, as Australia is concerned.
This short-sighted policy of the banning and barring of the married man is evident in many other branches of Australian industry besides that of agriculture; and only the other day I cut the following out of the Sydney Bulletin, which has a happy knack of putting its finger directly on the weak places in the administration of its country:
“The old, old policy of baby-prohibition, this time from the Victorian Police Department:—‘Wardsman wanted at Police Hospital, Victoria Barracks, St. Kilda Road. Salary, £75 per year, with board. Applicants must be single, etc.’ It is a wonder the unfortunate baby ever contrives to get born at all, when one considers the number of awful bosses who fine the father in his whole salary if baby happens.”
All this time I seem to have got very far away from my first subject of gardens, but it has been merely from a natural discursiveness of mind, and not from any lack of legitimate material, for, indeed, the paucity of interest to be found in the private gardens of Melbourne is amply balanced by the beauty and variety of the public ones; among which the Botanical Gardens must be accorded the first place, both in importance and size—covering, as they do, eighty-three acres—exquisitely situated, for the most part on either side of a deep valley, along the hollow of which runs a thick grove of moisture-loving palms.
To the right of this, as one looks towards the city, is the Alexandria Avenue and the winding, silver ribbon of the Yarra, which is gradually being made as beautiful at close quarters as it now appears from the all-enhancing distance. Besides this deep valley, one elevation of which is topped by Government House, there is an infinitude of ups and downs, sweep after sweep of undulating greensward broken by many flower-beds and by jutting masses of trees, fringed with blossoms of every colour. It seems that anything will grow in Melbourne if only you water it enough—the old, old grievance again—and both subtropical plants and the hardiest English varieties flourish amicably side by side in the Botanical Gardens. Still, it is in the diversity of its trees rather than its plants that it really gains most over an English garden of the same sort, the shapes and colouring of the trunks, the almost human turn of the branches, the size and luxuriance of the leaves, proving an endless source of delight.
Best of all I love the gardens in the autumn, when all the borders are gleaming with the pale masses of chrysanthemums, bed after bed, border after border of them, tawny yellow and pale gold, white and amethyst, not one single glaring or sharply-defined tint, the very soul of colour. The autumn in the Melbourne Botanical Gardens is exquisite. The little, sharp chill in the morning air, the noon of clear warm sunshine; and the mist-haunted evenings, when standing on the high ground, one watches the trees grow ghostlike and unreal in the fading light, while the lamps of the distant town glimmer out beyond the grey veil of the river. Autumn evenings in England smell very good, but not as good as autumn evenings in an Australian garden, where the sun has been shining warmly through the day, drawing all the perfume from the blossoms, the fallen leaves, and humid earth. Then, there is not the same sense of sadness, of loss, which is inseparable from the autumn at home; for here it is not the end, but rather the beginning, the time when the burden and heat of the long summer is past, while life is all ready to start afresh during the damp coolness of the winter days; for, however cold it may be, it is always a cold that quickens, and does not deaden as does that of northern climates.