CHAPTER V
THE AUSTRALIAN BUSH
An introduction to an Australian home—Off to a picnic—The wattle, the gum, the waratah—The joys of the forest.
The Australian child wakens very often to the fact that “to-day is a holiday.” The people of the sunny southern continent work very hard indeed, but they know that “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”; and Jill a dull girl too. So they have very frequent holidays—far more frequent than in Great Britain. The Australian child, rising on a holiday morning, and finding it fine and bright—very rarely is he disappointed in the weather of his sunny climate—gives a whoop of joy as he remembers that he is going on a picnic into the forest, or the “Bush,” as it is called invariably in Australia. The whoop is, perhaps, more joyful than it is musical. The Australian youngster is not trained, as a rule, to have the nice soft voice of the English child. Besides, the dry, invigorating climate gives his throat a strength which simply must find expression in loud noise.
Let us follow the Australian child on his picnic and see something of the Australian Bush, also of an Australian home.
Suppose him starting from Wahroonga, a pretty suburb about ten miles from Sydney, the biggest city of Australia. Jim lives there with his brothers and sisters and parents in a little villa of about nine rooms, and four deep shady verandas, one for each side of the house. On these verandas in summer the family will spend most of the time. Meals will be served there, reading, writing, sewing done there; in many households the family will also sleep there, the little couches being protected by nets to keep off mosquitoes which may be hovering about in thousands. And in the morning, as the sun peeps through the bare beautiful trunks of the white gums, the magpies will begin to carol and the kookaburras to laugh, and the family will wake to a freshness which is divine.
Around the house are lawns, of coarser grass than that of England, but still looking smooth and green, and many flower-beds in which all the flowers of earth seem to bloom. There are roses in endless variety—Jim’s mother boasts that she has sixty-five different sorts—and some of them are blooming all the year round, so mild is the climate. Phlox, verbenas, bouvardias, pelargoniums, geraniums, grow side by side with such tropical plants as gardenias, tuberoses, hibisci, jacarandas, magnolias. In season there are daffodils, and snowdrops, and narcissi, and dahlias, and chrysanthemums. Recall all the flowers of England; add to them the flowers of Southern Italy and many from India, from Mexico, from China, from the Pacific Islands, and you have an idea of the fine garden Jim enjoys.
A HUT IN THE BUSH. [PAGE 63].