Victoria and New South Wales now produce more than one hundred and twenty-five million pounds of butter and about fifteen million pounds of cheese every year. The dairy cows of New South Wales alone yield enough milk annually to give a gallon to every man, woman, and child in the United States, while if the butter export of the Commonwealth were sent to us, we would get nearly a pound apiece. Most of the Australian butter sold abroad goes to British markets.
The beginning of dairying in Victoria is interesting. One of the butter makers talked to me about it while I was in Melbourne. Said he:
“Twenty-five years ago we made no butter to speak of. Our total shipments did not amount to more than fifty thousand pounds a year. Then the government came in and helped the farmers. It arranged a scale of bounties for butter exports which was to continue for four years. For the first year we were to receive from the government a bonus of four cents per pound for all the butter shipped, the second year three cents, the third year two cents, and the fourth year one cent. The people at once began to study and experiment. Men who until then would not have a dairy cow on their places bought good stock, and now our butter is selling at high prices in both Asia and Europe. We use American machinery in our dairies.”
The number and circulation of Australian newspapers show that there is no lack of interest in reading among the people. Including the magazines and the trade journals, nearly a thousand newspapers and periodicals are published on the continent. In Melbourne the leading dailies are the Argus, the Age, and the Herald. The Sydney Herald is taken in all parts of Australia, and one sees the Sydney Mail everywhere. Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth have both morning and afternoon dailies, and, in fact, there is scarcely a large town on the continent which has not four or more papers. The most popular weeklies are the Sydney Bulletin and the Melbourne Australian, the Adelaide Observer, the West Australian, and the Sunday Sun. The big city newspapers have Saturday editions of many pages, which sell at four cents a copy and go out to all parts of the Commonwealth. There are all sorts of agricultural journals, sheep journals, and financial journals.
As a rule the Australian newspapers are less sensational than those in the United States, yet more lively than the English newspapers. Judging by the amount of advertising they carry, I should say that the owner of a popular Australian paper has a gold mine.
Some of the aborigines are housed at the back-block mission stations, where their children are given an elementary education. But most of them are nomads and call only occasionally on the state aborigine boards for supplies of food and clothing.
The Australian aborigines were cannibals in the past, and still stand at the bottom of the ladder of human progress. They are incapable of advancing in contact with civilization and are now a dying race.