Hobart has the reputation among Australians of being a slow, old-fashioned town, though recently it has been rejuvenated by the hydro-electric power development at Great Lake.
In one way, the effort to develop home industries has helped American trade. It has created an enormous demand for American machinery, tools, and other equipment with which to operate the new factories. Not long ago the state of Victoria ordered two enormous electric generators and other machinery for a power plant being erected at the so-called “brown coal” mines in that state to furnish current to Melbourne, ninety miles away.
The Commonwealth government has set up a high tariff wall around everything manufactured in Australia, and is doing all it can to foster home industries. Some British companies have already established branch factories here to be inside the tariff wall. A great advantage of the branch plant is the fact that it brings the British exporter several thousand miles nearer to his Far-Eastern markets. When it comes to making goods for export in competition with other countries, however, the local manufacturer is somewhat handicapped by the higher labour costs in the Commonwealth.
Great Britain has a preferential tariff arrangement with Australia so that certain of her goods come in at lower duties than those paid on similar goods from the United States or other countries. Yet, in spite of this “imperial preference,” our trade is healthy and growing. We sell Australia more than one fifth of all the goods she buys abroad and take a good proportion of the half billion dollars’ worth of wool, hides, pearl shell, and other raw products that she annually sends into the markets of the world.
CHAPTER XXI
TASMANIA
I WRITE this in one of the “farthest south” towns of the globe. Hobart is twenty-five hundred miles below the Equator, with nothing but ocean between it and the frozen lands of the Antarctic. It is now the end of April, late in the fall in this topsy-turvy land, but the grass is as green as in old Ireland in June, and, although Mount Wellington, back of the city, has a coat of snow, the sheep are everywhere feeding out-of-doors, and it is as warm as Ohio in May.
As I look around me I cannot realize that this is Tasmania, the country I studied about years ago as Van Diemen’s Land. I had read of the cruel treatment of the criminals sent out to it from England. I knew it was an island somewhere between the South Pole and Australia. I had an idea that it was bleak, bare, and inhospitable, the jumping-off place of creation, and it seemed that to visit it would hardly be worth the time and expense.
I have changed my opinion. Tasmania is the Switzerland of the southern Pacific, and one of the most healthful and beautiful lands of the globe. It is a heart-shaped island, with its top less than two hundred miles from Australia and its point toward the Pole. At the southernmost tip the Pacific and the Indian oceans meet. Tasmania is all mountains, valleys, and glens; with waterfalls and lakes, forests of fern trees, trout brooks, and hunting parks. Its coast is deeply indented with fiords and harbours, and the tourist bureaus have made it a great health resort. The whole country is spotted with boarding houses and hotels, and during the summer months, from December until May, it is swarming with visitors. One can go almost anywhere by motor, coach, horseback, or rail, and always have good company. There are also many tourists on foot.