Australia, New Zealand and some islands of the South seas

by Frank G. Carpenter

The island state deserves its name of the “Apple Island.” It is a voyage of more than a month by sea from Hobart to London, but apples are sent to England every year by the shipload in refrigerator steamers. The annual crop now amounts to more than two million bushels and brings in close to two and a half million dollars. It would surprise our orchardists to see how close the Tasmanians plant apple trees. They set them out ten feet apart, instead of twenty or forty feet, as with us, and I am told that as many as six hundred bushels are sometimes gathered from a single acre. The trees begin to bear in their third or fourth year and keep on bearing for twenty-five or thirty years.

Tasmania ships much green fruit to Australia. It raises quantities of pears, plums, cherries, and currants, and in recent years has been exporting several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of jam, not only to the United Kingdom, but to South Africa, France, and even to the United States. By the law of the Commonwealth every jar of jam or marmalade exported must bear a label stating that it was made in Australia. Tasmania, which had built up a reputation for her preserves before the federation of the states, does not like this law, for it seems to give all the credit to Australia. The jam makers get around it by printing their labels with the word “Tasmania” in large letters and “Australia” in smaller letters.

These people are excellent farmers and their crops are usually good. The wheatfields cover only about twenty-two thousand acres, but the average production is more than eighteen bushels per acre, which is far ahead of the yield in the other Australian states. Large quantities of barley and oats are grown.

This island ranks with Vermont as a place for breeding fine sheep. It has many sheep worth upward of a thousand dollars apiece. They are sold to the mainland states and the countries of South America, pedigreed rams often bringing as much as five thousand dollars each. The land holdings are smaller than in Australia or New Zealand, so that the Tasmanian sheep breeders can therefore take better care of their stock. This is a great turnip country, and in this part of the world a good turnip country is a good sheep country. There are fields about Hobart that have produced as much as sixteen tons of turnips to the acre, and in northeastern Tasmania twenty-five tons have been grown on an acre.

Until 1872 the minerals of Tasmania were practically unknown, but in that year on Mount Bischoff, in the northwestern part of the island, tin mines were opened which have proved to be the largest tin mines of the world. They paid their first dividend in 1878, and are still yielding large profits.

Another big mineral property is that at Mount Lyell, which was discovered in 1881. It was first worked as a gold mine, but was afterward found to contain copper and silver. When these ores were smelted the results were so gratifying that the original company was reorganized with a capital of about four and a half million dollars, a railroad was built from the mines to the smelting works, and within a short time the company had five smelters treating eleven thousand tons of ore a month. This company paid its first dividend in 1897 and by the middle of the year following it had distributed more than a million dollars to its stockholders. It now pays out many thousands a year in salaries and wages and is making money right along from its copper.

I have made some inquiries about lands, both mineral and agricultural, and I find that all the best land has been taken up and that farms and city property bring almost as much as in the United States. For years one trouble with Tasmania was the fact that its lands were held in big blocks by rich men who would not sell. But now, under the closer settlement laws, the Minister of Lands may acquire, either compulsorily or by agreement, private land in any part of the island to be leased to settlers. The land taken over by the government is divided into farm allotments, the value of which may not exceed twenty thousand dollars. These are rented on ninety-nine-year leases. Unfortunately, the government is not yet rich enough to buy up many of the large estates.

One of the troubles about taking up government lands is the dense growth of timber which must be cut down before they can be used. The climate here is moist and the undergrowth is thicker than in most parts of our country. Much of the timber is eucalyptus, but there are also beeches, dogwoods, oaks, and other hard woods. There are millions of acres of virgin forests, some of which are now being cut to furnish railway ties to other Australian states and to South Africa.

The cost of living is as high in Tasmania as in the other Australian states, but wages are lower. The best paid labourers are the skilled iron and electrical workers, and they get a maximum of only thirty dollars a week. As to clerks and bookkeepers, they are poorly paid, and there are few clerical positions open. Domestic servants are in demand and their wages are fair.

The Australians of the mainland seem to consider the people of Tasmania as slow as the New Yorkers do the Philadelphians. They have a saying: “Don’t send a live man to Tasmania; send flowers.” I have heard it said that the island used to be peopled by women, children, and graybeards; for as soon as the boys reached man’s estate they crossed Bass Strait to Victoria or New South Wales. This, however, is no longer true; Tasmania is waking up, and its people think it has a big future as a manufacturing centre for all Australia. Its numerous lakes and rivers can furnish abundant water power at low cost and the development of its hydro-electric resources is going forward rapidly. All kinds of electrical appliances, which are regarded more or less as luxuries even in the large cities of the mainland, are conveniences of every-day life in many small towns of Tasmania.