Following the World War many countries experienced political upheavals and radical ventures in government. But it was in Australia years earlier that a working-man’s party first gained control of a national government. As we go about in the several states of the Commonwealth we shall find many evidences of the part played in public affairs by the labour unions. They have frequently held a majority in state legislatures, but are especially anxious to dominate the federal Parliament so that they may put their ideas into effect on a wholesale scale. Woman suffrage, adopted in Australia almost without opposition, has added strength to the labour element, for it is generally agreed that nearly every workingman’s wife goes to the polls, while many of the women of the well-to-do classes stay at home.
CHAPTER III
QUEENSLAND
MOST travellers from our hemisphere first set foot on the Australian continent at Sydney, the biggest seaport of the country and the seventh city in size in the whole British Empire. I first stepped out upon its mainland at Brisbane, which lies five hundred miles north of Sydney and is the capital of the state of Queensland.
In coming down the coast from Thursday Island and Torres Strait I had one of the wonder trips of the world, for my way lay inside the Great Barrier Reef.
Imagine a chain of coral as long as from New Orleans to Chicago. Let the chain be composed now of atolls, great coral walls encircling lagoons, now of long coral ridges, and now of gardens of the beautiful red, white, and pink flowers fashioned by these insects of the seas. Such is the Great Barrier Reef, which extends along the whole eastern coast of Australia northward to Torres Strait. For the most part it is only from five to fifteen miles from the mainland although in one place it is a hundred miles off shore. At times we were close to the coast, and again were moving along near huge rings of coral that seemed to float on the green sea. Some of the atolls had vegetation upon them, their round basins being circled with coconut trees, while others, seen only at low tide, were stony and bare.
The air was wonderfully clear and the sky a heavenly blue. The few clouds made big patches of dark blue velvet on the dreary gray of the Australian mountains. The sea was as smooth as a mill pond. We were feeling our way along through a wide canal, one side of which was walled with the cliffs of Australia and the other by this masonry of countless millions of coral polyps. Our steamer had to go cautiously, for under the smooth waters were treacherous spurs and peaks of coral ready to rip holes in her side. Our captain kept a sharp lookout for brown waters, which mean bars, or green, which indicate coral, and steered a course through the deep blue of the safe passage. Among navigators the shallows between Cape York and New Guinea have the reputation of being the worst waters in the world. Some of the ship captains boast that they can smell the coral in the dark, just as those of our transatlantic liners declare that they can smell the ice of the bergs that drift down from the North.
Such cautious sailing began to get on the nerves of some of the passengers and I think all of us were glad when our steamer turned into Moreton Bay, the outer harbour of Brisbane. We approached a low shore of sandy dunes and beaches rising gradually into rolling hills thick with trees. Slowly we entered the mouth of the wide Brisbane River, up which we travelled for several hours. As our steamer went on through the murky water, we could look over the side and see masses of jelly fish, transparent mushrooms of bright violet, tossed this way and that by the waves from the ship. The banks were low and covered with bushes. Along the way there were meat-freezing plants, each surrounded by little houses roofed with galvanized iron, the homes of the workmen.
As we kept on, the country on each side of the river became more hilly, and when we reached Brisbane I found it a place of as many gulleys as Kansas City. Most of the town lies on the right bank of the river. There are many pretty villas, and rising high above them is the Queensland Parliament House.
After a lenient examination by the customs officials, I drove to my hotel through streets not unlike those of an American town. They were paved with wood instead of brick or asphalt. The stores reminded me of ours at home, and the size of the buildings surprised me.