Australia, New Zealand and some islands of the South seas

by Frank G. Carpenter

Brisbane, the capital of the second largest of the six states of Australia, has more than two hundred thousand people, and is the fourth city in size on the continent. During the last half century it has had a phenomenal growth. Less than seventy-five years ago it was taken away from the neighbouring colony of New South Wales and became the capital of Queensland. At first it grew but slowly, for it was handicapped by having been the site of the Moreton Bay Settlement, a colony for the worst of the convicts sent over from England. When it began to get on its feet a terrible flood swept away so many of the houses in the low-lying sections that it was believed the town would never recover. Yet it took a new lease of life, and to-day it is hard to realize that, fifty years ago, it was only a village with less than one thousand inhabitants.

The public buildings were planned with an eye to the needs of the future. The State Treasury would do credit to our own capital at Washington. The Law Courts cost nearly two hundred thousand dollars, and the Parliament Building half a million. In George Street is a splendid palace which houses the Lands Office, and the Public Library is a striking piece of Italian architecture. On a steep cliff above the big-domed custom house rises the Cathedral of St. John, considered the finest Gothic structure in all Australasia.

Talking with the Queenslanders it is easy to see that they think theirs is the coming state of Australia. They say the good lands of Victoria have long since been taken up, that New South Wales is fairly well developed, and that such large areas of South Australia and West Australia are desert that those states can never support a great population. Queensland has two slogans: One claims that it is “a paradise for willing workers,” and the other that it is “the richest unpeopled country in the world.” The state has vast tracts of arid land, which it expects to reclaim by artesian wells. It has already redeemed from the desert a country more than twice as large as the state of New York, having discovered that most of the great area beyond the coastal range is underlaid with subterranean lakes and streams, which will furnish water for stock. The cultivated acreage is growing every year. Enough pastures for seventeen million sheep are now in use, and the state has already nearly twice as many sheep as any other division of Australia.

Queensland might be called “The Newest England” of these British south lands. It is a principality in itself. It comprises the northeastern quarter of the Australian continent; from north to south it is as long as from Washington to Omaha, and from east to west about as wide as from Washington to Chicago. It is three times as big as France, and twelve times the size of England and Wales.

The upper half of Queensland is not far from the Equator and raises cotton, sugar, tobacco, and all sorts of tropical fruits. Bananas do so well that one of its nicknames is the “Banana State.” Scrub lands cleared at a cost of about ten dollars an acre can be planted without ploughing and will produce fruit in a twelvemonth. Fifteen tons of pineapples to the acre is not an unusual crop, and pines weighing from fourteen to sixteen pounds have been grown. The factories for canning this fruit that have been started with the aid of the government may some day compete with the great pineapple canneries of Hawaii.

A great advantage of the fruit-growing business in Australia, as in South America, is the difference in seasons in the Northern and Southern hemispheres. Being south of the Equator, the fruits ripen at a time of year when European and North American markets offer the best prices, and refrigeration and fast boats are already landing Queensland fruits on our winter tables.

Australia usually raises enough sugar to supply her own needs, and ninety per cent of her crop is produced in tropical Queensland. Sugar cane was first grown here about 1865, and in the early days the plantations were worked with coloured labour brought in from the South Sea islands. Later on it was decided to send the “blacks” home, and keep the resources of the state for white men exclusively. From the standpoint of the growers, this was a real sacrifice, and the Commonwealth government is now doing everything possible to stimulate sugar production. At one time it paid bonuses on sugar produced by white men, but these have been given up. Now the government buys the entire crop outright and controls its refining and sale. The cane is crushed in Queensland, but is refined by the big Colonial Sugar Refining Company in Melbourne and Sydney. Under the government monopoly the consumer pays about twelve cents a pound. Importation of sugar by private individuals or companies is forbidden, and whenever the Queensland crop falls below three hundred thousand tons the government imports enough to meet the requirements.

Australia has her sugar bowl in Queensland, which produces nearly enough cane to supply the entire population. It is one of the few places in the world where the crop is grown without coloured labour.