Advance Australasia: A Day-to-Day Record of a Recent Visit to Australasia. / Second Edition.

by Frank Thomas Bullen

In this the final chapter of this series of impressions I feel first of all compelled to regret my inability to visit many Australian towns of great interest, more especially in Queensland and the northern part of New South Wales, several of which I knew well, such as Newcastle, Grafton, Brisbane, Rockhampton, Gladstone, and Maryborough. Also that I had neither time nor opportunity to see many of the inland towns of Australia such as I have had in New Zealand, although in their case it certainly would not have been a revisit. Neither have I been able to visit beautiful Tasmania. But in the course of my six months' tour I have been unable to get much more than a passing glance at the country, and also, by meeting all sorts and conditions of men, to get a fairly comprehensive idea of the conditions of things generally. Passing all these matters in review for a general summary, the first thing that I would like to notice is the high level of excellence and independence maintained by the Press. The newspapers of Australasia, with but two or three exceptions, are the equals of any of our newspapers at home, and in some respects their superiors, as, for instance, in political controversy. I gratefully miss that virulence of attack upon prominent men which is so painfully evident in many of our home journals, more especially so, strange to say, in those which profess to maintain a high religious standard.

That form of argumentative abuse and reckless slander is out here left to certain lewd journals of the baser sort—which indeed would seem to be their obvious place.

Daily Journalism is, as I say, of a very high order, and this applies not merely to the matter but to the paper and format also. And while the Colonial news is very full in detail and interest, home and foreign affairs are most comprehensively dealt with, and widely disseminated in the form of cablegrams and occasional London letters. In bulk, of course, these journals do not rank with the American newspapers, that hideous agglomeration known as the Sunday Edition being unknown here, but in quality the Colonial newspapers are so immeasurably superior that no comparison is possible, with such notable exceptions as the Tribune, Outlook, Saturday Evening Post, and a few others out of the many thousands of newspapers with which the great Republic is afflicted.

But the most marvellous feature of Australasian journalism is its illustrated weekly Press. Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin, all turn out splendidly written and illustrated journals, in which, except in the small matter of paper, the original pictures may safely challenge the world. A special feature of these fine papers, without exception, is the enormous amount of good reading matter which they contain for sixpence. I have just taken up one haphazard. It contains eighty pages of reading matter exclusive of advertisements. Fully half of this great space (the pages are Graphic size but the printing is closer) is taken up with matter of intense interest to Colonials, such as the state of the markets for their produce, the conditions of agriculture, mining, manufactures, employment, sport, education, art, and science. Politics are fully dealt with, not merely Colonial, but worldwide.

There are twelve pages of illustrations, four serial stories by well-known authors, twelve short stories, and about fifty storyettes. The only thing you may search its pages for in vain is anything objectionable or suggestive. This holds true of all, and it is indeed a high standard. Such papers as these are a sweet boon to dwellers up-country, who are thus kept in full communion with the great outside world in the pleasantest way. What I have said may seem too eulogistic, but I know that I have barely done the great Australasian illustrated Press justice, and have besides left uncatalogued a number of minor but most interesting items.

There are also a number of magazines which, in defiance of scanty circulation because of the small populations, persist in appearing and flourishing, such as the Review of Reviews, Life, the Red Funnel, &c. These offer a fair and welcome field for the development of budding Colonial literary talent such as has already thrown up several writers of a very high class, notably Louis Becke, John Arthur Barry, Henry Lawson, "Banjo" Paterson, Mrs. Campbell Praed, and others. I hope no idea of invidious selection will be attributed to me in mentioning these names, I do but give them as they occur to me.

The very delicate question of political matters must of course be dealt with, but circumspectly as becomes a casual visitor from the Homeland. The one thing which strikes me most forcibly is the daring way in which these new communities deal with what are burning and most difficult questions at home. I am afraid that they are often much too apt to forget, in their enviable position of writing upon an almost clean slate, the difficulties of dealing with home problems. This lack of perspective often leads politicians out here into intolerance of British slowness, as they term it, in handling such fundamental questions as those of dealing with the land, and the unemployed, for instance. They do not realise what it means to have the dead drag of past centuries, nor the paralysing effect upon the Old Country of free imports, both of cheap labour and manufactures. Securely entrenched behind their own prohibitive laws, they cannot see, nor can they understand, why Britain has so many paupers, nor how it is that we cannot do as they do—look after their own people first, and afterwards—a very long way—consider the foreigner. The Socialism which at home is so real a danger because it ever tends in the direction of more making of paupers and the survival of the unfit, in contravention of Nature's most obvious laws, assumes quite a different character here. As nearly as I can make out Socialism out here means the inalienable, incontrovertible right of every man to live and enjoy life, providing that he can justify his claim to be fit to live. At home, as far as I have yet been able to understand the pronouncements made by Socialists, every human being born has a right to live whether he will work or not, and if he beget children he may be as selfish, as improvident as he will, he has a right to have his offspring educated and maintained at the expense of the State, that is, being translated, at the expense of those who are striving with all their might to do their duty to their own families and to the State of which they are components.

In consequence of this difference Labour legislation, or even Socialism, does not strike me out here as presenting any dangerous features. It is, of course, strange and pleasant to see labour meeting capital upon a purely equal basis, and to see the working of the Arbitration Courts where capital has no power beyond what the judge deems to be for the greatest good of the greatest number. But stranger still it is to see how men of wealth and position will concede that it is not all bad that the men they employ shall be placed, by the law, upon an entirely equal footing with themselves as regards questions of abstract justice. These things give furiously to think, but always there lies behind the knowledge that what is not merely possible but practicable in a new country, is both impossible and impracticable in an old one.