Insect life, white ants excepted, is most fascinating in Brisbane. The moths and butterflies are gorgeous to the last degree. They flash in the sunlight, living rainbows, displaying the most ravishing colours. In these semi-tropical regions the colours of nature seem to reach absolute perfection. Sky, flowers, and insects all match. There is no blue so wonderful as that of these skies, and no colours more soft and subduing than those which overspread the heavens at the moment of sunset.
While here I have had the experience, twice repeated, of a tropical thunderstorm. Nothing can approach this in majesty and terrifying power, unless it be a storm in the Alps. There, the feature of the storm lies in the long-continued reverberations of the thunder crashing amongst the mountains. Here the thunderstorm is marked by a terrible display of lightning, and by the appalling colour of the sky. The storm gathers in an incredibly short period of time. After a day or two of abnormal heat, radiated from a pellucid atmosphere, the clouds suddenly appear. In an hour the heavens assume a slaty appearance, a ghastly colour that speaks of anguish and coming dissolution. Everything grows dark. It seems as if the hour of the traditional judgment had arrived. An ominous wind sweeps over the country, bending stately palms beneath its fury and threatening to uproot smaller trees. And then from afar comes the muffled roar of the storm. It is like the march of a hostile army. Great guns seem to boom, gatling and quick-firers rattle their shot across the plain. And then, for an hour or more, the heavens become alive with light. The lightning appears in a dozen places at once, stabbing, tearing, exploding. The thunder is awful. And then the rain descends, as no Englishman who knows but his own land has ever seen it fall. Not in drops, but in sheets, it pours down until every street becomes a river. It is useless to attempt to speak while the flood is upon us. It is the din of a battle at its height, for the roofs of the houses in Brisbane are made of corrugated iron, and the rain falling upon this resounding substance produces a terrifying effect. And amid the tempest, while human voices are hushed, there is one glad note heard. One creature is excited to delirious pleasure through the storm. Silent as the grave while the tempest gathers, this creature chants in triumph while the storm rages. It is the frog. No man knows the vocal capacities of the frog until he hears it croak in one vast chorus during a tropical storm.
CHAPTER IX
QUEENSLAND, THE RICH UNPEOPLED STATE
The northern territory of Australia constitutes the “grand problem” of the Commonwealth. How vast a problem that is no man can realise until he in person visits the north. There, in very truth, is the colour line, drawn, not by the caprice of man, but by the hand of Nature. And the grand question to settle is, Can the white man live and toil in the north as he does in the south? One party says “No,” the other party says “Yes.” When the question is finally settled, then a great era of prosperity may commence. The natural wealth and resources of the north are almost incredible. Yet they are largely untapped, and the bottom reason for this is the nebulous state of the colour question. Once demonstrate that the white man can live in these tropical regions, and then will come a great immigration and an abounding prosperity. But while the doctrine of a “white Australia” is proclaimed coincidently with the dogma that the white man cannot toil in the north, so long will the north remain a problem.
Queensland is at once the largest, the richest, and the most scantily populated of the States of the Australian Commonwealth. Its area is eight times that of Victoria. It possesses no fewer than 429,120,000 acres, of which only 650,472 acres are under cultivation. And in all that vast territory there are but 760,000 people. It is amazing, almost appalling. Little wonder that the Government of Queensland is laying itself out to attract to this rich country a population from beyond the seas; for the authorities have the wit to perceive that a land so fruitful and promising cannot, in the nature of the case, remain uninhabited for long. Neighbouring peoples with overflowing populations are not unmindful of the fact that almost at their door there lies a promised land crying out for men to enter and possess it. The danger involved in this fact is one that thousands of Australians do not wish to recognise.
The vast majority of people in the Old Land are utterly ignorant of Australia, and particularly of Queensland and the north. Let me try to make the situation clear.
First of all, Queensland has a climate. In the extreme north it is tropical, in the south it is semi-tropical. The Government claims that it is the healthiest climate in the world. I hold no brief for Queensland, and therefore I merely pass on the official statement. But there is no question about the beautiful climate. In the winter-time thousands of persons from the south, from Tasmania and New Zealand, take the trip to Cairns and the north—the land of eternal summer. “Winter” is practically unknown in Queensland. What a Queenslander calls “winter” a Londoner would call early summer. In this particular Queensland stands in direct contrast to Canada, that land which hitherto has monopolised the British emigrants. Ice and snow are unknown. The soil is ever fertile, the sky is ever blue. The man who has no house in which to live need shed no tears; he will probably find it quite as comfortable to live in the open air. “Sleeping out” is as common as sleeping in. Even in the south we practised that. In Melbourne we abandoned our bedroom for the balcony. In Queensland we should not have a bedroom at all. A superb climate, then, is the first great asset of this northern State.
When we descend from sky and air to the earth, the prodigious natural wealth of the land staggers one. It is hardly believable that one single State can yield what Queensland does. Take, for example, the matter of fruits. In the Government Bureau at Brisbane there are cases containing models of the fruits of Queensland. And the list comprises such luxuries as the pineapple, giant banana, custard apple, cocoa pods, grenadilla, mangoes, persimmons, tamarinds, pomeloes, paw-paw, giant plums, grapes, oranges, lemons, apples, pears, peaches, cherries, figs, apricots, nectarines, quinces, strawberries, passion fruit, rosellas, blackberries, Cape gooseberries, melons, loquats, and guavas. Was there ever such a list for one State? These tropical fruits are simply wonderful—wonderful for variety and for magnificence. Think of peaches measuring eleven inches in circumference! The great problem is to find a worthy market for these fruits. Many of them cannot now be transported to England on account of the distance. But when an adequate population brings the demanded railway and the mono-rail, fast steamers and the Trans-Siberian Railway between them, together with a fast service of steamers in the Panama Canal, diminishing the distance between Queensland and London, reducing the time of transit to seventeen or eighteen days, then the Queensland fruits, so strange to Englishmen, may be found at Covent Garden.
From fruits let us turn to crops. Wheat, maize, oats, barley, rye, and the usual cereals are, of course, easily grown. Two crops of maize each year are possible in parts of the country. Besides these, cotton, tobacco, coffee, rubber, sugar, rice, and arrowroot are easily grown. Think of the possibilities of commerce when crops such as these can be produced. When American cotton-planters make their “corner,” and plunge Lancashire into distress, it might be worth the while of open-eyed spinners to turn their attention to a British colony where cotton can be easily cultivated. If persons at home only realised what Australia is capable of producing!