Читать книгу Rambles in Australia - Edwin Sharpe Grew - Страница 8

Table of Contents

The city of Perth is in a transition stage. Scattered over the low hills of the Swan River, its situation is magnificent, and its climate superb, but it is as yet only partly built, or rather it is undergoing the gradual process of rebuilding. As the municipality becomes more wealthy, handsome houses are replacing temporary structures, so that imposing white official buildings alternate with makeshift affairs hurriedly run up in earlier days, when need was urgent and money was scarce. Perth is, then, on its way to becoming a fine town, and its public buildings are being constructed from simple designs in good taste.

PERTH, FROM “THE NARROWS.”

But what most impresses the new-comer from Europe in Australian towns is not the buildings, but the people. Here is no miserable sordid fringe of the poor and wretched. In this happy country there is no poverty. Its people are well fed, well clothed, well housed, well-to-do. Whatever her problems, and they are many and difficult, and not to be lightly pronounced upon by the casual visitor, it is the glory of Australia that she has no poor.

It appeared to us, especially in the West, that a characteristic type is developing; lean, loosely hung, wiry, with eyes deep-set from the strong sunlight. In odd contrast to European towns, men everywhere preponderate over women in the streets. Perhaps because of its newness, the attitude of the other states to Western Australia is still a little patronising. Western Australians themselves are fully conscious of this, they on their part always talk about “the East” in tones of desire: “I hope we shall go to the East next year,” is often heard in Perth. At first we thought they meant China or Japan, but we soon found that in Western Australia “the East” means Melbourne or Sydney. They stand for London or Paris, and one lady said plaintively: “If I have a nice dress, when I go to see my sister in ‘the East,’ she says, ‘You didn’t get that made in Perth.’”

Perth, however, is looking forward. She knows the time will come when she can compete fearlessly with her elder sister the capital of “the East.” Meanwhile she has achieved the acquisition of the most attractive zoological gardens of any Australian city. They are small, but charmingly laid out, the animals left free to roam about in their own little grassy paddocks. The pleasant shady walks are lined by the pretty Cape lilac, which in July is bare of leaves, but covered with clusters of yellow berries, very decorative in effect. These gardens lie on the far side of the Swan River, and a ferry-boat plies across its shining blue waters. Numbers of black and white water-fowl swim alongside, diving below and bobbing up again, or settling on a row of posts that run out from the shore, each one like a little black and white carved ornament. The gardens are a few minutes’ walk from the landing stage. We found them charming, the darker evergreens everywhere lighted up by patches of golden wattle. The kangaroos and wallabies feeding in their little enclosures hop up and put gentle inquiring noses into your hand.

Perhaps it is because the little wild Australian animals are so pathetically confiding that they are becoming extinct. The authorities do all they can to preserve them, but it appears to be inevitable, though deplorable, that the native wild animals of Australia, charming little inoffensive creatures, are becoming rarer every year, in spite of large reserves or national parks, where everything is left untouched in its wild state. Unfortunately some of the most interesting cannot be kept in captivity. This applies, for instance, so we were told, to the koala, or little tree-bear, and to the curious duck-billed platypus, a little animal covered with a wiry brown fur, with the bill of a bird, and something of the habits of our river otter. The gardens possessed a one-eyed alligator that caught pigeons in its mouth with astonishing dexterity, and swallowed them whole in two gulps; and some fascinating cranes with beautiful vermilion legs, that danced as gracefully as any ballerina. Our own visit to the gardens was pleasantly concluded by tea, which an Australian lady was hospitably dispensing to ourselves and some other English visitors.

Tea is a most important feature of Australian life. Tea comes in with the maid and hot water in the mornings, and tea is drunk at breakfast; “Morning tea” is a settled social institution. We were invited to it on several occasions, it is served at eleven o’clock. Tea next appears at or after lunch. Afternoon tea is a matter of course everywhere; but it comes in again at or after dinner, and is very often drunk the last thing at night. One would think so much tea would undermine the strongest constitution, but it is made very weak with a great deal of milk. Australians themselves feel that their indulgence in tea-drinking is rather excessive but they account for it by saying that “In the bush you cannot get anything else to drink,” and neither seek nor offer other explanation.

It was at this Perth tea-party that we first saw the brown heavily scented “boronia,” for which West Australia is famous. The tables were decorated with that and the delicate pink Geraldstown wax flower. Boronia has a small chocolate-coloured flower, yellow inside, and is so sweet that its scent is overpowering in a room or on a dinner table. The genus was named after an Italian botanist. There are many varieties in Australia, which, to the uninstructed eye, do not in the least resemble each other. Boronia megastigma, the West Australian variety, is used for the manufacture of scent, and is cultivated for sale; it is one of the most characteristic spring flowers.

We were not long in discovering that Western Australia, whatever course its future development may take, is at present a paradise for the working-man. Nowhere else is life made so pleasant and easy for him in such matters as housing and education; nowhere else are his children given such facilities for making their way in the world in their turn. To begin with, education is provided free of cost, from the primary school to the University. In the primary schools boys are given manual training, and girls are taught cooking and domestic economy. Special facilities are provided by the Government to meet the needs of scattered settlers in the bush remote from centres of population; wherever it is possible to assure an average attendance of even ten children within a radius of three miles, schools are already established. The Education Act even takes into consideration the case of isolated families, where the muster of children is less than ten; the department pays £7 a year for each child on condition that the parents find a suitable teacher, and will supplement this grant, so that he may have a minimum of £30 a year over and above the cost of his board and lodging.2 In effect the Government pays part of the salary of a private tutor. It can be easily imagined that the education grant must be a very heavy one, in proportion to the population. It amounts, in fact, to about £1 annually for every individual in the state.

From the primary schools children are drafted into the secondary schools, when they are able to profit by the advanced standard of teaching. There are also technical schools, where trades are taught, and a training college for teachers.

We visited one of the intermediary schools, the Perth Modern School, as it is called, at Leederville, a suburb between Perth and Cottesloe Beach. We found a handsome red brick building, looking like a Nonconformist college in one of our older Universities. In the large, well-kept grounds there is room for football, tennis, hockey, and a gymnasium is provided in a detached building.

The school is admirably constructed for its purpose, the classrooms opening out of a large central hall. We were unexpected and unannounced. In the course of our researches in pursuit of the headmaster we were impressed with the excellent discipline and tone of a school in which the children’s attention was not to be distracted by the presence of strangers glancing into their classrooms in passing. The teachers, masters, and mistresses, all wore university gowns. The headmaster, alert and enthusiastic, showed us over his spacious, airy school-buildings, including the well-equipped laboratory and the department of domestic economy. Western Australia does not neglect the practical side of its children’s education, and here the girls are taught dressmaking, millinery, and cooking. The dining-rooms of the staff, and those pupils whose homes are at a distance, had the air of a well-appointed restaurant, with its small tables daintily set out with clean linen, and fresh flowers brought by the children. We noticed among them what looked like a small edelweiss, the Australian “flannel flower.”

The period of education at these intermediate schools consists of a four years’ course lasting from 12 to 16. A “Leaving Certificate” on the completion of the four years’ course must be obtained by examination to enable the student to pass into the University. Some students are drafted into the Training College for Teachers, or, after the four years’ course is finished, students may stay on at the school to study special subjects. We were impressed with the appearance of the children. They were healthy, well-to-do, and attractive; their manners were frank and without self-consciousness.

One of the older girls, who was deputed by the headmaster to show us the way to the station, would have compared favourably with any English schoolgirl of the same age. Her father had visited England, “and you have no sand in England,” she added, half incredulously, “and father could not make them understand about the sand here.” She came from up-country, and was able to tell us that two handsome large grey and black birds with a singularly limpid note were “rain birds.” She also pointed out to us two large castor-oil trees, and told us that the magpies, predatory, knowing-looking birds, which are to be seen everywhere in Australia, are called “break o’ day boys” in the country, because, like our cocks, they call the neighbourhood.

It is only quite recently that Western Australia has acquired its University; it is in fact of such new foundation, that, like some of Perth itself, it is still housed in temporary buildings. Its professorial staff is appointed, and it confers degrees, but the scene of its labours is at present in a number of classrooms beneath a corrugated iron roof, opposite the charming gardens of Government House—Australia is very good to its governors in the matter of houses and gardens. But Perth is developing with great rapidity, and a probable permanent site for the University is already talked of, on the banks of the Swan River, in the National Reserve or King’s Park.3

If working-men are liberally treated by the state as regards education for their children, they are treated no less generously as regards housing accommodation.

One afternoon we visited, in company with the State Premier, some of the houses the state builds for working-men. The bungalows were built on the Western Australian plan on piles; one-storied verandahed houses each in its own palisaded plot of ground about a quarter of an acre in extent. Outhouses, including a washhouse, were at a little distance from the main building. The houses were pretty and picturesque; they were constructed of coloured “sand” bricks, made of cement and sand, and had corrugated iron roofs. They vary in type, and the intending purchaser can see the plans and make his own selection according to his taste and means. Those we visited were situated on the pleasant outskirts of Perth, with a view over the Swan River. We went over several in the course of construction, and then made our way to a street of occupied houses. We left the motor-car behind here, for the roads were of soft sand like a sea beach. The sand was held together by a low-growing plant, a kind of mesembryanthemum, locally known as “pig’s face.” It has very thick, succulent leaves and an attractive flower like a large primrose-coloured thistle. Sheep or cattle will eat it, and it is almost independent of moisture. We visited some new-comers who had lately taken one of the houses. The owner was a member of the Legislative Council, and had recently left the goldfields to come and live in Perth; for Western Australia holds that it pays its legislators to legislate, and requires of them whole-hearted devotion to the service of the state for their £300 a year salary. He had already made his garden. The front lawn was sown with grass and sanded over, and he was busied in making a vegetable garden in the sand, in which early spring flowers were showing even then.

Inside, the rooms were large and well furnished, the bedrooms opening on to the broad, shady verandah that faced what would eventually be the lawn. As we drove away the Premier pointed out a small wooden house in a tiny plot of ground—that, he said, is all a man can do without state aid for the same money.

As to the financial part of the scheme, it is regulated on no principle of extravagant philanthropy, but is conceived on a sound commercial basis, to repay the Government the interest of 4½% on the capital expended. The payments of the tenants are calculated on a basis of 5%, with a rebate of ½% on punctual payment. The land on which their houses stand is inalienable, that is, at the end of ninety-nine years it reverts to the state, and in the meantime the owner cannot dispose of it except to the Government, who will take it back on a valuation, allowing compensation on improvements, or making deductions from the original cost on depreciations. To be eligible as a tenant a man’s income must be under £400 a year, and he pays a small deposit. The most expensive houses vary from £600 to £700. The tenant’s weekly payments, which may be spread over a period of thirty years, eventually make the house his own; but his payments may vary in accordance with his means, and he can make his house his own at any point by paying off the balance. No wonder that with such inducements to linger in the neighbourhood of a town, men should shrink from the harder, more vigorous life up-country. Yet it is “up-country” men that Australia wants, to clear, sow, and till her rich, fertile soil; with enterprise and energy to win certain fortune, and courage to face the initial hardships and loneliness, which bring their own reward.

With all her natural advantages Western Australia’s development is only a matter of the last twenty years. Like most of the rest of the continent, she has an inhospitable and forbidding coast. The Dutch knew of the existence of a southern land or, “Terra Australis,” before the end of the sixteenth century, and Dutch captains sailing from the Cape to Java and the East Indies not infrequently found themselves within sight of a desolate and unknown coast, which they gradually charted, till it was mapped in outline from the Gulf of Carpentaria to Cape Leeuwin. It was not, however, till nearly the end of the century that the first Englishman landed in Australia, when Captain Dampier, commanding the “Roebuck,” navigated the western and north-western coastline in 1699, and was not encouraged by what he saw there.

Sailing from the Downs in January with fifty men, and twenty months’ provisions, Dampier sighted the low, even shores of Australia in August of the same year, and entered Shark’s Bay, as he called it. He and his men went ashore, but sought in vain for water on that waterless coast, digging wells, but to no purpose. A hundred years later, in 1803, the continent was circumnavigated by Matthew Flinders, who suggested that “Australia” should be substituted for the Dutch name of New Holland.

Still nearly another century passed away before Western Australia begun to grow and prosper. In 1826 Major Lockyer was sent from Sydney, with troops and a party of convicts, to occupy King George’s Sound on the south coast, where the Port of Albany stands to-day, and a few years later the Swan River Settlement was formed in the neighbourhood of Fremantle and Perth; but these first beginnings of the colony were unpropitious, and it languished till the discovery of gold brought the first great influx of population, and with it the consequent demand for agricultural produce, which at last gave an impetus to Western Australian development.

Slowly the outside world began to realise the immense possibilities of this great territory, which occupies about one-third of the whole continent, and has an area eighteen times that of England and Wales. Within its fertile and beautiful interior, stretching from the temperate to tropical zones, were found districts well fitted for raising cattle and sheep, for agriculture, and fruit-growing and the cultivation of vines. Vast primeval forests of valuable timber cover many square miles, while the discovery of coal and other minerals accompanied that of gold. Western Australia is no less fortunate in its climate than in its natural resources: over the greater part of the state it is equable and pleasant without violent extremes. The dry season lasts into April; the greater part of the rainfall, which varies in different districts of the state from 40 to 10 inches, taking place between May and September.