The efforts of an individual isolated by
remoteness and the sea, must necessarily be circumscribed.
No Australian is able to affirm that his knowledge of the country is
entirely satisfactory to himself. There are some points upon which the
best informed stand to the correction of others whose general knowledge
may be admittedly inadequate. We who are scattered about in odd and
out-of-the-way corners, pick up in the school of experience scraps of
local knowledge, and may without presumption present them to others to
confirm and to conjure with.
The term "Australia" as generally used ignores most of the continent out
of sight of Melbourne and Sydney, though both Victoria and New South
Wales could be stowed away in little more than half the area of
Queensland. Do we reflect that Australia includes some of the driest
tracts in the world, as well as areas in which the rainfall approaches
the phenomenal--that not very much more than half of the territory of the
Commonwealth lies within the temperate zone--that there are as marked
differences between Tasmania and North Queensland as between the South of
England and Ceylon? That the one is the land of the potato, apple,
apricot, cherry, strawberry and blackberry, and the other the land of
sugar-cane, coffee, the pine-apple, mango, vanilla and cocoa; that though
there exist no imposing geographical boundaries, such as chains of lofty
mountains or great rivers to emphasise climatic distinctions, these
distinctions nevertheless exist, and that they imply special policies on
the parts of Government and Administrations.
Pages:
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127