CHAPTER XIXIN AND ABOUT BRISBANE
TheBrisbane River, flowing gently between its green banks, is a favourite resort of picnic parties, one of the most popular forms of entertainment in Australia, where dry wood is abundant and the weather can be depended upon; and the party pride themselves on their skill in producing “billy” tea in the shortest possible space of time. One sunny afternoon we started up the river in a motor launch. On either shore were pretty suburban houses, each with its shady verandah, and palm trees in the gardens. The river does not, however, always flow softly and invite pleasure-seekers to embark upon it. Brisbane people often allude in awestruck tones to “the Flood,” when the river rose and swept away the peaceful bungalows on its banks and wrought much havoc. After a pleasant little voyage we landed with some difficulty on a rickety wooden pier, on the banks of an immense meadow of coarse rough grass stretching away for many acres, with other scattered picnicparties in the far distance; evidently a favourite spot. Our billy was soon boiling, and when tea, which is on these occasions a sort of sacrificial rite, reminiscent of the early settlers, was over, we went up the bank to prospect, and heard for the first time the sound which so many Australians had described to us, “the moaning” of the shea-oak in a rising wind. We had heard it described as “weird” and “depressing,” and it is certainly extraordinarily uncanny. The foliage of the shea-oak is like a lot of knotted whip-cord, and when all its strings are swept together by the wind it gives rise to a strange cry that seems to come from far and near, shrill, insistent, and full of foreboding. It is impossible to compare it to any other sound.
Among Queensland products are its precious stones, and Brisbane at first seems to support a quite disproportionate number of jewellers’ shops. It is specially famous for its black opals, which are not black, but a sort of peacock blue, with wonderful high green lights. These beautiful stones are of infinite variety in depths of colouring, and their very novelty makes them attractive, but all the same the visitor should only make purchases in the presence of an expert adviser, for, even in the case of jewellers of high repute, he will find that what he pays for his stones inBrisbane may bear no relation to the value attributed to them by a London firm. Almost every known precious stone is found in Queensland, including diamonds. Opals occur in the upper cretaceous rocks in the western districts of Queensland, and sapphire mining is carried on to a considerable extent in the Anakie district west of Rockhampton. The stones are blue, green, or yellow in colour. They occur in an alluvial lead, and their original matrix is a basalt found near the source of the alluvial deposit, the gems having been set free by the weathering of the rock.
We saw some opal cutting in Brisbane. It is done in the jewellers’ workshops. They buy the rough-looking brown lumps from the miners, and they are cut open and polished with emery to test their value.
One characteristic Australian sight we were unable to see, the “wool sales.” The trade in this principal source of the continent’s wealth was at the time practically at a standstill. Owing to the war the annual wool sales could not be held. Before the war, the buyers, chiefly German and French, attended the wool sales in the principal Australian towns, so there was practically no market for the fine merino wools. September ought to have been a busy month in Brisbane,for that is the season of the wool sales. But if we could not see the sales, we thought it would at least be interesting to see the wool, and as in Australia you need only express a wish to have it gratified, an acquaintance of our river picnic of the day before volunteered to show us the principal Brisbane wool store.
It was a morning of dazzling Queensland sunshine, with a light breeze off the sea, when we motored down to the wharf where the big store-houses are built. Here the wool comes in on trucks in bales of jute, and at first the visitor sees only endless rows of shelves stacked with brown bales. These bales, or jute sacks, which are made in India, are all marked with the name of the grower and the district and quality of the wool, in a kind of shorthand unintelligible to the layman. The “clips,” as they are called, are separated into the fleeces proper and the other parts, packed in the jute sacks, labelled, and sent straight to the storehouse. Our expert friend could tell, by taking a handful of the wool out of any sack at random, the district from which it came, explaining to us that this handful was stained with the red earth peculiar to certain plains, while another contained the characteristic “trefoil burr,” a little seed-vessel, which curls itself tightly among the wool. In the salessamples of the wools of different growers are taken from the bales and spread upon tables in an immense upper room. The walls were painted a light blue, to soften the glare of the light and throw a becoming tinge on the wool, as pink lamp-shades are used for the complexion. Here the dealers inspect it, and it is afterwards sold by auction, though the seller puts a reserve price upon it. From the warehouse the bales can be run down a sort of shaft directly on to the cargo boats for Europe; but the wool packs, as they are called, are first squeezed in a press and bound with iron bands to facilitate their shipment and storage. Some deterioration takes place in the colour if it is kept longer than two years.
The most remarkable thing about the presence of this immense quantity of wool was that, though the sheep are not washed before they are sheared, the fleeces had none of the oily unpleasant smell of a flock of sheep, but the warehouse only smelt of the jute bales. As we were coming away we were shown some merino rams in a little pen yet in possession of their deep silky fleeces. The breed of merinos has been so greatly improved since its introduction in 1797 that merino rams fetch as much as five hundred guineas, while in 1913 two rams actually were sold for 1600 and 1700 guineas respectively. Merino sheep did not, however,thrive on the coastal districts, and British sheep were therefore imported for breeding purposes.
It was later the same day that to escape from the dust, which is Brisbane’s besetting curse, we went by tram out into the suburbs. Brisbane itself is on the sea level, but its suburbs climb the hills behind it. The suburbs are only scattered bungalows dotted among the green, with their flowers and paw-paw trees and palms. Patches of eucalyptus scrub remain here and there, and rough roads connect them with the main road, up which the tram climbs steeply. After its terminus the road still climbs the hill and we climbed with it, till we came to a green lane, where was a rare butterfly with wonderful metallic blue wings fluttering above a yellow-berried duranta bush, and where we heard a laughing jackass, and watched some untidy-looking magpies. All Australian birds are rather untidy-looking, as if they had lived so long in the bush by themselves, that their toilets could not be regarded as of consequence.
From these innocent diversions we were driven by a smart shower to take refuge in the nearest bungalow, which had an inviting verandah. The house belonged to a Scotch settler, who welcomed us like old friends, brought out cushions for the wicker chairs, and when theshower was over begged us to prolong our visit—it was “so nice to see someone from home.” Last summer, she told us, had been the hottest for thirty years, but with that exception she had not felt the tropical heat excessive. When we came away she gave us the handgrip of the exile.
The most beautiful point within easy reach of Brisbane, commanding a magnificent bird’s-eye view of the city, the bay, and surrounding country, is Mount Coot-tha Reserve, or One Tree Hill. It is only a few miles out of the town, and a friend motored us up there one afternoon. On the way we stopped to have tea at her house. In the drawing-room was a heavily carved massive upright piano. We commented on its unusual case, and our hostess told us it had been in “the Flood,” and the works were ruined, but it was impossible to get them replaced in Australia. Going on to talk of the drawbacks to life in Brisbane, she said that before a storm the house would be filled with flying cockroaches and other insects, and she showed us photograph frames and book bindings riddled with small holes by the ravages of silver fish. Under her carpets were quantities of crushed naphthaline to prevent their being eaten, and a winter coat that was left hanging up by some oversight, she said, was immediately ruined. We were considerablyperturbed after this on coming across a large whiskered silver fish among our clothes, when we were packing, but his wicked intentions were frustrated prematurely, and there were no ill-effects from his presence, though we actually brought a silver fish home to London, where he was found between a trunk and its cover, and instantly slaughtered as something exotic and uncanny by the maids who were unpacking. He probably, however, came from Java.
After tea we continued our journey to One Tree Hill, our hostess actually was wearing a stole made of the skin of a platypus. The fur was curiously wiry to the touch. Mount Coot-tha, like all reserves, is the original untouched gum forest with carriage drives running through it. At one point the trees had been cleared away to give a view of Lake Enoggera, the reservoir of Brisbane, cradled in green hills some miles away.
From the western extremity of the hill the view is very extensive and extremely beautiful. Brisbane is spread out below nestling in greenery, with its winding river, and Moreton Bay far off lying placid in the sunshine. The view is bounded by distant hills.
There is generally some one feature of a town that stands out afterwards more distinctly than the rest. In the mental picture that the name ofBrisbane evokes it will always be the Botanical Gardens, cool and quiet with their banks sloping to the river, that wake the pleasanter memories. Here we came often to escape from the all-pervading dust, and here we came on our last evening in the brief twilight that intervenes for some few minutes between sunset and the fading of the afterglow. The level rays of the sun silhouetted the grotesque bunya-bunya trees on the river-banks so that they looked like bunches of crooked housemaids’ mops. The peace and calm of the quiet place were intensified by the rapidly falling dusk. Except for the scolding and chattering of a party of white Australian cockatoos in an aviary, there was no sound but the swishing of the wind in a grove of dry bamboos, and the little cropping noise of some kangaroos feeding and skittering about in a paddock. In a small round pond fringed by Cape lilies a bull-frog was beginning to cluck. Already the palm trees were black against the fading orange afterglow. A too peremptory custodian cut short the enchanting moment; it was closing time he said. So we made our way back through the busy clangour of the crowded streets, and for the last time sat out on the balcony after dinner in the dusty half-light of the street lamps and the stars, and watched the Southern Cross above the palms,and Venus shining with a lustre and a brilliancy unknown to northern skies.
PALM AVENUE, BOTANIC GARDENS, BRISBANE.
PALM AVENUE, BOTANIC GARDENS, BRISBANE.
PALM AVENUE, BOTANIC GARDENS, BRISBANE.
Our last morning came filled with the bustle of packing and departure. And for the last time let us urge upon travellers to Australia to take far less luggage than they can possibly imagine they will want. Let them bear in mind, in the first place, the great inconvenience of transferring small luggage, when there are no porters, the hideous nuisance of packing and unpacking if they have to do it for themselves; the very much simpler standard of dress that prevails in a new country, where even in the capital people are contented to go out to dinners and theatres by tram; well-to-do people dressed in elaborate cloaks and satin shoes. The variation of climate compels a fairly large assortment of clothes of different weight. But cut it down rigorously. This digression is inspired by the recollection of the exhausting nature of our packing in the heat. When it was done we had to charter a cart and a man, and freightage in Australia is far from cheap, to take it the half-mile to the station, where its mountainous bulk was with difficulty packed into the very dusty little train that runs from Brisbane to Pinkenbar, lower down the river, whence the steamers sail for the Northern Territory.
We had already paid one visit to Pinkenbar to engage a porter, a lean, tall, weather-beaten old man, selected on the wharf, to bring a truck to the station and convey our luggage to the boat. When we arrived and got out of the train with a litter of small baggage, the first thing we saw was a large American trunk tightly jammed half in and half out of the window of the guard’s van, the guard having got so much of our luggage between himself and the door that he could not get it open. Fortunately, however, our porter from the wharf was on the spot in every sense of the word. He first shouted encouraging directions to the guard, and then by the exercise of brute force thrust the trunk back through the window without doing any serious damage to that perturbed official. Eventually, with the help of another man, we got under way and proceeded to the landing-stage. The rough intervening ground was overgrown with tall blue thistles with flowers like pale yellow anemones; they looked as incongruous as if someone had stuck them on. After seeing our luggage over the ship’s side and consigning it to the steward, we returned to Brisbane in search of lunch and recovered our calm, for the boat did not sail till towards evening.
It was after lunch on this last day that we sawa thing we had always wanted very much to see and despaired of doing so. It was the little Australian tree bear, or koala bear, once very common, now becoming rare. We heard from a French waiter that there was one in the hotel, and presuming on our experience of Australian good nature, sent a message to its unknown owner to ask if we might see it before we left. He brought it down immediately, carried in the arms of his little girl, and it really was an adorable little thing. It was about the same size as the very largest child’s “Teddy Bear,” grey in colour. Its little hand-like fore paws were holding on to the lace of the little girl’s pinafore, one on each side of her neck, and it turned its head and fixed a pair of wistful eyes upon us. She said it slept all day and woke up at night, when it cried for milk like a cat. It only ate gum leaves. “When we were boys,” said its owner, “we used to hunt them. It took thirty or forty shots to bring one down, and then it would take eight or ten dogs to finish one, they are so tough.” Even so, these charming and harmless little animals, which live in the gum trees and feed on their leaves, are becoming exterminated.
It was late afternoon when we made our third and last visit to Pinkenbar. The scene in the neighbourhood of the station was so typicallyAustralian that we lingered regretfully to take a last look at it. The rough dusty road that led away inland, the drove of horses in an enclosure waiting to be entrained for the War, with another horse hitched on to the fence by its bridle, the clear strong stereoscopic light, a paddock of burnt grass, the scattered row of houses beyond, with flat grey roofs, built high on piles, and beyond again gum trees and more gum trees. We turned away towards the wharf with a certain sadness, for this spacious country with its austere beauty and its handful of warm-hearted inhabitants is wonderfully endearing in spite of, or perhaps because of, all its crudeness. We distributed our newspapers among the men loafing and smoking on the wharf, who took them with that frank friendliness of a country, where class distinctions are almost unfelt; and went on board the boat that lay alongside, still busy with the bustle of departure.