The New Australia
Preface
[edit]In Paris one day in 1882 I had a visit from a compatriot, Marin La Meslée, who had come back from Australia.
He told me that after various turns of fortune down there he had taken a job in the colonial government service as a surveyor in the Lands Department at Sydney.
M. la Meslée had come to address the Geographical Society of Paris on his impressions of Australia and at the same time to publish an account of his travels in the antipodes.
He asked me to write a few lines to introduce the material in this book.
Adter some natural hesitation — for I have never seen Australia — I accepted. What made up my mind in the end was that I have always had a sort of partiality for that country, whether from being interested in the Australian sections of the universal exhibitions at Paris and Philadelphia, or from my friendship with some who have spent years in Australia and told me of the wonderful developments in that far-away and curious land, of its fertile soil, its rich mines and the toughness of its indomitable colonists.
Nearly three years ago, when the French government decided to subsidise a mail service to Australia, I had the honour of being nominated by the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs as a member of the extra-parliamentary commission appointed to study the matter and even of being chosen as its chairman. There again I learnt more about Australia, the manly and enterprising spirit of its people, and its varied and innumerable resources.
The work just mentioned began towards the end of last November and already, as I write this, a magnificent brand-new steamer, the Natal, built expressly for this line in the Ciotat dockyards, has completed its maiden return voyage. Every Australian hailed its landfall. In the absence of her husband, Lady Loftus, wide of the Governor of New South Wales, herself came aboard to salute this, in some sense unexpected, guest and bid her, as the English say, welcome. On her return voyage the Natal carried Australian products in exchange for her French merchandise. A cargo of tallow, which had to be trans-shipped at Marseilles, was received by our merchants and quickly resold on the spot. All this augurs well for the future.
French-Australia line ships leave Marseilles every twenty-eight days, thus making thirteen voyages a year. They sail via the Suez Canal, touch at the Seychelles, at our beautiful island colony of Reunion, at Mauritius — our ancient Ile de France, now British — and thence to Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney whence the postal service continues on to Noumea, the capital of New Caledonia.
From now on this regular steamship service will export directly to Australia French products which hitherto went through London and sometimes lose their trade-marks en route. We shall be sending chiefly silks, fine textiles, millinery, and novelties; oil, wine, spirits, liqueurs and jams; jewellery, clocks, perfumes and objéts d'art. In return we shall take from Australia for our northern spinning-mills fine merino wool, of which we are the largest buyers, to the tune of more than a hundred million francs a year, and also wheat, tallow, hides, leather, frozen meat, copper, lead, tin and gold.
Good quality coal, of which Australia has a surplus, will be sent to Mauritius and Reunion which have none, and in return the islands will send to Australia more and more of their surplus sugar. It is true that Australia is now beginning to grow its own sugar cane, at least in the colony of Queensland.
Our luxury liners will carry English travellers to and from Australia. En route they will visit Marseilles and Paris and thus French and Australian people will learn to know each other better, to esteem each other and to be bound together more and more by common interests.
This country is in fact a continent. With its dependencies of Tasmania, New Zealand and Jiji it makes up what the English call Australasia — that is to say a new, a southern, an Austral-Asia. It is rich in minerals, especially gold, tin, iron, zinc, antimony, lead and copper. The discovery of the gold-fields in 1851 gave new life to the country. Prior to that year England kept it as a receptacle for her convicts. Yet the pastoral industry has already taken root and merino sheep were acclimatized from the beginning of the century. Then came grain-growing and for some time Australia has been, like California its rival in gold-production, like Chile and the Argentine republic, indeed like India and the United States, one of the granaries of Europe; but it is above all in the raising of stock — cattle, sheep and horses — that Australia has taken a leading position. It has more sheep, sixty-five million head, than any other country in the world and it is among the leading cattle-producers. Wool, hides, leather, tallow and meat are and will always be the mainstay of Australia, especially meat, if a successful freezing process is invented to ensure its regular shipment to Europe.
A whole race of sturdy pioneers, of tireless squatters, people this extraordinary continent. The women willingly accompany their fathers, husbands or brothers on exploring expeditions which are not always without danger. While the wilderness is being populated and cleared, the coastal and inland towns frow and ports open their docks to the whole world's ships. The continent itself is already divided into several different states or colonies, chambers and even its own particular economy. England superintends this colonial development from far away, and says herself that perhaps when the fruit is quite ripe it will fall naturally from the tree and begin another life even more independent than its first. No matter — the real bonds, at least the economic and commercial ones, will endure and relations with the mother-country will always increase.
I have tried to salute in my fashion this country which I know only by hearsay, but which I appreciate and love deeply, not less than those who live and work in it. I hope that France, who till now has held herself somewhat aloof from these distant shores, will visit and understand them in her turn, and that fortune-seekers amony my countrymen may also go, like our English cousins, to build their homes there.
I thank the author of these interesting pages, Marin La Meslée, for his part in revealing to me some Australian horizons and I wish him all the success which his book deserves.
L. Simonin
Paris, April 1883
Contents
[edit]PART ONE: From Melbourne to Brisbane
[edit]PART TWO: A Journey to the Cobar Copper Mines and to the Darling River
[edit]PART THREE: Geographical, Political and Statistical Description
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