ETERNAL SUNSHINE 



" North Queensland is my country. I love it. I live in it. I 

 would die for it."— Dodd S. Clarke. 



To those who earnestly beUeve that a country exercises 

 dominance over its inhabitants, mental as well as 

 physical, the present state of North Queensland oflfers 

 interesting problems. Save for a fast-disappearing 

 remnant, gone are the original occupiers of the land. 

 The most listless, the least thrifty of the old peoples, 

 have given place to representatives of the most adven- 

 turous, the most successful — men and women of British 

 blood, of progressive ideas, vaunting and independent 

 spirit, but with slight respect for the traditions of their 

 race. Apt to regard their own land as all-sufficient, 

 to resent the incoming of strangers (especially those of 

 dark complexion), determined to exclude coloured labour 

 from tropical fields, while demanding higher and yet 

 higher recompense for work which in other equatorial 

 regions is deemed to be servile, on what grounds do 

 they base the hope of adapting themselves to their 

 environment, of becoming children of the soil ? 



The genius of the race forbids degeneracy. Marked 

 and sudden improvement may be expected if examples 

 drawn from the lower animals and certain plants are 

 apphcable. Huxley laid it down that "the animals and 

 plants of the Northern Hemisphere are not only as well 

 adapted to live in the Southern Hemisphere as its own 



40 



