The Never-Never Land 67 



Australians are planning to pierce it with a rail- 

 way from east to west, and with another from 

 south to north. They may be driven back for a 

 time, but they will never rest until the last secret 

 it holds is wrested from the Never-Never country. 

 Meanwhile, it is there, and supplies the ele- 

 ment of mystery and the touch of imagination to 

 the life of a people that is, in the main, essentially 

 practical and utilitarian. The city clerk, hurry- 

 ing to his work through the crowded streets, feels 

 on his face the fierce north wind that has blown 

 over a thousand miles of arid sand, and is re- 

 minded of the solitude and the great emptiness of 

 the desert on the fringe of which he lives. The 

 selector's wife, shading her eyes from the sun just 

 setting over the western ranges, pictures her ab- 

 sent husband toiling behind the slow-moving 

 sheep across the level plains far away beyond the 

 ranges. The bushmen themselves tell wonderful 

 stories of the treasure hidden away in the far soli- 

 tudes ''where the pelican builds her nest," and it 

 inspires the poets and writers with something of 

 its own mystery and strange beauty. "The 

 wind," writes one, "comes to you over the great 

 uninhabited spaces, desolate grey distances, and 

 you feel somehow or other that it would have a 

 better story to tell, and a sweeter and more 

 familiar appeal to your heart, if it had the human 

 note in it, if its sounds were lightened with a 

 laugh or saddened with a sigh. . . . All 

 Australia in its waste places is waiting for live 



