CHAPTER III 



THE AUSTRALIAN PASTORALIST REGIME : 

 THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT 



A HUGE parallelogram of a continent, not " much larger 

 than Europe/' as Cook imagined, but somewhat smaller 

 and nearly equal to the Dominion of Canada and to 

 the territory of the United States ; resembling Africa 

 in its mass, with similarly unvaried outlines and com- 

 paratively few capacious harbours ; truncated by the 

 loss of portions now represented by the Great Barrier 

 Reef and islands hke New Caledonia, and thus sharply 

 isolated from all the rest of the world ; Australia seems 

 to be set apart for the generation of pecuHar vegetal 

 and animal species and the nurture of an original type 

 of human society. A vast and moderately elevated 

 tableland, whose low and scanty mountain-ranges are 

 but the escarpments of its plateaus, which slope down 

 to and surround the central basin with its desolate and 

 forbidding plains, it might appear the predestined 

 home of the pastoralist. 



The pastoralist, however, needs something more than 

 level and spacious lands ; he needs water and grass. 

 Before there can be all-nourishing rivers, feeders of 

 flocks and herds, there must be mountains, the resting- 

 places of the snow and the reservoirs of the rain. Austra- 

 lia has its spinal mountain-chain, like other countries, 

 but it is ill-placed, forming a close parallel with the 

 eastern coast, and making the country lop-sided. It 

 is, moreover, of a low altitude, nowhere rising above the 

 snow-line, and therefore the rainfall is almost every- 



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