76 CONFESSIONS OF A BEACHCOMBER 



Some Differences 



" The weather may be extremely fine ; but not without such 

 varieties as shall hinder it from being tiresome." 



What higher or better reward could be desired than the 

 reflection that one had attempted to assist in the dispersion 

 of the mists of ignorance which obscure some of the aspects 

 of the land of his adoption? Australia is vast and of 

 infinite variety. The efforts of an individual isolated by 

 remoteness and the sea, must necessarily be circumscribed. 



No Australian is able to affirm that his knowledge of 

 the country is entirely satisfactory to himself. There are 

 some points upon which the best informed stand to the 

 correction of others whose general knowledge may be 

 admittedly inadequate. We who are scattered about in 

 odd and out-of-the-way corners, pick up in the school of 

 experience scraps of local knowledge, and may without 

 presumption present them to others to confirm and to 

 conjure with. 



The term " Australia " as generally used ignores most 

 of the continent out of sight of Melbourne and Sydney, 

 though both Victoria and New South Wales could be 

 stowed away in little more than half the area of Queens- 

 land. Do we reflect that Australia includes some of the 

 driest tracts in the world, as well as areas in which the rain- 

 fall approaches the phenomenal — that not very much more 

 than half of the territory of the Commonwealth lies within 

 the temperate zone — that there are as marked differences 

 between Tasmania and North Queensland as between the 

 South of England and Ceylon ? That the one is the land 

 of the potato, apple, apricot, cherry, strawberry and black- 

 berry, and the other the land of sugar-cane, coffee, the 

 pine-apple, mango, vanilla and cocoa ; that though there 

 exist no imposing geographical boundaries, such as chains 

 of lofty mountains or great rivers to emphasise climatic 

 distinctions, these distinctions nevertheless exist, and that 



