Sydney Porter—Notes from Australia



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of the Minister concerned what I did with any young Parrakeets which

I bred. I said I sometimes exchanged them for fresh blood ; upon

this I was informed that I was therefore a dealer !


The official attitude regarding the export of birds from Australia

is almost incomprehensible. Foreigners of any nationality other than

British are more or less received with open arms so long as they bring

with them a letter from any kind of fun-fair, menagerie, or similar

trading concern which likes to call itself a “ Zoo ”, and they are then

allowed to take away, not hundreds, but thousands of Australia’s

choicest birds. Most of these birds, though one cannot prove it, are for

sale in the respective countries to which they go. Unofficially the

collectors admit that the birds will be sold when they arrive in their

own country.


During the short time I was in Australia three such large collections

left bound for foreign countries. It was rather galling for a Britisher,

an aviculturist like myself with decent aviaries, wanting a few pairs of

birds for legitimate breeding purposes, being refused a single pair of

protected birds, yet seeing hundreds of them leaving for sale in foreign

countries ; my only method of getting these birds legitimately being

to buy them, when I arrived home, from the foreign countries where

they were imported ! These things possibly appear sense to the official

mind but they certainly don’t to the lay mind.


However, these things, galling as they appeared to be at the time,

were only pinpricks and were compensated for by the kindness and

hospitality I met with almost everywhere I went.


I suppose all of us deep down in our hearts have some longing or

desire ; maybe to have that little dream house all of our own ... to

win a colossal sweepstake so that we can live a life of crowded fullness

... to meet that friend who understands and loves us in spite of our

failings ... or to find that far away land where our dreams come true.

My secret longing was to find in the heart of a vast forest a little wooden

house that was part of the forest itself and where I could feel that the

trees, the birds, and myself were all just part of the scheme of things

-—where the only sounds were the song of the birds, and the sighing

of the wind in the tree-tops, and where one could see ranges and ranges

of vast blue forest-covered mountains on whose tops the white clouds



