Soon after crossing the Queensland border we entered a stony country in which intrepid settlers had built themselves houses among granite boulders. In spite of this the soil of the surrounding district is very rich, and consists largely of decomposed granite, which stretches for eight hundred miles round the township of Stanthorpe, and is specially good for fruit-growing and vineyards. “There,” observes the guide-book poetically, “roses bloom all the year round on the cheek of the young, and vigour characterises the movements of the old.”

The line then crossed open country cleared of gums; on the pastures numbers of horses were feeding. Mountain ranges stretched away to the far distance with deep grassy gorges. At one point we passed a large patch of prickly pear, one of the most terrible of Queensland pests which has had to be dealt with by special legislation, both in Queensland and new South Wales. Botanically it is known as a form of Opuntia inermis. It resembles the cactus hedges common in Southern Italy, and was introduced by Governor Philip in 1789, who brought it from Rio de Janeiro as food for the cochineal insect. It is said that the first plant was regarded as so great a curiosity that a gardener was dismissed for neglecting to water it. This may be an apocryphal story, but at any rate the prickly pear took so kindly to the Australian soil, and climate, that vast areas have been overrun by it to an entirely disastrous extent. No entirely successful measures have been evolved for coping with its devastating increase. It is a most serious anxiety to agriculturists, for it is estimated that in Queensland alone thirty million acres have been affected by it, and that it spreads at the rate of one million acres a year. It has found its opportunity in the fact that the districts best suited to it are sparsely populated. No economical means of eradication have been devised. In New South Wales the cost of destroying this pest was calculated a year or two ago at ten or twelve million pounds. Its barbed spinules produce severe irritation in men and animals, and besides its habit of entrenching itself in gullies, on hilltops, and places difficult of access, it is propagated by birds and stock, which eat the seeds; and every joint, or piece of one, forms a new plant.

The township of Warwick lies in the foot hills of the Darling Downs, which the line now crosses. This is one of the most fertile areas in the state. There are over four million acres of rich black soil, formed of decomposed basalt and many feet in depth. It is well watered, has a plentiful rainfall and a temperate climate. Toowoomba is the capital of the district. It is a thriving, growing town, an important centre of agricultural, and especially dairy, produce. The line now turns sharply east, and descends again to the plains, where we saw fields of Indian corn or maize, the stalks left standing after the crops had been gathered.

Long before we arrived at Brisbane it was dark. The less said about Brisbane hotels the better—in all respects. There seemed to be a billiard-room somewhere below our uninviting quarters, for we heard the click of balls, and a man’s voice thickly reproached a comrade for having “given his girl a rosary and made her a Roman Catholic”—an interesting sidelight on the ease with which conversion may be effected. It was so pleasant to be out of the train, that after dinner we strolled about the brightly lighted arcaded streets of the town, and found our way to a broad, swiftly flowing river that reflected the lights of the city.

We had now left the mild Australian winter behind us, and were in the height of an English summer, wearing the thinnest summer clothes, though Brisbane counted it as early spring. Brisbane is a most beautifully situated town, set among hills washed by the river, which runs into the sea eighteen miles away. Its many handsome public buildings are fronted by gardens full of tropical vegetation, its broad arcaded streets, filled with people, prosperous-looking like all Australians. In the charming suburbs on the slopes of the green hills, the houses are all built high on piles, each capped by its inverted saucer to ward off the depredations of white ants. The deep, verandahed houses are screened from the sun by straw blinds.

Politically, Queensland is the youngest of all the Colonies. A convict settlement was founded at Moreton Bay by Governor Brisbane in 1824, but it languished and was soon afterwards abandoned. In 1842 Moreton Bay was proclaimed a free settlement. Not till 1859 was state separated from New South Wales by Letters Patent establishing Moreton Bay as a new colony under the name of Queensland. The constitution of the colony is modelled on that of New South Wales; that is to say, there is an Assembly or Lower House, whose members are salaried and elected by manhood and womanhood suffrage. The Legislative Council or Upper Chamber has a continuous existence. It is interesting to note to what extent the Australian Second Chambers have acted as a retarding influence on the democratic legislation of the Assemblies. A well-known Australian writer observes that: “Designed as Conservative bodies, the Councils have certainly fulfilled the retarding function of a Second Chamber. Nearly every measure which is claimed as democratic and progressive has had to pass the ordeal of several rejections.... The resistance of the Councils to drastic schemes for breaking up the large pastoral holdings, and to land taxation, and the brake they apply to ‘Socialistic legislation,’ have driven many if not into the ranks, at any rate to the support of the Labour Party, and have been the main cause of the zeal of that Party for enlarging the powers of the Commonwealth Government, in whose constitution a forward policy has to encounter no such obstacle.”22

The promoters of the Colony in these early days had little idea how rapid would be its growth or how great its material prosperity. Very little was known of that vast area, and its resources were practically undiscovered. As for the coastal waters, little more was known of them than had been described by Captain Cook and Lieutenant Flinders. The stretch of smooth water that forms a natural harbour for a thousand miles inside the great barrier reef was unimagined. The northern coast land was believed to be uninhabitable by white men; the interior was supposed to be an almost waterless area of intolerable heat, while experts affirmed that if sheep survived at all beneath the tropical suns of Queensland, they would grow hair instead of wool.

Meanwhile the young Colony throve and prospered, and in 1909 held an exhibition of her products to celebrate the completion of the first half-century of her separate existence. Besides live stock, raised on the rich, indigenous grass crops, which cost nothing except wire fencing, Queensland products include cotton, sugar, butter, cheese, bacon, wheat, maize, potatoes, oranges, pineapples, and other tropical fruits. Her minerals consist of gold, copper, tin, coal, besides gems.

It is, however, Queensland’s pastoral industries that are the main source of her wealth, and which form more than half the total value of her exports. The great sheep district is in the “Western Interior,” which occupies about half the area of the state. Here undulating downs extend to the horizon, almost treeless, except above the watercourses. In the summer season many of these become a mere series of water holes, but the discovery of the great supply of underground water, over a district reaching from the extreme north of Queensland into New South Wales and South Australia, has made it possible to transform them into running streams by means of artesian bores. It is a melancholy fact that many of the pioneers in the industry got poor returns for their hard and strenuous enterprise. In the early days labour was scarce and dear, and in the absence of railways or good roads it took from six to nine months to convey the wool to the coastal district by means of bullock drays. It was many years before the great agricultural possibilities of the Darling Downs were discovered and utilised, though this rich district supplies more than 70% of all the oats, wheat, and barley grown in Queensland. The Queensland farmer is at present in a most fortunate position; he has good stock, cheap land, first-rate pastures, and a climate which allows production to go on all the year round. As immigrants from Great Britain are under normal conditions admitted on payment of a nominal fee as passage money, there is an unlimited scope for agricultural enterprise.

The morning after our arrival at Brisbane we went out to gain our first impression of the city and its immediate neighbourhood. The air was soft and humid, as it is all along the north-eastern Australian coast line, and our first walk left upon us a mingled impression of brilliant sunshine, dust, and palm trees. In Brisbane there is tropical vegetation everywhere; the charm of the tropics, their glorious never-failing sunshine, and the picturesque and profuse vegetation is first felt here. If it were not for the fine, all-pervading dust, it would be Paradise. Here, too, we first encountered tropical fruits. The pawpaw looks like a dark green elongated melon. Its firm yellow fruit is rather tasteless, but eatable with sugar. On the whole, we came to the conclusion that it was not worth while, and the same may be said generally of all tropical fruits. The smell of a ripe mango is sufficient to deter all but the hardiest vegetarian. The pawpaw plant is handsome, tall, and palm-like in growth, closely resembling the small greenhouse auralia. It is common in the gardens of Brisbane suburbs.

All the public buildings are dignified and handsome, with white stone fronts. The University buildings are adapted from a former Government House, and stand in beautiful grounds which run down to the river.

The Botanical Gardens, which flank the drive, are also washed by the broad, swiftly flowing river. They are enchanting to linger in more so even than the world-famous tropical gardens of Buitenzorg in Java. Perhaps it was the moisture and greenness after the arid look of most of the rest of Australia at the end of the dry season, that seemed to us so refreshing and delightful. At any rate, we never tired of wandering in these gardens, where hedges of sweet peas and stocks alternated with every kind of gorgeous tropical flowering shrub, now just coming into bloom. Here were palms and sloping lawns; by the river grew the curious bunya bunya trees, with their bare arms and mop-like ends; here were greenery and quiet; and, most blessed of all, freedom from dust. Above the river two large kingfishers often glanced to and fro; they must have had a nest close at hand.