Rambles in Australia

Opposite to us was Australia. During the long days of the voyage across the bleak South Indian Ocean it had seemed no more than a vague area on a map, small, as all countries and even continents are, compared to the interminable stretches of the sea. But the voyage was ended now, and Australia, first no more than a blur on the horizon, and then solidifying into a shore with green trees, had now become resolved into an island with a lighthouse; and now into a harbour with wharves and quays and a background of houses behind the sheds and derricks. There was a train puffing in the distance; and here fussed a launch bringing with it people from the shore....

Quite suddenly the Blue Funnel Liner which has had the accustomedness of a home to us for all these weeks, shrinks to the aspect of a ship, of no more importance to us than a passenger train; and impatience seizes us to be off. There is the land, alluring in a glow of sunset barred with feathery clouds ... there’s a shore breeze calling, let us go!

So much for the emotions of arrival. They are quickly submerged by occurrences which are no less stubborn in the poetic moments of reaching a new land, than at any other time. The Blue Funnel Liner had been behind her time, and had not wired her subsequent gain of a few hours; our arrival had been expected, and was to have been made the occasion of a greeting by the Government of Western Australia to the members of a scientific mission on board. Western Australia’s first greeting was to have taken the form of a garden party at Government House, Perth; and as the invitations had been distributed over hundreds of miles of a wide country weeks before, no postponement had been possible. The garden party was being held—in our regretted absence—and the Port Medical Authorities, not to be done out of their festivity, had gone to it. So there Western Australia was—at our garden party, and there peering at the land of promise were we.

Hours went by. Those of us who had hastened over lunch and wrestled impatiently with trunks and hold-alls that be they attacked ever so early never can be packed at leisure, wandered about the decks, finding that they had lost their friendliness with their deck chairs, and had become as little homelike as a railway platform. The deck-steward, who had become merely a deck-steward instead of philosopher and friend, recovered some of his old standing by telling us that we were to have an early dinner on board, after all. But it was an empty meal. We so much desired to be gone. And at last we were. The sunset had faded, the swift dusk had deepened into night, when at last we went down the gangway and stood in Australia.... It was Australia, though beneath our feet were the planks and rails of a wharf. The French have a proverb that at night all cats are grey. This wharf, might it not have been the wharf at Liverpool or Tilbury? Not quite. There was the Southern Cross overhead; and in the warm darkness there was a something—something that was not England.

The party that had been so long companions split up and were scattered. The writer of these lines became for an hour or so more single than any of them, for business took him at once into Perth, where he had to find Reuter’s Agency. So looking back, and sorting out his recollections, he remembers first the friendly host that met him and walked to the railway station at Fremantle; and after that the Swan River shining in the starlight as the train crossed it; and after that nothing but the soft Australian night stealing in through the open carriage windows and seeming to come through whispering trees—until the train drew up at the lighted terminus of Perth. And Perth? In the darkness it was much like any other town at which one should arrive at night. Not like Paris, where, as a Frenchwoman in Bâle once said to us, at ten o’clock “Ça commence,” nor yet like London, where, in times of peace, the streets are still open-eyed. But not unlike a provincial town; with some shops still brightly lighted, though most of them and the office buildings, are shut; a town with lights, but not lit; and with streets that are kept awake only by the street lamps. Through one such street I tracked down the office I sought, receiving much friendly aid by the way; and finally arriving at it in company with the publisher’s clerk of the Perth newspaper.

That is another outstanding recollection: the publishing office with two clerks, one rather sleepy, the other painstakingly deciphering an obituary notice which a small girl had brought in. When he had at last made it out, and felt that he could leave the office for a few minutes in charge of his companion, he put on his hat and said he would come with me. So he did. As a matter of history his kindness was unavailing, except to make me feel that Australia was filled with friends, for the office we wanted was vacant. So back I went through the gaunt streets and on to the railway station, where I was too new to the country to disregard the notice that smoking was not allowed on the platform; and presently the train was again taking me back to the suburb of Cottesloe Beach.

This was a country railway station, evidently. Just like one at home, to the two lighted shops just outside, and the white road stretching up a hill in the starlight. The road up which I was directed was dotted with houses wide apart; with shaded lamps which I could see through the shrubs; and now and again a piano tinkling. It was very still. At last I found the house I sought. Very white, with trees about it, and a windmill for its well; and windows lighted for the stranger. No; not the stranger, but the unknown, welcome guest. The gate in the wooden fence was swung back; there was a light in the hall; and the hall door was wide open, though the hall was empty. And that was how I thought then, and have always thought of Australia. It is the “Land of the Unlatched Door.”