II - THE SQUATTERS

Summary

One has a natural hesitation in disappointing people.

I know so well the sort of picture that is “expected” of me here, not only by the ordinary Englishman, but also by the ordinary town and coastal Australian.

The men of the Interior are sardonic over the conception of themselves and their life held by the good folk in the capitals.

Considering the still semi-nomadic character of a large portion of the people, the “bogey” notions held by one section of it in regard to the others exceed all reasonableness.

The ignorance of Victorians concerning the facts of daily existence in Queensland is often only one shade less than that of full-blown British “new chums.”

But the gulf between colony and colony is small and traversable compared to that great fixture that lies between the people of the Slope and of the Interior.

Where the marine rainfall flags out and is lost, a new climate, and, in a certain sense, a new race begin to unfold themselves.

The “fancy” stations on this side of the Great Dividing Range produce something just different enough from anything in England to make the Englishman accept the dictum of the Australian cockney that this is at last the typical example of “the bush life.”

People in the country districts of Illinois and Kentucky doubtless talk in the same way of “the West.”