XX Queensland
Accompanied by His Majesty’s Australian Ship Australia, and two destroyers, the Renown made a fine weather voyage to Sydney from Tasmania. After crossing the Bass Strait the course was close inshore along the beautifully wooded hills of New South Wales, and boats laden with people put out from the small whaling port of Eden to greet the Prince. Loyal messages were also flashed from homesteads further up the coast when the Renown came in sight, transmitted by men, now back in their homes, who had learnt to signal in France or Gallipoli. Entering Sydney harbour, numbers of yachts and launches were found waiting in the fairway to welcome the flotilla, the scene being almost as gay as when the Prince first arrived at this wonderful port. The wharf also demonstrated the interest felt in the arrival. It was loaded with people whose cheers were undiminished as the Prince went his way to the station, where he proceeded at once to entrain for Queensland.
The rail journey northwards produced some of the most remarkable experiences of the tour, experiences the more notable for occurring in States where public sentiment is perhaps more markedly democratic than anywhere else in Australia. The first stop of any consequence was at the coal-mining town of High Street. Here the Prince was taken by car in procession through decorated streets, lined with people twenty deep the whole way. The objective was the neighbouring railway station of West Maitland, where H.R.H. was to rejoin the train, and where he found an enormous crowd of miners and their wives and children, who gave him a rousing welcome. He shook hands with three hundred returned men, also with a pathetically long line of mothers, widows, and orphans of fallen soldiers, and he inspected a big gathering of school-children.
A picturesque figure occupied a place in the crowd on the road between High Street and West Maitland, a native Australian woman in flowing robes, with a golden crown on her head, who was the head of a local tribe of blacks. Standing beside her was a full-blooded son, who had lost a leg in France, whither he had gone in company with white squatters, amongst whom, prior to this, he had presumably been a stockman. She added to her memories and her dignities a word with the Prince of Wales.
Beyond West Maitland the route passed through fine park-like country, with wooded hills and cultivated valleys, plainly visible in the bright moonlight which had succeeded a typically balmy New South Wales winter’s day. The train stopped and receptions were held at various minor centres, including Murrurundi, a place full of the romantic associations of a bygone generation, when this part of Australia was still a land of bush, broken only by very occasional squatters’ cabins and mining camps. As the Prince stood on a gaily decorated platform outside the station with orderly lines of returned men and neatly dressed lady war-workers beside him, one’s mind went back to wilder scenes, enacted many years ago. A grey-headed man told how, on almost exactly this spot, a bush-ranger had been shot, after long eluding capture with the help of his sister, who was a waitress at the local drinking saloon, whence she used to ride out to his hiding-place at night in the hills, upon a horse borrowed from race-stables near by. In this way information and supplies were communicated to him, the midnight journeyings upon the borrowed thoroughbred not being brought to light until the time came round for the annual race-gathering, when the mud and sweat of its condition attracted attention. What became of the girl, my informant did not know, but she was honoured in the story if not in the incident.
Wallangarra, the border station between New South Wales and Queensland, was reached the following morning, when the Prince again had the modified excitement of changing gauges. Here he bade farewell to Mr. Hodgson, who had acted throughout the tour in charge of the railways of New South Wales. He was welcomed by a distinguished group of officials representing Queensland, who came on board the train. The Premier, the Hon. Mr. E. G. Theodore, was at that moment on public business in London on behalf of the Queensland Government; the Governor, Sir Hamilton Gould Adams, had recently retired. Their places were filled by Mr. Fihelly, acting Premier, and Mr. Lennon, acting Governor, pending the arrival of Sir Matthew Nathan from England.
From the border the track climbed steadily to the top of a pleasant wooded plateau, three thousand feet above sea level, dotted with rich orchards and gardens, which are being opened up in increasing numbers and of late at rapidly advancing land prices. It is difficult to realize at first sight how the fruit-trees manage to take root. Some of the very richest and most sought after plots are a mass of tumbled rocks amongst which there seems room for nothing to grow, yet it is just amongst these rocks that the very finest peaches and apples are raised.
A newly constructed branch line carried the party to the returned soldiers’ settlement of Amiens. Here a cheerful crowd of some two hundred Australians and British had assembled, accompanied by wives and babies, the wives in a surprisingly large percentage of cases from England, and the babies some of the healthiest looking imaginable. The Prince would have liked to spend some time in this settlement, but an inexorable programme hurried him away. He had time, however, to hear a great deal about the felling, burning and clearing up of string-bark forest, the fencing and ploughing of the land, also the planting of it with fruit-trees of the finest stocks. He also saw a number of comfortable bungalows each with the amenity of a roomy veranda, in which the settlers live. Ten acres of good soil were considered a sufficiently large holding to keep one man employed, and each place is arranged to include this area, apart from rocky or water-logged portions. The average out-turn of such a holding, when planted with suitable trees of six years’ growth, is estimated, with prevailing fruit prices, at £700 per annum. Returned men, accepted by the local agricultural authorities as likely to succeed on such properties, and irrespective of whether they are from Australian or British units, are able to obtain advances, as they may require them, up to a total of £625, against work done upon their places. These advances are repayable in easy instalments, spread over long series of years, at about five per cent. interest, which is less than the money at present costs to provide. Most of the holdings, when seen by the Prince, were only partially cleared and planted. The men were hopeful of pulling through, however, until the trees should come into bearing, their pensions and advances, eked out by the growing of tomatoes, potatoes and other vegetables, for which there appeared to be considerable local demand at remunerative prices, being considered sufficient to keep them. Once the trees come into bearing their owners can reasonably expect to do quite well. The authorities estimated that, in the ordinary course, a man should be able to pay off all indebtedness within ten years, after which he would find himself the absolute owner of an unencumbered property, capable of indefinite expansion by taking up more land, and even without any expansion, sufficient to support the settler and his wife and children in conditions of comparative comfort.
The life on these holdings is in the open air, in a sunny climate, without any extremes of temperature, amongst beautiful natural surroundings, and in an atmosphere so bracing that these well-watered uplands have long been utilized as a health resort. The breaking in of the holdings is, no doubt, very hard work, and here the Government advances make it possible to pay for help in the case of men unequal to do the whole of it themselves. Once this has been done, the work that remains, of cultivating, manuring, pruning, and spraying the trees, and of picking and packing the fruit, is very much less strenuous; and for those prepared for a life in the open air where country pursuits replace the feverish interests of the city, the prospect seems almost ideal. Certainly those we saw entering upon it gave the very pleasantest impression. The man will, of course, do best who possesses those qualities which make him the lender, instead of the borrower, of the stump-puller, and the purveyor, instead of the buyer, of tinned luxuries at the co-operative shop and packing establishment. For all, however, there seems to be a living under conditions which must certainly be considered favourable.
The sun was getting low when the Royal train pulled up at Warwick, a prosperous city in the breezy uplands of the Darling Downs two thousand feet above the sea level, home of sheep, mixed farming and white-stemmed forest trees. Here in the Central park, commanding a beautiful view of blue distant mountains, the entire population had assembled and the usual civic address was presented.
I talked with two of the residents, both men from the Thames Valley, one a doctor, and the other a chauffeur. They agreed in not even considering the idea of going back to the old country. This part of Queensland, they said, was a place where it was easy to make a living, an its warmth and sunshine were delightful after the English winters of which so little can be safely predicted. They would not admit that the summer was too hot, or that the drought from which this part of Australia had only recently suffered had been more than a very temporary setback in the steady growth of continually increasing prosperity.
The train halted for the night in open upland country, with delightful bracing air, one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen painting a clear evening sky. The following morning, in warm brilliant sunshine, the track crept down the wooded slopes that gird in the Darling Downs, and emerged in the rich cultivated Lockyer plain below. Here fine red cattle were feeding down magnificent crops, six inches up, of green luscious oats, the settlers considering that this somewhat remarkable procedure increases the ultimate harvest of grain, by causing the young plants to stool out.
Beyond the Lockyer plain the route lay through the Liverpool hills whence it descended, by easy gradient, to Brisbane and the sea. Not a station, a village or a house upon the way, but was gay with decorations. The inhabitants were out upon all sides, on horseback, in buggies, in cars, or seated upon fence rails, every man of them hat in hand, every woman and girl a-smile, every child wide-eyed with excitement. Operatives cutting down trees, navvies shovelling ballast upon the railway track, farmers plowing their fields, husbandmen pruning their orchards, stopped work and saluted or shouted a welcome as the train went by. Boys raced beside the Royal saloon in youthful endeavour to keep up. Not a churlish glance, nor an indifferent face, was seen for a hundred miles.
Brisbane first presented itself in the shape of pleasant garden suburbs full of wooden houses on stilts, each surrounded by a garden of flowers. It developed, as the train rushed on, into the solid masonry of a closely built city. The heartsome sound of cheering accompanied all the way. Arrived at the railway station, H.R.H. was welcomed with every formality. The State Premier, the whole of the Cabinet, the Mayor and the city Council, received him on the platform. Naval and military guards-of-honour were in attendance. The usual procession of motor-cars was ultimately in motion, and carried the visitor through several miles of streets, in which elaborately decorated arches, made of wool bales, fruit, vegetables, and corn-sheaves, gave homely, delightful, convincing character to their setting. Crowds lined the entire route and gave the Prince a welcome the warmth of which was equal to that of any he had previously received. The way was kept by returned men, and long lines of women war-workers, including nurses and helpers of every kind, formed a solid wall of white on either side of the route for at least a quarter of a mile.
In the Albert Square Mayor Maxwell read an address of welcome. At the University pretty girl-students, in black caps and gowns, raced one another across the grounds to get a second view of the Prince after they had stood demurely at attention as he went past. On the grassy slopes of the wide Domain beside the river, backed by an assemblage of ten thousand delighted school-children, the Prince reviewed the men who had been keeping the route through the city. To render this possible every detachment had closed up and followed the procession after the cars had passed. In this way were gathered some two thousand men representing every arm of the service. The designations of the First, Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Australian Divisions were in evidence on the flags carried past the saluting point.
Another interesting occasion during the visit to Brisbane was the local agricultural exhibition, which never, in the long history of this popular institution, had been so crowded, the principal stores and other business establishments having all been closed in honour of the occasion. The proceedings began with a procession through the wool, wheat, sugar-cane, fruit, butter, cheese, pig, and cattle exhibitions halls, the Prince and members of the committee making slow progress in the crowds of cheering spectators. The afternoon was devoted to a parade of prize-winning cattle and horses. This was held in a big amphitheatre—seventy years ago the crude “Bora,” sacred initiation ground, of Queensland savages, now the beautifully turfed show-ring of the National Agricultural Association. Here, in the presence of some seventy thousand spectators, the Prince saw some very fine jumping, not devoid of minor mishaps. He himself ran to help to pick up a girl whose mount came down at one of the fences. By this time it will be noted that it was impossible to keep H.R.H. out of any kind of incident not strictly arranged for. He also assisted at an attempt, not the less interesting because it just failed of success, to lower the mile trotting-record of the track.
Leaving the show in the afternoon, the Prince proceeded, in company with the acting Premier and the Lieutenant-Governor, to Farm Park, where he took tea upon the grass with the Mayor and Aldermen of Brisbane, in the midst of thousands of spectators. So closely was the civic tea-table surrounded that the red cross nurses, to whom fell the duty of waiting on the Royal party, scarcely had room to perform their functions. The number of cups and spoons and other articles that became heirlooms in 1920 for the benefit of Australasian posterity must be considerable. The Prince was eventually extracted from the crush, and embarked, amidst much cheering and hand-clapping, upon one of numerous decorated motor-boats which took him, attended by a flock of yachts, across the wide Brisbane river, in the yellow sunset, on a visit to invalid soldiers in the fine “Anzac” Hospital on the other side.
Another notable function in Brisbane was the state dinner, at which representative men from every part of Queensland were present, some four hundred sitting down. The Prince was between the acting Premier and the Lieutenant-Governor. The Papal representative, Monsignor Cattaneo, occupied a seat on the other side of the Lieutenant-Governor. Others present included the Anglican Bishop, the members of the State Cabinet and the Legislative Council, and the Chief Justice. The streets outside were densely packed with people, who became so insistent in cheering after the Prince had got inside that he left the banquet to wave to them from the balcony. Mr. Fihelly, in proposing the toast of the evening, emphasized that their Royal guest had endeared himself to all with whom he had come in contact, and had been found to be “a man of parts, a man of ability, able to take his place amongst men, and one who would carry away with him the goodwill of all the people of Queensland.”
Mr. Vowles, Nationalist Leader of the Opposition, spoke in similarly loyal tone. The Prince rose to reply amidst cheers, and developed his points in a voice which his hearers noticed had now recovered its clearness and resonance. In the course of a long and enthusiastically received speech he dwelt upon the wonderful reception he had had, the pleasure his visit had given him, and especially on the large part taken in the receptions by returned sailors, soldiers and women war-workers. Referring to the soldier settlement he had visited on his way to Brisbane, he congratulated the Queensland Government on the foresight and energy with which they had tackled the repatriations problems. “You cannot do too much,” he said, “for your diggers, who played such a big part in saving the Empire, and who should be looked upon as the backbone of the Commonwealth.... My tour in Australia, alas!” he continued, “is nearly over. It is particularly to the future of the Commonwealth that my thoughts turn. My visit to Australia has taught me that the spirit wherein your diggers volunteered, and fought and won, is not something unique or out of the way, which will never happen again, but the natural outcome of a national spirit which is going to make Australia one of the great progressive nations of the world. Their free and gallant services in the war have shown to yourselves, to the Empire and to the world what you are and what you can do. With such a spirit in its men and women Australia has a splendid future in its grasp. I came to Australia already feeling a strong bond of comradeship with your troops: I shall leave it feeling even a stronger bond of comradeship with the Australian people as a whole, and my heart will always be with them in their mighty task of building up the solid British fabric of freedom, justice and security with fair play for all upon this vast continent.”
Another of the Brisbane functions was a popular reception in the public gardens overlooking the river. Here some thousands of people passed before the Prince, who stood upon a dais, the acting Premier beside him. Girls presented bouquets of flowers. Men and women stopped to wish him good luck on his homeward voyage, or to photograph him at close quarters. Here and there an old-fashioned curtsy would be dropped, or cheering or hand-clapping started. The great majority of the people expressed themselves in a simple nod or smile, or waved hand or hat or handkerchief as they went by. One could not help recognizing, not only that they had taken the Prince to their hearts, but that while paying him the great compliment of ceasing to treat him with formality, there was no diminution in the deference that was shown. When he left the reception he went back to his quarters in Parliament Buildings, where, marching up and down, were armed cadets in full service kit, volunteers from districts it had not been possible for the Prince to visit, their expenses all paid by local subscriptions. There was no serious necessity for the services of these young warriors, but they represented the universal determination of North-Eastern Australia that “our Prince,” as by this time he had begun to be called, should lose nothing of pomp or Royal circumstance while he remained the guest of their State.
Before the Prince left, Monsignor Cattaneo, Apostolic Delegate, and the Very Reverend M. Duhig, Catholic Archbishop of Queensland, asked and obtained an interview at which they formally presented “the homage and devotion to the throne of the whole Catholic community of Australia.” They dwelt upon the deep loyalty of this community and declared that the Prince had won all their hearts.
In the course of his visit to Brisbane H.R.H. was shown State factories, State shops, State insurance offices, and State markets in full operation, a class of enterprise under experiment in natural conditions so favourable as to give it at least a sporting chance. He also heard much of the sugar-cane, coco-nut-palm and banana plantations, and the enormous cattle ranges of the northern territories where Queensland rolls away into the tropics and there is rich land and to spare for a population as large as that of France.
Leaving Brisbane one day during his visit to that city, the Prince proceeded by train through a well-wooded country of rich black soil, just then a quagmire from heavy but welcome rain. He touched at a number of centres, including Ipswich, head-quarters of woollen mills and coal-mines, and Harrisville and Boonah, country towns where farming and pastoral communities predominate. Every stopping-place had been converted by unpaid local labour into a beflagged forest of greenery, in the midst of which the inhabitants of the entire neighbourhood, also many from far distant stations, had assembled. At Ipswich the streets were lined by operatives and miners, and the welcome of this important place included a car procession through decorated streets, a popular reception, a mayoral address, and a civic luncheon served to the strains of one of the largest and best trained choirs in the State. Vocal music as the accompaniment of food was an unaccustomed luxury to many of those present, but it did not appear to interfere with the general appetite. At Boonah the proceedings were simpler but not on that account less impressive, although they took place in a pelting rainstorm. The Prince waded through an ankle-deep stream of flood-water to an exposed platform, where, surrounded by a crowd of squatters, stockmen, farmers and their families, including large numbers of women and children, all standing in the downpour with streaming mackintoshes and umbrellas, he unveiled a fine marble war-memorial bearing three hundred names. He also shook hands with relatives of the fallen, and with numbers of returned men, nurses and other war-workers.
On the way back to Brisbane further centres were visited. Amongst them were Maryborough, a manufacturing and coal-mining city, where the steel skeletons of two twelve-thousand-ton steamers, under construction for the Commonwealth Government, towered amidst the decorations. One of the arches was surmounted by a group of blacks in native costume, armed with bows, arrows and spears, which they wielded realistically. Another carried a dozen diggers in uniform. Other places visited were Tiaro, where the assemblage that greeted the Prince consisted chiefly of agriculturalists; Gympie, where the returned men, assembled in a war-memorial park, included gold-miners as well as farmers; Cooroy, where the Prince made the acquaintance of a large logging community; Landsborough, where sugar-cane planters, and banana and orange-growers preponderated, and Beerburrum, Queensland’s biggest soldier settlement, where he shook hands with a large number of returned men engaged in growing pineapples.
The Prince finally left Brisbane amidst unforgettable scenes of national enthusiasm and emotion. The entire population of the city seemed to be in the streets. The neighbourhood of the railway station was blocked by masses of cheering men, women and children. The railway station buildings were besieged, the more influential folk, including the members of the State Government, and their families, thronged the platform. The general public crowded windows, balconies, culverts, overbridges, and fences, wherever a glimpse of the train could be obtained. The start had to be three times postponed, so many were the Prince’s personal farewells. After the train got into motion, motor-cars raced beside the track, school-children were found lined up at wayside crossings, stumps and telegraph poles were perching places for daring climbers. Everybody waved something, if it were not a handkerchief, a flag or a hat, it was the nearest thing to hand. I saw a vegetable hawker wildly flourishing his biggest cabbage, a housewife excitedly using a tablecloth as a signal of affection, a company of railway carriage-cleaners throwing their dusters upon the wind. Workmen in overalls, carters with teams of horses, stockmen riding to their duties stopped and doffed hats as the train went by. “Old Lang Syne” was taken up, again and again, by thousands of voices, to be itself drowned in a chorus of shouted “Goodbyes.” All the Members of the Cabinet travelled upon the Royal train as far as the border of the State. The acting Premier had to stay behind for urgent public reasons, but was so determined not to be left out of the proceedings that he attempted to follow the train in an aeroplane, and was only stopped by crashing heavily. The demonstration was so remarkable that even the Queenslanders themselves were astonished at it. Enthusiasm had taken possession of this democratic people, and there seemed to be no length to which they were not prepared to go. Here was a country where the people are as sovereign as anywhere on earth. Yet wayside villages and towns on the southward journey, one after another, took up and repeated Brisbane’s farewell demonstrations. The crowds at the railway stations, where addresses were presented, included in many instances definitely more people than the entire population of the immediate centre, this being due to farmers, squatters, and settlers bringing their families incredible distances by train, by motor, in buggies, or on horseback, so that they might not miss the occasion. In one case four well-mounted girls galloped astride nearly a mile, keeping abreast with the train, and arriving at the next station, where an address was to be read, just as the Prince alighted. Their spirited ride secured them a handshake and a compliment.
The train halted for the night at Toowoomba, in the heart of a wonderful agricultural region, which was found smiling under splendid crops. Here the countryside had long been preparing for the Prince’s coming, and the celebrations were of the liveliest, everything, including decorations, gathering of returned men, civic banquet, and ball, being planned to create a record.
The following morning the Prince recrossed the border, over a carpet woven of yellow wattle flowers. It was a pretty thought and offered him much.