Down Under With the Prince Part 7

Concluding he said: "Many of you are now completing or beginning a university course after service in the field. I hope that these will not find themselves handicapped by the time they spent overseas." It was a hope that perhaps the easier conditions and nearer prospects of young life in Australia may well fulfil. In any case its expression was one of the many graceful gestures of consideration that did so much to bring the Prince close to the hearts of the people of that country.

XIV

SOME COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

"One heritage we share though seas divide" surmounted one of the decorated arches on the route traversed by the Prince on the day of the military review at the Centennial Park, Sydney--a phrase no doubt, but one that expressed the sentiment which pervaded this striking occasion.

Major-General Sir Charles Rosenthal commanded the parade, which included a naval detachment under Lt.-Commander Patrick, a body of Light Horse under Major-General Ryrie, and portions of five Divisions respectively under Brigadiers Bennett, Martin, Jobson, Herring, and Christian. The command was made up entirely of demobilized men, who, despite cold grey weather on a full working day, had donned service uniform and a.s.sembled--many of them from long distances--to do honour to the heir to the Throne. The numbers present were not precisely ascertainable, as the men were not under discipline, but had turned up of their own accord.

Estimates of how many attended therefore varied considerably, but any number up to twenty thousand may have been there.

When the Prince reached the ground he found the units drawn up in formation about half a mile in length in front of him. Long lines of bath-chairs and motors were on his left, filled with disabled men who had been brought from sanatoria and hospitals in the districts around.

Behind him some thirty thousand spectators joined in the cheering. The Prince went down the lines, shook hands with all the officers and spoke to a number of the men. He also shook hands with every disabled soldier present. The proceedings terminated with a general march past in column, so arranged that the disabled men could see their old regiments go by.

A sequel to the military review was a visit a few days later to Duntroon College, the Sandhurst of Australia. Daylight on the shortest day in the Australian mid-winter found the Royal train, now on the standard four-feet-eight-inch gauge of New South Wales, speeding through dry, rolling country, dotted with occasional blue gums beneath whose tattered foliage sheep were picking a wholesome meal. Bright sunshine reminded one that it was Australia, though the cold wind, which drove clouds of dust and grit into our faces, might have been from a March east in England. At the township of Queanbeyan, where the Prince changed into a motor-car, the entire population had a.s.sembled and the usual ceremonies of welcome were gone through. The country beyond Queanbeyan was open, and barbed wire fences bounded the road on either side most of the way to Duntroon, which proved to be a pleasant garden township of white-walled houses, set upon a low hill amongst many trees.

Senator Pearce, Commonwealth Minister for Defence, and General Legge, Commandant of the College, with a group of red-tabbed field officers, received the Prince on a sheltered lawn overlooking a wide gra.s.sy plain reserved for aeroplane manoeuvres. Those presented included a number of the professors whose rank between soldier and pedagogue was quaintly expressed by their black mortar-boards and college gowns which only partially concealed service uniforms and war-decorations. The Prince afterwards saw the cadets at exercise in the gymnasium, and took the salute of one hundred and twenty of them as they marched smartly past on the parade ground. Addressing them afterwards in the big mess-hall at the dinner-hour, he recalled the fine war history of the college, which had lost no less than forty-eight of its students in battle, and was cheered when he repeated the story of that gallant soldier General Bridges, who had found his way from the Kingston Military College, in Canada, to make a new Kingston in Duntroon, and to lead Duntroon's first contingent of trained officers to Gallipoli, where he himself was killed.

It was dinner-time and "Carry on" was the word pa.s.sed round to the cadets, when H.R.H. had finished his speech, and the cheering had momentarily died down. The soup was then served at all the tables, but it must have grown cold while cheer after cheer followed the Prince as he left the hall and re-entered his motor _en route_ for Canberra, a place only a few miles distant.

The way from Duntroon climbed slowly through undulating, park-like country, dotted with blue gums, two thousand feet above sea level.

Freshly made roads, with water-pipes and sewers laid on, presently indicated that the site of the much debated new capital of the Commonwealth had been reached. The scene continued to be rural, however.

The pleasant stream, which meandered amongst willow trees and gra.s.sy solitudes at the foot of the hill--where the Prince subsequently added a foundation-stone to the already considerable number of these expressions of hope and faith--might have been a hundred miles from civilization of any kind. The little river gave to the scene that touch of verdure so grateful in the dry and dusty bush, and one day will doubtless be spanned by the arched bridges of the Commonwealth's capital. At present it must be confessed that the metropolis is hardly more than a sketch of itself, and a sketch that presents no very distinctive features.

The importance of Canberra, however, is not to be judged from the present condition of the site. As the Prince pointed out in his speech at the ceremony, although the city still consists largely of foundation-stones, this is chiefly because the war has delayed progress with the scheme of construction. Mr. Groom, Commonwealth Minister for Public Works, who presided, summed up the position when he said, "Victory having been happily achieved, once more the mind of the nation is reverting to the provision of a national seat of Government where Australia will be mistress in her own house, and where there will be no room for the complaint of provincial influence in pursuit of national aims." The idea thus expressed that the Commonwealth administration should have a territory of its own, away from the influence of any individual state, holds the imagination of the majority of Australians.

It is an idea that has worked out satisfactorily alike in Canada and the United States, where the circ.u.mstances, which justified the building of Ottawa and Washington in the past, are essentially similar to those of Australia to-day. The fact that India's endeavours at capital building at Delhi may not yet have met with corresponding success, does not affect the matter, since the conditions in a bureaucracy differ essentially from those obtaining in the democratic a.s.sociation of self-determining Dominions.

Public opinion in Sydney supports the Canberra scheme on the practical ground that it will bring the Commonwealth capital nearer to itself.

Melbourne is naturally lukewarm, since the present arrangement whereby the central legislature meets there, so long as Canberra does not materialize, is one that local pride desires to see continue as long as possible. The remainder of the States, while not very actively enthusiastic about a scheme which must necessarily divert a large sum of public money from railway and other useful local projects, recognizes that the atmosphere surrounding the Commonwealth Government would be none the worse for being removed from the wire-pullings of state politics. Scenic beauty, healthfulness, a good water-supply, and accessibility to the two princ.i.p.al Commonwealth centres of population and industry, combine to justify the choice of Canberra for the purpose concerned, and the fact that a sum of some two million sterling of public money has already been sunk in preparing the site, increases the probability that the scheme will eventually be brought to completion.

One of the party accompanying the Prince on his visit to Canberra was a minister of state, who loved to tell how he had left his home in the Canberra district on a push-bike to seek his fortune twenty years before, now to return, in company with the Prince of Wales and as the responsible head of an important Government department. Like every one else who knows this part of the country, he overflowed with enthusiasm as to the healthful prospects of its future. It was from him, I believe, that the Prince first heard the ancient tale of the cemetery for which, after long and infructuous waiting upon local necessity, the inhabitants were driven to import a corpse from outside. That cemetery has served many a rising town. It must be closed by now except for purposes of historical research, but no doubt Canberra's claim to it will be justified when the time comes.

Another expedition from Sydney was by train and launch, up the Hawkesbury river, and on to Newcastle. On this occasion the Prince was accompanied by the entire New South Wales Labour Cabinet, including Premier Storey. One of the features of the trip was a remarkable demonstration on the part of the men working in the Sydney railway sheds, who a.s.sembled in large numbers along the line, and shouted good wishes as the Prince's train went out. Every engine in the big station yard at the same time blew a shrill accord on its whistle, a choral accompaniment which was as convincing as it was deafening.

Addresses were presented, on the way, at the towns of Parramatta and Windsor, while the residents, along fifty miles of the river traversed by the Royal launch, a.s.sembled at the water's edge and waved flags and cheered as the Prince went through what is probably one of the most beautiful water-ways in the world. At Hawkesbury River Landing, where the Prince rejoined the train and met a number of mothers and widows of men fallen in the war, the entire station had been decorated by the unpaid labour of those working upon the line. At Fa.s.sifern, which he went through after nightfall, the entire valley was lighted up by bonfires, and the station and wharf at the small township of Toronto, where the Prince spent a night at the house of Mr. Duncan McGeachie, was a fantasy of Chinese lanterns.

The following morning the Prince received and replied to an address on the local pier which juts out into the beautiful Macquarie lake. Here, waving over his head, was a Canadian flag, presented to this Australian namesake by the capital city of Ontario. From Toronto the Prince was taken by train past a number of the pit-heads of one of the richest mining districts in Australia, at that time supplying coal at the very reasonable price of seventeen shillings per ton f.o.b. on the seaboard.

Every heap of slack and every railway truck, as the Prince's train went by, had upon it a contingent of miners who cheered in a way to warm the coldest heart.

Newcastle, the second city of New South Wales, was reached at noon. The Prince, on alighting, was received by the Mayor and Corporation, supported by a smart guard-of-honour of naval cadets and an immense crowd of spectators. He crossed the harbour by launch and landed on the low marshy foresh.o.r.e of Walsh Island. Here he shook hands with a long line of returned men, employed in the shipbuilding yards, who gave him a most cordial reception. Similar scenes were repeated, at least half a dozen times in the course of the day, at the entrance to each set of works. At Walsh Island, over which he was conducted by Mr. Estell, State Minister of Works, and Mr. Cutler, General Manager, New South Wales Shipbuilding, he launched a fine six-thousand-ton freight steamer, built by state enterprise on behalf of the Commonwealth Government. The launching was to have taken place at flood tide, but, owing to postponement of the Prince's visit, had to be done at the ebb. A strong west wind on the ship's quarter added to the difficulty of the undertaking which was entirely overcome, the ship taking the water beautifully.

These vessels are an interesting example of state enterprise in New South Wales. They are designed to carry produce away from Australia, and to bring British emigrants back. There was at the time plenty of demand for their services, as thousands of would-be settlers were awaiting pa.s.sages in the old country, and wheat was rotting in Australian granaries that was badly wanted to reduce prices of bread in Europe. The claim was made for them that they were being built at rates materially lower than those offering for the construction of similar vessels in any dockyard in the world at the time the contracts were given out. The cost, I was told, ranged from 31 per ton until the last rise in wages took place, which brought the rate up to about 35. At the time of the Prince's visit no workman employed in the yard was receiving less than fourteen shillings and fourpence daily, the average being very much higher than this figure. The vessel launched was the fifth of six uniform steamers under state construction. The four previously completed had been rated "A1" at Lloyds.

After leaving the Government dockyard, the Prince was taken over works of private enterprise of even larger significance, the steel-furnaces, rolling-mills and rod-mills of the Broken Hill Proprietary Company, which are also located in Newcastle. Here he was conducted by Mr.

Delprat, general manager, and Mr. Baker, local manager, and saw the whole of the processes, from the emptying of three open-hearth blast furnaces, to the conversion of glowing molten steel into 72-lb. railway rails, of which these works claim to have manufactured, last year, some hundred and sixty thousand tons. The capacity of the works is very much larger even than this amount, two separate strikes having reduced out-turn in this period. The price paid for these rails by the various state railways in Australia, which now depend almost entirely upon this source of supply, was thirteen pounds per ton. I learnt also that the average pay of the labour employed in the works was about one pound sterling daily per man. The profit upon the 4,000,000 capital of the concern is such that its one-pound shares were quoted in the Sydney Stock Exchange the day the Prince went over the works at sixty-four shillings apiece.

After seeing the steel-works, the Prince was conducted by Mr. MacDougall over a neighbouring wire and nail factory, which claims to be now filling the entire demand of Australia for plain-wire fencing. The firm was preparing to set up additional machinery upon a large scale to make barbed wire which Australia has. .h.i.therto bought in Europe. The significance of this development is considerable, since barbed wire forms the top, as smooth wire does the lower strands, of fences of which hundreds of thousands of miles are already in existence in Australia, and millions of miles more have still to be built.

After leaving the wire-works, the Prince drove in procession, through decorated, crowded, cheering streets, to a sheltered park overlooking the Pacific, where thirty thousand people had a.s.sembled and Mayor Gibson read a civic address. In the course of his reply the Prince dwelt upon the remarkable industrial development of Newcastle. "Your harbour,"

he noted, "your shipping facilities and your manufactures have greatly enhanced the importance this district has possessed from the earliest date on account of its rich deposits of coal."

Leaving Newcastle in the afternoon by train, the Prince returned to Sydney through a pleasant land of tidy orange plantations and ragged blue-gum bush. On the way he held a reception in the city of Gosford, and saw further reaches of the beautiful Hawkesbury river. A record crowd cheered him at Sydney railway station, and along the route to the harbour where he rejoined the _Renown_.

XV

WESTERN AUSTRALIA

The Prince went from Sydney two thousand miles by sea to Western Australia, a state as large as the combined areas of England, France, Germany, Austria, Spain, and Holland, with a population of less than half a million people to develop this stupendous territory.

On the way, in traversing the Australian Bight, that borders the southern coast of the continent, the _Renown_ encountered weather remarkably bad even for this region of frequent gales. Green seas swept over forecastle and quarter-deck alike. The engines were slowed down.

The big ship strained, clanked, and groaned, but proved her seaworthiness magnificently. The waves were still high in King George's Sound outside Albany, where owing to shallow water the _Renown_ had to lie four miles from land in a wide and but partially sheltered bay.

Where the sh.o.r.e could be seen it lay in rocky gra.s.s-grown hummocks, on which the surf beat heavily. A picket boat conveyed the Prince and his staff through a narrow entrance into the small landlocked harbour, where they landed on a desolate pier, wet decorations flapping dismally in cold wind and spray. The entire population had turned out, however, despite the weather. The Governor of Western Australia, Sir Francis Newdegate, the State Premier, Mr. Mitch.e.l.l, and a number of other members of the Government awaited the Prince upon the pier. The Mayor of Albany read an address from a wind-swept platform in front of a town hall prominently situated on a low hill facing a wide street that led down to the harbour. The crowd here was a varied one. It included traders, merchants, commission-agents, and manufacturers belonging to Albany itself, also large numbers of fruit-growers and farmers from stations in the interior of this prosperous land of orchards and wheatfields. Gatherings of returned soldiers and school children, also nurses and other war-workers flanked the general a.s.semblage. A night train journey followed through rolling country and bush, with arable fields, apple orchards and orange gardens which looked most attractive next morning in brilliant sunshine in the freshest of rain-washed air.

The Prince was cheered by gatherings at many wayside stations, including Parkerville, where a number of children, in charge of gentle-faced sisters in black robes, sang patriotic songs in the chill morning air as the train went through. About noon he alighted at Perth, capital of Western Australia, an extraordinarily beautiful city, with wide streets and solid masonry houses, situated on the low banks of the picturesque Swan River--here so wide as to be almost a lagoon.

The streets were decorated and lined with cheerful people. Those who received the Prince included the Governor, the State Premier, the Mayor, Mr. Lathlain, the Chief Justice, Sir R. MacMillan, the leader of the State Opposition, Mr. P. Collier, the Chairman of the Reception Committee, General Sir Talbot Hobbs, also most of the other members of the local houses of Parliament and of the Perth munic.i.p.al corporation.

The Prince went through the usual inspection of naval and military guards-of-honour, and then proceeded by motor-car through the city, which looked delightfully fresh in bright winter sunshine. The crowd was lined up behind wooden barriers on either side of a lane kept by blue-jackets from H.M.A.S. _Sydney_, also men of the Royal Australian Naval Reserve, and returned soldiers, cadets and scouts. The route taken was some two miles in length. It lay through the princ.i.p.al business and residential streets, the crowd extending the entire distance, clapping, cheering, laughing and flag-waving as the Prince went by. The procession disappeared inside the shady grounds of Government House, a place of green lawns and rose-bushes blossoming in the shade of banana-trees and Insignis pines.

Later on H.R.H. visited the princ.i.p.al theatre, where he addressed several thousand returned sailors, soldiers and nurses. He congratulated them on their services, alike during the war and since their return home, where they had shown that they stood for the maintenance of law and order. From the theatre the Prince went on to a big civic luncheon in the Town Hall, where Mayor Lathlain told an appreciative audience of their guest's keen personal interest in the welfare of the people of the Dominions. He also mentioned the fact that the Prince had come as representing "the dear old Motherland, the heart of the Empire, the land upon whose Navy so largely depends Australia's ability to carry on her peaceful avocations." H.R.H. was loudly cheered when he rose to reply, and his pleasant little speech evoked the greatest enthusiasm. He felicitated Perth and Western Australia generally upon their wonderful progress, of which much had been achieved within the memory of the present generation. He said he knew Western Australia's record in the Great War, and desired also to congratulate its women--alike those who had gone abroad and those who had worked at home. An invest.i.ture at Government House and a State ball completed the day's work.

The visit to Perth lasted about a week. It had several memorable features, among them a review, when, in a wide thoroughfare bordered by pleasant residences bearing such British names as Ilfracombe, Warwick House, and St. George's Terrace, the Prince stood, framed in a background of crowded grandstands, taking the salutes of a number of thousands of Australians, including a solid contingent of blue-jackets, a yet larger one of returned soldiers, some in khaki, some in mufti, cohorts of cadets and boy scouts, both naval and military, phalanxes of red cross nurses in smart white dresses, and girl guides in a dense column of blue, followed by what seemed an endless procession of children, every school within ten miles of Perth being represented.

From the review the Prince went to Mayor Lathlain's "people's garden-party" in the National Park. Here upon a dais beneath a statue of his great grandmother, Queen Victoria, in the shelter of big timber-trees, commanding a magnificent view of the city and the river, he stood for an hour while the people of Perth streamed past in column.

Babies were carried pick-a-back on their fathers' shoulders, men doffed hats, mothers and daughters waved hands, handkerchiefs or flags, as they pa.s.sed. One old lady delayed the line to shake hands with him, but accepted the Admiral's clasp as a makeshift, the Prince being too busy taking off his hat and returning eight smiles at a time to have a hand to spare. Everybody was so engrossed gazing at the visitor, every head turning on its neck for a long backward glance after the dais had been pa.s.sed, that hardly an eye was drawn off when a noisy aeroplane, which had been stunting unnoticed in the Prince's honour overhead, suddenly swooped out of intolerable oblivion to within a hundred feet of him.

A further notable function was the State banquet at Perth Government House. Here were present all the leaders of thought and enterprise in Western Australia, politicians, administrators, squatters, settlers, traders, naval and military commanders, ministers, judges, ten V.C.'s, and everybody else who counted. Grace was said by that soldierly episcopal, Archbishop Riley, who, as a Chaplain-in-Chief of the Australian forces in the field, is known and loved from one end of Australia to the other. The Prince's health was proposed by Premier Mitch.e.l.l. After it had been drunk with the usual cheering and waving of napkins, H.R.H. made a speech. "Your policy," he said, "is to draw settlers from the old country, at the same time ensuring that they shall not suffer from lack of experience when they are first put upon the land of their adopted country. I am delighted to hear that you are giving to Imperial ex-service men the same chance of starting life upon the land when they arrive in this state, as you give your own diggers. I can think of no more admirable way than this of continuing the splendid traditions of the war and maintaining our united British spirit." It was a note which has often been sounded since to appreciation and applause throughout the Empire.

One of the expeditions made from the state capital was by launch down the wide placid reaches of the Swan River, still the haunt of the black swan, emblem of Western Australia, to hold a reception at the port of Fremantle, some ten miles distant, where the river joins the sea. No black swans graced the occasion, only an occasional porpoise leapt alongside the launch as it entered the estuary. The entire population of the countryside lined the banks as the vessel went past, every village, settlement, and factory _en route_ contributing its quota, which in the case of saw-mills, cold-storage plant and electricity works, consisted almost entirely of workmen.

Arrived at Fremantle the entire city was found awaiting the Prince, crowding the pier and lined up along the streets. Naval and military guards-of-honour, with bands, saluted. The chairman and members of the Harbour Trust and the Mayor and members of the city council stood bare-headed as he made his landing. From the pier he was conducted in procession, first to a picturesque display by thousands of children, and afterwards to the big "Anzac" military hospital where convalescent patients were drawn up with doctors and nurses outside, and where the warmth of the cheers that came from the wards, where he went round the beds of those too ill to move, was more than touching.

Speaking later at a civic luncheon, the Prince looked forward to Fremantle's eventually becoming one of the leading harbours in the Empire, the importance of its position as the first port of call on the western seaboard being emphasized by the completion of the trans-continental railway. Returning to Perth later in the afternoon by motor-car, he was taken through the magnificent National Park, a well-kept forest upland, full of fine timber, including a whole avenue, each individual tree dedicated to some West Australian soldier fallen in the war. Just before entering this park, the Prince pa.s.sed some thousands of children drawn from schools in the Cottesloe, Claremont and Subiaco munic.i.p.al areas, who stood hardily in the rain in the open to wave their flags and sing their patriotic songs.

Still another rewarding expedition was by car to some of the fruit gardens near Perth. Orange groves in the dips and apple orchards on the rising slopes made odd neighbours. The apple-trees were bare, but oranges hung in the golden profusion of Malta or Seville. Fifty acres of this fruit in some cases meant a clear income of over a thousand pounds per annum to the fortunate owner after paying for all labour other than his own. The orchard zone was near the coast. Further inland is one of the wide wheat-belts which feed Australia and furnish a surplus for Great Britain. Beyond this again begin the cattle-stations of the Great North-West. Perth was buzzing with the Great North-West. A commission composed of parliamentarians and publicists had just returned, loaded with information and optimism, from a two-thousand mile expedition through it by motor. In addition the highways were blocked and the views were obscured by mountainous men, full of deep c.o.c.ktails and deliberate conversation, who had descended from this region for the occasion of the Prince's visit. Some of these genial giants worked, as private pasture, areas ranging to over two million acres. They seemed in themselves a sufficient indication of what the country could produce, and an adequate reason for railway enterprise in their direction. In this state land nationalizes may note the character of the movement towards small holdings. It has recently been laid down that no peasant or other proprietor shall obtain a fresh grant of more than one million acres.

Not a long step toward communistic property, but possibly a beginning.

XVI

WHEAT, GOLD, AND LOGGING