Peeps At Many Lands: Australia

es-"Bobbies and bushra

less weighed down with conventions and thoughts of rules than the life of an older community. So Australia is a very happy place for children.

every member of the family. On the sea-coast swimming is the great sport, though it is dangerous to swim in the harbours because of sharks, and protected baths are provided where you may swim in safety; still children have to be carefully watched to prevent them fr

children of ten and twelve and fourteen years of age taking quite a part in life, entrusted with some little tasks, and carrying them through in grown-up fashion. The effect of all this is that in their relations with their parents Australian children are not so obedient and respectful as they might be. This does not work for any great harm while the child is young. Up to fifteen or sixteen the so

much scattered, it is necessary and possible to go to school. The State will carry the children to school on its railways free. If there is no railway it will send a 'bus round to collect children in scattered localities. Failing that, in the case of fa

on this two, or three, or even four children will mount and ride off. When the family number more than four, the case calls for a bugg

life in the Bush. There is a very charming writer about Australian children, Ethel Turner, who in one of her stories gives a picture of a little Bush school in one of the

s name was Eagar, and his friends said that he suited the sound of it. Alert of eye, energetic in movement, it may be safely said that in his

way with the fire of life had long since departed from the place, and gone to set their homesteads and stackyards, their shops or other businesses elsewhere. So there were only a few limpets, who clung tenaciously to their sp

of neither was attended with any great difficulty. In three months he had turned his own box of books into a free circulating library, and many of h

oud, had tried to persuade himself that little Rattray had breathed a trifle quicker as the blind man's stick came tap tapping along the road. The sea was nothing but a name to the whole number of scholars (eighteen of th

arth than to have just enough money to take the whole school to Sydney for a week, and see what a suddenly widened horizon would do for them all. Had his salary come at that

early 'sweep' fever for far-distant races would attack the place, an

y shillings. Sixty shillings, he explained, would pay the fare-coach and train-to Sydney of one schoolboy, give him money in hi

et with 'top boy.' And never having been 'top boy' itself at any t

raw lots,'

rting element in the affair, slowly subscribed its

ile every morning, and five miles back again at night all the six months of the yea

squatter to hold water for his sheep. That extract shows the Bush school at its very hardest in the hot back-country. Of course, not one twentieth of the population lives in such places.

for tuppence,' came a lumbering old horse, urged into an unwonted canter. Three kiddies bestrode the ancient, and as they swung along they sang snatches of Kipling's 'Recessional,' to an old hymn-tune that lingers in the memory of us all. As they drew near to me the foremost urchin suddenly reined up. The result was disastrous, for the ancient 'propped

had caught

ll you do with

l about them at school.' The answer was spoke

t hymn you were sin

the "Recessional"!' This,

ancient down the hillside, I made up my mind that I would visit the school where the teacher told the sc

DREN RIDING TO

large

rly comers are at work on the beds, which are dry and dusty from a long, hot spell. Little tots of six and seven years stroll up and watch the workers, or romp about on grass plots in close proximity. Presently the master's voice is heard. 'Fall in!' There is a gathering up of bags,

ve faculties scarcely in the slightest degree exercised.' In those days, as many old State-school boys well remember, to learn was, indeed, to work, and when fitting occasion offered, we 'wagged

s and encouraged to take a few 'deep breathings.' Then the lines are formed

to say that the ideal always is to make the work alive and i

t his education costing his parents anything at all. When I was a boy the State of Tasmania used to send every year two Tasmanian scholars to Oxford University, giving them enough to pay for a course there. That has since been stopped, but many Australians c

it-hole and fell with him. The boy's thigh was broken and the horse was prostrate on top of him, and did not seem to wish to move. The boy stretched out his hand and got a stick, with which he beat the horse until it rose, keeping the while a hold of the reins. Then, with his broken thigh, that boy mounte

he Australian Bush. It is no place for the cowardly or fo

ns. A very favourite game is that of "Bushrangers and Bobbies" ("bobbies" meaning policemen). In this

obin Hood or the Scotch Rob Roy, living a lawless life, but not being needlessly cruel. It is those few who have given basis to the tradition of the Australian bushranger as a noble and chivalrous fellow who only robbed the rich (who, people argue, could well afford to b

should be near to his place of business, which was to stick-up mail-coaches and rob them of gold, valuables, weapons, and ammunition. It also needed to be in a position commanding a good view, and with more than one point of entrance. Two bushrangers' caves I remember well, one near to Armidale, on the great northern high-road. It was at the top o

ts purpose. Climbing down a mountain gully, you came to its end, apparently, in a stream of water gushing from out a wall of rock. But behind that rock was a narrow passage leading to a cave which opened out into a little valley with ano

he rifle bullet of that day. The Kellys were finally driven to cover in a little country hotel in Victoria. They held the place against a siege by the police until the

o be a bushranger, and the guardian of the law is looked upon as quite an inferior character. Lots decide, however, the cast. The bushrangers sally forth and stick up an imaginary coa

way down to National Park (N.S.W.) for the Field Artillery camp, at one of the suburban stations there broke into the carriage reserved for officers, with a cheerful impudence that defied censure, a little band of boys. They had not a shoe among them, nor had anyone a whole suit of clothes. But they carried proudly fishing tackle and some rags of canvas which would help, with boughs, to build a rough shelter hut. The remainder of the train being full, they invaded the officers' carriage and made themselves comfortable. They wer

matches. All the schools have their teams. Most of the shops and factories keep up teams among the employees. These teams play in competitions with all the earnestness of big cricket. As the players grow better they join the electorate clubs. In every big parliamentary division there is an electorate club, made up of residents in that electorate. The clu

the richer may stay at school and the University until nineteen or twenty. Usually they laun

type of the Anglo-Celtic race. I have never yet met a British man or boy who was of the right manly type who did not love Australian life after a little experience. The great distances, the cheery hospitality, the sunny climate, the se

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