No Australian is able to affirm that his knowledge of the country is entirely satisfactory to himself.  There are some points upon which the best informed stand to the correction of others whose general knowledge may be admittedly inadequate.  We who are scattered about in odd and out-of-the-way corners, pick up in the school of experience scraps of local knowledge, and may without presumption present them to others to confirm and to conjure with.

The term “Australia” as generally used ignores most of the continent out of sight of Melbourne and Sydney, though both Victoria and New South Wales could be stowed away in little more than half the area of Queensland.  Do we reflect that Australia includes some of the driest tracts in the world, as well as areas in which the rainfall approaches the phenomenal—­that not very much more than half of the territory of the Commonwealth lies within the temperate zone—­that there are as marked differences between Tasmania and North Queensland as between the South of England and Ceylon?  That the one is the land of the potato, apple, apricot, cherry, strawberry and blackberry, and the other the land of sugar-cane, coffee, the pine-apple, mango, vanilla and cocoa; that though there exist no imposing geographical boundaries, such as chains of lofty mountains or great rivers to emphasise climatic distinctions, these distinctions nevertheless exist, and that they imply special policies on the parts of Government and Administrations.

Do we realise that the voice of the tropic half of Australia is drowned in the torrent of the temperate?  It may be possible to misrepresent opinions and to obscure the fair view of things, to defeat aspirations; but are we to be denied the right of being heard and of explaining ourselves.  Politicians to whose loud and profane voices electors listen, have declared that North Queensland shall become a desolate and silent wilderness, rather than that their views shall be gainsaid.  Do such as these reflect that North Queensland is a fruitful country, capable of producing food and immense wealth, and giving employment to millions, and that other nations will not stand idly by and see the worth of so much land wasted because of the vanity of men who do not, and who apparently will not, endeavour to comprehend the magnificence of its extent and the width of its capabilities.  The world is not so vast that any part of it—­still less a part so situated and so highly favoured as this—­can be left unpeopled.  If not peopled by Australians or those of British blood, it will assuredly be by people for whom the average Australian entertains but scant respect.

Australians cannot with justice complain when the good old folks at home blunder in their geography and perceptions, the while that so much local misapprehension prevails.