Confessions of a Beachcomber - Edmund James Banfield (suggested reading txt) 📗

such hardship, and therefore devoid of inherent powers of resistance, then gave way with pitiful lack of resource, and as speedily recovered on the return of normal conditions. Yet the 60 inches of "the drought year" represented more than twice the average rainfall of London.

The average annual rainfall for the State of Victoria during the last thirty years has been 26.68 inches. Townsville (considered to be one of the driest places on the coast of North Queensland) averaged 45.54 inches during the period of thirty-four years.

Twenty-five miles further north the rainfall for 1904 exceeded that of Dunk Island by 6 inches more than the average rainfall of the upper basin of the Thames Valley, which is given as 28 inches. Australia is big--there is bigness in our differences.

Here in the tropics we have the finer weather--no excess of either heat or cold, no sudden, constitution-shattering changes. At Wood's Point (Victoria) rain fell on 185 days in 1903, and on 166 days in 1904. At Dunk Island rain occurred on 107 days in 1903 and On 92 days in 1904. We had many more days of picnic weather, notwithstanding our overwhelming superiority in quantity of rain. Moreover, in the tropics the bulk of the rain falls after sundown. After a really fine day in the wet season the hours of darkness may account for several inches of rain. Here over 12 inches have been collected between sundown and nine o'clock the following morning.

Particular references are confined to seasons three or four years past because recent official data, necessary for enlightening comparisons are not available, but in confirmation of statements concerning the meteorological conditions of the coast of tropical Queensland, the record of rainfall at Dunk Island since 1903 may be quoted:

1904 94.41 inches.
1905 89.06 "
First nine months of 1906 134.70 "

Of the latter total, 56 inches occurred in February, two days (6th and 18th), accounting for 22.95 inches--more than half the average rainfall of the State of Queensland.

An illustration--homely but graphic--of climatic differences may be given. During the first five months of 1904 the rainfall of Dunk Island amounted to 75.15 inches, the lowest monthly record being May (5.30 inches) and the highest March (29.05 inches). At the end of May on the Burdekin Delta--150 miles to the south--the sugarcane was beginning to be affected by the hot, dry weather, and irrigation was about to be resorted to. Here in January it became necessary to repair the roof of the boat-shed, and to keep the ridge covering of paper-bark in position, two long saplings were tied parallel with the ridge pole. At the end of May these saplings were taken down in order that the whole of the thatch might be renovated, when it was found that both had started to grow, several of the shoots being 8 and 10 inches long. While sugarcane was languishing for lack of moisture, 150 miles away down the coast, a roughly-cut sapling exposed on the roof of a building found the conditions for the beginning of a new existence so favourable and stimulative that it had budded as freely as Aaron's rod. "Through the scent of water it had budded and brought forth boughs like a plant."

Nearly as much misapprehension prevails in the Southern States of the Commonwealth as to the characteristics of North Queensland as seems to prevail among the good old folks "at home" as to Australia generally. If the few facts presented excite even mild surprise, they will not be altogether out of place in these pages.

Dunk Island has a mean temperature of about 69 deg.; January is the hottest month with a mean of 87 deg, and July the coolest, mean 57 deg. Taking the official readings of Cardwell (20 miles to the south), I find the greatest extremes on record occurred in one year, when the highest temperature was 103.3 deg. and the lowest 36.2 deg. At Geraldton (25 miles to the north) the extremes were 96 deg. and 43.4 deg.

Rainfall and temperature, the proportion of clear to cloudy skies, calms, the direction, strength and the duration of winds, do not wholly comprehend distinctive climatic features. There are other conditions of more or less character and note, some hard to define, yet ever present. Here the air is warm and soothing, seldom is it crisp and never really bracing. Hot dry winds are unknown, but in the height of the wet season--which coincides with the dry season of the Southern States--the moisture-laden air may be likened to the vapour of a steam bath. While the rain thunders on the roof at the rate of an inch per hour, inside the house it may be perspiringly hot. After a fortnight's rain the damp saturates everything. Neglected boots and shoes grow a rich crop of mould, guns demand constant attention to prevent rust, and clothes packed tight in chests of drawers smell and feel damp. But the atmosphere is so wholesome that ordinary precautions for the prevention of sickness are generally neglected without any fear of ill consequence.

However sharply defined by reason of the personal discomfort it inflicts, this steamy feature of the wet season is no more a general characteristic than the hot winds are of Victoria. Warm as the rains are, they bring to the air coolness and refreshment. Clear, calm, bright days, days of even and not high temperature, and of pure delight, dovetail with the hot and steamy ones. The prolifigacy of vegetation is a perpetual marvel; the loveliness of the land, the ineffable purity of the sky, the glorious tints of the sea--green and gold at sunrise, silvery blue at noon, purple pink and lilac during the all too brief twilight, a perpetual feast.

For six months it may be said the prevailing wind is the south-east, followed by gentle breezes from the east and north-east. North-easters begin in September and are intermittent until the beginning of the wet season. The south-east monsoons are regular and consistent; the north-east, which precede the rainy monsoon, fitful and wayward, never continuing long in one stay, and lasting but four out of the twelve months. Rare is the wind from the west, rarer from the south-west. North-easters are a pronounced feature. They work up by diurnal and easy grades from gentleness to strength, thunder coming as a climax. After a succession of calm days and days of gentle breezes from the east-south-east and east, the north-easter begins softly, and daily gathers courage and assumption, to find in the course of a week or two its haughty spirit subdued by thunder and rain showers. Calms prevail for a few days. Easterly breezes come, to give way to the north-east again, and so the programme is repeated with variations which none may foresee, and which set at naught the lengthiest experience. At last, at Christmas or the New Year, the rains come with a boisterous beginning. A north-easter accompanied by thunder lasted a whole July afternoon. It was as strange as a crop of mangoes would have been at that time of year.

During the cool season--a generous half of the year--dews are common--not the trivial barely perceptible moisture called dew in some parts, but most ungentle dew, which saturates everything and drips from the under sides of verandahs as the sun warms the air; dew which bows the grass with its weight, soaks through your dungarees to the hips, and soddens your thick bluchers, until you feel and appear as though you had waded through a swamp; dew which releases the prisoned odour of flowers irresponsive to the heat of the sun, which keeps the night cool and sweet, which with the first gleam of the sun makes the air soft and spicy and buoyant, and inspires thankfulness for the joy of life.

Are we not all apt to fall into the error of estimating the character of a country by its extravagances rather than its average and general qualities?

North Queensland has the reputation of being the home of malaria and the special sport of any cyclone that may have mischief in view. Being tropical, we have malaria, but it is of no more serious consequence than any one of the ills to which human flesh is heir in temperate climes. It does not exact such a toll of suffering and death as influenza, nor as typhoid used to do in crowded cities; nor is it as common as rheumatism in damp and blustering New Zealand, where the thermometer ranges from 100 deg. in the shade to 24 deg. of frost. Malaria touches us lightly, and it is chosen as a bugbear with which to scare people away. A southern critic, honestly pitiful of our ill state, urges that the experiment of destroying those mosquitoes which disseminate the germ of malaria, by sealing up lagoons and swamps with kerosene, is worthy the attention of town and country residents in tropical Queensland, "where attacks of malaria are felt every summer." Mere idle words of pernicious consequence. Many a wretch who has done less mischief than "these utterers of forged tales, coiners of scandal and clippers of reputation," has had his liberty restricted. But a small and an annually lessening proportion of our population suffers from malaria, and yet all have the renown of an annual attack! In that case the writer ought to have had twenty-five attacks, and thousands of others, lusty and toneful fellows, forty and forty-five attacks. With as much claim upon reason might one say that because of the sudden jerks of their climate (40 deg. of difference within twelve hours) all Victorians have to make three changes of raiment every day in order to avoid ill consequences; or that every man, woman and child in merry England has had instead of expects or dreads or hopes to have appendicitis, since King Edward the Peacemaker suffered, and renown came upon that disorder. Malaria is fleeing before civilisation. It cannot--at any rate in North Queensland--long endure the presence of the white man.

Unfeigned pity is bestowed upon the denizens of North Queensland on account of the pains and penalties and discomforts alleged to be the sentence of all who dare select it as home. We who know can but smile and wait; and ever call call to mind pleasant and happy experiences, everlasting truths and "the falsehood of extremes."

Even in the matter of cyclones--often quoted as one of its detriments--North Queensland has nothing to hide. At intervals Nature does indulge in a reckless and violent outburst, but not more frequently here than in other parts of the world. Year after year the seasons are passive and pleasant, and in every respect considerate of humanity and encouraging to humanity's undertakings. Then, abandoning for a few hours her orderly and kindly ways, Nature runs amok, raving and shrieking. Her transient irresponsibleness and mischievousness are then cited as everyday, persistent vices. Not so. Nature is rational even in her most passionate moments. Vegetation, rank and gross as in an unweeded garden, requires vigorous lopping and pruning. These twenty-year-interval storms comb out superfluous leaves and branches, cut out dead wood, send to the ground decayed and weakly shoots, and scrub and cleanse trunks and branches of parasitic growths. All is done boldly, yet with such skill that in a few weeks losses are hidden under masses of clean, insectless, healthy, bright foliage. The soil has received a luxurious top-dressing. Trees and plants respond to the stimulus with magical vigour, for lazy, slumbering forces