Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/214

 have repeated this description, attempt to palliate it, but they admit its force; and the fact is that being a people with a sense of humour, they recognise the exaggeration as the recoil which we all experience when anything is over-praised to us. It is very hard for a young country not to praise its possessions, not out of conceit, but from a human desire to elicit praise from a superior critic. We "know you've got some great things," they say by inference to the visitor, "but you'll admit that this thing of ours is not so bad." Thus when the citizen of Ballarat points out to you the glories of his main street, he does not ask you to compare it with Piccadilly or the Champs Elysées, but he would like you to think that it is something for a mining community to have cut out of the Bush.

So now to Sydney Harbour. Long before we ever saw it we had heard of it. They think no end of Sydney Harbour, we had been told. They say it's better than the Bay of Naples. "If ever you meet an Australian, and tell him you're going to Australia," Phil May once said to the writer, "he'll be sure to say, 'Well, you look out for Sydney Harbour.' It's a fine place," added May reflectively; "but, you know, if you tell an Australian that the only thing you have to complain of in Australia is the toughness of its beef,