Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/265



BANANA-LAND

Oh Land of Ours, hear the song we make for you— Land of yellow wattle bloom, land of smiling Spring— Hearken to the after words, land of pleasant memories. Shea-oaks of the shady creeks, hear the song we sing.

Those lines were written by an Australian in exile, for he was with the Australian contingent in the war in South Africa. He is dead now, and he did not long survive the brave soldiers whose epitaph he wrote beginning with those words, which seem, to one who has known Australia only a little, to sum up in a wonderful way the clinging memories of the land. He spoke too of the "blue skies clear beyond the mountain-tops," and "the dear dun plains where we were bred," and there are no two sentences which more simply or clearly bring back Australia to the mind. But it is the Australia of the west and the south. When the Hawkesbury River is crossed eastwards, and the flats where the first Cornstalks were raised have been left behind, a new country comes into vision. It is tropic