Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/266

 Queensland, whose inhabitants are called Banana-landers, because the banana finds the climate very suitable to its growth.[A]

Naturally the change is not immediately apparent in the long, long journey by rail. The enchanting cool stretches of the Hawkesbury give place to the ascending grades of the hills; then there are interminable stretches of the dun plains, broken by lengths almost as long of gaunt forest, sometimes dead wood. Then the plateau of fine pasture of the Darling Downs, and the descent warmer and moister and greener as you go into the land of the banana and the pine. It is also, if you strike far enough north, the land of the prickly pear.

Railway journeying is not a bad way of seeing a country if you have no better. One can gain an impression of China such as nothing can obliterate by taking the North China Railway up to Harbin; and people have written books of impressions of Java on the strength of the five days' journey which can be made from the port

[Footnote A: In reference to the vast amount of sand in West Australia, the West Australians are called "Sand-gropers." Life was hard in early South Australia, and hence the South Australians remain "Crow-eaters": Victorians, proud of their giant gum trees in Gippsland, are called "Gum-suckers," and only the New South Wales people are genuine "Cornstalks."]