Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/269

 went for a holiday on the Queensland coast," said he, "and we had rare sport. We used to go shark-spearing. It can only be done on a few nights in the year. The season is when the sharks come in to the coast; and it must be moonlight and you race along the beach with nothing on, and you can see the sharks in the under curve of the big rollers as they break on the beach. And if you are quick and have the knack you can stab at them from underneath, and they can't get you. I got two or three, though I was only a learner the finest sport " His voice trailed away into silence. Our friend the distinguished physiologist had gone from dusty London to a place in a tropic land eleven thousand miles away.

That is Queensland as it seemed to us: a place in which the towns were still additions rather than a part of a land where enchantment and adventure still linger. There is an island on the coast which is quite near a thriving town of meat-packing warehouses, streets full of sun and dust and flies, and it is called Magnetic Island. You can reach the island by a steam launch, and the people of the town often make the trip, and when they get there presumably they have lunch at the boarding-house hotel. It is a wooden building with washing hanging out in the backyard