Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/290

 problem of soap. We turned on the tap hopefully, but the Australian rainfall was quite inadequate to remove molasses. So we went in search of the Nambour hotel. However new an Australian town may be, it always has an hotel or two, and a sort of communal hall. Nambour has in addition a few shops and some stray cows and horses. We watched a cow eating sugar cane with every manifestation of pleasure. It was not till we got to Queensland, by the way, that we began to see horses everywhere, just as we had imagined them in Australia, hitched up to gates by the bridle.

We made our way to the hotel, where everyone was very busy preparing lunch. There was no hot water upstairs, but, penetrating into the kitchen, where there was a great bustle, and anything extraneous was very much in the way, we succeeded in getting a pudding basin full of hot water and a teacloth, and attacked the molasses in the yard outside, before an audience of poultry. Molasses, however, appears to yield to nothing, not even chemical cleaning. It always re-emerges. So relinquishing the vain attempt, we repaired to lunch.

Whatever you don't have for lunch in Australia, you always seem to have turkey. It is like the inevitable poulet in Continental hotels. There