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
