stand aloof. Even so the news was sufficiently serious, and telegrams on the Perth post office were eagerly scanned. It was not till quite the end of our visit that definite intelligence arrived that England had joined the cause of the Allies, and even then nobody realised it in the least.
Our last day came all too soon, warm and sunny, when we made the short journey from Cottesloe Beach to Fremantle. The war news seemed more real, when we saw a German tramp held up in the harbour, with the guns of the forts trained on her. The big Orient liner was lying alongside, and we boarded her with many regrets at what we were leaving behind, for we had to say good-bye to many friends, and our cabin was filled with flowers, sweet violets, and the heavy scented boronia, of which Western Australia is so proud. At last we started on the four days' voyage to Adelaide, and it was not till we reached Northern Queensland that we again encountered that atmosphere of primitive freshness and novelty, that we were leaving behind. So we left Western Australia, with its warm-hearted, generous people, its vast, almost untouched resources of primeval forest, and rich soil, its social problems, on which the visitor is incompetent to pronounce, problems acute in the old
