AUSTRALIAN TOPICS

Evening Star, Issue 20984, 24 December 1931, Page 10

AUSTRALIAN TOPICS

AFTER THE ELECTIONS [FKOIt OUK CORRESPOND*!*!.] SYDNEY, December 19. When the hurly-burly’s done, when tin battle’s fought and won, people see the honour of the election tussle. In th i heat and heroics of the hustings, patriotic promises sound almost sublime. On the “ morning after,” many of them are apt to sound ridiculous. The catch cries that roused the crowds, the red herrings that baulked . the scent, the bogies that gave grim air to the battle—all have a faded and comic aspect when the election figures are published and the new “ Guvernment is assured a lengthy regime. Elections have long been the butt of the jesters. Hogarth has graphically recorded the crude customs of the hiistmgs ot his day. Dickens has poked in the ribs all t 1 ) well-worn tricks of the electioneer' inn- trade. The General Elections throughout Australia have been giim fights, with grave issues at stake. But the British race somehow always has time for a chuckle, even in its grim moments. As with Dr Johnson s famous philosopher, cheerfulness somehow is always breaking in. And why should not the public have its election chuckle? It pays dearly for the staging of all this political pomposity, and surclv has a right to smile at some ot the unrehearsed effects of the fuss. One of the serio-comic phases of the Australian elections has been the sudden bafflement of' tho meeting-smashing hooligans by tho electric loud speaker. As in previous elections —back to tho English eighteenth century and beyond —rowdy cliques were organised to interrupt some of the prominent candidates. In one or two cases they did a bit of interrupting. But wherever the electric loud speakers were installed they wore baffled. It was comical to watch the astonished and even hurt look on the faces of these boohooing larrikins when they found that th-j electric loud speakers drowned their lustiest cat calls and countingsout. They have been so used to noisy victory that they naturally thought, as usual, that half a dozen of them together bawling “ Give us yer policy would put the poor candidate clean out of his stride. ' But when the candidate merely retorted by tuning up the loud speaker to an acuter pitch, the yelling toughs first looke 1 puzzled, and then expressed a shocked conviction that another great institution —organised political interruption—had gone down ignominiously before tho onward strides of ruthless science. The plight of these paid interrupters is almost pitiful. Not onlv is their occupation gone, but the voice of the candidate can now surge outside the meeting hall, and drown the roar of the passing trams. Trams and toughs are a joke in the eyes or the really rhetorical and electric-allied platformer. It was notable that in the Australian elections no politician used the phonograph record to broadcast his speeches. In England some years ago the leaders of tho several parties had their policy speeches recorded on the vulcanite discs, so that they could bo “ spoken ” on countless phonograph machines throughout the land. It was a neat notion—with one serious defect. Well enough to utter one’s political promises, and even to emphasise those promises with the timbred aid of a loud-speaker. But when political promises are recorded on phonograph discs, the poor politician would have to carry out those promises, or suffer the shame of having them afterwards hurled at him from the indignant speaking horns of hundreds of phonograph machines. Could his promises be recorded on pie-crust . But vulcanite is such an enduring record. It recalls the sad experience of the famous eighteenthcentury divine who had a shrewish wife. Not only did his reverence get many a curtain lecture, but the lady in the case habitually threw a'f his holy head admonitory quotations from his own published sermons. The cleric got “wise” in time, and ceased to publish his impressive homilies. Likewise, have the politicians shrewdly ceased to publish their policy speeches on anything so noisily enduring as a phonograph record. The elections over, Australia will settle down to a stiff tussle with the depression. One thing evident already is tho disposition to live more simply —and more healthily happily. This Christmas will see thousands of, campers and hikers over the mountain and seaside resorts. Not all these neophytes of the simple holiday life will really enjoy their strenuous jaunts. Some will return home vowing never to attempt again to sleep under canvas, or to drink tea into which centipedes seem naturally to tumble. But multitudes will rejoice in such inexpensive outings. Again, it is noticeable how the pushbike is returning to popularity—that cheap, convenient vehicle that can be made entirely within the borders of its Own country. BOGUS BEGGARS.

The secretary of Melbourne’s Charity Organisation Society is not speaking without the book when he complains how the genuine needy suffer for the .sins of the cadging impostors. When a well-known Sydney beggar woman recently died she left an estate that was subsequently sworn at £25,000. An equally notorious Bourke street beggar in Melbourne was found to possess properties and shares that returned him £lO a week. When an apparently penniless patient died at a public hospital in Sydney some time ago, the authorities were reluctant to hurry him to a pauper’s grave. So they made inquiries, and found that the properties ho had left were worth £38,000. So, again, is fact stranger than fiction —stranger even that the classic Conan Doyle yarn about the slum cadger who secretly hoarded a fortune. BIG GAME.' Professor Osborne, of the University of Melbourne, declares the American “Wild West” of the movies to be a mvth. But there is at least a romantic “Wild West” tang about the buffalohunting director of Australia’s National Travel Association, in the wilds of the western areas ot Arnhcim Land in tropical Queensland. On a 10,000-mile hunt in a motor car. this adventurer say many flocks of wild buffalo, some mustering as many as 1,500 beasts. Even some patriotic, Australians seem surprised to learn that such big game abounds within their borders. Though the Australian buffalo averages Gcwts, its beef is not deemed tasty in its own country. But the hides make wholesale hunting a profitable business. One famous Australian buffalo hunter bagged 1,100 beasts in a_ single year, mostly in the swampy region 200 miles from Darwin. RARE GEMS. Australian wheat and wool arc worldknown, but what a lot of other primary products come from this continent is suggested by the discovery of diamonds down near Victoria’s Wilson’s Promontory. Though Victoria has previously found that sort of gem at Bcechworth and Cliiltern. New South Wales is the State with the impressive diamond-delving record, just as

Queensland lias brilliant orange saphires not found in any other part of the world. Though not a gem, the Northern State also has discovered some valuable deposits for paint making, including a vermillion previously thought to he a monopoly of the Orient. Gem-getting is deemed a “ poor man’s trade ” in Australia, though some of the stones, skilfully cut, have found high prices in European markets. Strangely enough, jewellers report a local prejudice against such lovely Australian gems as the opal and tho ■Orange, sapphire. Is it superstititiou?