WHITE AUSTRALIA.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 19 January 1926, Page 8

WHITE AUSTRALIA.

IS JT A REALITY ? INVESTIGATIONS IN NORTH. COLOUR TIDE EBBING. SYDNEY, Jan. 5. Is Australia really white? was apparently the question put to himself by a newspaper correspondent who has recently been investigating conditions in the far north of the continent. There still exists an impression among many Australians that in the tropical north White Australia is only an inspiration, and that the yellow man is tenaciously maintaining the foothold he gained in the days of indiscriminate settlement. Beyond Cooktown lies the far north of Queensland, an area double the size of Belgium, controlled by three or four police officers and a staff of black-trackers. From time to time there are rumours of a steady Japanese ‘ infiltration through t-lie unguarded back door of Australia, the Achilles heel of the Commonwealth. 'Pile correspondent’s investigations led him to the belief that those rumours are incorrect, that the tide of yellow in the north is ebbing (writes the Wellington Post’s Sydney correspondent). The 300 or 400 miles of indented, isolated coastline from Cooldown north to I he extremity of Cane York is a liappv hunting ground for the far-off, armchair alarmist, who imagines Japanese being landed secretly from luggers on this coast, to shoulder their swags to the nearest township to complicate further the racial tangle of tropical Australia. The correspondent found that, of all the races lending colour to racial variety of Northern Queensland, the Japanese, outside the pearling grounds, is the least considerable element: “The closer one pursues this wilv tresnnsser.” declares the writer, “the more snoctral he becomes. One of the surnrises that awaits the new'miner to the north is the actuality of White Australia there.” The correspondent found that a fortunate few yellow men had by thrift or heads for business established themselves in trade. For the others, white'

labour has left little more than the growing and hawking of vegetables, a table in a tailor’s’ shop, or a job as hotel cook. Braced with the tonic of high wages, the white man will tackle any other job that may be offering, whatever may be the temperature, and to hew wood and draw water is as fair a road to fortune as any that the fai north offers.

The correspondent also touches upon the various Chinatowns of the coastal cities, such as Cairns, Cooktown, Innisfail and Atherton, but he found them mostly in a state of decaying squalor bespeaking the disappearance from the north of the old yellow population. Where the Britisher or Australian has not pushed him out. the Chinaman is being ousted by vigorous Greek, Italian, Maltese, or some other Southern European nationals who love to live in comm uni tv settlements.