ALONG THE EAST COAST

Southland Times, Issue 22728, 2 November 1935, Page 11

ALONG THE EAST COAST

Motoring In Australia Motor touring has accelerated the pens of many writers, but the first book dealing with an extended pleasure excursion by car in Australia, that I have read, is “Blue Coast Caravan,” by Frank Dalby Davison and Brooke Nicholls. Four people, two men and their wives, set out from the south, and after travelling with car and trailer through Queensland, mostly in the coast region, they sought the Barrier Reef. Although pleasure was expected the two men say that their purpose was to travel so as to gain material for a book. It is obvious that they achieved both. Here is the book, and in its pages there is proof that the members of the party enjoyed themselves in the long trek through settled but, to them, unknown Australia. The people and places they saw and wrote about are in easy reach. One does not require a carefully prepared expedition in order to see them, and duty cannot immure one for years beyond barriers of sand. This was a pleasure cruise, and the writers have revealed parts of Australia that are no less beautiful and interesting because they happen to be accessible. The party was not hurried in its movements, and the reader has plenty of time in which to see things just off the road, and to meet people who are part and parcel of Western Australia and of the modern world. At Nambucca they went hunting flying-foxes, an adventure I don’t envy them, but it was evidently full of interest. A point cropping up again and again is the monotonous ugliness of the towns the party visited in its journey. Grafton, despite its Jacaranda Avenue was evidently the first, but not the worst of them. In fact the Doctor declared Grafton to be “almost as good as some Californian towns that he remembered,” which may go down as a cryptic utterance. In the centre it was presentable, but beyond that it was “architecturally barren” and depressing. In Queensland the caravan left the region of made roads and after a climb through some jungle .came to the Mary river and Maryborough. Fraser Island offered unusual attractions and an aboriginal settlement supplied native colour. After this the track carried on to Cairns and to Glen Boughton, with a glance at some Italians on the way. Their observations are of value, especially their reminder that the Piedmontese who have settled extensively in Italy, are developing into sound “Owstralians," objecting to the Sardinians as excitable, knife-sticking and unreliable. Most of the Italians they met had been on the land for some years and all were making good after tough battles. They are described as Fascist to a man. The Great Barrier Reef is a place of nature’s .mysteries, and this section of the book is particularly interesting. It was a revealing trip and the two authors, working in excellent collaboration, have produced a book which fully justifies the adventure. “Blue Coast Caravan,” by F. D. Davison and B. Nicholls. (Messrs Angus and Robertson, Ltd., Sydney.)