Читать книгу Rambles in Australia онлайн

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As we drew nearer to our journey’s end, we passed an occasional small clearing, where the yellow sandy soil had already been planted with apple trees for the fruit growing, which is one of the industries of the future for Western Australia; or patches of forest had been ringbarked,5 and left to die, after the cheap but wasteful method of clearing in use. Visitors to Australia cannot help being impressed with the waste of timber, which seems appalling to an inhabitant of an over-populated northern country, where everything grows slowly, and every inch of wood has its economic value. They are too ready to rush into print, or public pronouncements, on a subject of which only prolonged residence in the country, and a more than superficial study of its economic problems, could enable them to judge. In the first place the cost of transport is prohibitive, or means of transport may even be non-existent; and secondly, in a new country time is money. Great tracts of forest all over Australia are ringbarked and left to rot. In the Government sawmills at Big Brook, the debris of the great karri trees is lost. There is wholesale waste, wholesale destruction of timber going on in Australia, the least intelligent observer cannot fail to mark it, but time is literally money in Australia. “We can’t afford to wait,” said one of the leading statesmen of Western Australia, commenting on the waste of timber at Big Brook. “We sacrifice five pounds to gain twenty,” said one of the shrewdest and best-informed officials of Victoria.