ABSTRACT
Although the authors of the next two extracts travelled through the same part of New South Wales — New England and its surroundings — their descriptions of country and people could scarcely be more different. The landscape has been ruined; the people are rough and mostly drunk; the economic situation is bleak. Even if one allows for the different personalities of the two men — one a happy-go-lucky young journeyman, and the other a conservative old count — it seems obvious that, only a generation after the peak of the gold boom, life ‘in the bush’ was stagnating. Most places had to revert from gold town to rural centre, and adjust accordingly. Travelling in Australia is no longer as difficult as it used to be, because mail-coach traffic becomes more extensive year by year. The number of roads increases, pushing back the surrounding bush and replacing it with growing settlements.
