ABSTRACT
Authors visited the continent in 1905 and 1906 and industriously studied Australia’s social, political and economic life. In fact, to get ‘right inside the life of the Australian worker’ he worked for three months — in a wool shed and at the McKay harvester works in Melbourne where he was known as ‘German Bob’. Australasia can be proud that to date it can claim a population whose origins are made up of the best peoples in the world. Its basis is a British-Irish one, with Germany and Scandinavia contributing the next greatest percentage of European migrants. The pioneering work in the rugged bush and the grim life there, and the hard struggle for existence in the tent camps on the goldfields or in the wooden barracks of the shearing sheds, also made the people independent, weather-hardened, strong and stubborn. So a new people grew from the new soil.
