Happy Australia [1950]

Australia has an area of about 3,000,000 square miles and a population about equal to that of London. Western Australia, which is about a third of the whole continent, has only one person to every two square miles, which is about what is supposed to have been the density of the human 30 population of Africa 500,000 years ago. The fear of Asia has dominated the imagination of Australians ever since the early months of 1942, when the northern regions were evacuated owing to the imminent expectation of Japanese landings. Rural development in Australia faces difficulties which did not exist in the United States a hundred years ago when the West was being conquered. The pioneer in Australia has a mentality very similar to that of the 30 American pioneer of a hundred years ago. As a scientific problem, the increase of the fertile area of Australia is a fascinating subject.