Charles Bean

1911

It was exactly the same when evening brought us to a boundary-rider’s hut. He asked us in to share his evening meal as a matter of course. And when the time came to turn in, nothing would satisfy the old chap who lived out there, but that the Sydney passenger should have the rough wooden bench that made his bed, while he himself curled up on the floor.

Out in this country of huge distances they seem to take all this as one of the conditions of life. A strange buggy is seen jogging across the paddock, and they make its occupant honestly feel that they are glad he has come and are sorry when he goes away. That outback hospitality sets the ideal for the Australian; the city Australian as well tries to act up to it, so far as it is feasible in big cities. Naturally it cannot be quite the same in crowded parts, but one has hopes that it will always remain the standard.

Perhaps the strongest article in the outback code is that of loyalty to a mate. Possibly it is an article of faith with all Anglo-Saxons; but it is worth mentioning here because that loyalty is a quality which largely originates in the back country, especially in the mining camps. Wherever you have men of the British race engaged in mining precious metals on their own account, you seem always to get a tremendously strong public opinion in favour of straight dealing between mates. It is public opinion, not the police, that really prevents thieving in a mining camp. The average digger is the most loyal man on earth. Such people have nothing particular to get from a Labour Government, but they make the most solid Labour constituencies in the country, partly because they are highly independent, but chiefly because it is a necessity to the miner to be what he considers loyal to his mates elsewhere. You cannot talk about that sort of loyalty; the more it is bragged about the shallower it becomes. But one may just say this, that although the Australian will never be an effusive “imperialist” nor, probably, favourable to any hard and fast parliamentary constitution binding his country to the motherland, nevertheless, if ever a certain ancient country, the old friend and protector of a younger land, finds herself in difficulties, there is in the younger land, existing in quite unsuspected quarters, a thousand times deeper and more effective than the more showy protestations which sometimes appropriate the title of “imperialism”, the quality of sticking – whatever may come and whatever may be the end of it – to an old mate.

The Dreadnought of the Darling, Alston Rivers Publishing, London, 1911