Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 307, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 December 1913 — Where Heat Leads to Water [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Where Heat Leads to Water

HEATS vary. It is hot in Durban till the Zulu rickasba man is too warm to prance . between the shafts, and goes along with you at a jog trot When that degree of heat arrives you wouldn’t change places with him for a rubber mine. Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, has a breathless, white, staring summer heat that lasts for weeks at a time. It hurts the eyesight, as successive team! of English cricketers have found out to their cost, but is otherwise not unhealthy. One of the most uncomfortable places in the world on a really hot day Is Melbourne. The sun blazes with an intolerable glare,- and the “brickfielder” (a scorching north wind) sweeps along the city’s wide streets thick with dust and the smoke of the distant bush fires it has brought down from the country, whence it whirled with the velocity of a hurricane that morning. The smoke gets into your eyes and makes them smart, and the dust and other refuse make your clothes filthy and get down your throat, into your ears, your nostrils, everywhere. * A* to London Heat. London heat, writes Arthur J, Rees in the London Evening Standard, resembles the heat Auckland, New Zealand’s most northern city. It is humid, close, sticky, oppressive and, above all, dense. But Auckland has what London hasn’t—a beautiful harbor that makes you cool to look at it. The Maoris call the Auckland harbor Wai-te-mata, which means "glittering waters,” and the sparkling blue of that volcano guarded bay holds you its lover while you are in Auckland — and ever afterward. It is the’color of forget-me-not, and you . never do forget it. You see the harbor from all parts of the city—from some spots the whole dazzling sheet of forget-me-not blue Spreads out before you, at others just a patch of rippling violet glancing' shyly up at you as you turn the corner of one of Auckland’s winding streets.

Sydney harbor is beautiful—you will not praise Auckland harbor to Sydney people if you are a wise traveler —but It lacks the entrancing blue and the lights and shades of the Harbor of Glittering Waters. " And Auckharbor Is still nature’s own—a 50-mlle gulf whose cliffs and headlands are wrapped In a grand and gracious solitude.

The subject of heat brings us naturally to the subject of bathing. The Australians, particularly those living near the coast, are a bathing people. The children take to the water early and stay in late. An Australian boy will pass the whole of a long summer day In the baths, with »alternate splashing and sand sprawling spells. All the state schools have swimming clubs for boys and girls, from the youngest classes up, where the children are taught to swim by good teachers.

The schtools have a series of interclub .‘swimming matches during the summer, when rivalry is keen and excellent swimming results. As a natural consequence of this splendid system most of the Australian boys and girls In the large cities can swim well and drowning fatalities are rapidly declining. Sea Baths Around Melbourne.

They have plenty of sea baths around Melbourne, but no surf bathing suteh as Sydney people revel In. Melbourne’s great bay, Port Phillip, is landlocked, so there are no breakers worth mentioning. There Is also a further obstacle In the shape of periodical Invasions of large sharks, which have a calming effect on the enthusiasm of those who advocate the charms of bathing in the open. Three or four miles from Melbourne is the fashionable suburb of St Ki Ida, which has the finest swimming baths In Aus-tralia-half a dozen of them. Bathihg by night under the electric light is a favorite amusement of the Melbourne people. For those hardier souls who prefer the embrace of “the great sweet mother,” untrammeled by the restrictions of a picket fenceeven though the fence is sharkproof "—there is Sandringham beach and Half Moon bay, a few miles farther along the coast.JKlere people have their bathing bdfejwand bathe in the open with a waryeye open for the appearance of the dorsal fin o'fa shark in the offing. A man who was fond of bathing off Sandringham assured me once, when I asked him if be wasn’t frightened of sharks, that a shark would never tackle you in the

water if you splashed and kicked up a noise at its approach. But the great eighty in the way of sea bathing in Australia is the summer surfing carnival at Sydney. It Is a remarkable spectacle. If ever you go to Sydney do not miss a visit to Manly or Bondi or Coogee—the three places all within an hour’s access of Sydney—where the surfers hold high revel and make the seascape glad with their merriment. I have seen people bathe - from various lands in many tides, but I have never seen anything that resembled the joyous abandon, grace and gayety of Sydney surf bathing. Young people of both sexes —a doz-' en or more together—go down to the water hand in hand to swim out to meet the breakers. Mother Grundy is banished from these sea revels, which are conducted with a harmless uneonventlon and innocent freedom from artificial sex restraint charming to see and good to participate in. Everybody is welcome to the open sea, and if you bump into your lady neighbor as you are swept back to shore on the breakers she accepts your apologies as laughingly as you tender them. Nor are introductions necessary if you wish to enter into conversation. Something of the freedom of the sea takes possession of you for the moment.

The sport has more than a spark of danger, but that seems to add to its attractiveness for Sydney people. In surf bathing you swim out to the advancing billow and dive Into It just as It breaks —to be swept ashore with a bewildering ecstatic rush amid the boom of the surf. Rut if you are caught in the powerful retreating undertow you will be swept out to sea, no matter how strong a swimmer you may be. If that happens, as it frequently does, the only thing is to lie still and try and float, and waif till a member of the life saving club — there are always several on duty—is paid out to you on a life line. Often the victim of the undercurrent is carried away too fast to be rescued, and the Sydney evening papers dismiss the tragedy in a few lines headed "Another Fatality at Surf Bathing." But the appalling list of deaths every season is no deterrent to the devotees of surf bathing. They go joyously on with their surf, in no wise checked by the thought that they are playing—with death. From their point of view the sport is worth the risk. Sydney surfing is marked by some pecnliar features of its own. There is the cult of getting brown, for instance. The surfer who can display a skin of dark golden brown is a king of his kind. Young men put in 8 lot of time lying about in the scantiest bathing attire letting the sun dye. or tan, their bodies the requisite tint They deplore the slowness of the process, and greatly envy the fortunate youth who has a night job of some sort which permits him to He about the beach . all day—getting brown. They bewail the golden hours they have to waste in work, and the moment they are free from the cares of office they dart by tram out to theirbeloved Bondi to get a little browned before the sun sets. Sharks do not bother the surfer much. The shark in the open sea prefers to let the deadly undertowsweep his evening meal out to him. Inside the harbor he has to fend for himself. That is why there are so many more shark accidents insido the harbor than in the surf. '

GOVERNMENT HOUSE, SYDNEY