On the whole, then, they were not so low in the scale of civilisation as the early observers imagined. Even the language, with its many dialects, due to the absence of writing and the nomad life of the people, is elaborate and inflected like those of Europe.
The native life in its original form is decaying, and survives chiefly in the interior and the west. Wherever white occupation has extended, the native is dying out; in fact, in some parts he survives only on the Government Reservations. Here are some 45 of these survivors in Victoria. Here again, in Queensland, we 46 see the native converted to European clothes, though he does not 47 seem very comfortable in them. In this district, as in South and Western Australia, and the Northern Territory, they still exist in considerable number; but it is probable that there are less than 100,000 in all in the Commonwealth. In the census of 1911 an attempt was made to count them, and some 20,000 were found to be living in or near white settlements; only a vague estimate was possible in the case of the tribes of the interior, who still live their nomadic life in the more inaccessible parts of the country. But the area untouched by the white man grows smaller every year, and unless the native can change his character greatly, he is likely to die out in the north and west as in the south-east. In 1911 there were only about two thousand in New South Wales, hardly any in Victoria, and none at all in Tasmania. It was inevitable that the Australian native should be displaced from his hunting grounds. An area about equal to that of the United States could not be left in the sole occupation of a few thousand savages. Now, instead of the savage with his primitive tribal system, we have a white race, purely British in origin, with industry and agriculture of the most advanced type, and an elaborate political constitution of federated States. It is the utilisation, by the white man, of the resources of this vast area which we must study.
We have seen something of the coast of this area; let us now try for a moment to picture it as a whole. The map shows us an oblong block, which lies east and west, on either side of the Tropic of 48 Capricorn. On the north, two peninsulas, Arnhem Land and Cape York, project towards the Equator; between them is the Gulf of Carpentaria, the only deep indentation in the whole continent. On the south, Victoria, continued by Tasmania, stretches into the cool waters of the Southern Ocean. A coastal plain, broad in the north, narrow elsewhere, fringes a plateau which occupies the greater part of the oblong. The plain is narrowest in the east, and the plateau edge most marked, so that it resembles a series of mountain ranges. Rivers, short for the most part, plunge down the seaward edge of the plateau. The only large area of lowland is in the south-east, drained by a group of long rivers and shared by four of the Australian States. Some of these rivers lose themselves in the salt lakes and marshes of the inland basin of Lake Eyre; the rest, gathered up by the Murray, reach the sea at the one point where the plateau rim disappears. The tropical lowlands, the temperate coast-plains, the plateau and the long inward slopes of the Murray system are the main features which we shall find recurring in the geography of the various States.