Australia: The Culture of Distance - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 290

cial redemption. When Dickens wrote about a convict who made good, he chose a former
Australian convict, Abel Madgewick, as Pip's secret benefactor in Great Expectations .
From the First Fleet to the end of transportation (1788-1840), convict guards were
mostly English, Scots, and Welsh. Irish convicts were treated with special brutality because
of their periodic attempts at rebellion, because many spoke Gaelic, not English, and be-
cause of their Catholicism. The Great Potato Famine of the 1840s brought Irish refugees as
free settlers on promises of land and a better life. They were striking examples of the poor
that got away, or, in another example of Australian humor, “We were sent here by Eng-
land's finest judges.” [259]
AUSTRALIA'S CITIES
With a sparsely settled interior, Australia's major cities are on or near an ocean, which
means that visitors have easy access to most of the country's tourist venues. The Boomer-
ang Coast curves south from Adelaide to Melbourne and, from there, north to Sydney and
Cairns. In the far north is Darwin, and on the southwest coast are Perth and Freemantle.
Australian hearts may be in the outback, but more than 80 percent of those hearts beat in
cities.
Almost all major cities are state capitals with a Parliament, courts, and bureaucracies.
Not surprisingly and not just in Australia, the government takes care of itself, which usually
means that funds are available for civic improvement, parks, museums, and the like. Aus-
tralia received its Constitution in 1901; former colonies kept their names but were now
states within a federal system. The system has been modified over the years, but like other
federal systems, states and the federal government each have assigned powers and powers
that are shared. Australia is a constitutional monarchy, and the Queen is head of state.
She rules (as titular head, mostly in name) through the will of Australia's federal Parlia-
ment. Even so, since 1975 a sizable number of Australians have pushed to make Australia
a democracy. But a recent referendum decided for the status quo.
Sydney, the capital of New South Wales, prides itself as Australia's original city, the
convict camp of 1788. The site of that camp, a rocky ridge overlooking the harbor, is called
the Rocks. The Rocks today are prime real estate, with elegant shops and narrow, dogleg
streets. Sydney is the modern, commercial capital of the country. Its high-rise office build-
ings are sheathed in metal and glass; Sydney Tower, emblem of the city's economic im-
portance, rises to 1,000 feet. And occasional clusters of nineteenth-century terrace houses
are reminders of the city's past.