GREENVILLE, S. C. -- It isn't uncommon to hear a man say nowadays, "I'm fed up! I'm just going to pull up stakes and move to Australia." Americans, hoping to escape the problems of today's life style in the U.S., are emigrating to Australia at a great rate -- 8,000 last year, according to a recent news story.Listed in the account as causes of this drastic action are the pressures of spreading cities, the fast pace, inflation, pollution, high taxes and welfare.
Whether Americans will find what they're looking for on that "last great frontier" is the question that was asked of Barry and Bob Blackstone, cousins from Aroostook County, and Virginia Vough from Markleton, Pa., who recently spent three months doing mission work "down under."
The three are students at Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C., a Christian liberal arts university which draws its 4,800 students from all over the United States and some 30 foreign countries and territories.
Bob is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Hartson Blackstone Jr. of Washburn, and Barry is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Wendell E. Blackstone of Perham. Graduates of Washburn District High School and members of the First Baptist Church of Perham, they worked mostly in Western Australia while Miss Vough was in towns nearer the eastern coast.
"There's plenty of room down there, and the pace is definitely slower in the western towns and rural areas," they agreed. "If anything, though," Barry volunteered, "the cities are faster and more congested than in America." Most of Australia's 14 million people prefer to live in a rather narrow strip along the eastern coast or, if they do go west, in the larger cities like Perth, capital of the state of Western Australia, or Darwin, the capital of the Northern Territory.
In fact, as a most persuasive incentive to get some Australian settlers for the sparcely populated "outback," teachers, government workers and railroad men are denied promotion until they serve two years of "western duty." But they don't have to go far inland to be "west."
Hughenden, one of the places where Miss Vough held woman's and children's meetings, has a population of 2,000 and is considered a "typical western town" even though it is only 250 miles from the eastern coast. The father of the family with whom she lived was serving his western duty with the railroad and had long since applied for his promotion and transfer back east.
One of the temporary Westerners remarked to Virginia, who is from Pittsburgh, Pa., "It's hard to believe there's a population explosion in the world when you see out here, isn't it?"
And 2,000 miles to the west, where Bob and Barry worked on a sheep and cattle station (ranch) of over a million acres, the population dwindles even more so. Distance and desert slow the pace to a standstill in many places.
On their two-day cross-country trip the young men traveled 1,100 miles through the Nullarbor Plain, which includes one 300-mile stretch of track "without a bend, dip or rise," "It was so barren through the desert," Bob said, "that we never saw a living thing."
A rough and tough frontier atmosphere prevails in the "outback," the "bush" or the "black stump," as the remote places are called. "And person going out there to settle has to have the frontier spirit, too," the students said.
The ranch where they worked was run by the United Aborigines Mission as a way-station for the training of Aborigines who want to get out to civilization. On it lives the missionary rancher and his wife, a teacher and his wife, plus eight Aborigines families. The nearest town of any size is Laverton with a population of 2,000 -- about 600 Aborigines and the rest workers with the government, mining concerns, or petroleum companies.
Wringer-type washers, black iron cookstoves, homemade bread to eat plain or to toast over the open fire and no television -- these are the order of the day out there. Western Australia, three times the size of Texas, is one of the seven states and covers almost one-third of the nation. It is mostly desert with less than a million in population, of whom 65,000 live in Perth, the capital.
And Western Australia is not the most remote area of the country. Across the deserts to the northeast lies the Northern Territory, vast and desolate, too sparcely settled even to qualify for statehood.
Barry and Bob often talked of how rich the soil of the outback must be and what a young farmer could do with the water that lies deep beneath the surface. "But first," Barry said, "he would need a financial backer!"
Prices on small things like haircuts and shoes are lower than in the States, the BJU students reported. They found the cost of clothes about the same, according to quality and design. But larger things and luxury items, like electric can openers, knives and blenders, are either nonexistent out of the cities or are very expensive.
While mutton, THE meat in Australia, can be bought for 10 or 11 cents a pound in quantities, and the best steak is only $1.20 per pound, a Ford Fairlane, even with 85 percent of its parts manufactured in Australia, costs $6,000. A refrigerator selling for $200 in the U.S. would be about $585 in Australia.
Black and white television, common in the cities, has been in Hughenden for about a year but color is not expected in the country for five more years, the young people said. In most city families they met, both husband and wife work to make ends meet.
Gasoline, regular, runs about 45 cents a gallon in the cities, 55 cents in the more remote places and 65 cents in the most remote. In Western Australia privately owned generators are used for electric power in the rural areas; and telephone service, when available outback, is through the old crank-style phones.
Australians are very anti-pollution and safety conscious, Barry noticed. Their automobiles have all the new anti-pollution devices, and front-seat riders face a fine if their safety belts are unfastened. They steadily refuse diesel trains, preferring the less economical, but also less polluting electric ones, and Melbourne still has trollies. In spite of all, a slight haze still hangs above the cities.
Although positions are plentiful for doctors, teachers, chemists and other professional people, many immigrant families they encountered in a city church visitation program were out of work. Would the students like to go there to live? Miss Vough loved it enough to go back if she had the opportunity.
"The frontier would be a real temptation to me if the Lord had not already called me to be a pastor in my native New England," Barry said.
And Bob has an idea that he may someday combine ranching with a missionary ministry as their host was doing in the great outback of Western Australia.