who has seen a thing or two in his brief span, staggered to his berth,
saying, `My God! Is ALL Australia like this place?'"

* * * * *

When no ships arrive, the Islanders just drop into the pubs,
as a matter of routine, for their usual evening soak.
They drink weird compounds -- horehound beer, known as "lady dog",
and things like that. About two in the morning they go home speechless,
but still able to travel. It is very rarely that an Islander gets
helplessly drunk, but strangers generally have to be put to bed.

The Japanese on the island are a strong faction. They have a club
of their own, and once gave a dinner to mark the death
of one of their members. He was shrewdly suspected of having tried
to drown another member by cutting his airpipe, so, when he died,
the club celebrated the event. The Japanese are not looked upon with favor
by the white islanders. They send their money to Japan --
thousands of pounds a year go through the little office in money-orders --
and so they are not "good for trade".

The Manilamen and Kanakas and Torres Strait islanders,
on the other hand, bring all the money they do not spend
on the pearling schooner to the island, and "blow it in", like men.
They knife each other sometimes, and now and again have to be
run in wholesale, but they are "good for trade". The local lock-up
has a record of eighteen drunks run in in seven minutes.
They weren't taken along in carriages-and-four, either;
they were mostly dragged along by the scruff of the neck.