All the usual British games are played in Australia: tops, hoops, marbles among the younger children; cricket, football, lawn-tennis among their elders. The climate is especially suited for cricket, as it is warm and bright and sunny for so long a term of the year. On a holiday in the parks around the Australian cities may be seen many hundreds of cricket matches. All the schools have their teams. Most of the shops and factories keep up teams among the employees. These teams play in competitions with all the earnestness of big cricket. As the players grow better they join the electorate clubs. In every big parliamentary division there is an electorate club, made up of residents in that electorate. The club may put into the field as many as four teams in a day--its senior team and three junior teams. So there is an enormous amount of play--real serious match play--every Saturday afternoon and public holiday. Australia thus trains some of the finest cricketers of the world. For some years now (1911) the Australian Eleven has held the championship of the world. The Australian child of the poorer classes usually leaves school at fourteen. The children of the richer may stay at school and the University until nineteen or twenty. Usually they launch out into life by then. Australia is a young country, and its conditions call for young work. * * * * * That finishes this "Peep at Australia." I have tried to give the young readers some little indication of what features of Australian life will most interest them. The picture is of a land which appeals very strongly to the adventurous type of the Anglo-Celtic race. I have never yet met a British man or boy who was of the right manly type who did not love Australian life after a little experience. The great distances, the cheery hospitality, the sunny climate, the sense of social freedom, the generous return which Nature gives to the man who offers her honest service--all these appeal and make up the sum of that strong attraction Australia has to her own children and to colonists from the Motherland. THE END BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD LIST OF VOLUMES IN THE PEEPS AT MANY LANDS AND CITIES SERIES EACH CONTAINING 12 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BELGIUM IRELAND BURMA ITALY CANADA JAMAICA CEYLON JAPAN CHINA KOREA CORSICA MOROCCO DENMARK NEW ZEALAND EDINBURGH NORWAY EGYPT PARIS ENGLAND PORTUGAL FINLAND RUSSIA FRANCE SCOTLAND GERMANY SIAM GREECE SOUTH AFRICA HOLLAND SOUTH SEAS HOLY LAND SPAIN ICELAND SWITZERLAND INDIA A LARGER VOLUME IN THE SAME STYLE THE WORLD Containing 37 full-page illustrations in colour PUBLISHED BY ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK SOHO SQUARE, LONDON. W. AGENTS