Dunk Island is well within the tropical zone, its true bearings being 146
deg. 11 min. 20 sec. E. long., and 17 deg. 55 min. 25 sec. S. lat. It is
but 30 miles south of the port of Geraldton, the wettest place in
Australia, as well as the centre of the chief sugar-producing district of
the State of Queensland. There the rainfall averages about 140 inches per
annum. Geraldton has in its immediate background two of the highest
mountains in Australia (5,400 feet), and on these the monsoons buffet and
break their moisture-laden clouds, affording the district much
meteorological fame. Again, 20 miles to the south lies Hinchinbrook
Island, 28 miles long, 12 miles broad, and mountainous from end to end:
there also the rain-clouds revel. The long and picturesque channel which
divides Hinchinbrook from the mainland, and the complicated ranges of
mountains away to the west, participate in phenomenal rain.

Opposite Dunk Island the coastal range recedes and is of much lower
elevation, and to these facts perhaps is to be attributed our modified
rainfall compared with the plethora of the immediate North; but we get
our share, and when people deplore the droughts which devastate
Australia, let it be remembered that Australia is huge, and the most
rigorous of Australian droughts merely partial. This country has never
known drought. During the partial drought which ended with 1905, and
which occasioned great losses throughout the pastoral tracts of
Queensland, grass and herbage here were perennially green and
succulent--the creeks never ceased running.

Within the tropics heat is inevitable, but our island enjoys several
climatic advantages. The temperature is equable. Blow the wind
whithersoever it listeth, and it comes to us cooled by contact with the
sea. Here may we drink oft and deep at the never-failing font of pure,