“ ‘It was a land of flowers’ said my grandmother,” writes Mary Gilmore [in the passage from Old Days, Old Ways here included],

At sea [in 1836] we noticed the perfume long before we came to [the land]… Australia smelt like the Spice Islands. “We are near Australia,” said the seaman, “Can’t you smell the flowers?” And people raised their heads and breathed in perfumes as it were out 'of heaven, for the land was still invisible….

In the same essay, Dame Mary continues: “The thick-nosed and dull-eared derided her… They called her a land of songless birds and scentless flowers. The world believed them; and for a century we followed in the train of the world, even though on our breath her perfumes hung high.”