AUSTRALIA

Inside the Bentinck Hotel, everything is cozy. Guests are gathered in the dining room, enjoying a leisurely lunch of carefully prepared delicacies. Or they’re seated around the fireplace in the gracious parlor, warming up with a hot toddy. Outside on this early spring day, it is raining. Not a soft spring) rain, either, but a damnable downpour, a real loosening of the; heavens. Also outside, ignoring the rain, four men are playing doubles tennis on the hotel courts.

There will always be an England, even if it’s in Australia.

Life is different at Ross River, about a thousand miles north-west of the Bentinck as the emu would fly if he could. At Gil Green’s Ross River Homestead, life is similar to what it is on any West Texas ranch. A little more vast perhaps, but not much different: tough and demanding but rewarding. The homestead’s countryside is so sparsely vegetated that Green’s cows would think West Texas bovines were gluttons. People are rare enough that a car breakdown can be real trouble; it might be days before someone happens along to help.

As these two disparate examples indicate, Australia offers thetraveler a kind of charming schizophrenia. The English charm ofMelbourne, Sydney and the other coastal cities vs. the old Colonial rough and readiness of the Outback, one of the world’s lastgreat frontiers. Australia’s vastness – it’s about the same area asthe United States minus Alaska-and its population of only 15million mean that there is no rush to settle, no great push west asthere was in the United States. The inland area is made up ofbarely inhabitable pockets surrounded by total desert – land thatis marginal even to wildlife. But there are people there, nativeaborigines and desert rats, the Kiplingesque characters alwaysfound at civilization’s outposts. At an Alice Springs bar youmight be elbowed between a cob-rough Aussie cowboy and aproperly British civil servant, fugitive from a domineering familyback home.

The Bentinck is in Woodend, a village about 40 miles northwest of Melbourne in a well-traveled area that includes Mount Macedon and Hanging Rock, of picnic and motion-picture fame. The Bentinck can only be described as civilized, in the best connotation of that most English of all adjectives. But it is not stuffy, and the Sunday clientele includes not only those up from Melbourne for a weekend in the country, but also the locals out for an afternoon of leisurely dining. Another typically English institution, the rich, eccentric widow, is a frequent guest. Her behavior may be exemplary, or she may decide to shock the other guests by raising her skirt over her head.

The success of the Bentinck is, of course, the result of the attitude and care of the management – Monty Hopa, Bill Wilding and Marie Kerr -and their staff. They manage to be efficient, warm, hospitable and relaxed at the same time. The overall atmosphere is like that of a group of friends spending a weekend together at someone’s country home. The Bentinck’s location makes it a perfect spot for Melbourners looking for a quiet weekend away from the suffocating press of the city.

But Melbourne has much to offer, too. There are echoes of London in the many parks, in the Victorian architecture, in the big-city bustle, in the pubs and their peculiarly English formality. But there are also large ethnic neighborhoods with their rich fusion of sounds and foods and shopping. There is a variety of entertainment, from the imaginative black-humor reviews of The Last Laugh to top-drawer conventional theatrical productions to the dress-white-proper spectacle of cricket matches. The cuisines rival those of any large city: Italian (Donnini’s, Tolarno’s) to fish and chips to the finest continental (Glo Glo’s in the Toorak section).

An easy hour’s travel from Melbourne is Sovereign Hill in the town of Ballarat. Sovereign Hill is a restored gold-mining town of the mid-1800s, a nearly complete replica of the original township run by a nonprofit corporation. It is without the usual air of commercialism that mucks up so many such enterprises. There are tours of the original gold mine, with exhibits and explanations of all phases of development, including the modern -the recent increase in gold’s value has made it profitable to mine the Sovereign seams again.

Farther northwest, up the coast and on the Gulf of St. Vincent, is the Emerald City, Adelaide. The capital of the state of South Australia, Adelaide is truly a jewel-like metropolis -a beltway of parks surrounds the city, encircling the downtown with an air of quiet relaxation. The pace is slower and less formal than in Melbourne. It’s as if the city is another step toward the frontier, and it is true that just to the north the landscape becomes increasingly harsher. Adelaide is the jump-off to the Outback.

The Cleland Wildlife Area on the north of the city is the home of Beau (probably the world’s most photographed koala) and of kangaroos, wallabies, emus, wombats and other species unique to Australia.

Farther up the road lies the Barossa Valley, where Australia’s finest wines are produced. The Germans who settled the valley brought their grape expertise with them. Center of the valley is Tanunda, more of a farm town than a quaint village, but still home of the Die Galarie, where you can eat perfectly prepared traditional German foods in a true rathskeller atmosphere. Winery tours are available, too.

Southwest of Adelaide, almost astride the gulf’s entrance, sits Kangaroo Island, a wind-swept “door” to Adelaide. The island is made up of sheep stations, wildlife preserves, rocky coastlines, tiny intimate beaches (at least one populated with seals) and Rex Ellis’ camel safaris. Rex, as much a naturalist as an entrepreneur, will see that you learn all about the island’s inhabitants as he leads you through the bush and along the island’s spectacular coastal bluffs. And don’t worry about the camels: They’re more sure-footed than goats and a hell of a lot easier to ride. Bruce Wickham of Kangaroo Island Village will show you the rest of the island. There are daily flights from Adelaide aboard Ansett, the domestic Australian carrier.

Jumping off into the Outback from Adelaide needn’t be sudden. Just catch the Ghan, one of the world’s last great trains, for the ride 1,200 miles north across the vast Simpson Desert into Alice Springs. The train fittings are British-proper, but the service is more Aussie-relaxed. Again the paradox. The new Ghan, only a year or so in service, makes the trip in a day and a half, and sometimes arrives early. The old Ghan was never early and sometimes arrived as late as a month. It was also more romantic, but that’s a price of progress.

Alice is true frontier: A lady would feel out of place, if not downright scared, in most of its bars. It’s a town of ranch-supply stores, a final outpost on the edge of civilization. It also offers the most visible reminders of Australia’s national shame, the sociological limbo into which the aborigines have been thrust. Everywhere they are evident, present but outside, a Stone Age people bewildered by the Television Era.

Alice has its signs of civilization. It boasts a vineyard and winery, the Chateau Hornsby, which produces wines like the people, unassuming and hearty. But Alice’s real leap toward modernity is the new Federal Casino. Razzle-dazzle as Vegas, only on a smaller scale: leggy floor shows with lots of high kicking and gambling tables with lots of high rolling. The typical weekend crowd is a real study, a small-town Texas study in fact. Cowboys are decked out in their finest, in for a break from the dust and drudgery of the range. The scene is another paradox, a gleaming new facility containing all the modern amenities crawling with characters from a Randolph Scott opus.

From Alice, too, you can catch a flight southwest to Ayers Rock, Australia’s Grand Canyon and Old Faithful. The rock is a major attraction, but the area is still relatively unspoiled. There are only a couple of spartan lodges, and the monolith itself is still the focal point. Nightlife consists of a coin-operated pool table in the Uluru Lodge, tales of stupid tourists by the lodge staff, and a Balinese singer who is not afraid to tackle such hippie-mystic odes as MacArthur Park. The rock is worth an overnight trip; you need to see it at both sunset and sunrise. Take a book for nighttime.

A few miles northwest of Alice at Ross River, Gil Green has turned part of the family homestead into a sort of dude ranch, where you will find real working cowboys, uncloudy skies and few discouraging words, unless you go to messing with one of the riders’ girlfriends. Or happen to be around when one of the locals has to help some bloody stupid tourist dig his car out of a seemingly dry stream bed.

Gil Green is a man of few words, but when he talks it’s with knowledge and a droll wit. His laconic history lectures are legend around Alice: informative and entertaining. He knows and understands the aborigines, too, and is a strong defender of their ways.

About teatime at Ross River, you’ll notice the folks gathering in the room that serves as a bar. There they’ll be having a cold beer and a bit of conversation. Maybe it’s not high tea, but a peculiarly Australian variation. But it serves, as tribute to tradition with a distinctive Outback flavor.