听力文本

Have you ever been homesick? If you haven’t, then you have never been far away from home for any length of time, or you never had a home. Just suppose you lived on the other side of the World from your father and mother, from your sisters, brothers, and friends, and were only able to get home once in five or ten years, ormaybe never. The English people probably love their homes more and get more homesick than any other people in the World, and yet they go farthest away from home and live there.
There is a big island, so big that it is usually called a continent and so far off from England that it usedto take five or six months, a half year, to get to it from England, and even now it takes a month or more byship. On it lived only wild black men, yet the English people went there, built great cities and now rule over the island. This island is Australia, which means “South Land,” for it is far, far south—south of the Equator, where it is summer when it is winter here and night when it is day here. The island was so far awaythe English thought it would be a good place to send prisoners, to get rid of them, because once there they could not get away and they could not harm anybody but themselves. Many prisoners were sent there and few ofthem ever came back. Some even died of homesickness, for even a criminal is human and gets homesick.
It was not very long, however, before the English found that this island was too good just for prisoners. The central part of Australia was a desert, but there were gold mines in the desert, and neither a desert nor danger will keep men away when gold, magic gold, is to be found. So a great many young Englishmen went out to Australia in search of gold and to make their fortunes, expecting to return home as soon as they had done so.

参考译文

你有没有想过家？如果没有，那么你一定没有出过远门，在外待过一段时间；或者你从来没有一个家。假使你居住在世界的另一面，远离你的爸爸妈妈、兄弟姐妹和好朋友，五年或十年才能回家一次，或者也许永远都回不了家了。英国人可能比世界上其他任何民族更热爱自己的家园，也更容易想家，但是，仍有英国人到离家最远的地方，在那里定居下来。
有一座岛很大，大到被称为大陆。它离英国很远，过去要花五六个月或者说半年的时间才能从英国来到这个岛。即使现在，坐船也至少需要一个月的时间。在这座岛上，那时只住着野蛮的黑人。后来，英国人后来到了那儿，建立了大城市，现在还统治着这座岛。这座岛就是澳大利亚，“澳大利亚”的意思就是“南方之地”，因为它在遥远、遥远的南方——赤道以南。当美国这儿是冬天的时候，那儿是夏天；这儿是白天的时候，那儿是夜晚。这座岛离英国非常遥远，所以英国人认为如果将犯人遣送到那儿，那可是关押他们的好地方，因为一旦到了那里，他们就无法逃离，也就伤害不到任何人，除非伤害他自己。许多犯人被送到那儿，几乎没有人再回到英国，有些犯人甚至因思乡而死，因为即使是罪犯，他也是有人性的，也会想家。
然而，没过多久，英国人就发现这个岛的好处不仅仅是用于关押犯人。澳大利亚的中心地带是一片沙漠，但是沙漠里有金矿。当金子、有魔力的金子有可能被发现的时候，无论是沙漠，还是危险，都不能阻止人们前往。于是，大批大批的英国年轻人远离家乡，来到澳大利亚寻找金子，寻求发财，期望一成功就马上回家。