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Title: Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria
Author: William Westgarth
Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5789]
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Edition: 10
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EARLY MELBOURNE AND VICTORIA ***
Produced by Sue Asscher [email protected]
EARLY MELBOURNE AND VICTORIA
BY
WILLIAM WESTGARTH.
(PLATE: EDWARD HENTY.
Died August 14th 1878.
George Robertson & Co. Lith.)
(PLATE: JOHN PASCOE FAWKNER.
Died September 4th 1869.
George Robertson & Co. Lith.)
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS
OF
EARLY MELBOURNE AND VICTORIA
BY
WILLIAM WESTGARTH.
"Oh, call back yesterday, bid time return."
--Richard II.
"A story of the mount and plain,
The lake, the river, and the sea;
A voice that wakes to life again
An age-long slumbering melody."
--GEORGE GORDON McCRAE.
"Ah! who has ever journeyed, on a glorious summer night,
Through the weird Australian bushland, without feelings of delight?
The dense untrodden forest, in the moonlight cold and pale,
Brings before our wondering eyes again the dreams of fairy tale."
--A. PATCHETT MARTIN.
"The genius of Australia now uprears
Her youthful form, like hope without hope's fears;
While o'er her head our Cross, with loveliest rays,
Heralds the brightness of her future years."
--R.H. HORNE.
CONTENTS.
AN INTRODUCTORY MEDLEY.
MR. FROUDE'S "OCEANA".
NEW ZEALAND.
UNITY OF THE EMPIRE.
EARLY PORT PHILLIP.
MY FIRST NIGHT ASHORE.
INDIGENOUS FEATURES AROUND MELBOURNE.
THE ABORIGINAL NATIVES IN AND ABOUT TOWN.
EARLY CIVILIZING DIFFICULTIES.
"THE BEACH" (NOW PORT MELBOURNE).
EARLY MELBOURNE, ITS UPS AND DOWNS--1840-1851.
THE MELBOURNE CORPORATION, 1842.
EARLY SUBURBAN MELBOURNE.
THE EARLY SQUATTING TIMES.
EARLY WESTERN VICTORIA ("AUSTRALIA FELIX").
SOME NAMES OF MARK IN THE EARLY YEARS.
THE HENTY FAMILY, AND THE FOUNDATION OF VICTORIA.
SOME INTERJECTA IN RE BATMAN, PIONEER OF THE PORT PHILLIP SETTLEMENT.
JOHN PASCOE FAWKNER, FATHER OF MELBOURNE.
JAMES SIMPSON, FIRST MAGISTRATE OF "THE SETTLEMENT".
DAVID CHARTERIS McARTHUR, FATHER OF VICTORIAN BANKING.
CHARLES JOSEPH LA TROBE, C.B.
SIR JOHN O'SHANASSY.
WILLIAM KERR, FOUNDER OF "THE ARGUS".
WILLIAM NICHOLSON.
CHARLES HOTSON EBDEN, ESQUIRE.
EDWARD WILSON, CHIEF PROPRIETOR OF "THE ARGUS", "THE TIMES" OF THE
SOUTH.
EARLY SOCIETY: WAYS, MEANS, AND MANNERS.
"GOVERNMENT HOUSE".
CHEAP LIVING.
RELIGIOUS INTERESTS.
THE GERMAN IMMIGRATION.
THE GERMAN PRINCE.
BLACK THURSDAY.
EARLY VICTORIA, FROM 1851.
EARLY BALLARAT.
MOUNT ALEXANDER AND BENDIGO.
EARLY VICTORIAN LEGISLATION.
POSTCRIPT.
MELBOURNE IN 1888.
ALBURY.
SYDNEY.
BRISBANE.
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY MELBOURNE AND VICTORIA.
AN INTRODUCTORY MEDLEY.
"Pleasure and action make the hours seem short."--Othello.
I had long looked forward to one more visit to Victoria, perhaps the
last I should expect to make, and the opportunity of the opening of the
great Centenary Exhibition at Melbourne on 1st August of this year was
too good to be lost. Accordingly, having been able to arrange business
matters for so long a holiday, I took passage, with my wife and
daughter, by the good steamship "Coptic" of the "Shaw, Savill New
Zealand Line," as it is curtly put. She was to land us at Hobart about
27th July, in good time, we hoped, to get across by the Launceston boat
for the Exhibition opening, and she bids fair, at this moment, to keep
her engagement. We would have taken the directer route, with its greater
number and variety of objects, via Suez and Colombo, but we feared the
sun-blaze of the ill-omened Red Sea in summer. We purpose, however, to
return that way towards the coming winter.
More than thirty-one years have elapsed since I left Melbourne, after a
residence there of seventeen years, broken, however, by two intermediate
visits "Home." I think with wondering enjoyment of what I am to see in
the colony and its capital after such an interval. Previously, when I
returned after only a year or two's absence, I was wont to mark with
astonishment all that had been done in that comparatively brief time. I
am thankful to Mr. Froude, whose delightful work, "Oceana," I could read
to all full enjoyment during the leisure and quiet of the voyage, for
somewhat preparing me for what I have to see, for I must infer from his
graphic accounts, especially of interior progress--while already three
more years have since elapsed--that even my most sanguine anticipations
will be exceeded. Our great Scottish poet and novelist has finely
said:--
"Lives there a man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said--
This is my own, my native land?"
But is there not a formidable rival to the force of this sentiment in
that with which one clings to the land where so many of the most
vigorous years of life have been actively spent? And a land, besides, of
surpassing sunny beauty and of rare romance. Business calls are usually
held to be imperative, even if they send us, willing or unwilling, to
"Ultima Thule or the Pole." Accordingly, my later lot has been to return
to the older, and not to continue in the newer, part of the common
empire. But, at any rate, that rather enhances the enjoyment of this
re-visit.
According to the usual custom, I now write my introduction last of all.
I have most pleasantly occupied several hours of the complete leisure of
each day in writing these "Recollections," and now, as we get within
almost hours of our destination, I am putting this last hand to my
labours. I cannot hope that their light sketchiness can go for much,
save with those who, familiar with the great Melbourne and Victoria of
to-day, may enjoy the comparison of the small things of a retrospect
extending to almost half a century, and all but to the birth of the
colony.
The voyage has been extremely pleasant, with a good and well-found
vessel, fairly fast as the briskly competitive speed of these days goes,
and above all with a head in Captain Burton who has proved first-class
in every requirement. He has just complimented us by saying that we are
the best behaved lot of passengers he ever took. That was due very
greatly to himself; and I think that all of us are well able to
reciprocate his compliment by regarding him as the best of captains.
Officers and crew also have been, to our view at least, faultless; but
then, again, all that so much depends upon the captain.
Touching the important matter of speed, let me say a little. All
important it is, indeed, in this age of fast progress. When I first
sailed for Australia, in 1840, we were, I think, 141 days on the way.
Nor was that a very inordinate passage then. This time I expect, within
that interval, to go and return, besides having nearly two and a half
months to spare--a space of time which now, with rails and fast steamers
everywhere, will enable me to visit all South-Eastern Australasia,
including even New Zealand. Of course, that means hardly more than "to
see," but still that is better than not to see at all, those wonderful
parts of our empire.
But yet again, on this point of speed, our "Coptic's" daily run averaged
rather under 300 nautical miles. In justice to the good ship, we should
credit her with rather more, for during the latter half of the voyage
she was meeting or anticipating the sun by six or seven degrees of
longitude daily, and thus clipping about half an hour off each day. But
turn now to the latest like exploit between Liverpool and New York--the
case, I think, of the s.s. "Umbria", whose unprecedented record is of
455 to 503 miles daily. Granting this to be subject to abatement for
running this time away from the sun, and thus prolonging the day, there
is enough of difference to give us, at this speed, the hope of a three
weeks' Australian service by the straightest available line. It has
already been effected to Adelaide in 29 days. We Australians must hope
that ere long Melbourne and Sydney, together with all about them, will
weigh, with ourselves at least, as heavily as New York. The coal
question is, of course, an awful difficulty for three weeks instead of
five to six days, but not, we hope, insuperable. Our "Coptic" burns but
fifty tons a day, but the New York liners require three hundred.
When a man has passed seventy-three, as I have done, he may be excused
in doubting his chance of yet another Australian visit. But while he has
been waiting these many years, he has seen such vast improvement in
inter-communication facilities of every kind, as to establish, he might
say, a complete counterbalance to the increasing infirmities of years.
Imagine, therefore, the Australian liner of the next few years to be a
great and comfortable hotel, as though one went for three weeks' fresh
sea air to Brighton or Bournemouth, with the additional charm that, on
quitting your pleasant marine apartments, you stepped out upon
Australia.
This brings up yet another subject. When attending, four years ago, the
very successful and most interesting meeting of the British Association
at Montreal, I was very curious as to the possible prospect, now that
this body had made so good a first outside step, of a like meeting in
Australia. But, not very long after, an invitation to the Association
was actually sent from Melbourne. The year asked for had been
pre-engaged for Home. My distinguished friend, Mr. Service, told me,
when on his late Home visit, that no doubt the invitation would go
again. I may usefully mention here that the Association is usually
engaged, or as good as engaged, two clear years in advance, so that the
third year, at least, in advance should be dealt with for Melbourne.
This besides would afford sufficient notice for the busy men of all
classes and all vocations at Home to arrange conveniently for the
necessarily long absence. I do not doubt of complete success. Indeed, it
is such a further chance as that which might tempt even the oldest of us
into visiting the far-off but bright and sunny South.
MR. FROUDE'S "OCEANA."
I feel that my introductory medley would still be incomplete if I did
not allude, somewhat more than I have already done, to Mr. Froude's
recently published "Oceana," a work which, in its vigour and high
literary style, marks quite an era in its Australian field. I had
regretted before embarking that, from the pressure of other things, my
acquaintance with it had been limited to the reading of many reviews and
the hearing of much criticism. But I have been well compensated by a
perusal during the peace and ample leisure of this long voyage. I must
confine my remarks to two points only, which, however, are amongst the
most prominent in the book. These are--first, the terms in which he has
alluded to the present condition of New Zealand; and, second, his
ardently loyal remarks, so often repeated, upon that rising question of
the day, the political unity of the empire--a subject which had been
advanced at the time into a most significant importance to the
Australian colonies by the apparent imminence of war with Russia.
NEW ZEALAND.
I am not inclined to repeat the scolding which, it is understood, my
zealous friend, Sir Francis Bell, Agent-General for New Zealand, under
his high sense of duty, administered to the brilliant author of "Oceana"
for this sole dark spot of his book. I see no sufficient cause. On the
contrary, he has given us such a charming account of the aspects and
prospects of this, the most magnificent of our colonies--for I agree
with him in believing that it is to be "the future home of the greatest
nation of the Pacific"--that certain loose or inaccurate words addressed
to him about the finances, and which he had deemed worth recording, may
well be expected to have in comparison the most evanescent effect. "One
gentleman," he says, "amused me considerably with his views," the said
views being to the effect that New Zealand would be ready, when the
final pressure came, to repudiate her heavy public debt. Another equally
vivacious informant stated that, besides the 32 million pounds of
colonial borrowing, "the municipal debts were at least as much more as
the national debt." Now this is six times overstated for municipal and
harbour debts together. No doubt the actual case is bad enough, for New
Zealand has far over-borrowed. But as to repudiation, there is not a
hint or notion of it in any responsible quarter whatever, any more than
with regard to our British Consols, although the colony is, for the
time, in the extremity of a depression, ever recurrent in such young,
fast-going societies, caused by a continuous subsiding of previous
too-speculative values. To this I may add, in reference to the smaller
issues of colonial municipalities, that of the very great number of
these, New Zealand's included, brought for many years past upon the
London market, there is not, in my recollection, as a matter of my own
business, one single instance of default, as to either principal or
interest, if we except the sole and quite special and temporary case,
above thirty years ago, of the city of Hamilton, in Upper Canada.
UNITY OF THE EMPIRE.
This question has been in a course of rapid clearing during the last few
years, and the successful establishment of the Imperial Federation
League has given an orderly procedure in every way promising. The object
aimed at is, that the empire shall have that political binding which
will give to it the maximum of power and influence possible under all
its circumstances. Above fifteen years ago some few of us--very few they
then were--first seriously raised this question at Home in the Royal
Colonial Institute. We had the smallest of audiences then. It is
marvellous to look back now upon that indifference. I recollect that
about ten years ago, when the movement was just beginning to look
serious to those outside of us, a leading Paris paper devoted an article
to the subject, remarking that if Great Britain persevered so as to
unite her empire as sought, the balance of the world's power would be so
seriously disturbed as to call for an international reconsideration of
that subject.
The progress as yet has been chiefly negative, but it has been great.
Modes entertained at first have been discarded. This may be said of
superseding the present Imperial Parliament by a pro re nata Federal
Assembly; and it may be equally said of an influx of proportionate
colonial representatives into the Home House. Councils of colonial
ambassadors, agents-general, and so on, have, I think, definitely gone
the same way. These are chiefly Home views, for Home is at length
aroused as well as the colonies to their common question; and the
summons by the Secretary for the Colonies of the Colonial Conference
which sat in London two years ago marks alike the most prominent and
most promising feature in the movement.
Mr. Froude has given, most usefully, the views of the colonists. Let us
take Mr. Dalley's, which is also that of most others, namely, that the
nascent but increasing colonial navies should be all under one imperial
command--that is, be a part of the British navy. There is one more
step--namely, to dispose of all colonial military force in the same
common-sense way, and then we have a politically united empire. But we
are "constitutional" or representative in our polity, so that something
else is still wanted. In short, the unity of the empire requires two
things. First, that all its force be under one executive, and, next,
that the colonies be proportionately represented in that executive. The
Cabinet seems to me the adaptable body we can operate upon to this end.
That body would then be actually, as well as legally, the empire's
executive. Nothing should--nothing need--prevent the attainment of this
grand end. The tariff bugbear concerns only commerce, and need not
arrest nor even interfere with the empire's political unity. All other
matters of the common interest can be leisurely settled by mutual
consent, as the empire, in its united state, sails along the great ocean
of the future. The mother will then, in emergency, have the sure call of
her children; while every colony, even to the very smallest, will know
that in case of need the whole empire is at its back. When the rest of
the world knows that fact, it will thenceforth probably not trouble our
empire either about international rearrangements or anything else.
EARLY PORT PHILLIP.
"Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And the days o' lang syne."
--Burns.
"Absence makes the heart grow fonder."
--Haynes Bayly.
Entering Port Phillip on the morning of the 13th December, 1840, we were
wafted quickly up to the anchorage of Hobson's Bay on the wings of a
strong southerly breeze, whose cool, and even cold, temperature was to
most of us an unexpected enjoyment in the middle of an Australian
summer. A small boat came to us at the anchorage containing Mr. and Mrs.
D.C. McArthur and others who had friends or relations on board, and who
told us that for some days there had been excessive heat and a hot wind,
which had now reacted in this southerly blast, to go on probably into
heavy rain, the country being excessively dry.
MY FIRST NIGHT ASHORE.
"The Hut on the Flat."
--James Henry.
"How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude."
--Cowper.
The rain did follow at night to the full as predicted. I had engaged to
accompany a young friend that evening to spend the next day, Sunday, at
his "country seat" on Richmond Flat, where he had constructed, mostly
with his own hands, a sort of hut or wigwam, under an unchallenged
squattage. Being engaged in a store for long hours on Saturday night, it
was past eleven ere we started. The rain had begun to pour, and the
night was pitch dark. We got into Collins-street, but had much
difficulty in keeping its lines where there were not post-and-rail
fences round the vacant allotments. Only three years had elapsed since
Melbourne had been named and officially laid out, and, excepting the
very centre, there were still wide intervals between the houses on
either side even of Collins-street. After floundering helplessly about
in the foundation-cutting of a new house, which was already full of
water, but happily only a few inches deep, we at length emerged upon the
open of the present Fitzroy Gardens, where for a little time we could
keep to the bush track only by trying the ground with our feet or our
fingers. But in spite of all care we soon lost the road, and wandered
about in the pouring rain for the rest of the night. We were young and
strong, and as the rain did not chill us, we were in but little
discomfort. A beauteous sunny morning broke upon us, with a delicious
fragrance from the refreshed ground. We found ourselves near the Yarra,
between the present busy Hawthorn and Studley Park. Solitude and quiet
reigned around us, excepting the enchanting "ting ting" of the bell
bird. We stripped ourselves, wrung our drenched clothes, and spread them
to dry in the sun, and then plunged into the dark, deep still Yarra for
our morning bath, afterwards duly reaching my friend's country seat.
INDIGENOUS FEATURES AROUND MELBOURNE.
"There are more things in heaven and earth
Than are dreamt of in our philosophy."
--Hamlet
These features form an interesting retrospect of early Melbourne. They
have nearly all disappeared since with the growth of town and
population. Some who preceded me saw the kangaroo sporting over the site
of Melbourne--a pleasure I never enjoyed, as the timid creatures fled
almost at once with the first colonizing inroad. I have spoken of the
little bell bird, which, piping its pretty monotone, flitted in those
earlier years amongst the acacias on the banks of the Yarra close to
Melbourne, but which has taken its departure to far distances many a
year ago. The gorgeous black cockatoo was another of our early company,
now also long since departed. For a very few years after my arrival they
still hovered about Melbourne, and I recollect gazing in admiration at a
cluster of six of them perched upon a large gum-tree near the town, upon
the Flemington-road. The platypus, also, was quite plentiful, especially
in the Merri Creek. Visiting, about 1843, my friend Dr. Drummond, who
had a house and garden at the nearest angle of the creek, about two
miles from town, we adjourned to a "waterhole" at the foot of the
garden, on the chance of seeing a platypus, and sure enough, after a
very few minutes, one rose before us in the middle of the pool.
THE ABORIGINAL NATIVES IN AND ABOUT TOWN.
"Oh I see the monstrousness of man
When he looks out in an ungrateful shape."
--Timon of Athens.
The natives still strolled into Melbourne at the time of my arrival, and
for a couple of years or so after; but they were prohibited about the
time of the institution of the corporation, as their non-conformity in
attire--to speak in a decent way--their temptations from offers of drink
by thoughtless colonists, and their inveterate begging, began soon to
make them a public nuisance. But aboriginal ways did not die at once.
The virtues or integrity of native life, as Strzelecki would phrase it,
struggled and survived for some few further years the strong upsetting
tide of colonial life.
Returning one night, about 1843, from dining with Mr. William Locke, an
old colonial merchant, at his pretty cottage and gardens on the Merri
Creek, between four and five miles out by the Sydney-road, I diverged
westwards from the purely bush track which as yet constituted that main
highway of the future Victoria. My object was to escape the swampy
vicinities of Brunswick, a village about three miles out of town,
consisting for a number of years of three small brick cottages,
adventurously rather than profitably built by an early speculator. With
firm footing and under a bright moon, I had a pleasant walk through what
is now the beautiful Royal Park, when, judging that I must be nearing
Melbourne, I perceived quite a number of lights ahead. There were as yet
no public lights to scattered little Melbourne in those early days,
although the new corporation, elected the year before, had got to work
by this time. So, what could it all be? I was not long in suspense. It
could only be a native encampment, and I was soon in its midst. The
natives at a distance, especially in the far western direction, were
still at times hostile, but all those who lived near town were already
quite peaceful, so that I had no hesitation in now entering their
encampment. I was most cordially received and shown over the different
wigwams, each of which had its fire burning. I was taken specially to
one occupied by a poor fellow who, under native war laws, had had his
kidney-fat wrenched out and eaten by his foes. He showed me the wound,
which, however, had now healed up. But he himself had never recovered,
being sadly weak and death-like, as one who had but little more to do
with this busy world.
The last great native demonstration near Melbourne, and, indeed, so far
as I can recollect, the last of its kind within the colony, took place
about a mile north-east of the town, in the middle of 1844. This was a
grand corrobboree, arranged for amongst themselves by surrounding
tribes, including the still considerable tribe of the River Goulburn.
This was, as it were, one last aboriginal defiance, hurled in despair
from the expiring native cause against the too-victorious colonial
invasion. We of the town had heard of the proposed exhibition, and many,
including myself, went out to see it. There were present seven hundred
aborigines of all ages and both sexes. The performances were chiefly by
the younger men, in bands of fifties, for the respective tribes, while
the females, in lines by themselves, beat the time, and gave what they
no doubt considered to be music.
EARLY CIVILIZING DIFFICULTIES.
"He loves his own barn better
Than he loves our house."
--First Part Henry IV.
Up to that time, and for some time longer, the religious conversion of
these natives was regarded as hopeless, so deeply "bred in blood and
bone" was aboriginal character. Consequently all the earlier missions
were abandoned in utter despair, with only one exception, that of the
Moravians, which, in faith and duty continuing the work, was at length
rewarded with success. Naturally some few, especially amongst the young,
were less severely "native" than the rest, and these were more or less
gained. But the change came with the next generation, "born in the
purple" of surrounding colonial life. The blood and bone had been
partially neutralized, and this is still more the result of yet another
generation that has followed, so that, in spite of the black skin, the
missionary now deals with natures much more amenable to his teachings.
A remarkable illustration of aboriginal tenacity, which, however, I am
quoting only from memory, occurred in South Australia. Two aboriginal
children, separated from babyhood from aboriginal life, were trained and
educated like colonists. For the earlier years little difference was
noticed, but as they advanced into boyhood some restlessness became
evident. When, on one occasion, a native tribe, presumably their own,
happened to be near Adelaide, these children, who had either seen them
or heard of them, made their escape at the earliest opportunity, and,
having reached the native camp, at once threw off the habiliments of
civilization, and never after showed any disposition to return to the
conditions they had so summarily rejected.
"THE BEACH" (NOW PORT MELBOURNE).
"Thinking of the days that are no more."
--Tennyson.
At the time of my arrival, all Melbourne-bound passengers were put out
by their respective ships' boats upon that part of the northern beach of
Port Phillip that was nearest to Melbourne, whence, in straggling lines,
as they best could in hot winds, they trod a bush track of their own
making, which, about a mile and a half long, brought them to a punt or
little boat just above "The Falls," where the owner made a good living
at 3 pence a head for the half-minute's passage. This debarkation place
got to be called, par excellence, "The Beach." It consisted already of
two public-houses, kept respectively by Liardet and Lingham. Both were
respectable people in their way, but the first was also a character. Of
good family connection, he had enjoyed a life of endless adventure,
which, however, had never seemed any more to elevate him by fortune than
to depress him by its reverse. He was a kind of roving Garibaldi, minus,
indeed, the hero's war-paint and the Italian unity, but with all his
frankness and indomitable resource. Having a family of active young
sons, he secured the boating of "the Beach" as well as the other thing.
But his untold riches of experience seemed never to condescend to
develop into riches of mere money--and perhaps without one pang of
regret to his versatile and resourceful mind.
This Beach was a sterile spot, afterwards fittingly called Sandridge,
and presented so little inducement to occupancy that these two
public-houses were the whole of it till well on to the days of gold.
Then The Beach awoke to its destinies. When the Melbourne and Hobson's
Bay railway was projected, in 1852, there were already a good few
houses, mostly wooden, straggling along either side of the original bush
track. Then arose the respectable suburb of Sandridge, to be finally
superseded by the municipality of Port Melbourne, which, with its mayor
and corporation, can now enter the London market with its own loan
issues.
The only other indigenous feature of this somewhat featureless Beach
which I recollect was a little virulently salt lagoon, situated in
complete isolation near the Bay, and only some hundred yards on the
right-hand side of the track to Melbourne. We all knew it was there, but
it had extremely few visitors, owing to its unapproachable surrounding
of bushes, and its bad repute from a countless guard of huge and
ferocious mosquitos. Without outlet for its extra-briny waters, and in
its desolate solitude, it might have aspired to be a sort of tiny Dead
Sea. With the advance of Sandridge this evil-omened southern Avernus
came in for better consideration, and by 1854, with a cutting into the
Bay, it had become a ready-made boat haven. The Melbourne maps now show
me that it must have reached still higher destinies.
EARLY MELBOURNE, ITS UPS AND DOWNS--1840-51.
"Will Fortune never come with both hands full?"
--Second Part Henry IV.
"The weakest go to the wall."
--Romeo and Juliet.
But "it's better to scheme than to slumber."
--J. Brunton Stephens, Queensland.
"Sweet are the uses of adversity."
--As You Like It.
When Fawkner, in August, 1835, following Batman's example of the
previous May, organized and sent forth his party from Launceston to
explore and colonize Port Phillip, his instruction was that they should
squat down for a home only where there was adequate fresh water. When,
in their cruising about to that end, the party entered the Yarra at the
Bay's head, ascended its roundabout course, and found ample water to
drink above "the Falls," they at once disembarked there, and there in
consequence arose Melbourne. Fawkner, following in October, confirmed
the choice, and with his characteristic energy commenced the work of
colonization. The immediate needs decide many things "for better, for
worse." A good many have since thought that this has been a costly and
inconvenient site for the colony's capital, and that that of
Williamstown, with its healthful level, like New York, might have been
better, and, still better than either, Geelong, with its beautiful
ready-made harbour, its immediate background of rich soil, and its
direct access to all the superior capabilities of the west and
north-west. But there Melbourne is, and in spite of all obstacles it is
already the prominent city of the Southern Hemisphere, and Fawkner is
justly its father. When Melbourne's father died, now a good many years
ago, and with not a few of the admitted honours and merits of a long,
laborious, and useful life, I sent authority to friends there to
subscribe for me to the inevitable monument. But my offered money was
never demanded, and therefore I fear that the living busy tide of such a
host of sons has crowded out the memory of the dead parent.
A vision of earliest Melbourne rises before me. Allotment speculators
were bound, within moderate time, to construct a "dwelling" on their
purchase, and in some cases these were made with honest intention, as in
the two adjacent half-acres of Mr. James Smith and Mr. Skene Craig in
west Collins-street. But in most cases these coerced structures were
only shams, which disappeared right early. The only "buildings" on a
good many sections, that are now central and almost priceless, were
post-and-rail fences, somewhat dilapidated at places by our license of
jumping over them for a short diagonal to adjacent streets.
Let me try to recall the Melbourne of 1840, as it looked in that year,
the year of my arrival. In the first place I must protest against the
meagre view given some years ago in the "Illustrated London News", from
a sketch by Mossman, an early colonist of my acquaintance, and copied
into the lively and pleasant volume of my esteemed friend, Miss Isabella
Bird (now Mrs. Bishop). It may be true as far as it goes, but it is only
the Western Market square, which had hardly one-thirtieth part of that
year's Melbourne. At the close of 1840 there were between three and four
thousand of population, although perhaps one-fourth of these, who had
been recently shot out of emigrant ships, were merely waiting for
employment or settlement. The whole District had about nine thousand.
Curiously enough, Melbourne (including suburbs) has always had about
one-third of the total colonial population, while Sydney and Adelaide
respectively have been much the same. But this naturally comes of a vast
interior behind, which has practically only the one outlet. In New
Zealand, on the other hand, the long strip of land, with the sea near to
every part, calls into being a number of small capitals. The latter are
the immediate facilities; but, in the other case, the ultimate creation
of a surpassingly great city, with all its powerful concentration of
resource, seems on the whole the more promising for a country's advance
in all the interests of human life. The latest returns for the end of
last year (1887) give 392,000 people to Melbourne, in a total for the
colony of 1,033,000.
Taking central Collins-street, which was then, and I suppose is still,
the chief seat of business, and beginning with "The Shakespeare," at the
market corner, where originally Fawkner opened the first public-house,
and proceeding eastwards to Swanston-street, there was a good sprinkling
of brick-built offices, stores, and shops, including Kerr and Holmes, in
stationery; Drummond's grocery (wooden), Turnbull, Orr and Co.,
Forsyth's druggery, the Imperial Inn, Pittman, Dinwoodie's saddlery,
Townend's corner (wooden), George James's wine office and house, and the
ill-fortuned Port Phillip Bank. Returning by the other side were Hood,
chemist; Cashmore, draper; Carson, shoemaker; J.M. Chisholm and the
Benjamins, soft goods; the hardware shop of William Witton, a leading
Wesleyan, his Wesleyan Church, and the Bank of Australasia, which
towered up, prince of the small squad. To the far east, on the south
side, was our worthy Dr. Howitt's good house and garden. On the other
side were some few small brick dwellings. One was occupied by
Deputy-Assistant Commissary General Erskine. In another was Dr. Hobson,
whose untimely death was an early grief to our small society, unable to
spare such lives. He was the friend and correspondent of Professor Owen,
and supplied the Prince of Science with curious data of the strange, and
then but scantily known, Australian fauna, from the platypus, at the
head of modern wonders, back to the earliest marsupialdom of the fossil
world.
The Reverend Alexander Morison's Independent Church and adjacent manse
came next. The Scots Church, lower down, of which the Reverend James
Forbes was minister, was then being built. Not till the next year was
the creditably large Mechanics' Institute begun. A good story is told of
it, characteristic of the earlier flourish of the times. Mr. P.W. Welsh,
then the leading merchant, had offered to subscribe so largely that the
committee took offence at such vain presumption, and limited
subscriptions to more modest sums.
Returning to the market place, and taking its eastern side, was a small
nest of early merchants--E.M. Sayers, whose stores my firm bought eight
years later; Watson and Wight; Were Brothers, whose senior, the
well-known Mr. Jonathan Binns Were, was always, under all fortunes, a
prominent and influential merchant and citizen; W. and H. Barnes and
Co., and perhaps one or two more. But as the buildings are not given in
Mossman's sketch, they probably belong to the end of the year, or
possibly tide over into 1841. Towards the foot of the market slope the
first Custom House was being built, and of that dismal, dark-brown
indurated sandstone, of which other places--St. James's Church, the old
gaol, etc.--were also built, because it was so near at hand.
Sweeping now round to the west side we come to the good store and
residence belonging to J.F. Strachan, of Geelong, and managed by F.
Nodin, who was quite a character of the time, with his bustling form,
and face ever full of business, whether business were full or not. He
would always accept his bills in red ink, and, as the joke goes, the
bills being good, the Nodin manner was supposed to help even the
non-Nodin bills through at the "Australasia." At the corner opposite the
Shakespeare was the Melbourne Auction Company, where I first met my most
worthy old friend, George Sinclair Brodie, so well known for ten years
after as the leading Melbourne auctioneer, or rather "broker," for that
is nearer the home equivalent. He was the salesman, while a genial and
amusing good fellow, John Carey, from Guernsey, was manager. The company
had just paid 20 per cent dividend--the first as well as the last in
that way. In the jolly days up to that time every buyer got credit, and
there was plenty of business; but when the times changed the credit
bills were not met, and so the poor M.A.C., which had as usual
guaranteed them, got cleaned out.
Down Collins-street once more, we pass the primitive wooden cottage
residence of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, whose family of fine daughters were
already all married--Mrs. D.S. Campbell, Mrs. R. Russell, Mrs. Martin,
Mrs. Hutton--excepting the youngest, then a school-girl, afterwards
married to Nantes, of Geelong, D.S. Campbell's partner. Then came Craig
and Broadfoot's stores, and Alison and Knight's flour mills. At the end
was pretty green Batman's Hill, which has since been remorselessly
sacrificed for the great railway terminus. Batman's original wooden
house on the southern slope was, after his early death, occupied as the
Government offices by Mr. La Trobe, and this homely tenement did such
high duties for no small subsequent term. Down hereabout was also a
conspicuous line of five little wooden cottages, called Roach-terrace,
after Captain Roach, another very early colonist, which were each let at
5 pounds a week, although they would not have brought half that money by
the year at home. Returning on the other side was St. James's Church, in
charge of the Reverend Mr. Thomson, of most sociable memory, within its
ample open area, and, further on, the notorious Lamb Inn.
For the rest of Melbourne of 1840 I must be content with one general
sketch. Manton's Mills had arisen at the lower end of "the wharf," such
as it then was. Flinders-street had as yet but little in it. James
Jackson, afterwards Jackson, Rae and Company, was already there. About
the middle was the cottage of P.W. Welsh, prior to his removing to South
Yarra; and there, as the story goes again, Mrs. Welsh gave her "Five
Hundred Pound Party," but having unfortunately omitted Arden, the editor
of the "Gazette", in the invitations, he was left free to denounce so
bad an example of extravagance. Bourke-street had an incongruous
grouping, including the well-known Kirk's Bazaar, and the superb
cottage, for its time, of Mr. Carrington, the solicitor; and in Little
Bourke-street was Mr. Condell's brewery. At the far east end was Mr.
Porter's good cottage, and further on, Mr. La Trobe's bijou residence,
in its pretty grounds, which, although only of wood and of the smallest
dimensions, he stuck to until his final leave in 1854. The lanes, or
Little Flinders and Collins streets, were already fairly filled, as the
land there was much cheaper. In the former were Heap and Grice's
offices, and the Adelphi Hotel, approaching the Lamb Inn in noisy
repute. The latter had Bells and Buchanan, the Post-Office under D.
Kelsh, and, where Elizabeth-street crossed, G. Lovell and Company and
Campbell and Woolley. The Catholic Church in Lonsdale-street was under
construction, and on the western brow was Mr. Abrahams's good house,
with his two pretty girl children, one of whom was in succession Mrs.
Pike, Mrs. Gray, and Mrs. Williams, and is still alive, with a
creditable total of family. Beyond was the trackless bush, excepting the
bush tracks to Sydney, and in the Flemington and Keilor direction. But
outside the town were already several suburbs, of which Collingwood was
the largest, having the residences of John Hunter Patterson and other
leading early colonists.
I used to traverse not a few dreary empty allotments in the hot summer
sun to reach the stores of my friend the Honourable James Graham, whose
dwelling and business place in Russell, by Bourke street, seemed then
quite far out of the village, but is since in the very heart of the
great city. The course of values in the colony, early and late, is well
illustrated by this example. The allotment originally belonged to our
friend in common, S.A. Donaldson, of Sydney, who had bought for some
nominal price at the Government sale in 1837. He bought many other lots
thereabout, and towards Collingwood, further east and north; and after
the gold discoveries, he told me pathetically, oftener than once, that
his impatience to sell had lost him the status and happiness--whatever
the latter might be--of a millionaire. Donaldson had let this place,
with its house, stores, etc., good as these things went then, to Graham,
at 500 pounds a year. This was about 1838-9, when everything in business
ways was rolling jollily upwards. But some few years afterwards the
landlord's attorneys, William Ryrie and myself, had to reduce the rent
to either 100 or 50 pounds--I think the latter. Some years later, Graham
purchased at 2,000 pounds, and it is understood has lately resold at
something approaching a quarter of a million. As these matters are all
locally so well known, I feel that, as with wills at Doctor's Commons, I
tread upon no toes in such useful illustrations.
I arrived just to witness the last glories of the famous champagne
lunches, which prefaced the auction sales of these early days, and
repeatedly I saw in his element Charles Williams, the earliest of his
trade. If such lunches cost 40 pounds, which was given me as a moderate
average, who suffered, argued their justifiers, if the exhilaration they
produced gave 400 pounds more to the net proceeds? The brisk liquor
appreciably blew up the prices, as the same lots, cut up and rearranged,
would come again and yet again under the hammer. Many a bullock-drover
would pull up on passing the auction room or tent, and quaff off half a
bottle to the good health of all concerned in such liberality. One
respectable old colonist was said to have almost lived on those lunches
in the dear early times, so regularly did he encourage and patronize
them. The bidding public were regaled before the sale, but the
auctioneer and his clients after--a plan which made very much the better
business, as might have been seen by the effects in either case.
Williams began with 4,000 pounds a year profits, which I dare say went
on to the rate of 10,000 pounds for the brief term. He was just
finishing what, for those times, was a fine villa on the Yarra-bank,
beyond Richmond, when the rapidly receding tide left him, as well as
many others, stranded.
Great gum-tree stumps were grievously prevalent, alike in Melbourne
streets and allotments. Swanston-street was special in this way, and
they long flourished upon allotments about where the city hall at first
stood. One huge stump, just touching the Collins-street line where the
Criterion Hotel was afterwards built, long held defiant existence, the
wooden building of the time having deviated to go round it. When at
length the lot came to be sold by Mr. James Purves, a well-known early
allotment-monger, whom I recollect on this occasion descanting on the
future prospects of so central a site, the buyer had the too
long-endured enemy attacked and extirpated.
THE MELBOURNE CORPORATION, 1842.
"When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy winter's field."
--Shakespeare, Sonnet 2.
The corporation arose towards the end of 1842, and then the anti-stump
warfare began. My friend Henry Condell, like so many other early birds a
Tasmanian (a Vandemonian was the ill-omened name at that time), was the
first mayor. The times were bad, and the shilling rating caused a growl,
but the new body held its way. John Charles King, an Ulster man, and of
good abilities, was the first town clerk. His successor, William Kerr,
had greater abilities, but not equal method and activity. Both were
strong Orangemen--a feeling, however, for which this colonial ground was
not favourable.
The bane and bottomless deep for the corporation's narrow budget was
Elizabeth-street, where a little "casual" called "The Williams," of a
mile's length, from the hardly perceptible hollows of the present Royal
Park, played sad havoc at times with the unmade street. It had scooped
out a course throughout, almost warranting the title of a gully, and at
Townend's corner we needed a good long plank by way of a bridge. At the
upper end of the street was a nest of deep channels which damaged daily
for years the springs and vehicles of the citizens. The more knowing of
us who lived northwards dodged these evils by a particular roundabout
via Swanston-street. Up almost to gold diggings and Victorian
Parliaments did the great Sydney-road begin thus inauspiciously, and
hardly less pertinaciously disconcerting was the Brunswick swamp, three
miles further on. Melbourne missed a great chance in filling up with a
street this troublesome, and, as a street, unhealthy hollow. Dr. Howitt
used to tell me he never could cure a patient, resident there, who had
become seriously unwell. A reservation of the natural grass and
gum-trees between Queen and Swanston streets would have redeemed
Melbourne up to the first rank of urban scenic effect, and the riotous
Williams might, with entire usefulness, have subsided into a succession
of ornamental lakes and fish ponds.
EARLY SUBURBAN MELBOURNE.
"Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness."
--Cowper.
"Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife."
-Gray.
In 1844 I lived in a little cottage at South Yarra, on the Dandenong or
Gardiner's Creek-road, then only a bush track, although considerably
trodden. I had not many neighbours. Mr. Jackson, at the far end, had
bought Toorak, but not yet built upon it; and the near end was graced by
Mr. R.H. Browne's pretty villa, in its ample grounds, sold shortly
before to Major Davidson, and constituting the palace of its time along
the road. There was a trackless forest opposite us, and more than once I
missed my way in trying to make a straight cut to the present St. Kilda.
One Sunday morning I made a discovery--a small sheet of water,
glittering in the sunshine, and I long gazed admiringly on the countless
insects and plants about its edges. It was confessedly neither broad nor
deep, and a certain tag-rag indefiniteness of outline gave occasion
afterwards to envious anti-Prahraners all about to make it out as only a
swamp. The little thing had much badgering to endure in this way in
Prahran's early progress. Later on, I saw it as a sort of central
reserve of the ever-rising Prahran. But still later it was drained off
and turned about its business, as either a profitless nuisance, or a too
costly ornamentation: sic transit, etc.
The following year, 1845, in which my worthy old friend Alfred Ross
joined me in business in the Market-square, then a place of the very
smallest pretensions compared to now, I rented, with him, the allotment
next beyond the Major's. It had been vacant since its previous occupancy
three years before by Mr. P.W. Welsh, already spoken of--one of the
earliest and largest, best known, and least fortunate of Melbourne's
early merchants. That the bad times that had brought many of us to the
ground had then not quite passed, although they had by this time
evidently "bottomed," may be judged by the fact that we got a fairly
habitable large cottage, with twenty-five picturesque acres, and the
remains, such as they were, of a garden, for 30 pounds a year. Five
years earlier some thousands a year would have been needed to live in
such a place. Eight years later it was worth, for mere site value,
probably 30,000 pounds. I am afraid to say what it may now be worth.
Probably most of it is long ago "cut up" into streets and town lots,
like "Major Davidson's paddock" alongside, which, consisting of some
twelve acres next the Dandenong-road, realized in 1854, under gold
discovery stimulus, no less than 17,000 pounds. Such are a few specimens
of colonial ups and downs!
Here, too, we made acquaintance, pleasant and long protracted, with our
neighbours, the gallant Major--since Colonel--Davidson, his quiet and
amiable wife, and "Missie," as she was called, their only child, then of
seven years, but in due time a surpassingly accomplished young lady, who
was married to the son of Colonel Anderson, and still survives in
London. She has confessed to me since that she used then to look up to
me with great awe and regard--not merely, I hope, because I was so much
the senior.
Only one other incident here. One dark night, towards the fall of
summer, detained by business longer than usual, we lost our way as we
walked home, distance hardly two miles. After some "dandering" about, in
order to strike the corner of Major Davidson's fence, which was as good
to us as at home, we caught glimpse of a light, which in that place we
knew must be a stranger. Then, as we approached, there were figures and
voices. Who should this be but old Liardet from The Beach, with a
section of his family, who, having an outing in Melbourne, had, like
ourselves, stayed too late, and were now hopelessly at sea, and far out
of their track in groping their way back. They offered us a share of
quarters, as it seemed useless to try the pathless forest any longer.
But we were too sure of our whereabouts to give up the game so easily,
and after some more perambulating we struck the fence.
In spite of the attractions and economies of Tempe--for that, I think,
was the name it ambitiously held--we quitted South Yarra within the same
year for a still greater bargain and temptation in the opposite
direction, where I had just then the chance of picking up, "at an old
song," the pretty cottage previously occupied by Mr. Locke, on the Merri
Creek, four miles north by the Sydney-road. Besides the presentable
cottage, there was a large, well-stocked garden, at enacre cultivation
field, and a small natural park (vulgarly, paddock), in all 46 acres,
for 50 pounds, plus 300 pounds of inevitable mortgage. I called it
Maryfield, after my parental home in Edinburgh, and revelled in grapes,
plums, and peaches, and much other country happiness. When a host of
visitors, on a bright summer day, would rather strain the narrow larder,
I used to divert the party into the garden, where they could complete
their meal, although at times with inconvenient demand, from the male
section at least, upon the brandy. When, in 1854, I re-sold "the lot" to
Mr. David Moore, under the heavy temptation of 6,000 pounds, he took the
warrantable liberty of a slight nominal alteration to Moorefield, while
at the same time he erased the poor old cottage for something more
accordant with great golden Victoria.
In this case I had a rather striking illustration of the old
land-transfer and other law costs incubus from which my late friend Sir
R.R. Torrens has so effectually relieved these colonies; and that, too,
as I believe, owing to the multiplied transactions, without any real
detriment to our many legal friends. Pounds were pounds in those
economy-needing times, and as the Savings Bank had, after a thorough
overhaul, accepted the title before giving its loan, I declared myself
perfectly satisfied to proceed at once to the conveyance. But no, that
was impossible. The courtesies, the practice, the established rights, in
short, of ancient custom required all to be done over again, in attested
copies of title, draughts of title as to defects for counsel's opinion,
and so on, even if all the paper and verbiage were to go straight to the
waste-basket; and thus a not over convenient bill of about 70 pounds was
rolled up. But I must at the same time bear in mind that this heavy drag
applied to all landed property, restricting business in it and reducing
its value. Had Torrens's Act been then in action, I could not possibly,
with the resulting higher value of land, have secured my bargain at the
fifty pounds, probably not even at fifty plus the seventy.
THE EARLY SQUATTING TIMES.
"Our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything."
--As You Like It.
The title "Victoria" did not come to us until, on 1st July, 1851, we
bloomed into an independent colony, having succeeded, after a good deal
of struggle and contention, in getting separated from our mother, New
South Wales, who complimented us by being very loath, and even angry,
that so very promising a child should be detached from her. We had begun
as the Southern or Port Phillip District of that spacious colony, which
had already dropped South Australia, and eight years afterwards was to
lose yet another arm in Queensland.
I recall with interest and pleasure some early trips into the interior,
when it was in a very different condition from now, when the indigenous
reigned almost uninvaded throughout, and when aboriginal natives were in
many places as plentiful as colonists. For some years squatting life was
the predominant or rather all but the sole feature of the interior
beyond Melbourne. The little capital was at first always called "the
settlement"--a distinctive title, however, which was just expiring when
I arrived. But, for some years after, the term "settler" always meant a
squatter, and not a farmer, as might be supposed, with his "settled" or
fee-simple home.
My first trip to the interior was, towards the end of 1841, to the sheep
station of my old friend Sam Jackson, situated on the Deep Creek,
seventeen miles northward from Melbourne. There I first tasted damper
and saw the novelties of squatting life. Samuel, and his brother
William, nicknamed for some reason "The General," were of the very
earliest from "over the straits," William having been one of the party
organized and sent over in August, 1835, by Fawkner. Sam followed soon
after, and they "took up" this station on the Deep Creek, under the
natural impression that to be so near "the settlement" must be an
advantage. They soon found it otherwise for more than one reason. The
constant tramp of sheep passing over their "run" to go beyond them
exposed their ground to infection, especially from scab. And they were
exposed in another way hardly less costly and far more annoying; for
every "traveller," whether bond fide or not, claimed quarters at the
Jacksons', and made the sheep disappear of a hungry morning with
marvellous rapidity, and at a time when, with the demand for live stock
to fill up the empty country, their value had risen to 40 shillings each
and upwards. "The General" had mainly to sustain this attack, as his
brother was generally in Melbourne practising professionally as an
architect, and was engaged at that very time in building the Scots'
Church in Collins-street. Naturally enough, he would fain have turned
somewhat the flank of this invading host; but, without being successful,
his efforts only got him the name of "Hungry Jackson."
Later on, I met further variety of early squatting life in a trip to the
Werribee Plains, where some friends, the Pinkertons from Glasgow, and
Mr. James Sceales, late merchant and Chief Magistrate of Leith, had
their respective stations. On those vast plains, extending westwards 30
to 40 miles, from Melbourne to the Anakies, or Station Peak, the slight
and scattered squatting invasion had hardly disturbed anywhere the
indigenous features. Thus over a vast solitude we revelled in much of
specially Australian scenery, particularly that of tortuous and deeply
excavated "creeks," with their chains of ponds or waterholes, the
running stream mostly dried up--indeed sometimes for whole years
together--but all characterized, more or less, by irresistible rushes
after heavy rains, sweeping all before them, including not seldom the
sheep, and even the homestead, of the incautious or inexperienced
settler. I have a striking contrast in store when I revisit those
plains, which now resound to the traffic of road and railway, and to the
busy hum of many towns and villages and of farming and gardening life.
As early as 1842, I paid a pleasant visit to pretty little Geelong, and
thence on to beautiful and diversified, but then almost empty, Colac,
meeting, at either one or other place, Mr. Duncan Hoyle and his two
sisters; the Messrs. Hardie, of Leith, who were then or after the
husbands respectively of these ladies; Messrs. Hugh and Andrew Murray,
and Mr. Augustus Morris, of Colac, who entertained us hospitably at "the
huts"--as station homesteads were then humbly designated--and who poured
out upon us interminable colonial experiences in a clear, penetrating
voice from which there was no escape. But we did not wish to escape, and
so we enjoyed everything.
Mr. Morris, who is now a prominent and useful man in Sydney, came early
from "across the Straits" with the tide, and settled here, and after
some few years, passed through rather trying times, which were not
perhaps quite so profitable as he expected, he was induced to "sell out"
to the famous Mr. Benjamin Boyd, who, arriving unexpectedly just before
this time from London in his fine yacht, had descended upon quiet,
plodding Melbourne like a Dives of unfathomable wealth. He had made a
hasty run up to Colac, seen and appreciated Morris, bought him out, and
left him in charge of this first of many purchases of the great
"Australian Wool Company," or whatever other title was to suit the great
schemes of this busy head which had turned up amongst us. Mr. Boyd's
main idea of buying up squatting property during the reaction sure to
follow the early speculation excitement of 1837 to 1840 was no bad
business project, or at all unskilfully formed. He gave Morris 7
shillings a head for his sheep. But the fall went on continuously into
1844, so that Boyd effected large purchases at rates as low, in some
cases, in the Sydney district, as even one shilling a head, besides
cattle and horses at relatively the same. The result, however, was sad
and terrible. It was confusion and failure, and mainly for this simple
reason--that human nature, left practically uncontrolled, will never
give the due care and attention to interests which are only those of
other people.
He had got up a bank specially for the supply of all the needed funds
for his grand schemes, thus securing, as he put it, an independently
large business for that institution. The chief shareholders knew, or
might have known, the character of their prospects. They all expected
unusual profits under the circumstances, and might possibly have got
them. Under this pleasant result they would have credited chiefly their
own sagacious courage. But instead they realized most severe loss, and
then, with angry unanimity, they condemned, and would have prosecuted,
Boyd. Wrath fell upon the younger brother, Mark, who had stayed at home,
and who, I think, had honestly but vainly striven to keep an
intelligible reckoning out of the confusing advices of his senior's
various and huge money-absorbing speculations. There was a sad
uncertainty about Mr. Boyd's ending. The local representatives, for the
time, of the Royal Bank of Australia had closed accounts with him in the
best way they could, allowing him to leave Sydney with his yacht and
several friends. He visited the Californian diggings, and afterwards
took a cruise among the Pacific Islands. He landed on one of them, as
though for some shooting, but was never either seen or heard of more.
Another pleasant trip about this time was to Yering, the Ryries'
station, situated nearly half-way up to the cool mountainous sources of
the River Yarra. This had already been made a charming home to any
contented mind, satisfied to fall back upon country resources. It was a
cattle station, for, in the thickly wooded hills, hollows, and flats
about sheep could not live--at least, to any purpose--and the homestead
had the importance of a little straggling street, with the main dwelling
at the top, as the end of a cul-de-sac, and the dairy and what not in
marshalled line below. We revelled in pastoral abundance. I wandered
into the adjacent woods, experiencing the sense of overpowering grandeur
amidst their vast solitudes, with the gum-trees rising straight above me
with colossal stems, not seldom 300 feet and more in height, and 100
feet, or even much more, from the ground without a branch. When this
"redgum" has elbow room, it expands in all variety of form, attaining in
favouring circumstances vast dimensions, as in one example met with in
the Dandenong Ranges, which measured 480 feet in height. But in this
Yering case, crowded as they were impoverishingly together upon flats of
the river, they did not bulk out into such dimensions, but they shot up
side by side, straight as arrows, rivals en route to the clouds. Sad
changes came to Yering's happy and hospitable owners since, for, like
many others, they had to "realize" in the bad times, and to quit a most
pleasant home. But Yering itself has thriven, and has since advanced
into a great wine-producing district, whose wines Mr. De Castella, its
later owner, has made to carry prizes even at European Exhibitions.
EARLY WESTERN VICTORIA ("AUSTRALIA FELIX").
"Oh! 'tis the sun that maketh all things shine."
--Love's Labour Lost.
"He makes a July day short as December."
--Winter's Tale.
But my chief excursions, which have left a pleasantly vivid recollection
of early colonizing life, were made to the far west--the one in 1844,
right through to the Glenelg; the other the year after, to the
newly-founded township of Warrnambool. The first of these was undertaken
partly on business in the interests of the Boyd stations lately formed
about Eumerella, a place of evil repute then as to the native hostility.
I had previously chanced to "chum" with Boyd's Port Phillip manager, Mr.
Robert Fennell, a young fellow as well-looked, gentlemanly, and pleasant
as anyone could meet with, and with whom I both officed and housed to
mutual satisfaction for two years, until his marriage with a daughter of
John Batman. And thus I came in for some few of the many Boyd
commissions that were flying freely about in those years, and which were
not at all unacceptable to any of us in that time of small things. I
afterwards, as I have pleasure in recording, received the hospitalities
of the great commission-maker in his generously open house at Sydney.
Once more, in passing westwards, I was at Colac. It was the month of
June (midwinter), but the country, with its lake, was not the less
beautiful in the universal green. Excepting the partial post-and-rail
barricade of my friend William Robertson's 5,000 acres of purchased
land, there was nothing all around but free and open squatting. On every
side was the hardly yet disturbed indigenous aspect. Pelicans flew
aloft, tall "adjutants" stalked about here and there, and cockatoos
screeched everywhere. One of the curious green knolls, so common there,
was so thickly covered with the yellow-crested white cockatoo as to give
the look of a cap of snow.
Leaving Morris's huts, I made for another Boyd station, in the famous
far west Eumerella district. There were many beauties around, for I had
entered Mitchell's "Australia Felix"--its extreme borders, to be sure,
but the most beautiful of it all. My nag was more than ever "in clover,"
and we wandered on through marvels upon marvels of remarkable and richly
fertile country. The country was all but empty as I now coursed through
it, but no amount of colonization could much alter its most striking
scenery, geological and general. I had some sense of awe and mystery as
I gazed down into a sort of "Dead Sea" depths at the southern end of
salt, salt Korangamite, and then up at the abruptly towering "Stony
Rises," capped by volcanic Porndon in my near vicinity. I passed the
Manifolds', where a sprinkling of fat cattle left hardly an impression
on the superabounding grass.
Eumerella, or rather the Boyd fragment of that large, rich, and varied
cattle area, was in charge of a versatile youth of the name of Craufurd,
of a good Scotch family, whom, to the great amusement of my friend
Fennell, I re-christened as Squire Hopeless, owing to his utter
nonconformability to the monotonies of civilized life. I was
sufficiently versed in geology to be aware of the wonders around me, so
we were soon off over the Stony Rises to Mount Eeles, only a few miles
away, which, like another Porndon, raised its not lofty but
mysterious-looking head to arouse our curiosity. We were guided latterly
by a well-beaten native track, for this seemed a favourite walk of the
aborigines. Our trip was not without danger, for the aboriginal
relations had been anything but of that peacefulness which characterized
the Melbourne vicinities; but we made up a station detachment under a
remarkably fine strong young fellow called Wells, of Tasmanian birth,
and equal, in an emergency, to six or a dozen natives for his own share.
We saw nothing of natives, however, and were rewarded with wonders of
geology. The little Mount Eeles cone surmounted, we looked far down into
a vast crater of miles in circuit, whose sharp-ridged, angry,
unsettled-looking sides could barely convince us that we looked upon an
extinct volcano. Hardly did its aspect reach the solid quiet of the
Vesuvian interior, as described by some scanty classic records, prior to
the grand, sudden, entirely unexpected outburst of the Pompeiian
eruption. Let the crowds of the future Pompeiis and Herculaneums of
Victoria look out, for their Vesuvius may some day play havoc, with
similar treachery.
We were introduced early to old Gorrie and his nephew McGregor, two
doughty Scots, famous--and too famous--in the native hostilities of the
last year or two--indeed, ever since these fine runs were taken up. The
aboriginal of so fine a country was, at any rate, a primus inter pares
of his race, and no way to be despised. The white invaders suffered
heavily, in property at least, if not much in their own lives, at the
hands of the invaded. Which side was in fault would have been a hard
knot to unravel, and probably few on either side troubled themselves
much to undo it. Old Gorrie was ever in the thick of war, and duty and
inclination went cordially together. He was a cool and terrible shot,
and had a terribly long and forcibly arguing rifle. The story goes that,
when a couple of pursued marauders had escaped from one covert, and in
wild terror were making for another, he quietly waited till they chanced
to come in line, and then sent one bullet through both. But he had his
cautious and adroit way of telling his doings, as he described to us
how, in the turmoil of pursuit, "the gun gaed aff" and "some puir
craturs fell." He had good need, for the authorities had been thoroughly
aroused by the occasional atrocities that were sure to arise out of the
strong mutual antipathies of the case; and on one occasion, for what
seemed a signal case of this kind, involving the massacre of unresisting
women as well as men, five colonists were arrested and brought to trial,
and would certainly have "swung for it" had there not been some
inadequacy of direct evidence.
The next station, Dunmore, was already quite famed for its pattern
homestead. I entered its hospitable doorway with a sense of comfort and
of the climax of possible squatting attainments such as had never been
approached before. "Campbell, McKnight, and Irvine," "brither Scots"
all, and all of them at home at the time, were of the best company,
classic or otherwise, alike to one another and to all visitors. Janet,
from the kitchen, too, sent us the best oatcakes and other Scotch fare.
I always fancy now that such cooks must be called Janet, from lively
remembrance of the savoury hotch-potch and sheeps' head of another Janet
at old Robert Sutherland's, at Egham.
Thence I reached "Burchetts', of the Emus," less finished, indeed, but
hardly less attractive. They were business clients of my pleasant old
friend Charles Barnes, whose name I gave as my pass, with, however, but
little need in those open-door days. This was a sheep station, as it was
a drier locality, the other stations having been more suited for cattle.
We sat joyously chatting in the bright midwinter sunshine. The air was
redolent of humour, for which the Burchetts had a name. One of them was
rather deaf--indeed very deaf, but when he did pick up the current
subject, he seldom failed to contribute good sauce. With regret I
remounted next morning, for with business finished in this direction, I
was resolved to push on to the Glenelg, as I wished to see through
Victoria westwards while I had the opportunity. So I turned my steed
north for the Wannon.
I struck a little southern tributary of that pretty grass-banked river,
and saw a noteworthy as well as a quite Australian sight. Some recent
slight rains had just set the tiny creek in motion, and it was now in
the act of filling up a previously quite dry waterhole. I watched the
tiny stream till it filled up this hole, and then saw it duly into the
next, only a couple of hundred yards off. There was a long succession of
these holes before it, generally so precisely rounded and scooped out as
to give the idea of human intervention, only that the human beings were
nowhere visible there as yet. Then I came down upon the Wannon, in
continuous admiration of the rolling hills on either side, grass-covered
to the very tops. One part of the Wannon vale here is remarkable for the
deep, almost blood-redness of its rich soil, a hue which seemed to come
from the similarly coloured stone and rock all about. Here I suddenly
came upon a grand spectacle--the falls of the Wannon, which Chevalier's
highly artistic brush has immortalized, along with almost countless
other Australian beauty. The river plunges over a far-projecting floor
direct into a volcanic crater, which, although very much less in its
dimensions, was as unmistakable in its character as that of Mount Eeles.
The only thing I had to regret as absent from the scene, but a most
important factor, was water, for, as far as I recollect, not one drop
was visible over the edge. At flood seasons the spectacle must be grand
indeed.
As evening drew on, causing me to be on the alert for quarters, I espied
a rather pretentious homestead, cosily placed in a natural shelter
half-way up the hillside. This proved to be Mr. Edward Henty's. He was
not at home, but Mrs. Henty happily was. Young, ladylike, beautiful, she
received me with that high courtesy which sets one at once at ease by
the flattering impression that in these squatting solitudes it is rather
the visited than the visitors who are the obliged parties. Ten years
later I, with my wife, called upon her in Melbourne to renew this early
acquaintance. She was then, of course, ten years older, but hardly less
charming. Thirty-four more years have since elapsed, and yet I must
still hope to meet her once more in that country which has become so
great, and which is, in so special a sense, her own.
I reached the Glenelg, which, however, I found to be, at or near the
Wannon junction, hardly better than a big, irregular, ugly ditch. How
curious!--for not far off, above or below, I might have found great deep
waterholes and picturesque water stretches as sketched by Mitchell. I
took all for granted, and turned back homewards.
I struck a little north towards Victoria Range, and passed one of my
nights with a solitary shepherd in an out-hut, so far and away from all
companionable life but that of his sheep that I could well realize, in
this extreme case, the dolorous side of squatting. My breakfast was a
tin of tea without milk, and a hunch of damper of my host's own
baking--not altogether rejectable in the keen fresh air when one had
nothing else. A sheep could not be killed for two, even if the business
could afford it. On I went, merrily withal, for it was the heyday of
youth and strength, making steadily eastwards for the southern extremity
of the Grampians, which rose in grand outline before me, forty miles
away. Neither station nor human being came in my road afterwards till I
reached and was rounding Mount Sturgeon, upon whose rocky summit the
setting sun already glinted. I was now upon a good, broad bush track,
which must lead to some station. But when? This small side-track to the
left looks as though a hut at least were nearer, and so I diverged into
it. Mile after mile I trotted, as well as the rough track would permit,
and when night fell, and for long after, I still pegged away. A dozen
miles right up, within the outer sierra, towards Mount William, brought
me at last to an open glade, where some small piles of "split stuff"
showed me at once my mistake. Dodging about till day, thus giving rest
to my horse, I soon regained my road, and after an hour's further ride,
reached Dr. Martin's sheep station, where a pleasant young fellow, Byass
by name, who had lost an arm in wars of some kind, and was then in
charge, ministered to my wants, and allowed me to take well-nigh the
largest breakfast on record in those parts.
I must not continue in such detail with the rest of my western tours'
incidents, especially as the second was mostly over the same ground as
the first. I dilly reached my last Boyd station, in the pretty and
varied Pyrenees district--a sheep station, then under charge of my
friend James M. Hamilton. Here the hospitalities were equal, but all the
rest sadly below The Gums, and an infinity underneath Dunmore. But
Hamilton promised us compensation in a visit to the more comfortable
residence of a squatting neighbour, Mr. John Allen. The master was not
at home, but the mistress received us with squatting welcome. She was a
young South Australian wife, charming alike in person and manners, and
surrounded by a little troop of children, some with the stamp of her own
beauty. She died not long afterwards, prematurely cut down, alas! like
many another bright flower in the world's great garden.
Next year, 1845, I reached Warrnambool, just then commencing its urban
life with a few straggling small white houses, along the edge of its
pretty semicircular bay. I had passed Mounts Noorat and Shadwell,
occupied respectively by Mr. Neil Black and Captain Webster, both early
colonists, and was once more in raptures with the spectacle of almost
continuously rich soil. I also came upon several round, deep, and
mysterious-looking lakes, one of which, with its waters far below me, I
descended to examine with no slight sensation of awe. I was told of
beautiful and grand coast scenes towards the east and Cape Otway; but
the ways were of Nature's uninviting hardness, and I apprehended a main
difficulty of the Glenmutchkin Railway kind, from want of house or human
being to help dependent humanity. I turned, however, the opposite way,
to rising Belfast and Port Fairy, and wandered about through the Alison
and Knight, and Rutledge and other acres; amongst cockatoos, as the
small farmers were there called, observing a soil of unsurpassable
richness, the potatoes and other products, the former particularly,
being the finest in the world. The striking new feature of this journey
seemed to me the picturesque and beautiful River Hopkins--beautiful in
all but its name! Why give such starched, hard, dot-and-go-one names,
when there are Eumerella, Wannon, Doutagalla, Modewarra, Yarra Yarra,
and countless other such natural and genial modulations to be had of the
natives for the asking?
The year following, when my dear old friends, Mr. and Mrs. A.M. McCrae,
had betaken themselves from hard lines of law to the pleasant variety of
an Arthur Seat cattle station--pleasant to their town visitors at
least--I oftener than once looked in upon them from Melbourne. They had
the life and adornment of a large family of pretty curly-headed young
boys and girls, some of them with the aristocratic fine black hair and
cream-white skin of their accomplished mother. McCrae and I galloped the
thirty miles interval, and while crossing and watering at the
ever-running Cannonook half way, and admiring the varied, almost
park-like vistas among the three gentle hill rises of the bay's eastern
coast, we would marvel at the stupidity of Collins in 1803 in abandoning
such a country. To be sure he chanced to squat on the least inviting of
its varied areas, and this benevolent excuse we confirmed by a ride
across country one day to inspect the spot. All we could see was what
seemed the remnant of a small fireplace. The "cups and saucers" country
we passed over on the way might be interesting geologically, and even
artistically; but on any dry, hot summer day the look around might not
be enlivening to a new arrival. None the less, Sorrento has since arisen
there--a considerable, lively, and pretty watering-place, as I hear, for
which the colony's good friend, Mr. George Coppin, has provided, amongst
other benefits to it, a regular steam communication. This steam route
includes another like wonder of progress, Queenscliff, which, at the
time I speak of, only possessed a lighthouse, but is now a breezy and
lively crowded and fashionable retreat from the great dusty city of
business and cares to the north.
SOME NAMES OF MARK IN THE EARLY YEARS.
"Some are born great; some achieve greatness,
And some have greatness thrust upon them."
--Twelfth Night.
Before endeavouring to give a sketch of our early society and its ways
and means, I am fain to pick out a few prominent persons as they flitted
before me at the time and have stuck to my recollection since. Although
they might not all have been in an equal degree interesting, good or
great in themselves, they were yet men of mark, closely associated in
various ways with our early colonial life, and, like a busy dentist,
much in the mouth of their public. By all right and reason, the first of
these prominent personages is the brotherhood group of the Messrs.
Henty.
THE HENTY FAMILY, AND THE FOUNDATION OF VICTORIA.
"Let the end try the man."
--2nd Part Henry IV.
"Great world! Victoria brings thee meat and corn and wine,
With richly veined woods, and glittering gold from mine,
Fairy web of silken thread, soft thick snowy fleece;
Wide room for smiling homes of industry and peace."
--Mrs. H.N. Baker.
The founder of to-day's great colony of Victoria was Mr. Edward Henty,
who landed at Portland Bay from Launceston, with live stock and stores,
for the purpose of settlement, on the 19th November, 1834. But in regard
to that notable event I prefer to speak of "The Henty Family," because,
in their colonizing efforts they seem to have acted so much with mutual
family purpose and in mutual help, and because there was a preparatory
work in which the family were all more or less engaged, all leading up
to this settlement at Portland, a site which had been selected after
more than two years of previous adventurous excursions and observations
along the coasts of Western Victoria and of South Australia.
The successful settlement of the noble Port Phillip Harbour the
following year by Batman and Fawkner caused such general attention and
such a tide of colonization, that remote Portland was comparatively
overlooked. For many years, therefore, much less was heard of the Hentys
than of those who had merely followed their steps. In fact, there can be
but little doubt that these latter were first aroused to the colonizing
of the vast areas, the all but terra incognita, across the Straits by
the vigorous example set by the Henty family almost from the moment of
their arrival in Launceston in 1831, and by the reports which they
brought back from time to time of the lands of promise they were opening
to public notice in South-Eastern Australia. But now that rail and
telegraph have virtually abolished distance, and familiarized the
central colonists with the value and beauty of the earliest occupied
Western areas--the Australia Felix of Mitchell--the Messrs. Henty's
position has passed more to the front, and their priority been
universally acknowledged.
I was not personally very intimate with any of the Henty family,
otherwise I might have had more to say in this sketch. But I have met
most of the brothers repeatedly, and frequently I met James, the
Melbourne merchant, who was the eldest, and also William, the lawyer and
ex-Premier of Tasmania, a most amiable and gentlemanly man, who latterly
resided at Home, where he died, and who often attended the lectures and
discussions at the Royal Colonial Institute of London. Both of these
brothers were rather grave and quiet, while Edward and Stephen were
energetic and lively even beyond most colonists. Francis, now the only
survivor of the large family, I met only once, about forty-three years
ago, in the Western District. He was then a handsome and rather slim
young man, not of the Henty mould, which was rather of the full John
Bull kind, as "Punch" gives him, minus the obesity. But if I may credit
the Melbourne "Illustrateds" in a recent likeness of the last of the
Victorian founders, he must have consented, in later life, to drop more
into the family mould. They were a family of eight sons and one
daughter. Seven of the sons emigrated with their father. They were all
men of mark, above average in mind and physique--men of a presence, who
would have been prominent in any society; altogether, in numbers, in
appearance, in circumstances, and in events, quite a remarkable family.
As I am not writing for history, so as to study completeness in my
account, but only of personal observations and recollections, I shall
not do more than give a very slight sketch of the emigratory particulars
of this family, and my excuse is that these data are so far personal as
having been told me direct by one or other of the family. The story is
striking, and our descendants may look back with surpassing interest to
the Romulus and Remus of a future Rome which, in the possibilities of
modern progress, may exceed that of the past. The father, Mr. Thomas
Henty, of Sussex, England, took the resolution to emigrate, with his
family, to the "Swan River," as the present Western Australia was then
called. In 1829 he sent his eldest and two younger sons there, with
suitable servants and supplies, intending to follow with the rest. These
pioneers declared against the Swan, and advised their father to go to
Launceston instead, to which place they themselves also went. Arrived
all there in 1831, a new disappointment awaited the family. No grant of
land could be had, as in the case of the Swan, where they had 84,000
acres. This grant system had been abolished only a fortnight before
their arrival. They had now to rent their farms, and the prospects,
therefore, were discouraging. They were unable even to effect an
exchange for their Swan River grant.
This disappointment led to a search, begun in 1832, under the lead of
Edward, the second son, who twice traversed the seas between Portland
and Spencer Gulf, examining the aspect and promise of the country. The
result was always in favour of Portland, where he landed on one
occasion, confirming all impressions by actual inspection ashore. He,
therefore, resolved on a settlement here. In his second expedition he
took his father with him, as the latter had expressed the wish to see
for himself the Swan River grant before finally abandoning it. The
party, having reached the Swan, found that what they had got was "sand,
not land," and so it was finally given up.
Edward, who was the prime adventurer of the party, now got ready to
settle at Portland Bay. He chartered a small schooner, "The Thistle",
loading her with stores and live stock, and with selections of seed,
fruit trees, vegetables, etc., part of them bought from Fawkner, who had
then a market garden on Windmill Hill, near Launceston, besides keeping
the Cornwall Hotel there; and with these he sailed in October, 1834. In
two days they were within twenty-five miles of their destination, when a
storm drove them back to King's Island. Six times successively they were
thus driven back, losing a good many of their live stock, and it was
only after thirty-four days that they effected their landing. The work
of colonization began at once. "The Thistle" returned to Launceston for
fresh supplies and additional colonists, and returned this second time
with Francis Henty, the youngest of the family, who landed at Portland
on 13th December, within twenty-four days of his brother. Edward was
then twenty-four years of age, and his brother only eighteen. This is
the brief but momentous story of the founding of Victoria.
Mr. Francis Henty has given a most amusing account of the meeting
between his party and that of Major (afterwards Sir Thomas) Mitchell,
who, in exploring "Australia Felix," in 1836, came, in great surprise,
upon the Henty settlement at Portland. The story reads now like the
highest romance of adventurous exploration. The Mitchell intruders, five
in number, were at once regarded as bushrangers, and a defence promptly
organized. The fire-arms were limited to an old musket, which was loaded
to the very muzzle, to be ready for a grand discharge. Then as to the
Mitchell party, even after they were relieved of their first fears, for
they too had taken the others to be "no better than they should be,"
they exercised a measure of reserve, as though doubtful of their new
friends' respectability. Mutual suspicions, however, being at last
dismissed, the travellers were supplied with the stores they much
wanted, and, in return, they gave such a favourable account of the
pastures of the Wannon Valley as to induce Mr. Edward Henty subsequently
to remove a part of the flocks there, and to establish the homestead
where, as I have already stated, I enjoyed in my Western Victorian
travels the squatting hospitalities.
Let me add just one more incident of the Henty family, one personal to
myself, but in quite a different direction from the above. Once, on a
special occasion, I met the banker, Charles, who had stuck to his
profession at Launceston, instead of adventuring across the Straits with
his brothers. Besides his quiet banking vocation, he was, I think, the
portliest of the family, which may be the explanation. The occasion was
a public dinner to the Anti-Transportation League delegation, sent from
Melbourne, in 1852, to stir up the cause at the Van Diemen's Land
fountain head of the common evil, and of which delegation my lately
deceased old friend Lauchlan Mackinnon and myself were regarded as the
heads. Mackinnon, like many another such vigorous Highlander, as he then
was, could never take a subject of deep interest to himself quietly. We
had had a sample of him already at Hobart, where the feeling as to our
mission was by no means clear, both from the natural touchiness of
convict connection or descent, and from that still considerable section
of colonial employers and traders who thought that the ledger and its
profit and loss account had at least an equal right to be heard in the
question as any other so-called higher interest. The ground, slippery
enough at Hobart, was supposed to be still more treacherous at
Launceston. Had not Edward Wilson, of the thoroughly Mackinnonized
Melbourne "Argus", been but a little before nearly mobbed by the furious
Anti-Antis of this place, to his utter surprise and astonishment at his
own importance, and been only saved, in life or limb perhaps, by old
Jock Sinclair, who was timely on the spot, and who dexterously led him,
by a roundabout, to safety within the departing steamer for Melbourne?
In short, a row was more than half expected from the Mackinnon speech,
and as this was undesirable, for good reasons to all sides of Launceston
society, Mr. Henty resolved to prevent it, and did so most successfully
by a very adroit but not unworthy trick. He took occasion to speak just
before the Mackinnon avalanche was to come on. Introducing Mackinnon and
commending his straightforward honesty in this matter, and so on, he
said that some such people could not take even a good cause in
moderation; but that these defects, if he might so call them, were more
easily seen than remedied, and that all kindly consideration must be
made in the case. I fear I am not literal as to the identical words,
although I heard them, but I have given the purport. Poor Mackinnon, as
he afterwards laughingly pleaded, what could he do under the cold douche
of such a wet blanket? He made the smallest and quietest speech of his
life upon a great and stirring subject.
SOME INTERJECTA IN RE BATMAN, PIONEER OF THE PORT PHILLIP SETTLEMENT.
Mr. Edward Henty, from Launceston, first entered the future Victoria in
1834 by her remote portal, Portland Bay, and thus became the founder of
the colony. In the following year, John Batman, of Hobart, sailing from
the same stirring little Launceston, entered by the central and grander
portal of the Port Phillip Heads, and was thus the pioneer of Port
Phillip settlement; for we must really turn blundering Collins, with his
abortive doings in 1803-4, out of the running. I never saw Batman, as he
died the year before my arrival, so that, according to my rule, I have
nothing to say of him. But I must mention an incident occurring shortly
before my date, and characteristic of the times, namely, the raffling
for Batman's old and well smoke-begrimed pipe. This was at the famous
Lamb Inn, a little wooden edifice on the north side of West
Collins-street, opposite the Market-square, and fronting a small cliff
which the street levelling there had left for future disposal. There
were thirty tickets at a pound each, and the fortunate winner was to
compensate the disappointed by standing champagne all round. I was once
in the Lamb Inn ere its glories had quite expired, as might be inferred
from a charge of 4 shillings for a bottle of cider, for which I had
called in support of the house, and to while away time in waiting for a
friend. I had to share it with two others who happened to be in the
room, the waiter having promptly filled the three tumblers he had
brought, without even "Robert's" professional stereotype of "by your
leave," the tumblers, too, being as promptly emptied without any
ceremonious bother about acknowledgment. The Lamb Inn lived a brief
space longer, but utterly bereft of its old position in the revels and
extravagance of every kind of the young settlement, and was finally
levelled out of existence in company with the "cliff" at its back.
But I have to do also with nearer and dearer connections of Batman than
his tobacco pipe. I have to record the marriage, during 1844, of two of
his daughters, the elder, already a widow, Mrs. McKinney, to my pleasant
friend Fennell, as I have previously mentioned, and, happily, resulting
in a family of descendants to the Port Phillip founder, and the younger
to one of the two squatter brothers Collyer. The latter event, which
came off at the hospitable and comfortable homestead of old John Aitken
of that ilk (I mean of Mount Aitken), was a grand gala time to a very
wide circle. Guests, by the score together, trooped up from town and
country, headed, in the former direction, by Andrew Russell, then second
mayor of Melbourne, in succession to my friend Condell, and in the
latter by his cheery and ever-smiling uncle, Peter Inglis, of Ingliston,
a great station homestead in the comparisons of those early times, and
once, as Peter liked to tell, taken for a town, perhaps in the gloaming
hours, by a bush traveller when he inquired of one of the domestics, to
her great amusement, the name of the street he had confusingly got into.
Mrs. Aitken, as literally as by courtesy the good wife of the house, and
then in the full charm of her beauty and strong youth (now Mrs. Kaye,
and sadly changed in both respects), went busily about, her young family
at her skirts, administering plenty and preserving order, while, towards
genial eve, her good man occupied a quiet corner, indisputable king for
the nonce of the toddy race. The night accommodations were a difficulty,
although not a few, like the host himself, were in no great want. I and
a score or two of others turned into a wool loft, where a number of
little mattresses, mostly of a pro re nata kind, were provided, into one
of which I was soon ensconced and fast asleep. But well on, as I
guessed, in the small hours we were all awoke by loud and burly noise in
the loft, proceeding, as we soon recognized, from two Anakims of the
party, Isaac Buchanan and John Porter, who seemed on the eve of a
struggle for a Mace or Nolan belt. Porter had retired peacefully with
me, but Buchanan had been vieing in the toddy corner with his host, and
when inevitably knocked under--for the other had not yet been limited by
his doctor to that woman's wash, as he called it, sparkling moselle--he
had contrived to find the common loft. It is said, of unpractised topers
at any rate, that, after an extra indulgence, they either see nothing or
see double. Whichever it was with Buchanan, he insisted on berthing for
the night in Porter's occupied nest, while the latter, after standing
the all-round chaff for a little, got savage and threatened war.
Buchanan's sight getting by-and-by clearer, the remainder of the night
was, happily, peace. But it was not for long, as almost with the dawn
our host, alive as if nothing out of the usual had happened, woke us up
with the invitation to finish the champagne by way of refresher after
all the toils and toddy we had gone through.
DR. THOMSON, OF GEELONG.
This earliest amongst the early of Port Phillip, whose active form
flitted about its shores ere the memorable year 1835 had expired, might
have come in for a full separate sketch had I been thrown more with him,
so as to have sufficient personal data. But, although I met him at
times, he lived at Geelong, fifty miles away from Melbourne. I have put
him under this sub-heading, in the Batman interjecta, because, as his
daughter, Mrs. Henry Creswick, told me, it was Batman's representations
to him of the land of promise to the north that induced him to follow
the early tide with his flocks and his family--the latter consisting of
his wife and one only child, the daughter above alluded to. She still
survives, in her pleasant residence, situated in the fitly named
Creswick-street, Hawthorn.
The doctor was one of the most active of the colonists, both politically
and generally. He was chiefly concerned in establishing the Geelong
Corporation, of which he was several times Mayor, and he was most
actively interested in the early representation of the district in the
Sydney Assembly. He sat there as one of the district members prior to
the "separation" session of 1851, and it was at his instance that the
House made an exhaustive inquiry into the condition of the aboriginal
natives. In the separation session elections his party was outvoted by
the squatting or anti-democratic element; but none the less the former
in Geelong deputed the doctor to accompany the elected members, in order
to keep a watch upon their doings. The case had its comic aspect, but as
the doctor and I were on the same side of the politics of the day, he
was most useful to me in our common effort to secure a due share of
representation for the mass of the people, as intended by the Imperial
Government. The aim of the reigning regime was to continue their power
by means of an electoral distribution which was to secure a majority of
Crown nominees and Crown tenants in the two future sections of the old
colony.
The doctor, as I said, went over with the earliest from the Hobart side
of the island, quitting his land grant, which was the last under that
system, and was got for him by his friend Governor Arthur--a privilege
for which, as I have said, the Henty family arrived just too late.
Amongst the live stock he took over was Miss Thomson's pony, which was
the first of the equines landed at Port Phillip. Its owner was then a
very young girl. She and her mother landed towards the end of 1835, and
were the first ladies of "the settlement." The family pitched a tent
almost under a magnificent gum tree, whose stump, covered with ivy,
still exists close to the Cathedral at Prince's Bridge. But shortly
after several of the young men of the settlement, in order to provide
them better accommodation, collected some boards and built them a hut
lower down the river bank. With the two places the Thomsons were able to
dispense hospitalities, their guests including Messrs. Gellibrand and
Hesse, Mr. James Smith, and Mr. Mackillop. It used to be said that "the
settlement" was in the habit of going to tea with Mrs. Thomson.
This brings us into 1836. The next year came the officials in charge
from Sydney, who included Mr. R.S. Webb, as Collector of Customs, whose
daughter, Annie, was the first white child born in the settlement (with,
however, some dispute as to a blacksmith's child having been the first),
and who was afterwards married to my late friend, Colin Mackinnon,
younger brother of the better known Lauchlan. Dr. Thomson used to read
prayers to the little settlement in a rude structure upon the ground now
occupied by St. James's Church. Afterwards he removed to Kardinia,
Geelong, as his live stock had been landed there, and this place he
finally made his home.
From these lively and mixed events of our early society, let me now turn
to another subject, which is neither less lively nor less mixed than its
predecessors--the subject, namely, of:
JOHN PASCOE FAWKNER, FATHER OF MELBOURNE.
"The force of his own merit makes his way."
--Henry VIII.
"Well, I am, not fair; and therefore I pray the gods to make me honest."
--As You Like It.
"He's honest, on mine honour."
--Henry VIII.
"He hath a heart as sound as a bell, and his tongue is the clapper; for
what his heart thinks, his tongue speaks."
--Much Ado About Nothing.
"For now he lives in fame, though not in life."
--Richard III.
If circumstances won't make a poet, as genius contemptuously asserts,
nor make up for blood in a horse, as even the stable boy swears to, they
are at times marvellously effective in making, and, for the matter of
that, also in unmaking men. So might we say with regard to the
well-known subject of this sketch, who, arriving amongst us with the
earliest, and within the repellent surrounding of an evil repute, yet
under different surroundings and favouring circumstances outlived all
traducements, whether true or otherwise, and after a long, practical,
and singularly useful career, died in the full regard of his adopted
country. The unanimity of dislike and moral depreciation with which he
was regarded by his Tasmanian fellows was not indeed without a certain
share of reason or excuse. That he was the son of a convict ought not,
of course, to prejudice him in these Christian days, when the sins of
the fathers are not to be visited upon the sons even to the first
generation. His father arrived with Collins's prisoner party, and the
boy, John Pascoe, then eleven years old, was sent with his parent--for
not seldom were wives or children thus sent with the convicts, to
ameliorate by such a touch of nature the hard features of a society of
adult vice, much as Hogarth, in some of his masterpieces of the human
woes or vices of his time, gives, in striking contrast, a foreground of
maternal affection, or of children at play in the artless innocence of
their looks and ways.
But he was probably neither a pretty nor an interesting boy; for as a
man he was of the very plainest, with a short figure, always negligently
"put on," a rough, mannerless way, and a voice husky and hoarse,
although redeemed at times into an approach to commanding an audience,
when he was strongly stirred in some exciting cause. Some people have no
patience to subdue natural antipathies in such cases, and these people
would, as well-known scripture (with some transposition of the idea)
tells us, be apt to be most plentiful "in his own country." But, again,
Fawkner was himself a convict. Yes, but for what? Certainly if a man so
notorious in after life had committed any very disparaging crime it must
have been as notorious as his name. But I never heard anything
distinctive beyond that he had, for something or other, passed under the
Caudine Forks of the Van Diemen's Land Criminal Courts. Inevitably his
early upbringing was in low associations, where, probably, ties of
friendly feeling survived, as to which he might have said with the bard
of Avon--"I am not of that feather to shake off my friend when he must
need me" (Timon of Athens). My impression was that he had been convicted
of harbouring, or aiding to escape, some who had broken the law,
whatever more that may have meant, for, with his pluck, he was probably
little troubled about niceties of fine feeling, and, thus accoutred,
Providence dropped the man amongst altogether different circumstances
and associations in his new location.
I had much to do with Fawkner, especially after he and I met in our
young colony's first Legislature, and after I sufficiently knew him, so
as to allow for the rough exterior of his nature, I never had but one
opinion of the man. That opinion was, that throughout every condition of
the considerable space of his later life, whether in health or sickness,
strength or weakness, prosperity or adversity--for, at first at least,
he, like many others, was not prosperous in golden-fleeced and golden
Victoria--he toiled, late and early, for what, in his honest judgment,
was for the good of his colony; and with a singleness of purpose which
was not excelled--was not, I think, equalled, to my knowledge at
least--by any other in that colony.
He seemed to make an ascent under the exhilarating circumstances of his
new and increasingly responsible position, and to have the consciousness
of a great mission, which nerved him to surmount all that was dubious in
his earlier career. Nor was he behind in less pretentious ways. I never
once heard of any mean or over-reaching act of his, even in the smallest
matters. He once told me, in his prosperous days, with much becoming
feeling, and as an incident he could never forget, that when quite
broken in fortune, he had received, as unasked as unexpected, a most
timely pecuniary help from Mr. Henry Moor, the well-known solicitor. The
two were, I think, at hearty variance across the political hedge; the
more honour to both.
We have seen that he showed pluck in his earlier life, even in bad
associations; and he displayed the same under better auspices later on.
His action with a certain gravely suspected Commissioner of Crown Lands
was a good illustration. This high functionary, who, in those
pre-constitutional times, was practically an irresponsible Caesar over a
vast estate of dependent Crown tenants, whose interests might in any
case be seriously jeopardized by any unfairness, and who, therefore,
like the wife of his prototype, should be even above suspicion, was
accused by rumours, of no slight noise or breadth, of unfaithfulness to
his charge, and in the grossest and most mercenary of forms. Even with
the clearest case it was anything but assuring to attack such a man in
those days of authority. But Fawkner's bite was too deep for any laissez
faire cure, and so, nolens volens, the Commissioner had to defend or
retrieve his character. The verdict of a farthing damages, at which
amount the jury estimated that character in the case, was complete
justification to Fawkner, and laid the whole Province under lasting
obligation to him for a most important public service.
Another of his more prominent services was upon the first Gold
Commission, 1854-5, summoned hastily together by the Governor, Sir
Charles Hotham, under the surprise, not unmixed with consternation,
caused by the Ballarat riot, an incident which, in some of its aspects,
such as the stockade structure, deserved rather the graver name of
rebellion. Already in his 63rd year, in broken health, and certainly the
weakest physically of the membership, he was the most active of all,
ever running full tilt into every abuse or fault or complaint that might
help to explain this unwonted, and, indeed, utterly purposeless and
stupid incident of a British community. In my capacity as chairman, I
appreciated Fawkner's untiring, or more properly, unyielding spirit, and
under travelling fatigues, too, of no mean trial even to younger men.
For the Colossus of Rhodes, as my energetic friend, Dr. (now Sir
Francis) Murphy, was humorously called, on accepting, recently before,
the charge of the rutty and miry ways of golden Victoria, had as yet
made but feeble progress in his most urgent mission. We learned enough
to explain, at least, if not to excuse the miners; and were thus guided
to a reconstruction of goldfields administration. This was chiefly in
that national element, hitherto utterly absent there, of local
representative institutions; and the change has since assured the future
from even John Bull's proverbial growling. General McArthur, with a few
troops, promptly, but not without considerable bloodshed, ended the sad
farce. In view of the very exceptional features of an incident extremely
unlikely to occur again, Fawkner and most others of the commission were
most decided for a general condonance; and this was agreed to in the
report by all except the Official Commissioner, Mr. Wright, who,
excusably enough, sided with his official superiors for a treason trial.
But the jury, as might have been anticipated, acquitted the prisoners.
One of their leaders, Mr. Peter Lalor, who lost one of his arms in the
cause, has since been for many years Speaker of the Victorian Assembly,
and as loyal to his Queen as he is genial to his many friends.
When we wound up the Commission's inquiry at Castlemaine, and on the
morning of a hot midsummer day embarked upon one of the springless "Cobb
and Co's" of the time, with the prospect of ten or twelve hours of
terrible jolting before us, poor old Fawkner seemed so much enfeebled
that I was in some doubt as to his being landed alive at Melbourne. But,
game to the last, he rode uncomplainingly through all; and he lived even
a goodly number of years after, but only to do more and more work. Old
General Anderson, of early colonial memory, had a habit, quite his own,
of saying to the face of anyone whose conduct gave him satisfaction, and
in his blunt soldierly way, "Sir, I have a great respect for you." Such
an accrediting and not unacceptable declaration he addressed, times
more, I think, than once, to Fawkner. Indeed, all classes of the colony,
from the highest, in which the gallant colonel moved, to the humblest,
now alike recognized the veteran who had so long and so well fought for
them all. When at last the spirit quitted the worn-out frame, and its
well-known form, possibly, even to the last, keeping up still, amongst
some few, the lingering dislike of the long past, was to be no more seen
amongst us, there seemed but one impulse for the occasion, which
fittingly expressed itself in a funeral procession entirely
unprecedented in its every aspect. This was not less to the colony's
honour than to that of Fawkner. He died on 4th September, 1869. Not the
least impressive feature of the funeral, perhaps the most, was the
remarkable prayer offered up at the grave by the Reverend Dr. Cairns.
Victoria's most eloquent preacher, in giving the true setting to the
life and character of the man, thanked God, in the name of the colony,
for such a life, the influence and example of which could not but be for
good to all who were to follow. He has fought bravely for the R.I.P. of
the tomb. He rests from his labours, and his works do follow him.
JAMES SIMPSON, FIRST MAGISTRATE OF "THE SETTLEMENT."
"He hath an excellent good name."
--Much Ado About Nothing.
When "The Settlement" began, and when, like the pre-Judges time in
Israel, every man did as he pleased, the inevitable inconvenience of
that ultra-radical paradise led the small community to seek out a male
Deborah, and, with one accord, they made choice of James Simpson, their
early fellow-emigrant in the tide from Launceston. Had there been even a
much larger society, the choice would probably have been as surely the
same, for it would have been difficult indeed to find anyone, who, in
the grace and command of natural presence, exceeded this inaugurator of
authority in Victoria. His figure, rather tall, shapely, well-developed,
surmounted by a noble head, bald with age, just touching the venerable,
and with a genial expression of face, which, however, never descended to
levity, although times without number to a smile or slight laugh, he sat
erect upon the bench, facile princeps, as though institutions were to
bend to him, and not he to them. When we entered the little hut-like
structure in the middle of the Western Market area, so long Melbourne's
only police-office, James Simpson seemed to us as much a part of its
fittings as the rude little bench itself; and it was a disappointment
not to find him there, as the indispensable complement to the scene,
even although better conduct in the community was to be inferred. How so
striking, so influence-wielding a man did not get or take a still more
leading position than he had was due, perhaps, to some indolence of
nature, to a rare and enviable contentment, or to a mixture of both. He
took what fell in his way--magistracies, bank directorships, or what
else, and lived unambitiously on his moderate but sufficient means,
always in the front social position, and, of course, in universal
respect. And how, again, so quiet a spirit adventured across amongst the
tag-rags of the earlier Launceston tide, unless indeed under some
benevolent inspiration and prescience about the magisterial needs, is a
mystery which, although I often conversed with him, I never happened to
hear him explain.
DAVID CHARTERIS McARTHUR, FATHER OF VICTORIAN BANKING.
"A man of good repute, carriage, bearing, and estimation."
--Love's Labour Lost.
Almost as early a colonist as Simpson, his intimate friend, his
colleague in the Melbourne branch of the Bank of Australasia, of which
he was himself general manager, with Simpson as director, McArthur fitly
follows the other in this list of early colonial prominents. To the day
of his death he held the first position, active or honorary, in
Victorian banking. But he was even better known, or at least better
regarded, as, par excellence, "mine host" of the early community. During
a long life, of which the later and much the larger half was spent in
Victoria, there was none who entered more readily, constantly, or
acceptably into the varied life of the community. His leisure, such as
he had, his means, his fellowship, were at their command. He was
geniality personified. But he was a banker, and a banker has duties, and
in the ups and downs of colonial business life, he was but too often
reminded to that effect. It was quite a sight if you happened to witness
the scene with a bank customer, to whom, as to "the state of his
account," it was necessary to administer what Mac's countrymen call a
"hearing." Often he had to pity victims of circumstances in the sudden
changes of colonial commerce; but "the gods aboon can only ken" to
discriminate impartially in such cases, and duty to the bank must be
done. First, the humorous twinkle in the eye sensibly abated, but it
still lingered there, unless there must be still stronger stages of the
ordeal, to bring the business culprit to reason. But when the last gleam
went out, a storm was certainly imminent. The storm, however, swept past
on the instant with the provocation. When that eye finally closed, a
veritable sunbeam of the colony went out with it.
Mrs. McArthur, who still survives, went hand in hand with her husband.
That they were an attached couple has the complementary illustration of
his making her his full heir. As they had no family to divide cares and
means, we must blame the less the surpassing hospitalities that
distinguished them. McArthur had really no other fault, unless indeed we
must fall back on the general limitation which Adam Smith had to admit
even in the excellence of his departed friend Hume; for, after all, a
man can be good or perfect only "so far as the nature of human frailty
will permit."
CHARLES JOSEPH LA TROBE, C.B., SUPERINTENDENT OF PORT PHILLIP, AND FIRST
LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR OF VICTORIA.
"However God or fortune cast my lot,
There lives or dies...
A loyal, just, and upright gentleman."
--Richard II.
The more I saw of the subject of this sketch, over nearly all the
fifteen years of his unusually prolonged and varied officiate, the more
I explained his case by the excusing consideration that he was where he
was without his own consent. He was naturally a quiet, amiable,
unambitious man, full of official activity and ability, in a prescribed
line, or under the instructions of superiors. Thus commended at Sydney,
he accepted, as matter of course, or of duty, his appointment by the
Governor, in 1839, to the Superintendency of the Port Phillip community,
a small body as yet, although making an ominously loud noise upon the
far southern skirts of the vast colonial expanse of which Sydney was
then the official and business centre. The charge did not then seem to
threaten to be an anxiously large one, and in any case his inauguratory
office might hardly remove him from the accustomed instruction of
superiors. What he did not bargain for was that the child he went to
nurse was to rush almost from the cradle into manhood; and the little
"settlement" he began his reign with to be, ere he had done with it, the
most notable, if not indeed actually the most important, colony of the
empire.
He was a Moravian Christian, of a well-known name in that excellent
body, and possessed of all its virtues; he was, besides, a well-educated
gentleman. The pure and happy home which he transferred to the new scene
was of priceless value to its society, and all the more so at a time
when such virtuous homes, in such high quarters, were by no means over
common thereabout. But with a natural shyness, and, in a socio-political
sense, timidity of character, which in ordinary circumstances are
feelings leaning to the better side, he exemplified how a good man may
not always be a good ruler of men. The diffidence is often mistaken by
the ruled, and always disappointing; and in public affairs it is apt, as
Mr. La Trobe but too well illustrated, to take the inconvenient and
injurious form of personal indecision.
He had not a particle of pride or selfishness, hardly even of the
commoner infirmity of vanity. He would, whenever possible, take a
roundabout to escape observation, but if even the humblest colonist
persisted to address him, unrepelled by the evident tendency to "move
on," he would be as frank and unceremonious as our Queen in a Highland
cottage. We regret that so righteously-stored a man should make a bad
Governor; but so it was, none the less.
There was comparatively little damage during the day of smaller things,
prior to the gold. Still, even then, the characteristics told, in the
reluctance to resolve upon action in any departure from the red tape of
the beaten track, in a young settlement of men nearly all in the
exuberant prime of life, and almost daily called upon, amongst
Australian peculiarities, to confront their novel circumstances. For
instance, upon rumours, oft repeated, that there was good workable coal
at Western Port, a party is formed, with capital in readiness, to give
the case a thorough testing; and they, as of course, apply to the
Government to give them all those aids and concessions, or, at least, a
sufficiency of them, which could most easily have been given in that
quarter, for Mr. La Trobe was practically the Government. He referred
the matter to Mr. Crown-Solicitor Croke, to ascertain what might be the
legal impediments. Impediments, obstacles, difficulties! But who had
asked for them? The application had been for facilities. Of course, Mr.
C.S. Croke, as instructed, and with all the facility of any lawyer worth
his salt, duly found the required impediments; and so the disturbing
enemy was defeated, and the Government left at rest.
But when the goldfields' grand drama of progress opened, when thousands
promptly flowed into Victoria from neighbouring colonies, and, a little
later on, ten thousands from Home, this chariness of action, this
resolute irresolution, or, in Ollivier's description of his master
Napoleon, before he, in an unlucky moment, swayed over to his side, this
"obstinate indecision," proved sadly damaging to the colony, although
indeed, under all the circumstances, it was hardly possible for any
obstacle whatever to arrest materially its marvellous growth. Of course,
the interest of a colony, thus enviably favoured, was to settle as best
it could this throng of enterprising humanity over its vast and all but
empty areas, and that could only have been done by prompt and adequate
access to the land. But some current differences as to the bearing or
rights of squatting leases gave the Governor--the Superintendent being
now in that higher position--the too ready excuse for his infirmity of
indecision. Even the squatting difficulty, which could have been easily
removed by a reserve of compensation for whatever of it might have been
real, was only one part, perhaps not even the chief part, of the
wretched case. Acres by the million, on either side, along the busy
highways, and around the many goldfield outbreaks, small and great, from
which the live stock, where there had been any, were now all driven
away, might have been brought to market at once without real injury to
any interest. The squatters, naturally enough, sided with the Governor,
giving him an encouraging semblance of public principle; for did not the
one-third of united Crown Officials and Crown Nominateds, plus the Crown
Tenants, in our first so-called representative Legislature, show, on
this question, a small majority for "the Crown?"
At last, when the public scandal of so grievous a spectacle made longer
inaction impossible, when the disappointed and shiftless immigrants
began to beat a retreat from the inhospitable colony, the balance
streaming by thousands into "Canvastown," or wandering helpless
elsewhere, and mostly ruined by the cost of living--for a cabbage had
risen to 5 shillings at the goldfields, and to 2 shillings and 6 pence
in Melbourne--the Governor, by an adroit move, in the despair of the
position, referred the case "Home." There common sense decided it at
once, or at least as quickly as might have been expected from the
leisurely ways of the Colonial Office of those far-back times. But the
decision came, in very great measure, much too late. There had been in
the meantime a blazing fire of land speculation, which, unlike other
fires, had blazed all the more intensely from the want of fuel. The
small supply of land, and the fury of multitudinous demands, had driven
up prices to such absurd, and, the utilities considered, such impossible
heights, that the inevitable reaction had already begun, involving
numbers of families in most sudden and unexpected loss, and not a few in
ruin.
But Victoria easily recovered from and forgot this preliminary and bad
physicking, and was soon to be seen galloping on its road of progress as
if nothing to its damage could ever have happened. Full of work for the
day, full of hope for the morrow, the busy colonists saluted cordially
the departing Governor. For my part I do not grudge it to him, for his
motives and conduct were of the purest, and he was ever withal a right
good Christian gentleman.
SIR JOHN O'SHANASSY, PREMIER, AND FOREMOST PUBLIC MAN OF VICTORIA.
"Altogether directed by an Irishman; a very valiant gentleman, i'
faith."
--Henry V.
One of O'Shanassy's oft-repeated jokes, told with the humorous twinkle
of his eye, was that "All men are born free and equal, AND MUST REMAIN
SO." He was wide as the poles asunder from the radical leveller, as this
joke of his might help to show. Indeed, he was decidedly conservative,
in a general socio-political sense of the word. While in strong sympathy
with the mass of his countrymen, he might have limped at times alongside
even of Parnell, to say nothing of Davitt and O'Donovan Rossa. He had
more than O'Connell's dread to pass irretrievably outside the law,
although he might not have scrupled to drive the proverbial carriage and
six through law's usual dubieties of expression, particularly in certain
sections of the Victorian Education Acts.
As one of the earliest Irish colonists from the old country, he soon
rose to the leading position amongst his fellow-colonist Irishmen. His
qualities, alike in physique and mind, easily gave him that position.
His tall, massive form, with the imperturbable good-humored smile that,
even when annoyed by an opponent, he could hardly dismiss from his face,
except, perchance, by a blend of the sarcastic; his deliberate manner in
speaking, and his sonorous voice, gave him this surpassing influence.
But in colonial public life, where he had to encounter greater
competition and sharper criticism than in his own smaller Irish world,
he lay under some disadvantages. Like his friend and occasional
opponent, Fawkner, he had an ungainly gait and rather mannerless
address; he had, too, a rich Clonmel brogue, and certainly he had not
enjoyed an education at all commensurate with his great natural
endowments. But, all defects notwithstanding, he steadily rose in
political estimation, and for the simple reason that his views of public
affairs were characteristic of the statesman more perhaps than those of
any others associated with him.
He first entered public life in 1851, as one of the three
representatives for Melbourne in Victoria's first Parliament. But,
doubtful perhaps, with his anti-radical temperament as to the fickleness
of large town populations, as well, possibly, as the dread of his
liability to get compromised by the over-zeal of supporters, he changed
the venue to the small semi-Irish town of Kilmore, where his seat was
always secure, until, in his advancing years, he condescended to the
less laborious sphere of the Upper House.
I saw much of O'Shanassy at the outset of Victorian legislation, when he
and I, in 1851-3, sat together as colleagues for Melbourne in the single
chamber of that inaugurative time, and afterwards when we were
associated in the Goldfields Commission, 1854-5. Often I noticed the
unerring bent of his mind towards the statesman's broad view of subjects
of political controversy. As a sincere Catholic he was sometimes
trammelled as he ran with liberal Protestant majorities. In the
education question, for instance, as already hinted, seeing that
Victoria stands amongst the most advanced in the rigid secularity of its
teaching, to the extent, at least, of what of instruction is
provided--and gratuitously provided--by public money. But in general he
was anxious to be reasonably accordant with public opinion--so much so,
indeed, in that "profane" direction (as Gibbon might have phrased it) as
not to be quite reckonable with the extreme of the Jesuit or
Ultramontane section of his church.
I recollect and record with pleasure one of the Goldfields Commission
incidents illustrative of O'Shanassy's high public qualities. We had
completed at Castlemaine, near the original Mount Alexander, our
considerable tour of goldflelds inspection; and as we sat round the
table of the only public room of the small hotel or public-house of the
place, the evidence completed, and all the proposed changes decided on,
there remained yet one question. Our proposed chief pecuniary change
abolished the indiscriminate, and, to the many unsuccessful, most
oppressive charge of 30 shillings monthly license fee, and substituted a
yearly fee or fine of only 20 shillings. And what was this, or the
documentary receipt that represented it, to be called? Reduced as the
amount was, it was still a tax, and any ingenuity that could dignify or
otherwise reconcile a tax, was worthy of the best statecraft. As
chairman, and not having at the moment a suggestion of my own, I had to
knock at the heads of my co-members. I turned to one, then another, and
yet another, but without response. Even the original brain of Fawkner
sent forth no sign. At length I came to O'Shanassy, who happened to be
at the far end of the table. He had been waiting his turn, and the
answer came promptly, "Call it the Miner's Right." It was but one out of
many instances of his statesmanlike turn. The Miner's Right, of course,
it was called. The name passed on to many other goldflelds. I noticed it
in British Columbia shortly after, with its new gold discoveries; for
the Commission's report had attracted much attention, owing to the
forefront position which golden Victoria had already assumed in the
world.
WILLIAM KERR, FOUNDER OF "THE ARGUS," AND TOWN CLERK OF MELBOURNE.
"I am in the place where I am demanded of conscience to speak the truth,
and therefore the truth I speak, impugn it whoso list."
--"The Argus" motto.
Another of O'Shanassy's oft-repeated jokes was a good story about Kerr,
and always told with that stereotyped good temper which I fear the
latter, with his strong Orange antipathies, would, upon opportunity,
have but grudgingly reciprocated. Two "brither Scots," happening to meet
one day in Melbourne, one of them, presumably not long arrived,
"speered" of the other, "Did ye ken ane Weelum Kerr here aboot?" "Weelum
Kerr!" replied the other, in reproachful astonishment; "No ken Weelum
Kerr, the greatest man in a' the toon!" That a hard-headed,
liberal-minded commonsense Scot, as Kerr was in most things, should have
had the Orange infirmity, may be excused, or at least explained, by the
fact of his being of Stranraer, a Scotch town almost within hail of
Ulster. That small, and not overmuch known place, has not been the least
among the cities of Scotia in contributing heads and hands to the
colony's progress, including, besides Kerr and others, James Hunter
Ross, a leading Melbourne solicitor, and my good old friend Hugh Lewis
Taylor, who, ere well out of his teens, was made manager at Geelong, and
is now manager in London, of the prosperous Bank of Victoria.
Kerr had a high order of abilities in certain literary directions, which
might have given him a much better position than he ever secured but for
his indolence and negligent want of method. He had also a bad physical
constitution, which had probably much to do with the other defects.
Perhaps it was his literary turn that led him first, in his new home, to
try a stationery business, which, under the style of Kerr and Holmes,
afterwards Kerr and Thompson, in Collins-street west, was, I think, the
precursor of that particular trade in little early Melbourne. But that
had to be given up, and after some looking about, with not overloaded
means, he established the Melbourne "Argus". The preceding press efforts
had, at my arrival, established three papers, which, by tolerant mutual
arrangement in a bi-weekly issue respectively, gave the small public the
almost indispensable food of a daily paper. Almost at the beginning,
Fawkner's practical hand supplied "The Patriot," hand-written for the
first eight or ten numbers, until type came from Launceston. This was
soon followed by "The Gazette" of George Arden, and that again by "The
Herald" of George Cavenagh. All three had, I think, the common prefix of
"Port Phillip". "The Gazette", after a brief career, under its very able
but rather erratic owner, went to the wall. "The Patriot", under
Boursiquot, who had succeeded the overworked Fawkner, was, somewhat
later, bought up by the "Argus", under Wilson and Johnston, in
succession to Kerr. The Herald, when quitted after an excellent and
timely sale by its founder early in the gold times, was soon after
shipwrecked in the storm of vicissitude that characterized some of the
first years of gold-digging.
With the editorial pen Kerr was in his element, and his naturally
combative tendencies found their fitting expression in the motto he
adopted, and which still heads the paper, "I am in the place where I am
demanded of conscience to speak the truth, and therefore the truth I
speak, impugn it whoso list." But even the little "Argus" required
management, and Kerr was no manager. He was induced to sell it, and for
no great sum--pounds going a long way in those times--to Mr. Edward
Wilson, who thus laid the foundation of his subsequent great position
and fortunes.
Kerr was fortunate after this in securing the town-clerkship of
Melbourne, in succession to Mr. John Charles King, the first clerk. The
Corporation was still hardly beyond infancy, and Kerr's natural legal
acuteness was of great service at his new post, where reigned he
practically master, and was an authority far outside his official
sphere, and even in legislative difficulties of the young Parliament,
for we are now entering into Victorian life, and the importance that was
fast being developed with the gold.
But after a time the old besetting infirmity turned up here also, and in
a rather serious form, as connected with irregularities in Corporation
moneys and accounts, which might have been compromising to any other
than Kerr, with his well-known indifference to such vulgar good things.
He had a remarkable resemblance, in more than one point of character and
circumstances, to his brother Scotchman, and fast friend till death, the
Reverend Dr. Lang, of Sydney; and had he possessed the physical vigour,
not to say the stately proportions, of that most combatant of members of
the church militant, he might have been his Victorian rival in a far
more prosperous and protracted career. In each there was a very
combative mind behind the mildest of manner. Besides the pulpit, Lang
sought successfully also the Legislature, where, somehow, clergymen are
not favourites. He was, in fact, in the first instance, one of our
members for Port Phillip, and it was chiefly to his efforts and
abilities that separation from New South Wales was eventually conceded
from Home. In the elective contests we saw some of the peculiar talent
with which Lang fought his many political foes, when, with an inimitable
blandness of address, and the softest of mellifluous language, he would
build up a many-sided argument, patiently and leisurely, and at last, as
with the bitterly biting end of a stockman's long whip, flay the
Wentworths of opposition, who, with more noise than effect, were ever
snapping at his heels.
But, alas for the cause of human perfection! The Doctor, being on a
mission Home, and by no means for the first time, for the promotion of
the emigration of Scotch Presbyterians to Australia (his great and not
unworthy hobby), and being short of funds after raising in one direction
all he could upon his bill of lading, horrible dictu! pledged elsewhere
for the balance of his account a spare copy of the set, left with him in
trust and confidence. Now was the day of vengeance for his foes, and
they duly essayed to take it. But the imperturbable Doctor was not
troubled with too thin a skin, especially in a matter which was totally
devoid of personal pecuniary advantage. The overdraft was, as he
expected, readily made up by the public. Nor did he sustain any great
moral damage, even with his foes, as his indifference about money was
too well known--first his own money, and after that other people's.
Kerr was in a like plight, but a great deal more helplessly. If he
escaped as to character with the many who knew him, yet of necessity he
lost his good post. He was succeeded by Mr. Fitzgibbon, who, more fitly,
I doubt not, than Kerr, has held this important office ever since, a
period of no less than thirty-two years. This serious loss of means and
position completed a breakdown that had probably begun before, so that
Kerr was no longer able for first-class work. We may envy this
opportunity to his old opponent, O'Shanassy, who, in power at the time,
generously found him a small appointment--a station upon one of the
railways--which gave him, at least, a comfortable, and, in a social way,
by no means ungenial home for the short remainder of his life.
It was mainly at my good friend Kerr's urgent instance that I entered
public life, which was in 1850, for the representation of Melbourne at
Sydney. Doubtless he had his own aims quite as much as my interests in
view, as he wanted the supposed good card, a Melbourne merchant, Scotch
and Presbyterian like himself into the bargain, to play against the
anti-Orange and Irish-cum-O'Shanassy party. I fear that his expected
henchman was too cosmopolitan at times. But Kerr rendered me a more
direct service at the subsequent election for Melbourne in Victoria's
first Parliament, by bringing me in at the head of the poll, which
happened in this way:--At the first count the poll stood thus:
O'Shanassy, Westgarth, Johnston, Nicholson, the latter being out, much
to his own and his friends' astonishment, as there were only three
seats. Kerr, who was resolved O'Shanassy should not be declared first if
he could help it, called for a scrutiny prior to declaration. He had
knowledge of a goodly scale of false voting on the Irish side, where, in
fact, there was a legion of busy Kerrs to my one, many of them having
voted double, or, as with Sheridan's proposed yearly Parliaments,
"oftener if need be." One had voted nine times in succession at
different polling places. I fear Kerr was wrong, and that scrutiny
should have been applied for after declaration. But Kerr was the most
dogged of mortals when he had a mind and an object, was then in the
zenith of his influence, and, best of all for his side, he was king of
the position as town clerk. So he secured his purpose, and O'Shanassy
and I changed positions.
I have a better service than this, and of much more general interest,
with which to conclude my present sketch. A year later, the second year
of the gold, during which it was estimated that fifteen millions of gold
had been washed out of the drifts, chiefly of Ballarat and Bendigo, the
colony was already flooded, and no wonder, by the convict element from
Tasmania. To intensify this evil beyond all bearing, that colony's
Government, in view of relief from accumulating prisoners, had lately
enacted a "conditional pardon" system, the condition being that the
criminal was at liberty for all the world except to return Home, and
forthwith, Her Majesty's pass in hand, he crossed to golden Victoria. A
cry of despair arose there, for almost immediately the towns,
goldfields, highways, and everywhere else where havoc was to be made,
were the almost daily scenes of the most atrocious outrage. One forenoon
word reached town that five ruffians, taking position on the St.
Kilda-road, had stuck up and robbed some twenty of the merchants and
traders on their way to Melbourne, including my friend John G. Foxton.
The Anti-Transportation League, then some years in existence, held a
great meeting, at which a large committee was appointed, and was
enjoined to find an effective mode of dealing with this novel form of
evil. I think that it was at my suggestion that each of the committee
was to write out his thoughts and bring the paper with him, so as to
have a basis for arriving at a prompt conclusion. Kerr was made
convener, and he was not long in convening us.
Only Kerr and myself responded! We may take a mitigated view of the
others, for everyone was busy over something in those days, many
embarrassingly so for want of servants, who had "bolted" to the
diggings, while most of the committee had had legislation and incessant
deputations and public meetings to look after besides. As to myself, I
had vainly tried to find fifteen consecutive minutes for the subject.
When Mr. Kerr asked me for my paper, I excused myself by pleading that
it was so meagre that I would rather first hear his. Thereupon, in his
deliberate way, he drew forth a sheet of foolscap, and read to me "The
Convicts Prevention Act." Such it was, for, with a few comparatively
unimportant mitigations, secured by the ability and influence of
Attorney-General Stawell, the impatient Assembly, highly appreciating
and determined to have the measure, promptly passed it by a large
majority. This was Kerr's culminating public service, and I am the more
pleased to have this opportunity to say so, as my name was rather unduly
attached to the bill, from its having been committed to my charge. His
prompt remedy, I doubt not, saved many a colonist, not only as to life,
limb, and property, but from outrage in some cases worse than death. His
scathing measure introduced, indeed, a new principle, for we
unceremoniously clapped people into prison who held up to our courts the
Queen's pardon. Her Majesty's representatives at Home did not at all
like it. The Home Government, indeed, refused to confirm the temporarily
enacted measure; but by that happy safety-valve understanding, which has
perhaps saved some explosions, it was renewed and re-renewed as long as
required. The letter of imperial law was doubtless violated; but Her
Majesty's Government first violated the spirit, by authorizing men unfit
for England to go to Victoria.
WILLIAM NICHOLSON, MAYOR OF MELBOURNE, AND PREMIER OF THE COLONY.
"An honest man, sir, is able to speak for himself, when a knave is not."
--As You Like It.
In one of our colonial municipalities, which of them I have forgotten,
as I heard my story so long ago, a working furniture-maker, who had
secured an order from the Mayor for his official chair, was observed to
be at particular pains over its construction, and, on being asked the
reason, replied that he intended some day to occupy it himself. If the
subject of this sketch had been of that particular trade, this would
have been a very likely story to fix upon him. Not that he was of
inordinate ambition; for, on the contrary, he looked quiet and contented
beyond most around him. But he was always ready and willing to respond
to the many opportunities of a new colony, and from his great natural
gifts usually able to do them justice. Nature had given him all she
could to make him a good and useful colonist; but there was one thing he
had not had from her, because not within her power, and that was the
school. He was probably not altogether uneducated; but he could not have
had many chances in that direction, otherwise the facility with which he
educated himself in life's practical work after he had reached manhood
would have told for him as a schoolboy as well. In business, in public
speaking and debating, and in public life in general, he took
successfully a first part; but when he had to condescend to such
schooling products as writing and spelling, he made confessedly only a
bad second. But, again, a defect of this kind is much less of an
obstacle in new colonies than in old societies, because for generations
in the former the hand is relatively more important to progress than the
head, and the man of work than the man of thought. In colonies men of
great natural parts, if ambitious, can usually take good positions even
if but little educated. At Home this is hardly possible, and the
consequent social distemper is there a danger to the State--a danger,
however, which our Education Acts since 1870 must be steadily removing.
I happened, on one occasion, to meet Nicholson's home employer in
Liverpool. He had been foreman, if indeed so high as that, in a
warehouse. When he told his employer that he had made up his mind to go
to Port Phillip with his family, there was regret to part with so quiet
and trustworthy a servant, but, as he said to me, not the least idea
that the unpretending individual before him would, within a few years,
take a position considerably in advance of his own.
He set up a grocery shop in Melbourne, and was soon on the road to
success. Then he stood for the municipality, which was hardly yet out of
infancy, was duly elected councillor, and in a very few years became
Mayor of Melbourne. Then, gliding easily onwards and upwards, he entered
the young colonial Legislature of 1851, as member for the Metropolitan
County, North Bourke. He had previously, as I have told, tried
unsuccessfully for the capital itself, getting some compensation,
however, in the "next first." But with all this rising importance he was
ever the plain, unassuming William Nicholson, and when Mayor or M.L.C.
both he and his wife would be found in their shop as usual--so far, at
least, as the other crowding duties would permit.
When he formed his first and very brief Ministry, under Constitutional
Government, prior to my definitely leaving the colony in 1857, he did me
the honour to invite me to a place in his "Cabinet," if our young
colonies may use that grand Imperial term, as his Commissioner of
Customs. With regret I was compelled to decline; for, from experience a
few years before, I had found that if a man has business of his own
which he must attend to he cannot possibly at the same time attend to
that of everybody else.
Premiers came in thick and fast succession in those days, for there was
no small doing and undoing, and no little of general upturning when an
exclusively representative Assembly took the place of the "Crown"
system, in its preceding complete or subsequently still partial
condition. The Land Question was ever the chief difficulty, for, whereas
in previous times the people had been directed to conform themselves to
land laws, now the new fancy all was that the land laws should conform
to the needs of the people. Ministries rose and fell mainly on this
question. When the second time Premier, I think in 1860, Nicholson left
his name to a Land Act, as did O'Shanassy, Gavan Duffy, and others, and
there is a ringing of the changes even yet upon that fertile subject.
William Nicholson has passed to his rest, and Burns might have fitly
awarded him his high palm, "An honest man's the noblest work of God."
CHARLES HOTSON EBDEN, ESQUIRE.
"But I thought there was more in him than I could think."
--Coriolanus.
"Methinks there is much reason in his sayings."
--Julius Caesar.
"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." The subject of this sketch
might put in a claim for at least something towards redeeming Jack's
dulness, for he had a few odd ways, and a fertile turn for
epigrammatics, some of them not bad. He boasted of having Beau
Brummell's antipathy to certain vegetables. During the early but brief
allotment mania he said that he feared he was to become "disgustingly
rich," one of his epi's which became a by-word, and scored him a decided
success. When some colonist, hearing him called by the name of Ebden,
asked him if he was related to "the great Mr. Ebden," his
humorously-delivered response, to the effect that he was himself that
happy individual, scored him another, perhaps smaller, success. I have
often seen him score yet another, which, perhaps, in his own view, was
not at all the least of that sort of thing, when, after writing in a
rather neat and most distinct hand, the pen seemed suddenly under
paralysis, and a sadly dilapidated signature was the result. He always
signed his name in that fanciful way.
Ebden's name was so well known in the earlier years--indeed his gait and
ways, his sayings and doings were so marked throughout--that to omit him
from my list would leave a decided blank. But if the man had consisted
of these little oddnesses just alluded to, whether first class or
second, little would have survived of him, as business-like John Bull
fails to appreciate people who have no more solid backing than that.
Underneath all this very gauzy surface, Ebden, as all who had his
intimacy were aware, was withal a man of ability and good common sense,
and, what was practically more, he was reputed to rank high in the role
of success in the early allotment rig. Indeed, in the rapid
fortune-making of that time, he contemplated a palatial residence for
himself upon an ample frontage to Collins-street, next above the Bank of
Australasia. Two back offices had been built towards the full idea, but
the allotment game had already turned ere he got further, and there the
incomplete work stood. The "offices" were readily sold or let, and from
intended sculleries or what not, rose to be the places of business of
two early firms of solicitors--Meek and Clarke on the one side, and
Montgomery and McCrae on the other. The spacious frontage remained long
unbuilt upon, but it has since been taken as part of a "Temple"--not,
however, of the gods, but of very different people--the lawyers.
He and I were on opposite sides of the political hedge, at least in the
times when we were together in public life, both in Sydney and
Melbourne, during the pre-constitutional era. He belonged, almost beyond
any others--the exceptions being perhaps limited to William Forlong and
my friend A.R. Cruikshank--to the anti-popular and pro-squatting party;
although, subsequently, when there was the "fact accomplished," and no
help for it, he accepted "fully and cheerfully," as his election
addresses put it, the reigning democratic platform. But he was not
unkindly withal, and he helped my comparative legislative inexperience
at Sydney, when we were both there to represent Melbourne and Port
Phillip. He had done me a great favour also in making himself most
serviceable with the German immigration which I had started from Hamburg
in 1849. He was quite a German scholar, having finished his education at
Carlsruhe, a name which he transferred to his pastoral station in the
Port Phillip District.
Ebden, like most others in it, did not bring much out from the allotment
mob. When returned afterwards to represent the district along with me in
Sydney, I heard that a draft of cattle from the station was needed for
expenses. These were still the reactionary times of such small things
for all of us. But in after years he went on and prospered, and he left
behind him what might have been called a large fortune in any place
where there were not a W.J.T. Clarke and a Henry Miller, and perhaps
some few others besides, in the rival category.
EDWARD WILSON, CHIEF PROPRIETOR OF "THE ARGUS," "THE TIMES" OF THE
SOUTH.
"The good I stand on is my truth and honesty;
I fear nothing
What can be said against me.
--Henry VIII.
I was long and intimately acquainted with Wilson. He was a man of high
qualities and noble longings, and scorned meanness of all kinds; and he
had, like his predecessor Kerr, some good and pungent literary
pretensions, although he could not be placed on a level with Kerr while
the latter enjoyed adequate health. But, on the other hand, he greatly
marred his influence by what might be called impetuous intemperateness
in his early press career. Indeed, "The Argus", in its later stages,
must needs emerge, as in fact it did, from its chief owner's editing, if
it was to take the position of "The Times" of the South. He had a great
antipathy to indecision in public men, and he entered upon a furious
crusade against the Superintendent and his surroundings, as the prime
causes in the delay in "the unlocking of the lands." Mr. La Trobe was
dubbed "the Hat and Feathers," as though these trappings were the most
of him; and this vulgarity, excusable only under small "Eatanswill"
conditions, passed into the great developments of the golden age. Some
of us, who were doing our best in the same general direction, often had
to wish, with reference to Wilson, to be saved from our friends, while
Mr. La Trobe, if affected at all, was only encouraged or scared into
still more decided indecision.
Wilson was not much of a man of practical business. He was not
successful in his early life at home, where business is a harder ordeal,
and with fewer of the "flukes" that cross the path in young colonies.
Arriving in Melbourne shortly after myself, and in company with a
friend, one of the brothers Kilburn, he squatted upon a small cattle run
to the south-east, towards Dandenong. But as this did little beyond
merely keeping soul and body together, as things were all now subsiding
from the riot of the earlier years, it was given up. Foregathering next
with Mr. J.S. Johnston, they between them bought "The Argus" from Kerr
for a very small sum--I think under 300 pounds--and the paper then
started upon its successful career under the increased vigour and
improved method of its management.
Although, as I have said, not a business man himself, Wilson was
fortunate in business partners--first Mr. Johnston, as above said,
succeeded by my old friend James Gill, who, retiring, was replaced by
Lauchlan Mackinnon whose energy and application piloted the paper
financially into its later grand position. He had latterly, besides, a
surpassing business agent in my old friend James Rae, whose firm of
Jackson, Rae and Co. had retired comparatively early, after attaining
the mercantile headship of the colony; thus leaving the colonial field
open to other early friends, Fred. G. Dalgety and Fred. A. Du Croz, who
have since, as Dalgety, Du Croz and Co., and Dalgety and Co. Limited,
taken the first position in Australasian commerce.
For some years Wilson took full charge of the editorial and general
literary work, which, after the gold discoveries, was labour second to
none. In the sudden expansion of all colonial interests, there was
constant fear for years together of falling short of adequate supply.
Now it was type, again it would be paper, and, worst of all, it would at
times be the inadequacy of staff. The Australian press had at times to
be content with such dress of paper as could on emergency be had, and
for some time, as I recollect, one of the Sydney issues came out on tea
paper from China. Wilson, as I have repeatedly seen him, would occupy
his corner in the comparatively large room into which the narrow old
premises in Collins-street east had been latterly expanded. There most
of the work was done, he receiving, during nearly the whole night, news
and messages, correcting proofs, and passing instructions in his quiet
off-hand, and, when needful, peremptory or commanding way, and, amidst
the ceaseless noise, writing or correcting leaders when possible.
With the gold tide came at first such heavy expenses, much of them quite
unforeseen and unprepared for, that the press interest was run, of
necessity, into heavy debt, where there was no adequate capital. It was
either this or to give up the game in those changing times; and those
who had not the money or the credit went to the wall, to make room for
others less embarrassed. "The Argus" thus got heavily into debt to its
agents and bankers; but after 1854, which had been a most trying year of
inevitable reaction, there was gradual recovery, and eventually a due
reward in commissions and interest to its supporters.
The prosperity of "The Argus" about this time was unprecedented in the
antipodes, and for a considerable interval the paper stood unrivalled,
not only in Victoria but in Australasia, having at last surpassed, both
in circulation and in the profits of business contents, even the
long-established and highly respectable "Sydney Morning Herald", it was
allowed, and not unfairly, to be "The Times" of the Southern Hemisphere,
for Wilson had retired in favour of more temperate editorship; and in
supporting, and being supported by, the mercantile interests, and in the
adoption generally of the Freetrade policy of the parent state, the
paper followed its northern prototype.
But the clearing of the ground had left room for other and better
accoutred rivals, and "The Age" arose to enter the lists with "The
Argus". The latter had taken up Freetrade and the "classes;" the former
took up Protection and the "masses;" so far, at least as these terms
might, as to either application, distinguish democratic Victoria's
condition. Protection had been quite in abeyance under the old regime,
beyond at least, an occasional sigh from agricultural Geelong for higher
prices for the farmer, "the mainstay of every country." Even during the
interregnum of semi-constitutionalism, 1851-55, the tendency had been
effectually checked, chiefly by the energy of the Collector of Customs,
Mr. Cassell, then one of the Official Legislative Members, who,
supported by the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce, was bent upon a tariff
of the Home kind, of half-a-dozen leading articles, with perfect freedom
of exchange over the world for all products of the colony's labour. But
Mr. Cassell, to universal regret, on general as on commercial grounds,
died in November, 1853, leaving the colony a less obstructed road to
those restrictions which it has since seen fit to impose upon its own
industry. "The Age", with remarkable ability and as remarkable success,
has always advocated Protection. But at first, as my recollection goes,
it was in that qualified way which is not necessarily against trading
freedom, reasonably considered. I perfectly recall the late Mr. Syme's
main argument, or excuse, to the effect that the Western United States,
for instance, should, on social considerations, restrict universal
wheat-growing, even at economic loss. But if one may judge from some
recent Freetrade and Protection controversy as between Victoria and New
South Wales (see "Age" for April-May, 1887), all qualification seems now
dropped, and even direct economic advantage expected from Protection.
None the less "The Age" gained upon "The Argus", and has, I understand,
long surpassed it in that most prominent of all tests, the circulation.
Perhaps in profits also. When I inquired lately of one of "The Argus"
chiefs upon those delicate points, the reply was, that "The Argus" was
not up to "The Age's" circulation, "but, further, deponent sayeth not."
This does not mean, however, the loss of position as the Southern
"Times", for "the leading journal" is by no means at the head of the
London press in point of circulation. Where it may be, however, when it
comes down from the aristocratic threepence to the common penny of its
brethren remains to be seen; and I am told that all has long been in
readiness for the change when the fitting times arrives. And so, as "The
Argus" is still twopence to "The Age's" penny, inverted relations as to
circulation may some day not be impossible there also. The circulation
of the daily "Age", by my last account, is close upon 70,000, which is
not "a poor show for Kilmarnock," in that sense of the joke.
In 1858, Wilson quitted the colony "for good," as the phrase is,
followed by Mackinnon, and later on by their third and only other
partner, Mr. Allan Spowers. "The Argus" was now an established principle
of Victoria, and prosperity was assured. After a few more years of
economizing, until the business debt was finally cleared off, the
partners could enjoy to the full their great and well-merited fortunes.
Wilson and Mackinnon took up palatial country residences--the one at
first at Addington, ten miles from London, and later at the pleasant and
classic Hayes Place, the favourite abode of the great Chatham; the other
at Elfordleigh, in Devonshire; while Spowers lived chiefly in London,
where, as the common favourite of both, he, with his genial temper, kept
the peace between his seniors, who, with an infirmity too common to
human nature, were prone to disagree, for want, let us suppose, of
anything else to think about.
Mackinnon, with his energetic mind, had been the most concerned in
building up the later stages of the "Argus" fortunes. Both Wilson and I
had a high opinion of his qualities, as the following incident may show.
He and I, as I have said in my sketch of the Henty family, were
anti-transportation delegates to Tasmania in 1852, and, proceeding by
steamer to Launceston, we had for fellow-passengers a considerable body
of returned diggers, most of them with their bags of gold, and a good
proportion of them with expressions of face one would rather not meet if
beyond call of the police. In short, a good sprinkling of returned
convicts were of the number, with their "piles," acquired possibly quite
as much by robbing as by digging. After a few hours at sea, a rumour
reached the cabin that there had been a robbery, one of these ruffians
having seized a bag of gold from one of the other digger passengers. The
thief had at once disappeared below and secured himself within a
surrounding of his own chums, so that it was feared he might escape with
his booty, as no one seemed "game" to descend the fore companion ladder
and encounter this sinister crowd below. Mackinnon at once took the
cause in hand. Telling the robbed man to follow him, so as to help
identification, he, without an instant's hesitation, descended the
ladder. A few of us followed, to support our gallant leader. "I want the
thief," he said; "he must restore the gold. You honest diggers are not
to lose your earnings in this way." So saying, he pressed forward into
the crowd, followed by his guide; and when at last the latter pointed
out the culprit, he seized his arm and dragged him back to the ladder's
foot, where he peremptorily ordered him to restore the stolen gold. All
this was done in less time than I have taken to tell it. The thief,
overwhelmed by the suddenness of the action, and still more, perhaps, by
the want of expected support from his "pals," promptly brought out the
gold; and thus ended a little drama highly illustrative of those
stirring times.
On my return I mentioned this circumstance to Wilson, and we both agreed
that Mackinnon was just the man we were all looking for at that critical
period for the headship of the colony's police. Wilson was in full power
as owner and editor of the rising "Argus", while I was senior member for
Melbourne; and between us we reckoned upon influencing the Government to
make at once this appointment, and in that view we went straight to
Captain Lonsdale, our Chief Secretary. We were just too late, for the
appointment, as we learnt, had already been decided in favour of Mr.,
afterwards Sir William, Mitchell. I do not doubt that this incident had
something to do with Wilson's subsequent invitation to Mackinnon to join
him in the "Argus" interest. And here he worked so effectively as to
make Wilson just a trifle sensitive as to people thinking that the new
hand did even more for the common cause than the old one. But, as the
saying has it, "Comparisons are odious." They are, besides, quite
unnecessary, for both have proved themselves most worthy men, fighting
their life's course valiantly and well, and that, too, with a rare
success.
There can, I hope, be no betrayal of confidence in repeating what rumour
gave as to "Argus" fortunes. The net profits about this time--that is to
say, towards 1878, when Wilson died--were put at between 22,000 and
24,000 pounds; but this, I believe, must have since very considerably
increased. Wilson had the larger moiety; Spowers, who was the later
importation, having a comparatively small interest.
Wilson was now the country gentleman, able to live in almost princely
style. With his amiable and highly-cultured sister, who lived latterly
with him, he kept a hospitable house, inviting the old colonists of his
acquaintance, as they came and went to and from the old country. He was
not without faults of temper and impatience, increased probably by a
feeling of physical weakness which denied him activities of mind and
body to the extent his ambition for life's utility would have preferred.
His tall, well-developed form and commanding presence, backed by his
ample means, placed him easily in a leading position. Now he would be
pacing Hayes Place grounds with the frank and genial Archbishop Tait,
who, on a visit to the parish, had dropped in with the Vicar, Mr. Reid.
Again he would be a well-known and welcome figure at dinners, "at
homes," picnics, and what not, with the Darwins, Lubbocks, Farrs, and
the rest of the neighbourhood, scientific and otherwise, but the former
by preference. His chief trouble was a weak action of the heart, which
for the last year or two kept him constantly in view of death. He calmly
regarded the prospect of the great change, put his affairs in order as
he wished, and awaited "the call of God." He passed away with but slight
suffering in the beginning of 1878, before completing his 64th year. His
remains were, by his own request, returned to the colony which, as he
always insisted, he had served so long and so faithfully. His large
means were left chiefly to various charitable and other useful
institutions in the colony. Besides larger legacies to his relations,
twenty-six of his oldest colonial friends enjoy for life a bequest of
100 pounds each per annum, and as these were the friends of the early
and small times of Port Phillip, few of whom had prospered at all like
himself, the help is not unneeded in most cases. That all of these
legatees were of the other sex is explained by the fact that, having
been always a bachelor, he had an intense, although only a general
admiration for the sex. Very many others will, over an indefinite
future, have reason to bless the name of Edward Wilson.
EARLY SOCIETY: WAYS, MEANS, AND MANNERS.
"When rather from our acts we them derive
Than our fore-goers."
--All's Well that Ends Well.
The salient defect, for more or less interval at first, in all
commencing colonial societies, is the disproportion of the female
element; and thus, in the sparseness of homes and families, we have that
hardness of social feature, which illustrates how much better is the one
sex with the "helpmeet" provided in the other. Early Port Phillip was no
exception to this rule. Ladies and children were comparatively rare
objects. From Tasmania and elsewhere there were a good many "choice
spirits" in more than one meaning of the words. There was a marvellous
consumption of brandy, among such unusual proportions of strong,
venturous, rowdy adults; of tea and sugar, and butcher's meat also;
giving altogether a statistical category worse than useless for accurate
purposes. Manners were rough, to use a mild term. The town was bad, and
the bush was worse. When a pious missionary of those early times, prior
to adventuring into the interior, inquired of a squatter if the Sabbath
were observed in the bush, "Oh, yes," was the prompt reply, "a clean
shirt and a shave."
In such times a large family of ladies might have trodden the soil
somewhat as goddesses come down to the desolate habitations of men. Four
such families of the earliest times, in particular, rise to my
recollection. They were those of Mr. Grylls and Mr. Clow, both
clergymen, the one of the Anglican, the other of the Presbyterian
communion; of Mrs. Williamson, a widow lady from near Edinburgh; and of
Mr. James Smith, Magistrate and Savings Bank manager, whose bustling
form, ever hurrying through our streets, was perhaps the best known of
the place, and who, along with his friend and co-magistrate, Mr.
Simpson, was as the coping stone of local respectability. That all of
these fair young maidens, most of them remarkably attractive and
pleasing, as I have reason to remember, were duly married, need hardly,
under all the circumstances, be told, besides being attested to-day by
whole generations of consequences.
Another feature of those early times, a lively and bright feature in
many respects, was the considerable number of young men, the younger
sons of good families--and, for that matter, the elder sometimes along
with the younger--who flocked out, in unusual proportion, I might say,
and who infused into the somewhat rough social scene the charm of high
culture and manners. Wild they doubtless were in instances not a few;
but even that may not be without its side of charm, at least amongst the
younger votaries. Some few eventually returned "Home," mostly those who
had been shipwrecked in the troubled sea of early-time speculation. But
most of them have remained to take their various and full part in
colonial society, not a few taking the very highest positions. Thus we
had the Stawells and Barrys, the Leslie Fosters, Sladens, Rusdens, of
town and neighbourhood, and the Campbells, McKnights, Irvines, of
surrounding squatterdom. Most of these are long since the fathers of
families, native Australians, including sons who not unfrequently
finished their education in the mother country--a dutiful deference
which Australia may surely not yet quarrel with. This habit is still
strong, even to the third generation in Victoria, amongst her well-to-do
colonists. The youths may not expect better training than from a Hearn
or a McCoy, an Irving or a Pearson, on the colonial floor; but such
diversion from rule will, in its occasional way, the better help to keep
the great scattering family united to their venerable mother--to keep
together the elder and the younger Britain.
Oxford and Cambridge in particular have, indeed, been quite run upon
from Victoria, and those two venerable mothers of English university
life can already command in and of that colony quite a small legion of
their alumni--the Clarkes and "Loddon" Campbells, the Finlays and
"Colac" Robertsons, the Websters and Westbys and Wilsons, who are now
the young or the still vigorous life of their colony. If some few of
these have remained permanently at Home, or if they pleasantly alternate
their domicile by such facile means as the marvels of modern
inter-communication afford them, yet all of them help, in more or less
degree, to strengthen that tie between the mother and her adventurous
colonial offspring which we must hope is never to be broken.
I have the less need to expand further this inspiring section of my
subject, seeing that I have been anticipated to some extent by a brother
author, who, under the pseudonym of "Rolf Boldrewood," has presented to
us, in lively and fitting style, a most charming picture of early
colonial life, its pleasant hospitalities, plus the Attic salt of no
small proportion of the bounteous tables. The disguise of name is not
difficult to penetrate. The author's father, residing in his pretty
place at Heidelberg, whose genial sun-browned face I pleasantly recall,
was well known to me, as well, indeed, as to every other early colonist.
His son's book has been my pleasant companion as I write up daily my
"Recollections" in the little cabin of the good s.s. "Coptic", more
especially as we both traversed much the same ground, and during the
same interesting early time, in Western Victoria.
"GOVERNMENT HOUSE."
"Old fashions please me best; I am not so nice
To change true rules for odd inventions."
--Taming of the Shrew.
But perfection is never to be expected in human nature, and accordingly
some decided drawbacks were, reasonably I think, chargeable to this
"good society" which, as I have just said, had beneficially helped the
dawning colony. There was a tendency to separate from, and rather hold
in undue depreciation, the trading and toiling masses who mainly made
the country. This tendency was fostered in the pre-representative days,
when there were no political institutions to bring the mass of plain but
prosperous society to the front. Of course, when these times came, the
game was soon up. But, while the preceding era lasted, a somewhat
invidious "aristocracy" gathered around the authorities, the mutual
instincts, born of the situation, inclining them to each other. This
united party got the name of "Government House." It included most of the
highly educated, to whom it was a tempting status, and most of the
squatting Crown tenants, whether highly educated or otherwise; and it
was cordially open to "presentable" colonists in general, who, holding
its views--of course a sine qua non--were willing to enter it. The views
were decidedly "pronounced," and took practically the form of a decided
preference for the status quo, or, at least, modified by the slightest
possible of political concession to those noisy, restless masses, who,
with the local press generally on their side, ceaselessly kicked at all
authority. The political timidity and indecision of Mr. La Trobe, worthy
man as he otherwise was, gave practically life and soul to this
anti-popular party, which laboured, more secretly perhaps than openly,
to avert or modify, for the time being at least, the political
concession expected from the Imperial Parliament. Mr. La Trobe's view
evidently was, that if the colonials kicked so strongly when under
bonds, how much more furiously must they kick when the bonds were
removed. But, as reasonable persons might have predicted, and as was
promptly experienced, the colonists kicked because they were bound, and
when unbound they did not kick at all.
The same political feature, and even in more resolute form, had then
developed also at Sydney, where Mr. Wentworth led the "upper ten," for
the protection of authority against levelling radicalism. He and his
party, out-Heroding Herod, and being more governmental than the
Government, seriously contemplated a limitation of the franchise to a 50
pounds rental, and the institution of a Colonial Peerage, as a permanent
slap in the face to the ugly Democracy. Had he carried his views, or
even some considerable approach to them, his influence with the party,
and his bull-dog courage, would soon have put his colony into an uproar,
and possibly even into civil war. But, thanks for once to his political
extremes, the question was happily settled rather by being laughed out
of court than by time-wasting argument.
"Government House," however, did secure, in both colonies, a certain
measure of triumph. Authority in esse having the whip hand of authority
in posse, the one-third of nominees as against two-thirds elective were,
by a disproportionately large representation purposely given to the
squatting districts, converted into a permanent majority of Crown
nominees and Crown tenants. This was clearly an evasion of the intention
of the Imperial Parliament, which was that, by giving a decided majority
to the popular side, the colonies might be graduated into complete
constitutionalism.
But, after all, this evasion lasted only for a very few years. These
early wranglings are now all but forgotten. But they are so only because
the narrow views which gave them birth have been entirely defeated, and
are all but exploded. In the progress of the colonies since, "the
merits" have occupied the front, and the useful has taken the precedence
of the ornamental. The latter is not to be despised when in company with
the former; nor has it been, for not a few who were once on the
anti-popular side have entered public life, and even secured the highest
prizes. This necessitated a descent from cloudland to the solid ground
of colonial society. The alternative was extinction, and wisely, in most
cases, the latter was not preferred.
Another feature of this Sydney ultra party--a curious feature, indeed,
to look back upon to-day--was its undisguised antipathy to the
anti-transportation feeling then gathering force throughout
South-Eastern Australia, and even in Tasmania. The movement was highly
unfashionable, say even deeply vulgar, in the leading circle surrounding
Government House. For those who had the infirmity of such puritanical
leanings there was an approach to the antipathy, plus contempt, of the
southern slaver of the States for his northern abolitionist countryman.
When my friend, Mr. (afterwards Sir) S.A. Donaldson introduced me, for
my temporary stay, at the Australian Club, then the high quarters of the
party, he passed me a friendly hint to steer clear, at least when on the
floor of that "house," of that delicate subject.
This feeling was further and rather amusingly illustrated on one
occasion during the "Separation Session," at which I was the member for
Melbourne, and present at the time. Mr. Henry Moor, the well-known
solicitor, and one of the five district members, in replying to the
charge urged against us of the unfilial indifference or ingratitude of
Port Phillip in thus seeking separation, instanced for the contrary the
recent event of the arrival from Melbourne of a deputation from the
Anti-Transportation League, in order to help Sydney in promoting its
good cause. The instant his drift was detected, the Speaker, Dr. (Sir
Charles) Nicholson, apprehensive, doubtless, of some undesirable scene
on that too sensational subject, rose to call peremptorily the
honourable member to order, and to the non-transgression of his proper
subject. But all this injuriously exclusive faction had entirely
disappeared from that open and genial society of Sydney which welcomed
Mr. Froude three years ago, and which he describes so pleasantly.
CHEAP LIVING.
"All cheering Plenty, with his flowing horn,
Led yellow Autumn, wreathed with nodding corn."
--Burns.
After the first few years of disturbing land speculation, and a too
general extravagance of living, we settled down into a frugal folk, of
moderate but steady prosperity, which lasted up to the general
unsettlement of everything by the gold. The general moderation, and the
cheap and plenty time that characterized it, culminated in 1844, when
bread was 4 pence the 4-pound loaf, rich fresh butter 3 pence a pound,
and beef and mutton 1 penny. A good managing lady, with whom I lodged in
that year, told me one day at dinner that a savoury dish we were
enjoying was a bullock's head, got for nothing from her butcher, and
with which she hoped to keep the house for yet two more days. Shortly
before this, when my friend Fennell and I housed together at the west
end of the town, we sent one day to the neighbouring slaughtering-place,
where the custom was to sell by retail to the public the legs of mutton
at 5 pence each, as they had comparatively so little of tallow for
boiling down. We duly got one, cooked it, and found it very good.
No doubt it was in very great measure because money was scarce and dear
that nearly everything was thus cheap. I recollect the sale by auction
at that time of a vacant half-acre allotment in central Collins-street,
next to that on which Mr. George James, wine merchant, had very early
erected his surpassing brick office and dwelling. After some slight
competition, the allotment, put up, I think, at the upset price of 300
pounds, was bought by Mr. Edmund Westby for 344 pounds. The amount is
impressed upon me, because I wondered at the time that anyone should
thus throw away so much good money. But my friend Westby reckoned the
future more accurately than I did, for within nine years after, this
price was hardly the 500th part of the value. To cap the whole tale, the
lot was, I think, in the hands of Government from having been abandoned
by the original buyer, who had forfeited his deposit rather than
complete his supposed bad bargain.
According to my recollection, the first of our sober community to set up
a carriage and pair was Mr. Henry Moor, above alluded to. Even His
Honour the Superintendent had no such luxury at that time. I remember
looking upon that vehicle with a sense of awe, possibly not without envy
at what was to most of us the entirely unattainable. I speak of the real
Hyde Park Corner article, and not the old "shandrydan" with which some
remote squatter might at times have galloped into town, poising himself
with practised and needed adroitness on nature's bush track, behind a
pair or more of the hundreds of nags on his run. I must except also
those said anomalous early years, for I recollect sallying forth in 1841
from my little lodging in Lonsdale-street, opposite the old gaol, then
being erected, to see Mr. John Hunter Patterson, a spirited colonist of
the earliest times, drive his splendid four-in-hand through the
trackless bush into town from the direction of the Moonee Ponds.
RELIGIOUS INTERESTS.
Our small society, in its upward struggle, received a distinctly great
impetus for good by the accession in 1848 of the first Lord Bishop of
the colony, Dr. Charles Perry. He exhibited a rare energy in the cause
of his Divine Master, and he frankly and genially sought and recognized
that Master's Church far beyond the pale of the Bishop's own section of
it, so far at least as the rules of that section would permit. But the
good Bishop, liberal as he was in one direction, yet failed to reach the
full width of colonial sentiment in that respect, when he refused to
reciprocate the courtesy visit of his Roman Catholic brother. He is
credited with having given his reason, namely, that, in his view, the
Roman Church belonged to "the synagogue of Satan"--surely a very
venturesome assertion of so vast a part of Christianity and of the power
and civilization of the world. We might say at times of bishops, as is
so often said of judges, that when they have to make any unusual or
unexpected decision they had best not give the reasons. I witnessed a
very different sense of duty, and one to which I must confess a
preference when we were at Lugano, an inland town of Teneriffe, situated
a few miles from Santa Cruz, where our good "Coptic" halted for six
hours to replenish her coal, thus permitting her passengers a shore
excursion. A polite elderly gentleman, apparently the sole occupant of
the Lugano hotel, whose decidedly clerical aspect, together with that
simple white neckband which Catholics claim as solely their own, made us
at once set him down as Roman, invited us to look through the inevitable
cathedral, the only sight of the place. But we found our mistake when he
took occasion to allude to "our dear Roman Catholic brethren." We then
adjudged him to be a broad-minded Anglican, which was correct, for, as
he afterwards told us, he was an ex-navy chaplain.
THE GERMAN IMMIGRATION.
"Go then forth, and fortune play upon
Thy prosperous helm."
--2nd part Henry IV.
When I made my first Home trip, in 1847, I resolved to open, if I
possibly could, German emigration to Port Phillip. Quite a number had
already been settled, some from the earliest years, in South Australia,
where their industry, frugality, sobriety, and general good conduct had
made them excellent colonists. This favourable testimony was confirmed
to me by correspondence on the subject with my late much-lamented
friend, Alexander L. Elder, one of South Australia's earliest, most
esteemed, and most successful colonists. My first step on arrival was to
write to the "Commissioners of Emigration," an officiate since dispensed
with, pointing out this South Australian success, and suggesting that a
certain charge upon the Colonial Land Fund, authorized in special cases
of emigrants--an aid of 18 pounds a head, I think--might be made
applicable to German vinedressers emigrating to Port Phillip. In due
course, I received a most cordial reply from the secretary, Mr.
(afterwards Sir) Stephen Walcot, to the effect that Lord Grey, then
Colonial Secretary, highly approved of the project, and that the aid
asked for would be forthcoming for properly qualified German
vinedressers. Armed with this letter, I went to Hamburg with
introductions to Messrs. John Caesar Godeffroy and Son, at that time the
chief shipowners of the city. They were evidently well disposed, and had
been, I think, concerned in the previous out-flow to Adelaide, as they
referred me to Mr. Edward Delius, of Bremen, who had been an agent in
the work. My visit to Delius resulted in my proceeding at once to
Silesia, where I got as far as Liegnitz, whose gilded or tin-covered
minarets reminded me that I was approaching the fanciful or gorgeous
East. Here I met a number of the peasantry, all eager to hear about
Australia, friends of some of them being already there. Hearing that a
Moravian headquarters was also there, I introduced myself, stating that
I was a subject of, and personally acquainted with, their brother
Moravian, Mr. La Trobe, our Superintendent. I found other La Trobes
there, his relatives or namesakes. Several of the body spoke good
English, and so I got fairly on with the peasantry, explaining as to the
class entitled to the assistance in emigrating, and that to vinedressers
only would the aid apply, so as to enable the Messrs. Godeffroy to give
them a free passage. I left them with the understanding that they would
make up a party and communicate with Delius.
About six months later I went again to Hamburg, this time to see the
first party away. They were in a good deal of trouble, for most of them,
in spite of all advice, had clung to old family lumber, things mostly
quite unsuited to Australia, and the carriage-cost of which drained
their narrow means at every stage. But, worst of all, the cholera was
then raging in Hamburg, and it attacked several of the party during some
few days, while they waited, under such shelter as they could improvise,
until the ship could take them. Delius and I visited them, to cheer them
with the near prospect of the sunshine and plenty of Australia.
A rather motley crew was this first German party landed at Melbourne. I
fear they were not all vinedressers. But the difficulty was to get them
to describe themselves as such, even when they were so. This was almost
as hard upon them as for an Indian Brahmin to write himself down a
low-caste Hindoo. Upon any pretence they would class themselves as of
some trade, and one, who doubtless expected great things from it,
entered himself, to the serious damage of our case, as "Doctor of
Philosophy." There was considerable difficulty and delay in getting the
grant. Mr. La Trobe helped us as much as he conscientiously could. Of
course, the said doctor had to be excluded, and others with him. But
eventually a substantial sum was handed to the shippers, sufficient to
encourage them to continue the business.
Several expeditions, larger or smaller, followed. I have no record of
their total. One of their great delights was the superabundance of fresh
beef and mutton. Our ever-active colonist, Dr. Thomson, of Geelong, who
took great interest in Germans, invited a party of them, just arrived,
to Geelong, where he gave them a supper upon the grass around his pretty
residence, killing and roasting a large fat sheep, and serving out
chops, and all the rest of it, ad libitum. One man was noticed to have
eaten a couple of pounds' weight right off, and no doubt he felt, in
consequence, like the boy in "Punch", just as though his jacket were
buttoned. My late esteemed friend, Mr. Otto Neuhauss, himself one of the
emigrating throng, although not of the very first party, gave me, from
his complete mastery of English, most material help in managing their
affairs. I had afterwards the pleasant duty of recommending him to our
first Colonial Secretary, Captain Lonsdale, for a Justiceship of the
Peace, to the great satisfaction and convenience of his co-emigrant
countrymen. I am under much like obligation also to Mr. Brahe, who long
acted, and I hope still acts, as a solicitor amongst the Germans.
But the grand prize for these Germans was the acquisition of land.
Accordingly Captain Stanley Carr (then on a visit with the German Prince
of Schleswig-Holstein) and myself took up, in trust for such Germans as
desired it, and had the means of payment, one of the square miles of
surveyed land, as yet unapplied for, about twelve miles north of
Melbourne, which was divided amongst them in lots as agreed upon. And
there they are to this day, a thriving community. When, in company with
Neuhauss, my wife and I visited them in 1857, just before finally
quitting the colony, we found considerable progress in the form of a
scattered village, with a little Lutheran church, and some show of
gardening and cultivation. They seemed delighted to stick to their
German speaking, and would not even try to speak English. One amusing
feature in the scramble as to allotments was that each tried, in most
cases, to get trees, stones, and rocks in preference to clear ground, as
if so much additional wealth. The trees might have had value for
firewood, but in the other items they had probably more than they
bargained for. We secured the land for them at a pound an acre, and the
fact of their being so largely settled upon it raised its value at once
considerably. All the land thereabout has now risen to many times this
first cost. Many more Germans have since, as I understand, settled upon
other land.
The exact value of the German immigration to Australia may be to us a
differing estimate, but I think we mostly give it a decided welcome.
Lord Grey, as I recollect, was attacked in Parliament by the political
opposition for thus spending money on foreigners which might have better
gone to our own destitute, etc., etc. And I myself was repeatedly so
attacked, but always in a like merely political opposition way, when
anything is let fly at an opponent that will serve the momentary
purpose. In the heat of the O'Shanassy contest for Melbourne, for
instance, I was accused of having told the Silesian peasants that they
were wanted to set an example of sobriety to the drunken Irish. But I
easily escaped from that noose by the rejoinder that, if I did say
anything of the kind, it must have been of my own countrymen, as an
Irishman can never stand to a Highlander at whisky. The true point of
the question is the denationalizing of our race, which is so seriously
threatened, for example, by the import of Chinese. We know that
something of French, Flemish, Dutch, and Danish-Norse, along with a
leading dash of German, all grafted on the old British stock, have
evolved the modern Englishman. Substantially, therefore, we are only
reopening this useful manufacture, which was effectively begun for
England fifteen centuries back.
THE GERMAN PRINCE.
"Come of a gentle, kind, and noble stock."
--Pericles.
One of the pleasant incidents to vary our social life was the arrival in
1850 of the young Prince of Schleswig-Holstein, to whom there occurred,
during the German dynastic confusion that followed the revolutionary
year 1848, an opportunity to see the world. Accompanied by his guardian,
Captain Stanley Carr, he arrived by one of the Messrs. Godeffroy's ships
from Hamburg, having been swayed to some extent in selection of travel
route by the fact of German emigration to Port Phillip having commenced
the year before through the same firm. The Prince, who was then only of
the age of nineteen, and of most amiable and ingenuous look, had that
charm of the true politeness of his years, which left you the impression
that he thought that everyone was to be preferred to himself. If
unfortunate, in the chances of the struggle, in being dropped out of his
principality, he was afterwards compensated in another direction, for
not only is his younger brother our Queen's son-in-law, but one of his
daughters is to-day Empress of Germany. What a reminder are such changes
of the swift passing of time and of the crowd of portentous events in
these quick-speeding years.
The Prince and his guardian landed, as it were, in my arms, by virtue
both of introductions from the Godeffroys, and of my position as virtual
parental head of the German flock which had begun to stream into Port
Phillip. Unacquainted myself with the language, I was ably and
untiringly helped, as I have said, by my late friend Mr. Neuhauss. The
Prince took the thin disguise of Lieutenant Groenwald, but I never heard
that name, except in Captain Carr's official intimation. We all called
him the Prince, but he was equally courteous and unassuming whatever way
we addressed him. It was quite touching to see the harmony that existed
between ward and guardian, the one looking up to his sage Mentor with
the trustful tractability of a child, the other reciprocating high
regard out of the depths of that ultra-Tory sentiment with which long
residence within German Court vicinities, and perhaps a natural turn of
mind, had imbued him. We have been apprised of this still lingering
German high sentiment by hearing at times of the late Emperor
Frederick's habit, when Crown Prince, of calling the Princess "wife,"
and of asking, when looking for her, where his "wife" was--a
transgression of court etiquette so appalling as well nigh to send the
queried parties off into a fit. There was another amusing illustration
from Captain Carr. He came to me once very considerably disconcerted by
the report of a public meeting the day before, at which he, oblivious
for the moment of the inevitable omnipresent English free press, had
offered some remarks. The "Argus", under the undiscriminating democratic
pen of Kerr, its editor, had reported that "Captain Stanley Carr had
told the meeting that the King of Prussia had told him" so and so;
whereas, as Carr sorrowfully complained, the proper expression should
have been that "an exalted personage in Prussia had led him to
understand" so and so. But, added my friend, with manifest comfort, the
departure from propriety was so flagrant that, if the report did happen
to reach the king's eyes, he would never believe it of him.
Both distinguished visitors honoured me and two of my sisters, who had
by this time followed their brother to the land of promise, with a few
days' residence at our cottage, with its garden so full of fruit, upon
the Merri Creek. When so many other invitations pressed, we were in
honour bound to this time-limitation. They were easily entertained with
such few elegancies as we could then boast of. But we were bound also,
even in mere good feeling to surrounding ambitious maidens, to get up a
ball in the Prince's honour. I had my task in discriminating the
comparative few of the fair hands that could possibly be placed in that
of the guest, for even a prince could not dance for ever, so as to
overtake all. On the Prince's part every successive hand was accepted
with equal readiness, and every favoured maiden was duly encouraged, or
discouraged, by faultlessly impartial courtesy.
BLACK THURSDAY.
"Whirlwinds of tempestuous fire."
--Milton.
The year 1851 had for us three memorable events: first, "Black
Thursday," on 6th February; second, the elevation of Port Phillip
district into the colony of Victoria, on 1st July; third, the discovery
of gold, which was practically and substantially that of Ballarat,
during the third week of September.
Black Thursday has been so much written about by others that I had best
confine myself to my own experiences. I rode in to business, as usual,
from my Merri Creek residence, 4 1/2 miles north of the city. The
weather had been unusually dry for some days with the hot wind from the
north-west, or the direction of what we called Sturt's Desert, where hot
winds in summer, and almost as distinctly cold winds in midwinter, were
manufactured for us. The heat had been increasing daily, and this, as we
comforted ourselves, was surely the climax which was to bring the
inevitable reversion of the southerly blast and the restoring rain, for
it was felt as the hottest day in my recollection. In town we did not
hear of much that day, although reports came from time to time of
sinister-looking signs from the surrounding interior, whence an unusual
haze or thick mist seemed to rise towards the cloudless sky. Some few,
however, who were more active than others in their trading or gossiping
movements, became aware in the afternoon, or perhaps were favoured with
the news as a secret, that Dr. Thomson had ridden posthaste from Geelong
to Alison and Knight, our early and leading millers and flour factors,
to warn them that the whole country was in flames, with incalculable
destruction of cereals and other products; whereupon the said firm at
once raised the price of flour thirty per cent. The Doctor had certainly
earned a good fee on that occasion, and we must hope that he got it.
I returned home as usual after the day's work. Nothing to alarm us had
even made a near approach to Melbourne, as our trees were too park-like
in their wide scatter, and our grass too much cropped off by hungry
quadrupeds, to expose us to any danger. But feeling unusual oppression
from the singularly close heat, for I was attired in woollen clothing,
not greatly under the winter woollen standard, and which, by the way,
serves to confirm that our dry Australian clime is not to be measured in
effect, like most others, by mere height of the thermometer, I proceeded
to indulge myself, for the first time in my life, I think, with a second
"refresher" of my shower-bath. Next morning accounts began to pour in
from all quarters of an awful havoc, in which, sad to say, life to no
small extent was lost, as well as very much property.
There has never been, throughout Australia, either before or since, such
a day as Victoria's Black Thursday, and most likely, or rather most
certainly, it will never, to its frightful extent, occur again; for
every year, with the spread of occupation, brings its step in the
accumulation of protectives. Still these fires are a terrible and
frequent evil, and even if the towns and settlements are safe, the
destruction of the grand old forests is deplorable, and ere very many
years will be, indeed, most sadly deplored. What between the unchecked
clearances of the fires, and the unchecked clearances on the part of the
colonists, I fear that those noble gum trees, the greatest and loftiest
trees probably in the world, so graphically described by Mr. Froude in
his recent Australian tour, will have but a poor chance. He describes
also, with equal life, those dangerous forest fires, which are so
especially frequent during the ever-recurring ordeals of drought, of
which he had a fair sample at the time of his visit. Only think of eight
miles of forest burnt in one fire which he witnessed, and such fires
frequent occurrences!
Let us in time take warning by the example of the States and Canada,
where, in and around the more settled parts, the magnificent primeval
forest has entirely disappeared, alike from areas still unused as from
those brought into use. When I travelled by rail from Montreal to
Toronto, during the British Association's Session at the former in 1884,
a very large part of the way was through the monotonous and utterly
wearisome scene of a second growth of miscellaneous small trees and
underwood that had succeeded to the grand original. We were told of one
small town which had become famous by its good taste or good fortune in
having preserved in its midst one of the ancient monarchs. Well, what
could be done to preserve Australian forests? We must not deprive the
people of the use of these forests, for there they are for the purpose,
as part of the country's wealth, and in quantity enough for all,
discreetly dealt with. I would parcel out the forests, into great
clumps, marking off adequate passages between each, and only permitting
for the present the latter to be dealt with. With the gradual clearing
of these intervals, the reserved portions, and the colony generally,
might be freed, in great measure, from the risk of fires.
EARLY VICTORIA, FROM 1851.
"Gold! gold! gold!
Bright and yellow, hard and cold."
--Hood.
I am drawing near the end of what may be fairly considered as "Early
Melbourne and Victoria." Indeed, I might be challenged in going beyond
the memorable 1851, a year which ushers such momentous new features into
the colony. But considerably more than a generation has since passed;
and, writing as I do for those who occupy to-day the old scene, I may
plead as my excuse their own view of the subject; for already they
regard the time I have come to as the real beginning of early Victoria,
while the dim distances preceding are to them a kind of age before the
deluge, which ordinary memories fail to fathom. In keeping to personal
recollections I cannot, at the worst, be very protracted, for I quitted
public life in 1853, and regretfully, under the calls of business, the
colony itself four years later. I must confine myself to some few
recollections of the former brief but busy period--1851-3--of which, in
its multifarious rush of political and general business, I might say in
the well-known words of the Roman poet, which have survived my classic
rust "quorum pars magna fui," provided I were allowed to greatly abate,
or rather perhaps, in becoming modesty, altogether to delete, the third
factor of Virgil's sentence.
The goldfields came upon us with almost the suddenness of the changes of
dreamland. We had had a slight graduation by the news, in the May
preceding, from the sister colony, of a shepherd on Dr. Kerr's station,
near Bathurst, having come upon a round hundredweight of nearly pure
gold. This luck, I presume, was mainly the result of the habit most of
us had begun to acquire of keeping our eyes upon the ground beneath us,
in consequence of Hargreaves, on his return from California about this
time, having predicted gold, and subsequently fulfilled his prophecy by
washing out some of the precious metal in the Bathurst vicinities.
Passing over trifling intermediate finds of gold, as at Anderson's Creek
in August, Ballarat came suddenly upon us.
The news reached town, I think, on 21st September. A week later a small
knot of us merchants, who had offices on the east side of the
Market-square--including our next door neighbours, Messrs. Watson and
Wight--were discussing what was to come of it all; for while part of our
employees were off to visit the diggings on leave, the rest threatened
to follow--leave or no leave. The situation had a certain convenience in
the fact that almost all business was for the time at an end, excepting
that of buying up spades and shovels, pitchers and pannikins, and
anything to answer for a cradle.
Instead of rising with the gold, houses and lands in Melbourne actually
fell, and considerably too, in the first confusion, when multitudes were
selling off or letting at anything they could get, in order to be off to
the diggings. There came, however, a rapid recovery a few months after.
My friend Mr. Henry Miller, sitting next me in the Legislature, told me
one day that two owners of cottages, to whom he had lent 80 pounds each,
upon their respective security, had begged him six months ago to take
over the said property in payment, and let them be off at once to the
common goal of the day; that he had charitably done so, and that he had
just resold these houses for 1,000 pounds each.
When the tide began its upward turn, a Mr. O'Farrell, a quiet
unpretending house agent and rent collector (one of whose sons
afterwards came to so bad an end), made promptly a large fortune by
buying up leases or fee-simples, and in an incredibly short time
re-disposing of them at a great advance.
EARLY BALLARAT.
"All that glisters is not gold."
--Merchant of Venice.
Let me begin upon early Ballarat by stating, what many may now have
forgotten, namely, that the original and native name was Balaarat, or
Ballaarat, which was the pronunciation then, and for some years after.
But our English way is to put the emphasis on the first part of a
polysyllabic word. I have long remarked this practice, comparing it with
that of races of inferior, or more or less barbarous condition, who, as
in countless other examples in Australia, and still more strikingly in
New Zealand, and generally, I think, over the world, lay the emphasis on
or towards the end of the word. What does it mean? I arrived at my
solution. The emphatic ending best preserves the whole word. The
barbarous, with few ideas, give surpassing importance to words; while
the civilized, under the crowd of ideas, disregard words except as mere
vehicles, and traverse them easiest by the early emphasis, to say
nothing of dropping the after part entirely when troublesomely long. The
Turanian, or lowest class of language, as Professor Max Muller tells us,
preserves its root-words for ever, tacking one to another, but never
losing the full sound of each; while all sorts of word "jerry mandering"
liberties go on in the highest class. I ventured to propound my theory
to my linguistic friend, Mr. Hyde Clarke; but he found so many
divergencies in Latin and Greek and Hebrew, and what not, that I was
driven to a partial reconstruction. It was the busy as well as civilized
race that scamped the words. The Greeks and Romans--that portion of them
that made society or the public opinion, and that consequently governed
the language--abhorred the vulgar hurry of business life, and thus gave
their words a better chance of unmutilated life. I have not yet been
driven out of this final theory.
With hardly anything else to do, it was as hardly possible to resist a
visit, with nearly everybody else, to Ballarat. So I appeared there on
the 3rd October, and, as senior member for Melbourne in the colony's
first Parliament, and first President of the recently established
Chamber of Commerce, I was, of course, "a man in authority." So,
mounting a gum-tree stump, as the only available chair or pulpit, I
harangued the diggers, first upon the grand fortunes that had overtaken
the colony, and next upon their sadly wasteful ways with the little
stream that ran through the Ballarat valley. I fear I did not much
impress my hearers on the latter point, for everyone did what was most
for his immediate needs, whether or not he thus sacrificed his neighbour
below him. Next I was conducted to Gold Point, which was just developing
its quality in the "blue clay," which had been struck at no great depth
below the surface. I was let down into a big hole, the early parent of
shaft-sinking, given a spade, and directed to apply it to a place where
a digger's quick eye had detected one speck of gold. There was probably,
he said, a string of gold behind it. And so it proved, for out of about
a pound weight of matrix which I removed on the corner of the spade, I
picked out 7 shillings and 6 pence worth of gold.
Then I retired from the crowd and the incessant noise of cradles, and
ascending from the valley to the high level plain, I came upon a small
lake, whose waters glittered peacefully in the warm sunshine of a bright
spring day. A tiny streamlet was still running from the lake, and
trickling down the small semi-precipice towards the main rivulet, now
sadly muddy, which I had just left. So near was this edge to the lake
that I increased the stream by deepening its bed with my foot; but I
repented of this waste, and restored the block, because the approaching
summer must be thought for, and this natural reservoir was by no means
deep. I waded into the pleasantly and invitingly cool water, but had
promptly to retreat from swarms of leeches which attacked my feet. The
scene was striking. Although the hum of busy humanity arose from
beneath, not an object was visible on the higher level, as I glanced
around to the far west and north, excepting the country's indigenous
features. There was not a human being, not even a sheep in sight. Around
this spot has since arisen the city of Ballarat, with fifty thousand
people, with streets, buildings, institutions, business (including an
extra busy Stock Exchange), equal to those of, at least, twice its
population at Home; while the lovely lake of that time has long been
fringed with residences and gardens, and its waters been the scene of
the regattas and other diversions of the leisure of the prosperous
citizens.
As I rode back on my horse to town--for Cobb and Co. had not yet
established their leather-hung stage drags, for which, in the
impossibility of others upon the unmade roads, we had reason to be
thankful--I mused over all I had seen, and long ere reaching home had
concluded that 10,000 pounds a day was being taken out of Ballarat.
Sundays excepted, that meant a product at the rate of over three
millions a year, into which, as one of its export items, the young
colony was already "precipitated" from a total export product of only a
trifle above a million the year before. No one was prepared to credit
such a statement. Indeed, unbelief on the point was prevalent until well
on into 1852, when Bendigo had been added to Ballarat, and when
Melbourne was seen to be full of gold, which the newly-instituted "gold
broker" was already practised, with critical eye as to quality, in
weighing out by the hundred or the thousand ounces, and which diggers by
hundreds were carrying away in their pockets, in most cases entirely
unrecorded, to Tasmania, Sydney, and Adelaide. There was hardly any
Customs record at the first, and only a very partial one for a while
after, until the diggers ceased thus to carry off the gold, upon finding
that the rival brokers gave them fair and full value. The yield of 1852
was estimated at no less than fifteen millions.
How the diggers, utterly inexperienced as they mostly then were, came so
suddenly upon such surpassingly rich drifts has never been, to my mind
at least, satisfactorily explained, unless the case be summarily
affiliated to those possibilities of throwing "sixes" in dozen
successions, and such like. In no one year, since 1852, have the
Victorian goldfields, although comparatively the most productive,
yielded even a near approach to fifteen millions.
MOUNT ALEXANDER AND BENDIGO.
"Our fortune lies upon this jump."
--Antony and Cleopatra.
The following year, about the same pleasant spring season, I made out a
second goldfields visit, in company with my late friend, Mr. W.M. Bell,
senior partner of the early firm of Bells and Buchanan. This time I went
further inland, and in the more northerly direction of Mount Alexander
and Bendigo, as considerable regions around were then loosely called,
and which are now represented respectively by the large municipalities
of Castlemaine and Sandhurst. Vast changes had taken place in the colony
since my Ballarat visit. There had been, in the first place, arrivals in
multitudes, first from the surrounding colonies, and then from Home,
and, in a lesser influx, from the Cape, America, and parts of Europe.
The tide of such threatening dimensions from China was later on. The
roads, such as they were, were crowded with passengers; and with
traffic, chiefly in flour, to the starving diggers, the carriage of
which to Bendigo ran up to 100 pounds a ton. Indeed, such was the cost
of carriage that some of us estimated that a single year's total would
equal the cost of making a railway. Of course the railway, draining the
labour market, could only itself have been at proportionate cost.
Nevertheless, Mr. Trenchard, a Melbourne solicitor, projected "The
Melbourne, Mount Alexander and Murray River Railway," an enterprise
which, after some months' flutter of chequered life, expired for want of
support from the over-busy colonists, who had other far more immediately
pressing needs and chances for their money.
The "gold escort" had been established by this time, with an armed
guard, which at times included "native police," a force which had been
the best, if not the only, success as yet in our "civilizing" efforts
with the aborigines. The art of digging had greatly advanced since my
Ballarat visit. At Bendigo I inspected the "White Hills," where there
was already regular shaft-sinking to depths approaching 100 feet. The
White Hills were so-called from a large ejection, piled up in white
mounds of a light-coloured thick bed of the auriferous drifts, in which
unprecedented quantities of gold had been found. Descending one of the
shafts, I was shown the chief source of this gold, namely, a thin seam
of small quartz grit, hardly two inches in thickness, and of the white
quartz hue, excepting the lowest half inch, which was browned with iron.
This lowest half inch had almost all the gold, and the very lowest part
of it, where the iron-brown darkened almost to black, was literally
crowded with gold particles. The diggers now always looked for the most
gold where the quartz drift showed most of iron browning. Mr. Selwyn had
not yet explained to us our Australian gold features and those gold
"constants" of Murchison, which had to sustain so severe a shaking in
Australia. I scraped out gold grains with my nails, and a good many with
a knife within a minute. When I told the claim owners, that here was
unlimited gold, and asked what they intended to do with it all, they
pointed to the superincumbent mass of white stuff, which was either
absolutely sterile, or, what was practically the same, had insufficient
gold to pay even a run through the wash when ejected. The case seemed
not unlike that of the thin seams of flint nodules (say nuggets) which
characterize the thick chalk strata of South England, within which most
or all the silicious matter of the entire bed has been somehow brought
together. I understood that this remarkable gold seam gave out not long
after, and that, thereupon, the marvellous yield of Bendigo was
seriously diminished.
As we approached this already great and busy goldfield, when the hum of
its business life was just breaking upon our ears, but without any other
disturbing intrusion to interfere with the universally indigenous scene,
a large kangaroo--the "old man," or largest species--started up amongst
the gum-tree underwood a little ahead of us, and bounded away in
magnificent style. But a day or two afterwards, as we were leaving
Bendigo, another feature of the colony, not indigenous and by no means
so pleasant was brought up to our minds to their considerable discomfort
for the moment. We were just clear of goldfields sounds and company, and
involved in the utter solitude of the primeval bush, when we espied a
party approaching us on the road. They numbered five, all on horseback.
Somehow, the circumstances considered, we had all, independently,
concluded that there was no small chance of their being bushrangers; for
already the towns and goldfields--the latter, of course, mostly--swarmed
with these unmitigated ruffians, arrived chiefly from Tasmania. We
discussed the chances--three, four, possibly even five to one in our
favour--and considered what we should do in case even five to one failed
us in the lot. What we COULD do was the practical question. We had also,
I think, five of a party, and Bell was a huge, strong fellow, able for a
couple of ordinary mortals; but what availed all that against
desperadoes each doubly armed with revolver and rifle. We calmed
ourselves as best we could as we mutually approached; our salute was
cordially returned, and then we found that we owed an ample apology for
having for once so grievously mistaken honest men.
Another goldfields feature was of the most pleasing and inspiring
character. In no goldfield we had then visited did we ever meet with so
much as one drunken person. With most laudable prescience, our
authorities had prohibited the ingress of and the dealing in any
intoxicating drink on all proclaimed goldfields. The good order in
consequence was quite marvellous, and we seemed as if in some earthly
paradise, where mankind had, as with one consent, dropped the worst of
human vices and passions. But this was only so far as drink and
drunkenness were concerned; for rude circumstances made rude men, to say
no more of the pervading convict element. Nor were the goldfields free
from "sly grog selling," as it is called. Still, the difficulties put in
the way kept them thus sober. Of course, outside the goldfields' limits
there was drunken riot enough, intensified, no doubt, by the enforced
sobriety within. Troops of diggers, or their employees, with their
pockets full of gold, would start for town, or for the nearest "public,"
there to run up a score till the whole "pile" had vanished. We were told
of one country hotel called "The Porcupine," whose keeper was making
40,000 pounds a year of net profit. These riotous crowds, at each
public-house, indulged in such shocking excesses of language and conduct
as to make mere drunkenness the very innocence of the case. But withal I
confess to a greatly disappointed feeling when, having left the colony
on a Home visit early in 1853, and returned late in 1854, I found that
the influence of the great "spirit interest" had succeeded in removing
all restriction from the goldfields. By this time, however, the police
and other authority were better organized, so that there was a very
considerable mitigation of bad effects.
EARLY VICTORIAN LEGISLATION.
"They that stand high have many blasts to shake them."
--Richard III.
"Hear ye not the hum of mighty workings."
--Keats.
"Stay, you imperfect speakers."
--Macbeth.
We commenced with an unpretending budget, although memorable 1853, with
all its gold and its progress, in what Wentworth happily called the
precipitation into a nation, had dawned upon us. The Speaker of our then
single Chamber system--one-third nominees--had but 400 pounds a year,
which is guide sufficient to indicate the scale and style of other
things. Our first choice for Speaker fell upon Dr. Palmer, an early
colonist of the medical profession, and of good culture and bearing, but
who had not previously taken any prominent social position. His ambition
was probably stimulated by the fact that amongst the busy colonists, who
perhaps foresaw more work than either honour or pay, there was no
candidate but himself. The rest of us speculated, not without expected
amusement, as to the official attire our new dignitary would appear in.
Probably any other of the elected members, as Speaker, would have
decided on simple evening dress, as most consistent with the modern
tendency to make a gentleman plain, and the waiter and footman dressily
conspicuous; and this would perhaps have decided as to "the Chair" in
that respect for all the future. But Palmer we all knew to be too much
of the old Tory for any surrender of that kind, and there was, besides,
just a trace of the oddly positive in him, although otherwise a genial
good fellow, which held out promise of sport. We were only half
gratified. He appeared in a plain quaker-like but much braided coat,
which was understood to have gone for dress in the good old times of
Charles II.--a time when kings were really kings.
Three prominent subjects came before us for legislation. First, that
fundamental topic of interminable difference, the Land Question. Second,
the Goldfields Question, which was even more important then, seeing that
the Government, under pretence of old English law, to the effect that
all "treasure trove" was the Crown's, claimed the whole goldfields as
Crown territory, whose population had thus no rights, political or
fiscal, except the Crown chose to give such. Third, the Transportation
Question, which, under the startling emergencies of the moment, was
perhaps second to no other before us.
It was rather amusing to see how business went at first, for nearly all
of us were quite inexperienced in public life. But Mr. Barker, our first
Clerk of the Council, took bravely to his duties, and soon became a
useful referee. There was much looking up for authority, and O'Shanassy
indulged in many a profane joke at "May" having taken definitive
possession of Speaker Palmer's brain. One most decided obstacle to our
legislative progress was the fact that the vast incessant tide of
business thrust upon the colony made it hardly possible to spare any
time for other than each one's own private concerns. In my own case, the
only "leisure" I ever had then in the six days was half-an-hour for a
walk and a thought in the early morn. The entire remainder of the day,
and great part of the night also, were one succession of private
business, public meetings, and deputations, Council Committees and
Council sittings.
The unprepared speeches were in due accordance. Dr. (now Sir Charles)
Nicholson, the Sydney Speaker, happened to pay us a visit during these
early legislative throes of baby Victoria; and as I sat by him in the
privileged place near the Speaker's chair, he remarked that, prepared as
he was to find a crude spectacle, he had never imagined an assemblage of
such helpless incompetency. But, in defence, I took Bulwer Lytton's
view, that genius being mainly labour, and labour mainly time, the want
of the last might be merely preventing the first. And so it has turned
out long ago; so that if Sir Charles, who, I am glad to say, is still to
the fore, were to pay another visit, and try conclusions with Mr.
Service, and possibly a hundred others besides, he might reach a
different verdict.
We were all, confessedly, terribly raw in all matters of Parliamentary
form. One day, while we were more than usually puzzled in that respect,
Town Clerk Kerr, who happened to be present, was continually sending to
myself and others written slips, suggesting the proper or common-sense
course. I could not help thinking that, if he had been but a trifle less
of a party man, there was no one in the colony who would have made a
better Speaker, with his sufficiently portly person and commanding
presence, his imperturbable gravity, and his well-filled head in
everything required from that quarter for the position. But this was an
utter non possimus with the nominees and squatting members, most of
whom, with Ebden at their head, would almost rather have endured a
presentable Vandemonian expiree in the chair than the ultra-democratic
Town Clerk and caustic ex-editor of the anti-squatter and
anti-government "Argus". Some of the officials, however, were fairly up
to their mark, notably our Attorney-General Stawell (now Sir William,
the ex-Chief Justice), who, both then and since, has ever held the first
position in ability. At an interval came Auditor-General Ebden, and one
or two others, official or unofficial. My worthy friend Cassell,
Collector of Customs (or Commissioner thereof, as I think he was then
called), was brimful of information for us all, but not much of a
speaker.
The other side of the House, that of the two-thirds elected, was, in my
memory, raw throughout. O'Shanassy's strong brogue, and ungainly
delivery and manner, had not yet been overbalanced by the solidity of
his arguments. Johnson, our third metropolitan, had early descended, or
else condescended, to pungent snapping at the heels of the nominees, as
though these sacred persons had been ordinary mortals like the ruck of
membership on his own side of the table. By far our most vivacious
member was William Rutledge, of Port Fairy, who, with an earnestness of
manner, contrasting with a merry twinkle of the eye, and with a ready
but utterly negligent tongue, gave us many a laugh. He was highly
indignant on one occasion, as I remember, on hearing that a bet had been
taken that, on a particular Committee day, he would rise and speak more
than thirty different times; and he was still more angry when his
informant went on to tell him that the bet had been won. One of the
country members, whose name I am now not quite sure of, set us all in a
roar, on one occasion, by taking as a personal affront, and very tartly
too, as though quite intended, the interruption to his speech by the
arrival of a "royal" message from the Governor.
Another curiosity was the way in which the House adjusted itself for
legislative action. Almost as matter of course, under the instincts of
the position, the elected members were, in fact and in principle alike,
opposed to the nominated; and that, by consequent instincts, ever meant
simply the Government. The press, with similar unanimity, was on the
elected side, for both were in the fight for the full "constitutional"
concession, which came a few years later. In anything that touched
squatting, however, the squatting representatives, led by another old
friend, W.F. Splatt, of the Wimmera, went over bodily, thus giving the
Government a small majority, which, as I have shown in my sketch of Mr.
La Trobe, blocked us seriously in dealing with the waste or Crown lands
for the benefit of the inpouring tens of thousands of people. Sometimes,
by the force of our case, we stole a vote from the Ministerial side, as
when Mr. (afterwards Judge) Pohlman defected upon my anti-transportation
motion for transmission to the Home Government. There was one sole
exception on our elective side (another old personal friend), William
Campbell, of the Loddon, who, uncongenial towards the disturbing
democratic prospect, voted steadily for the Government. On this account,
Edward Wilson, then editing "The Argus", found for him the designation
of "the lost sheep of the Loddon," which, as from the enemy's side, was
no bad piece of humour; and it took its place in the colony's category
accordingly; alongside of Ebden's "disgustingly rich," and possibly
other like humour which I have forgotten.
One of the nominee members, Mr. Dunlop, took me roundly to task for
asserting that, through a mere "accident of law" about "treasure trove"
being, as of old, the property of the Crown, the Government claimed to
confiscate the constitutional rights of one-half of the colonists. I
"explained." But the situation really explained itself. The
common-sense, as well as the political attainment of the day, could not
possibly tolerate such an application of "Old Black Letter" to the
entirely novel and unanticipated circumstances of these great and
populous goldfields. The elected members were compelled to threaten the
only course which appeared legally open to them--namely, that of not
voting the supplies, if the goldfields regulations, and receipts and
expenditure, all of which the Government had claimed as entirely their
own independent matter, were not of reasonable and suitable character,
and in accordance with the colonial representatives' views. At the last,
however, there was happily mutual agreement.
The "Protection Question" was early brought on, of course from Geelong,
by my worthy old friend J.F. Strachan, its member, and both its income
and, for that time, its exit, were amusing. "Why lose so much revenue in
order to set up colonial brandy-making?" he was asked; "was the domestic
article we were to make such sacrifice for to be superior to the
imported?" "On the contrary," he replied; "it was because it would be
inferior, and must therefore be thus bonused against the superiority of
the rival import." So then we were to lose revenue, and pay a higher
price, in order to substitute bad liquor for good. Let us still keep to
the better quality at the lower price. So the proposal was laughed out,
Strachan himself, with his usual good humour, joining in the laugh.
It would be "supererogation" to go into our early legislation, which is
familiar to the colony in a hundred publications, besides the fact that
I have touched already on some of the prominent subjects or questions in
which I myself took a part, such as the movement against transportation,
the new and rather startling course in "The Convicts Prevention Act,"
and the first Gold Commission. I have therefore exhausted my subject, so
far as it is properly my own, and must hasten to take my leave. When I
first thought of this work for the delightfully complete leisure and
repose of a long voyage, I feared that I might find but little to say of
matters of a retrospect approaching two generations. But seated at last
with pen in hand, and with memory stirred up, I had ere long to exercise
mercy towards my expected readers, in sifting the surging crowd of
recollections, so as to keep to such as might have general interest. I
hope I have reasonably succeeded; and if I have also contributed, in
however small a degree, to the information, interest, or amusement of my
old friends and fellow-colonists, I shall be abundantly repaid.
WILLIAM WESTGARTH.
S.S. "Coptic", at sea, latitude 45 degrees south, longitude 142 degrees
east, 25th July, 1888.
"And this is my conclusion."
--Much Ado About Nothing.
POSTSCRIPT.
MELBOURNE IN 1888.
"Here, fifty winters since, by Yarra's stream,
A scattered hamlet found its modest place:
What mind would venture then in wildest dream
Its wondrous growth and eminence to trace?
What seer predict a stripling in the race
Would, swift as Atalanta, win the prize
Of progress, 'neath the world's astonished eyes?"
--J. F. DANIELL, "The Jubilee of Melbourne."
"And, behold, one half of the greatness was not told me."
--2 Chronicles 9:6.
My intended postscript on Melbourne as I found it in 1888 has been
delayed until I have seen Sydney also, so that I have a few words of
comparison on the two great capitals of the southern section of our
empire.
ARRIVAL AT HOBART.
Allow me first to complete the outward passage. I concluded my
"Recollections" when still at sea, within about a day of our ship's
destination, Hobart. The Tasmanian shores gave us a salutation not
usually associated with Australia, that, namely, of the snow, thickly
sprinkled over the southern slopes of the island. I welcomed the scene,
both as recalling that of Home, and as giving the promise of the highest
of civilization, which, as Mr. Froude reminds us, belongs to the
countries where the snow remains on the ground. We shortened our course
by a few miles in taking D'Entrecasteaux Channel, and were, as I
understood, the first of the large vessels from the other hemisphere to
do so. We cast anchor off Hobart after nightfall, the many bright lights
of the city gladdening our eyes, while the babble of English tongues
from the boats around us reminded us once more that, after so many
thousands of additional miles since at Cape Town, we were still within
the British Empire.
WESTELLA HOTEL.
My first salutation came from an exact namesake of mine, Mr. William
Westgarth, whom I had known at Melbourne thirty-five years ago, and who,
after varying fortunes, had for the last dozen years been conducting a
superior class of boarding house or family hotel. It was called
Westella, and was situated in Elizabeth-street, the chief thoroughfare
of Hobart. The house I recollected as that of Mr. Henry Hopkins, a very
early merchant of the city, whom I had met more than once between forty
and fifty years ago. It was the undisputed palace of the city of its
day; nor was it disposed, even now, to bend its head to any second
position. As my friend conducted our party over the pretty scene of
garden and cliff behind the house, we found it all wrapped in frost,
except where the bright morning sun had struck, and we broke the ice,
quite quarter of an inch thick, on a fishpond of the grounds. Thus
Tasmanian ascendancy in the civilized world is secured.
PROGRESS OF THE ANTIPODES.
Already we began in Hobart, and we continued as we went further north,
to meet with indications of the progress of the age, quite abreast of,
and indeed rather ahead of, all that we have been used to at Home. For
instance, we were hardly settled comfortably within Westella, when the
waiter announced that. Mr. Fysh, the Tasmanian Premier, wished to see
me. I had met Mr. Fysh in London, and I quite expected that he wished to
have a talk with me about Tasmanian Finance and Loans. "Is he waiting?"
I asked, jumping up at once to go to him. "No, sir," was the reply, "but
he is speaking to you through the telephone." I passed to the telephone
room, and the signal being sent that I was in attendance, I was given
two ear-caps and told to listen. A clear, but also "a still, small
voice" came up as from the "vasty deep." Whether from the smallness of
it, or from my being unaccustomed to that mysterious sort of thing, I
did not catch the words, and had to relinquish the business to our
hostess, Miss Westgarth, and thus a meeting was conveniently arranged.
AUSTRALIAN FEATURES.
Fortunately for us, we had arrived in a leisure season in the hotel way,
so that our host was free to devote himself to us in sightseeing, and
thus, with hardly a day and a half to spare, we got a fair idea of
Hobart, including a drive along the Huon-road, in whose shaded valleys
we found as much snow and ice as though we perambulated the Scotch
Highlands in January. This had been, however, an exceptionally severe
winter. On the way to Government House, my eyes were once more regaled
with the gum trees, in the well-accustomed form of open forest, the
ground being covered with grass, on which sheep were depasturing. This
is the pleasing characteristic of much of Australian scenery.
THE TASMANIAN MAIN LINE.
The next day, Sunday, we had to leave for Launceston, by a special train
of the Tasmanian Main Line, so as to be in time for the boat to
Melbourne, on which we depended for arrival prior to the opening of the
great Exhibition on 1st August. We formed a large and important party,
including the Governor and lady, the Premier, Treasurer, and
Attorney-General, while the Auditor-General and others were to follow a
few days after. We understood there was to be a general concourse from
all the surrounding colonies, and so far as regarded the official
contribution to the concourse Tasmania had done its duty.
While we ran along this, the chief railway of Tasmania, I recalled
something of the endless contentions between its proprietors or agents
and the Tasmanian Government. The question requires some study, for the
"literature" thereof has already swollen to most inconvenient
dimensions. Any way of it, the Government would have done best for the
colony if they had themselves built the line. As matters now stand, the
company cannot be made to maintain the line in due efficiency, because,
unfortunately, it has neither capital nor credit to do so. Nor can the
amount needed for that purpose be permitted to be taken out of earnings,
because that only increases the guaranteed
interest properly payable on the bonded debt of the line by the
Government. Nor can the Government keep back any of this latter amount,
because the "innocent and helpless bond-holders," or the company as
their advocate, are at once down upon them for such atrocity. Nor,
lastly, can the colony buy up the line and thus be extricated from the
mess, because the company utterly scouts the idea of a sale at mere
valuation.
THE RIVER TAMAR.
Next day we were steaming down the Tamar, famous for its beauty as a
narrow inlet of the sea from Launceston downwards, rather than properly
a river. A small boat took us the first twelve miles, and we were then
transferred to the larger vessel in which we were to cross the Straits.
In the former we were rather crowded, for some twenty-five youths of
Geelong were returning from a football contest with some Tasmanian young
folks. They kept us lively with songs and recitations, in which the
praises of Geelong were dutifully mingled. I was delighted to see the
small Geelong of my early memory turning out in such strength; and
recalling in a parental way this said small past of the place, I might
have maundered in the "bless you, my children," sort of vein, had I not
been kept in check by the frolicsome humour of the boys.
PORT PHILLIP HARBOUR.
Two disappointments awaited me on entering the Heads of Port Phillip:
first, it was early morn, just before daybreak, and next, when the day
did develop upon us half-way up the Bay, it was in such mist and rain as
all but deprived us of any view. But the mist and cloud lifted somewhat
as we approached Hobson's Bay, and thence I was rushed into the
multitudinous shipping of Williamstown and Port Melbourne, the great
harbour works going on all around, the New Cut, the crowded wharves, and
all the other marvels of modern Melbourne.
MELBOURNE.
Here apartments had been provided for us at Scott's Hotel, as Menzies',
in its near neighbourhood, the more usual place for families, was quite
full with Exhibition visitors. But although our hotel had the noise of
ceaseless business below, we on the floor above were so quiet, with the
best of attendance and cooking, and with every other comfort, that we
are, by choice, to return to it after visiting the other colonies. Here,
then, we opened our campaign amongst old scenes and old friends,
separated for more than a generation. I had to ascertain who were dead
and who still alive. A glance over the city soon revealed to me that one
old friend--the oldest, I might say, upon the ground--had entirely
passed away, and that was the old Melbourne itself which I had left
behind me more than thirty-one years before. But happily the old street
names remained, and thus I began to feel again at home.
OLD COLONIST HONOURS.
Labours and honours opened at once. The day of my arrival I was to be
the guest of the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce for the honour of a
dinner to their first President. My friend Mr. Cowderoy, the secretary,
had telegraphed me to Hobart, in the hope that I might arrive in time to
secure the dinner taking place prior to the Exhibition opening, with all
its proposed engrossing after festivities. Mr. Robert Reid, whose
acquaintance I had made at the grand Colonial Exhibition two years
before, was now President of the Chamber, and received me most
cordially. For the following day again there was the opening of the
Exhibition, at which I was to march in the procession through the Avenue
of Nations alongside of Mr. Francis Henty, now the sole survivor of the
illustrious brotherhood who founded Victoria fifty-four years before.
So far from anticipating such honours, I had been preparing myself to
plead, on any public occasion that might offer, the cause of the early
pioneers; for although, as I proposed to put it, we were but the babes,
and have since been succeeded by the men, we were surely to count for
something, as without the baby there could never have been the man. But
all fears on that head were promptly dispersed, and at every turn
honours were poured out upon the "old pioneers" of the days of small
things. I had repeatedly to confess, for myself as one of them, that it
was a most pleasant and fortunate ACCIDENT to have been an early
colonist.
But one disadvantage of these honours and attentions is that they are
apt to excite the envy of your fellow-mortals. Human nature, even the
very best, can never be perfect. My old friend James Stewart Johnston
challenged my right to appear in the grand procession, where he and a
good half-dozen other "old colonists" had equal rights. I replied
soothingly, regretting that so glorious a band of early warriors, who
had borne nobly all the rough battle of early progress (how eloquent
people can be in their own praise!) should not have been super-added to
honour and adorn the procession. But this not satisfying him, I was
driven to bay, and fired my reserved shot, to the effect that I was the
only old colonist who had come twelve thousand miles on purpose to
attend the opening. That shut him up.
THE SUBURBS.
A busy time of public entertainments followed, during the intervals of
which I visited energetically persons and places of old association. The
Melbourne suburbs were quite as surprising as the city itself. Almost
countless miles of streets had taken the place of the country roads or
mere bush tracks of my recollection. While I stood wondering at these
changes, I had to regret that the old features had so completely
disappeared that I was at home nowhere, save that in an otherwise
entirely unrecognizable area there would still appear the old name, such
as the Sydney, the Richmond, or the Toorak Road. I had to be content
with this scant remnant of the past, and to begin acquaintance with an
entirely new set of occupant streets and dwellings.
OLD FRIENDS AND OLD TIMES.
Then I turned to the old and early friends of the past. Some of them
kindly called; others, less able, I had myself to seek out. Thus I met,
besides Mr. J.S. Johnston, already mentioned, Mr. J.A. Marsden, Mr.
Alfred Woolley, Mr. E.B. Wight, Mr. Damyon, Mr. Brahe, Mr. John Barker,
Mr. R.W. Shadforth, the Messrs. Ham, and Dr. Black. Mr. Germain
Nicholson, another old and worthy friend, was in Sydney, where he called
for us, but we have not yet met. I found time to reach Sir William
Stawell at his pleasant suburban residence at Kew, and was most
agreeably disappointed to find the veteran head of the law very much
more like his former self than report had accredited him. Another old
friend, Sir Francis Murphy, I have as yet failed to meet, and also Mr.
David Moore. Mr. Francis Henty drove us to the St. Kilda-road to pay our
respects to Mrs. Edward Henty, who pleasantly surprised us with as yet
hardly the marks of age, and as though fully intending to see at least
one generation more of the progress of the great colony which her
departed husband had founded. Mrs. D.C. McArthur was still residing at
Heidelberg along with her nieces, Miss Wright and Mrs. Were, the widow
of my late old and intimate friend, Mr. J.B. Were. I saluted the former
as the venerable mother of Melbourne society, and being thus one of her
sons I claimed and exacted the full salutation of sonship. I claimed the
same privilege from my other dear old friend, Mrs. A.M. McCrae, whom I
found hardly changed, in vigour of mind at least, although now
eighty-five years of age. Almost next door was Mrs. Henry Creswick,
daughter of my old friend Dr. Thomson, of Geelong, of whom, as one of
the very earliest, and only a few months behind Batman himself, I have
already spoken. We enjoyed a chat over the very oldest Victorian times.
THE BENEVOLENT ASYLUM.
I had one opportunity of taking "old friends and fellow-colonists" in a
wholesale fashion. The committee of the Benevolent Asylum complimented
me by so pressing an invitation to visit an institution which I
remembered and was interested in from its first commencement, that it
was imperative on me to find the time to do so. The spectacle was alike
most edifying and most interesting. The institution had enormously
extended since my time, both in its accommodation and the number of its
inmates. There were nearly 700 men and women, all of them helpless and
destitute, and nearly all passed into old age. Some who were paralyzed
in their lower limbs, and unable to move about, were put out in a
sheltered place in the sunshine, to busy themselves in various ways of
their own choosing, and we particularly noted two rather pretty young
women, whose lively expression of face indicated no lack of happiness,
and whose neat and nimble fingers turned out quantities of daily work.
There was a considerable section of the blind, who were systematically
treated, and had a library of their own. In one of the rooms were two
dying men, one already past consciousness, the other still observant and
even lively, but not expected to survive the night. Amongst so many and
such aged people this sight was too familiar to greatly disturb the
others. One of these was understood to be related to an English
nobleman, and had passed through much adversity of colonial life. His
face was still singularly indicative of the gentleman. Such cases are by
no means rare in Australian experience.
Our inspection was completed by a view of the kitchen and larder, and
the interesting spectacle of about 300 of the men engaged together under
one roof at dinner, every one of whom revelled in solid beef to his
heart's content. Included in their number were twelve Chinamen, who
seemed as comfortably at home as any of the others, and whose presence,
perhaps, helped to impress a Chinese Commissioner, who had lately
visited the Asylum, and who had left his record in the visitors' book to
the effect that such an institution was an honour to mankind.
THE OLD MELBOURNE CEMETERY.
The old Flagstaff Hill and the old cemetery were two objects which I
sought for on the earliest opportunity, and as the business day-time was
so full of work, I took the early morning. The Flagstaff Hill I had soon
to give up as quite unrecognizable under new plantations and roadways,
but the cemetery, in its close vicinity, was much as I had left it, and
there the old friends, albeit voiceless now, cropped up at every turn.
Let me select a few, commenting as I go along, and beginning with the
earliest in date.
1841.
A series of the well-known early family of the Langhornes, some of whose
members I often met. Let me begin with "The wife of William Langhorne,"
who died in this far back year, and end with Alfred, who used to amuse
us all with interminable stories, who had a strikingly beautiful wife,
and who died in 1874.
1846.
"The beloved wife of Joseph Raleigh, aged 32 years," whose funeral I
attended, to be witness to the profound grief of the husband thus
prematurely bereft of a wife who was, as I recollect, a rarely fine
woman. Even Carlyle's indifference to "tombstone literature" might
tolerate these lines, recorded on her monument, both for their own high
quality, and as the eloquent expression of the heart of the bereaved
husband:--
"Thou art gone to the grave, but we will not deplore thee,
For God was thy ransom, thy guardian and guide;
He gave thee, He took thee, and He will restore thee,
And death hath no sting, for the Saviour hath died."
1846.
"Allan K. Renny, of Dundee, Scotland, aged 24." A remarkably fine young
man, who died thus early, to the grief of all his friends. He was one of
the staff of the Union Bank of Australia. Although the favourite of
everyone, he retained his unaffected simplicity of manner and character
to the last. He died of consumption, in the house of Mr. Cassell, who
had invited him there when he took ill, in order that he might be better
attended to. Cassell, James Gill, Alfred Ross, and myself took the last
night of the dying lad in relays of three or four hours each; and when
the last breath passed from the fine young face, Mrs. Cassell, who stood
by with the rest of us, and who had nursed him with the fondest mother's
care, broke out into loud sobs of irrepressible grief. We decided upon a
broken column as his monument--fit emblem of the life so early
broken--and we settled his brief, simple epitaph, which Mr. Cassell drew
up:--"Erected by his friends in this colony in testimony of esteem and
regard."
1848.
"Edmund Charles Hobson, M.D., born 1814, died in his 34th year." The
monument, erected by public subscription, commemorates also two sons and
one daughter--all the family save one thus early carried off, for, alas!
the father, although of large and well-filled mind, was a man of poor
health and feeble physique. Mrs. Hobson, our old friend, still survives,
but is at present in England. I have already alluded to the Doctor and
his high qualities.
1850.
"James Jackson, of Toorak, who died at sea, aged 47." This was
Melbourne's greatest merchant of his early time, although he died at so
early an age. His house at Toorak, or rather the second house which he,
with his enlarging fortune, built there, but which he did not live to
enjoy, was long the finest of the place, and served for some years as
the Governor's residence. It supplies a striking illustration of the
sudden needs of the advancing colony after its golden era. A prominent
Melbourne trader had leased it at 300 pounds a year, but in the mid-term
of the lease, a demand suddenly arising in 1854 for a Government House
for Sir Charles Hotham, Toorak was sublet at 10,000 pounds a year. I
recall the early, happy, Toorak home, where personal beauty in mother
and young children lost its edge by being so common. The remaining
family are now all in the old country. Mrs. Jackson still lives, the
honoured head of a surrounding of descendants, which, to me at least,
have been long past counting.
1850.
"Isabella, widow of James Williamson, solicitor, Edinburgh, aged 70."
This is the lady of whom I have already spoken, who gave up six fair
daughters to the young settlement in its direst need, and who in turn
have given to it multiplied sons and daughters.
1850.
"Edward Curr, aged 52. In your charity, pray for the soul of Edward
Curr, of St. Heliers."
This is my old friend, the "Father of Separation" (from New South
Wales), with whom I marched for years towards attaining that object. He
was a proud man, who, with his vigour of mind and body, grasped his
world with a firm hand, and was not, perhaps, of the humour to ask the
help or prayers of anyone. But his church, by enjoining the above
formula over its dead, had its own way of humbling even the proudest,
whether the great or the small, the prince or the peasant. I was
surprised to find that one who held so commanding a position in our
young community should have been, at death, only 52.
He took the chief charge of the separation movement, if, indeed, it did
not originate with him; but, sad to say, he died, at this too early age,
just the year before the great object of his later life had been
attained. In considering this question practically as a merchant, my
view of the determining principle as to the mutual boundary line was
that the natural tendency of the trading, whether it took the Sydney or
the Melbourne direction, should decide. Thus the hoofs of the bullocks,
whether they indicated the northerly or the southerly direction, would
decide the contentious question. When I mentioned this point to Curr,
who, curiously enough, had wholly omitted it from a very long list of
"my reasons for separation," he saw at once its importance, and, in
incorporating it in his list, remarked that it was worth all the rest
put together. Whenever we sat together afterwards at a separation
meeting, he would pass me the joke about the "hoofs of the bullocks"
deciding the boundary. Sir John Robertson has since told us that
Melbourne missed its destiny in this fatal separation movement, for, had
she remained within New South Wales, she would have been the capital of
Eastern Australia. Well, that slap in the face to us is not altogether
uncleverly or unfoundedly directed. The eventuality thus predicted for
us might, indeed, have happened. And we, too, might have hesitated in
our divisive course if we could but have foreseen two things: first,
that the very next year Victoria should produce as much as fifteen
millions of gold, and for some twenty years after between six and twelve
millions yearly; and second, that our mother, Sydney, who had completely
the whip-hand over us at the time, would have permitted us to use all
our great resources in order to place ourselves, at her expense, the
first in the race.
1853.
"The Honourable James Horatio Nelson Cassell, H.M. Commissioner of
Customs, Member of the Executive Council of Victoria, born 1814. 39
years of age." I have already had to mention repeatedly one of my very
best and most intimate friends. He died in November, 1853, while I was
upon a Home visit. He left a message for me that he looked forward to
resuming our most pleasant friendship in Heaven. What a reality of voice
has this hope when it comes thus from the brink of the grave! What a
strength of resistance to that tendency of modern science, which, as
interpreted by some even of its greatest chiefs, is to abolish the hope
of the life beyond the grave, and to class us all with "the beasts that
perish."
THE MELBOURNE RACES.
Those who delight in contrasts may follow me now to the Melbourne Races.
Although not, in any sense or degree, "a racing man," I could not forego
this spectacle, so illustrative of the socialities and general progress
of the colonists. This was a considerable occasion, as there were about
70,000 present; but it was not the grand "Cup Day," an occasion which
can muster 150,000. The grand stand here seemed to me, from my
recollection, equal to Epsom and Ascot together. The racing was in
admirable style, the horses generally taking hurdles and steeples
without visible hitch in their pace. I used to have a racing theory
which was confirmed here--namely, that the horse should never be allowed
ahead, or at least for more than a yard or two, till close on the
finish, because he thus loses the highest of the excitement, and is more
amenable to fatigue. In one splendid race, of a dozen or more, on this
occasion, one man, who came in far ahead at the first round, I predicted
was to lose the race; and so it proved, for at the second and final
round he came in only sixth or seventh.
THE HONOUR OF THE RAILWAY FREE PASS.
Sixteen days of Melbourne life had pleasantly glided away, and we must
needs be off, because we had the rest of Australasia to see, and a very
brief term for accomplishing so great a business. Honours had been
heaped upon us. How we are to take it when we tumble once more to the
common level at Home I hardly know or like to think about. One of the
most gratifying of these honours was the railway free pass, which
Tasmania first sent us, followed by Victoria, South Australia, New South
Wales, and Queensland. Later on I was accorded, through Mr.
Labertouche's kind agency, the golden key or pass over the Victorian
lines for life, which I was assured was my due as one of the original
members of the first Victorian Parliament. From my old friend of nearly
forty years standing, Sir Henry Parkes, I had a courteous note to the
effect that our railway comfort should be looked after so soon as we
crossed the frontier. The honour of these things is, by infinity,
greater than the mere saving of money. This is to be literally the case,
for our daughter is already counting up these savings, with the
intention of claiming them for kangaroo and opossum cloaks and rugs.
ALBURY.
We took the day train to Albury instead of the through night mail, so as
to see Victoria, and have a few hours to spare to see Albury and its
great wine business. We paid our respects to the Mayor of Albury, Mr.
Mate, who, with Mr. Thompson, his son-in-law, showed us much attention;
and we also inspected Mr. Fallon's great wine vaults, and tasted some
excellent wine, including the pale, delicate tokay. Albury, with its
population of 8,000, reminded me of Melbourne about 1845. There was an
air of comfort and prosperity all about, and a leisurely way of it,
which contrasted pleasantly with the hurry and bustle of larger places.
THE BRACING COLD ONCE MORE.
Transferring ourselves now to the night mail, and awaking with the broad
daylight of a sunny morning between Yass and Goulburn, we looked out
upon a country all white with hoar frost, while our carriage windows had
an inside coating of ice. This recalled an inspiring discussion at the
Chamber of Commerce dinner a fortnight before, on my introducing the
question of the snow and the highest civilization it symbolized. I had
said that Victoria as well as Tasmania presented the significant snow.
Mr. Service, the leader of the federation movement, alike intercolonial
and imperial, corrected me by substituting Australian for Victorian
snow. But Mr. Macdonald Patterson, of Queensland, extended the snow line
well over even northern New South Wales, as he told us of a heavy
snowstorm he had encountered when travelling south from Brisbane, and
which lay so thickly upon the ground as to tempt the passengers to a
vigorous snowballing, which latterly concentrated upon the railway guard
for his grudging attempt to end the sport by ringing his signal bell.
But this snow and cold, however favourable to ultimate civilization,
were by no means a pleasure just at the moment, and I had to put on the
very warmest clothing I ever heaped upon me in an English or Scotch
winter. Nor did I escape a severe cold withal, which is only now
disappearing under the genial influence of the balmy air of Queensland,
which, now as I write, comes to us off the land towards the end of our
voyage from Sydney to Brisbane (19th-21st August). We are just passing
the South Queensland boundary of 30 degrees latitude, and as a few more
hours will land us amidst troops of new friends at Brisbane, I expedite
my work, fearing that, as at Melbourne, our brief space of time will be
otherwise occupied.
MELBOURNE AND SYDNEY.
Having just seen Sydney as well as Melbourne, I feel bound to give my
impressions of both, which will, I think, be best and most briefly done
in the form of a comparative sketch. I must premise with the remark that
the great extent of both cities, the great and solid basis of trade on
which they appear to rest, and above all the quick and ready step with
which they apply to practical purposes the progress, mechanical or
scientific, of our age, are beyond anything I had expected to meet with,
well prepared as I had previously been upon the subject. Thus the
electric light, electric bells, and other electric uses, the telephone,
and the lift system, all seem to me in more general use than in London
and our larger Home cities. The lift, for instance, is, as the rule, in
every bank or other large institution for the use of the staff or
customers or visitors. It is certainly as yet the rare exception in such
cases in London.
THE SYDNEY PRESS.
In Sydney I was first met by my old and esteemed friend the Honourable
George Alfred Lloyd, who, besides many other attentions, took me to Sir
Henry Parkes, with whom I enjoyed some interesting political and
financial conversation. I afterwards met the Honourable Mr. Burns, the
Treasurer, and discussed with him the prospects for consolidated
Australasian three per cents--a prospect which, as he said, he feared
might be still far off; owing to the perverse fancy of the other
colonies to enter upon special protective systems of their own, which,
after being established, they, or the interests protected, might not be
disposed to give up even for the sake of a federated Australasia; next
we called for one of our fellow-passengers per "Coptic", Mr. Sidman, at
the grand offices of the "Evening News" and the "Town and Country
Journal", for one or other of which he had been editorially engaged.
This happily led to our introduction to the proprietor, Mr. Bennett, and
to our being shown the wonders of the Press of our Southern Empire. And,
here, again, I had to notice that all the latest steps of progress are
taken up so promptly and so thoroughly. The time of our visit was
between one and two o'clock, and the work of throwing off the "Evening
News" of that day had begun. The machines, we were told, embodied the
very latest improvements, and when we alluded to that of "The Argus",
just then being fitted up, with every latest appliance, at the Melbourne
Exhibition, Mr. Bennett assured us that the machinery before us
comprised them all. We saw first the stereotyping process, by which
copies of the one type-setting of the paper can be multiplied
indefinitely. Then three machines were set in action, delivering 10,000
copies each per hour. A fourth machine was added shortly after, which
delivered somewhat more; and this latter appeared to us the exact
counterpart of "The Argus" machine, as already seen by us in London.
I recall a joke of many years back when mechanical contrivance was
attracting much general attention, and arousing great hopes, to the
effect that a sheep would some day enter the machine of the future at
one end, and be delivered at the other as ready cooked food and broad
cloth. What we saw was not a whit less wonderful. The great roll of
paper unrolled itself into one end of the machine, and, even more
quickly than one could walk the half-dozen yards of distance, it emerged
in separate papers, dropped, as I said, at ten to twelve thousand an
hour, printed, folded, cut, and numbered to the dispersing hand which
received them. The circulation of the "Evening News" is 60,000 daily.
That of "The Age", as I learnt on arrival at Melbourne, has now advanced
in its inspiring career to 76,000. These are the papers of greatest
circulation in the Southern Hemisphere. Such is already the Press of the
infant Hercules of Australasia.
Another stirring sight next greeted our eyes ere we quitted the "Evening
News" office, namely, the crowd of eager little newsboys waiting for
their trade stock. Pressing to the small open window, where their tiny
sums were paid to the cashier, they received their check, and forthwith
proceeded to the fountains which were dropping out their supplies at the
rate of four copies per second, all ready for delivery. They received
twelve of the penny papers for ninepence. These poor little fellows
would begin, perhaps, with ninepence as all their capital. They get
their dozen papers, and, if smart, sell them possibly in not many more
minutes. Then they are back with their increased capital, and so by
quick degrees they get to be quite large dealers. We saw one little
fellow, already a great capitalist in his way, with a load of papers
which one would have thought he could hardly carry, but which,
nevertheless, he managed with well-practised adroitness.
COMPARISON OF THE TWO CAPITALS.
If comparisons are proverbially odious, they must be specially so if
drawn out upon insufficient data. I must not, therefore, on such a
flying inspection, go very deeply into my comparative analysis. And yet,
under all the circumstances, the subject is one for which I feel not
altogether incompetent. To begin with, I had not, perhaps, sufficient
time in failing to note any material difference of physique due to the
difference of latitude, Melbourne having the cooler temperature by 4 to
5 degrees of Fahrenheit. Tasmania and Southern New Zealand give notably
the ruddy plumpness of the English face. Conversing with a young friend,
who was interested in football, he remarked that latitude is important
in a game which was mainly one of muscular strength. Thus, speaking
generally, Hobart will beat Melbourne, Melbourne Sydney, and Sydney
Brisbane. "But what as to New Zealand?" I said. "New Zealand," he
replied, "will square with England, and the Southern Island may beat
her."
The tide of general business in either city seemed to me equal, but the
streets and the public and business buildings of Sydney were scarcely
equal, either in number or style, to those of Melbourne, at least if the
great edifices and other works of the latter, either just being finished
or in progress of erection, be considered. The Melbourne Harbour is
conspicuously one of these, and will surpass alike that of Sydney and
those of most of the rest of the world. On the other hand, however, the
grand natural harbourage of Port Jackson, not to dwell upon its
surpassing scenic beauty, gives to Sydney a most decided economic
advantage for all time.
Melbourne has two obvious superiorities--first in the systematic laying
out of the streets, and second in the more conveniently level site. Thus
no Sydney street can compare with Collins-street, where even the
moderate rise of the eastern and western hills still adds to the
commanding effect of the whole line. The Melbourne street tram system is
also greatly superior to that of Sydney, and seems, indeed, to have
attained to all that is possible in that direction. In point of
population, Melbourne continues ahead, having, with the suburbs, about
400,000, while Sydney has about 350,000. On the other hand, New South
Wales has rather the advantage over Victoria in the total population, as
well as in the amount of external commerce, having lately, in these
respects, overtaken her younger sister, after the latter had clean
distanced her senior for a whole generation by help of the surpassing
gold production. The populations are now about 1,050,000 respectively.
THE RIVAL RACE.
In estimating the future of these two great colonies and their
respective capitals, I will endeavour to mark some distinctive
considerations. Unquestionably the climatic difference, although it may
not be serious, is in favour of Victoria, for the English race of both
colonies and for English industries. Then, again, we have this
ever-recurring Australian drought, from which Victoria does not indeed
always or altogether escape, but to which, with her cooler sea-girt
shores, she is certainly less liable than her sister colonies, including
New South Wales. Even now, as I sail along the northern shores of the
latter and along Southern Queensland, the severe drought which has
prevailed for the past six months is indicated by the ascending smoke of
bush fires in every direction, while Victoria, as I left it, was in
universal green from the sufficiency of rain. Lastly, there is the
disputable question as to how the much wider area of New South Wales
than Victoria bears upon the question. Is that a help to her or a drag?
With the present scant population to either, the advantage seems to me
with Victoria, compact as she is, and full of fertile land. Fifty years
hence, when the population of each has passed from one million to ten
millions, and when a system of irrigation has fertilized the large
proportion of now sterile areas of the larger colony, the latter will
assert her precedence and, perhaps, easily pass her rival. But for the
present she is rather handicapped than otherwise by her distances.
Granting that she has throughout as many rich acres as Victoria, still
she is, for the time being, under the disadvantage of having to draw her
resources from greater distances--from an average, say, of more than 300
miles to Victoria's 100.
Against this collective relative handicapping in her race, New South
Wales has happily still to oppose her good fortune in having adhered as
yet to the impartial freedom of exchange for the labour products of all
her workers, while Victoria has restricted that freedom, and has,
consequently, by so much, reduced that product, by her protective
enactments. Let me try to estimate this most important matter. Victoria
has seen fit to protect certain interests, agricultural and
manufacturing, at the expense of the whole of her public. Happily for
her the agricultural protection is probably almost, if not indeed
altogether, inoperative, as the climate and the soil of the country, and
the vigour of her people, give to her, independently, the natural lead
in agricultural products. But the manufacturing protection is
confessedly effective, so that the manufactures would not be forthcoming
without the extra price of protection. Let us average this protection at
25 per cent, and let us further suppose that one-fifth of all the
people's requirements are thus extra-charged. This means that the
Victorian public are made to pay in the proportion of 125 pounds for a
class of their daily requisites which the New South Wales public, by
virtue of their freedom of exchange for all the products of their
labour, can secure for 100 pounds; and that this very considerably
enhanced cost affects as much as the one-fifth part of all those
requisites. Victoria, and the vigorous life which peoples her, will in
any case ever present a spectacle of surprising progress. But if she is
mated in a race in which, while the two rivals are otherwise equal, she
is thus restricted in labour output by protection, while the other keeps
herself free, she is as surely to be beaten in that race as if, on her
grand Flemington racecourse, she were the seriously handicapped horse of
a noble pair admitted to be otherwise equal.
POST POSTSCRIPT.
BRISBANE, 22ND AUGUST.
My publisher affords me just time to record my arrival yesterday, at the
capital of the youthful but already great Queensland, and to give some
opinions of the place after a glance, which is, however, of necessity so
cursory.
Brisbane is to me not less astonishing than either Sydney or Melbourne.
From the adjacent heights of Mount Coot-tha, I looked over several
square miles, mostly of thickly compacted streets and dwellings,
comprising a town and connected suburbs of 75,000 busy people. While the
suburban houses are chiefly of wood, the town proper already, in some
respects, fairly rivals its senior sisters of the South. Thus
Queen-street, in its general architectural aspect, and in the tide of
business life which it presents, is but little short of the chief
streets of these other cities; while the structures of two of the
Queensland Banks, the Queensland National and the London Chartered of
Australia, together with those of the Australian Mutual Provident
Society and of the stores of Messrs. D.L. Brown and Co., Messrs. Stewart
and Hemmant, and Messrs. Scott, Dawson and Stewart, seemed to me quite
equal to anything of the kind, respectively, which I had met with since
my arrival. Indeed, I am prepared to congratulate my friend, Mr. Drury,
at the head of the former of these banks, upon an edifice which, in
graces of structure, as well as in mere dimensions, seems to me to
surpass all rivalry.
The Bank of England--the highly conservative "old lady of
Threadneedle-street"--on the recent occasion of negotiating yet one more
large Queensland loan, broadly hinted to her go-ahead client that her
borrowing must, for a time at least, be more restricted. I do not deny
the wisdom of this advice, for truly all Australasian borrowing has been
utterly outside of all principle and precedent. But while the Home
public is preoccupied with these colonies' great debts, my visit here
has diverted the leading idea rather to the solid and expansive basis of
trade and prosperity which I see around me. I have not yet seen South
Australia or New Zealand, but, from what already reaches my ears, I have
no reason to expect that my account of either colony is to differ
materially, if at all, from that of the others. The ready facility to
incur debt on behalf of colonial progress is due, as it seems to me,
rather to consciousness of strength than to indifference about financial
obligation. Each colony will "pay" with equal certainty and promptitude,
although a New South Wales or a Victoria may do so with less strain than
their sisters.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Personal Recollections of Early
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