"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.