"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.