A LITTLE ABOUT NEW SOUTH WALES.
Sunny Sydney—Public Buildings—Educational Establishments—Sanitary
State—Its Climate—Bathurst—The Blue Mountains—Romish Aggression—Botany
Bay—Old Days—A Wonderful Change—New South Wales Scenery.
IF you feel disposed to have a look at Sydney, respected reader, do not
go there when an election is on. Last night, till eleven, the street in
which I have found a temporary residence was filled with an excited
crowd, hooting and cheering, as from time to time great placards were
posted up as to the result of the day’s elections. Wherever I have been,
the talk has been of Free Trade or Protection. The farmers want
Protection; the towns are averse to it. High railway charges deprive the
farmer of his Sydney market, and he is undersold by the foreigner. The
Free Traders are obliged to hedge to satisfy the workman. He can’t stand
the Chinese, and more than one Free Trade candidate has had to promise to
vote for prohibitory duties on articles of Chinese manufacture. Another
one declared that he was against Protection, but would be quite ready to
tax foreign goods for fiscal purposes—that is, for protection for the New
South Wales manufacturer. The Free Traders have won, but they will go to
Parliament with diminished force. There is a good deal of nonsense
talked here as well as in England. One M.P. complained recently ‘about
the absence of his name _appearing_ in the Sydney morning papers.’ Said
another, as he banged the balcony bar with his fist, ‘Don’t you think,
gentlemen, that there was some grave _misapprehension_ of the public
money during the time that the Parkes party was in power.’ Another had
the hardihood to venture on the use of a French term, as he dilated on
what he called ‘the scandalis doin’s of the Parkes _rejamey_.’ But a
certain candidate who shall be nameless heads the list (or, as they say
out here, the ‘bunch’) of blundering orators when he remarked that ‘If
the days of miracles were as common as in the days of Ananias, they might
expect to see three of the finest pillars of salt that ever were on
view.’ One lesson we may learn—that is, the advantage of having the
elections all over on the same day, and that is how it is done in
Victoria. Here the struggle continues for three weeks, and a good deal
of bad feeling is engendered in consequence.
In spite of the dust and the heat—to change my theme—there is much to
admire in Sydney, and I have had a fine look at the town from the lofty
tower of the new Post Office, a tower some 260 feet above the level of
George Street, where it stands. Afar off are the Heads, into which the
great steamers come and go. At your feet lies the city, with its fine
public buildings, all of yellow sandstone; its narrow streets, its busy
crowds. Far as the eye can reach in every direction spread pretty
suburbs, and there the foliage begins to mingle with the gray roofs and
white chimneys of the suburban houses, and you realize the fact how great
is the population outside the city itself. The harbour is a thing of
beauty and a joy for ever; how Cook could have missed it seems a mystery.
Over that harbour the fine river steamers—of American fashion, far
superior to anything we have on the Thames—ferry backwards and forwards
all day long. On a Saturday it is alive with yachts—little
cockle-shells, with two great sails, that soon upset. I saw one capsize
in a sudden squall as I was crossing to Manly Beach—the Brighton of
Sydney, as they call it here, but it is no more like our Brighton than a
rustic maiden resembles a society beauty. All along the harbour are
fairy villas, green foliage, miniature bays, rivers, and all that can
give life and warmth to the landscape in the shape of holiday-makers.
That harbour, with its Botanical Gardens on one side, alone would
compensate for a good deal, and reconcile one even to the crowds of
Sydney who fill up the streets at night and prevent all enjoyment.
Sunday is quite a relief. It is a day of rest indeed, far more so than
in England. In the morning, instead of going to the noble cathedral, I
turned into the Congregational Church in Pitt Street, but the minister
was away, and so I fancy were his people, as the place was but half full;
but I am told on a Sunday night there is a very fine congregation. Four
or five hundred young men were met in the fine building known as the
Y.M.C.A., where they listened with much interest to the address delivered
by the Secretary, Mr. Walker, and at a temperance hall near there was a
service fairly attended; while close by, the New Church were meeting for
public worship. In the evening there was a good deal of open-air
preaching. In one quarter I heard so much from a young man about the
‘’oly hangels’ that I was compelled to retreat. Christian effort is not
out of place anywhere in Australia, and apparently in Sydney least of
all. The churches have quite as much to contend against there as at
home. Crime and pauperism and vice, strange as it may seem, are quite as
plentiful in this land of gold and milk and honey as at home. Alas! you
may change the climate, but the man remains the same.
One of the blots of Sydney is the street tramcar, drawn by a snorting
engine, which makes night and day hideous. As a nuisance and a means of
getting rid of the surplus population it seems an admirable contrivance.
The cabs are not bad, and the drivers quite as civil as those at home,
which, however, is not saying much; but the omnibuses are very old and
shaky, and at times the noise they make is so great that conversation is
quite out of the question. The Chinese are everywhere, and when they are
driven away it is hard to see how the townspeople will get their fruit or
their vegetables—as the Anglo-Saxons, whether native or Australian, seem
to hold gardening in contempt, whereas the heathen Chinee will get hold
of a bit of waste land which no one would ever think of tilling, and
straightway it rejoices and blossoms as the rose. Many of them are
tradesmen, and have shops in the best streets in the place. For
cabinet-making of all kinds they have quite a talent, but they have few
friends, although, as a tradesman in Sydney remarked to me, ‘They are a
good deal better than the people who find fault with them.’
Sydney, like Melbourne and Adelaide, rejoices in a university based on
the model of University College, London, and established by the State in
1850. Its buildings are magnificent, and a portion of them are set apart
for the School of Medicine attached. The prospects of the university are
excellent, and it cannot fail to exert a most beneficial influence on the
future of Australia. The Australian Museum, which is the oldest
institution of the kind in Australia, occupies a conspicuous site in
Sydney, facing one of the principal parks; it is open on Sundays. One of
the most popular institutions of the town is the Free Public Library,
which, in 1877, had a lending branch attached to it to meet the wants of
country residents. The National Art Gallery, established in 1880, is
also open on Sundays. It contains an excellent collection of paintings
and statuary, comprising some of the most famous works of the best modern
artists of the old world, and includes several very valuable gifts from
private persons. The extent of streets and lanes within the boundaries
of the city is 105 miles, and they are mostly in good order, many of them
being laid with wood blocks. Its new Town Hall, opened since I left, is
the finest on the continent. The great difficulty in Sydney, and all
over New South Wales, seems to be house accommodation. The poor have a
hard time of it as regards sleeping apartments, and one does not envy the
occupiers of the little corrugated iron-roofed shanties in which, as a
rule, the workman hides his diminished head. In all our great towns the
artisans have better homes than they have in Sydney and the other
Australian towns. Then there is the drought to make everything in the
shape of agricultural produce or garden stuff dear, with the exception of
meat, which is about half the price that it is at home. Eggs are scarce,
milk is fourpence a quart, and, as far as I can learn, other provisions
are very little cheaper than in London. In sanitary arrangements the
colonies are far behind the old country. In his retiring address, the
President of the Victorian Branch of the Medical Association, Dr. Rowan,
denounces the ‘infamous’ acts committed by land syndicates, who, in
laying out their townships, acted as if they considered drainage a
prejudice, sunlight a delusion, and ventilation a weakness to be treated
with derision. If ever, said he, a city rendered itself liable to be
plague-stricken, it was Melbourne. I don’t know whether a similar remark
applies to Sydney, but I do know that there the rate of infant mortality
is alarmingly high. In Australia, as in the old country, they have not
yet learned what to do with their sewage. In Sydney they laid out a
million of money, and then discovered that they had simply poured all
their filth into the harbour; but Sydney has now seen the error of its
ways, and at enormous expense constructed a tunnel many miles long to
take the sewage right away to the sea. At Melbourne the smell from the
Yarra river is overpowering. In Adelaide they have solved the
difficulty, and have a sewage farm that pays well; but Adelaide is a
small place when compared with Sydney or Melbourne. A good deal remains
to be done if the health of the great colonial towns is to be preserved.
Equally important is the water question. What is wanted are tanks that
shall conserve the rainwater when it falls. I have ridden miles and
miles and seen great rivers nothing but beds of sand, and creeks, where
the winter torrents flow, nothing but great fissures in the parched
plains, in which the cattle hide themselves from the blazing sun. New
South Wales can never prosper till it has a proper water supply. To
provide this should be the first duty of the Government. I suppose it is
because people make their money quickly that the Government grant so many
holidays. It is a great nuisance this to merchants and traders. You
rush off to the bank, and find it shut up, and on the door a notice to
the effect that it is Bank-holiday. The mass of the people work on all
the same. A Bank-holiday in no way concerns them, and consequently a
Bank-holiday here has little likeness to the similar function at
home—when all our big cities empty their living crowds to be a wonder and
a terror to all the country round. The public offices are always being
closed on some pretence or another. Sometimes it is an agricultural
show, sometimes it is a race; any excuse does. And the bankers’ clerks,
as regards hours, are much better off than their brethren at home; in all
parts of Australia the banks are closed at three.
It is a fair land, this new Australian continent, and well worthy to be
inhabited by the energetic Anglo-Saxon race. The whole mountain system
of New South Wales lies below the limit of perpetual snow. The grandeur
of the scenery is not to be compared with that of the Alps or the Rocky
Mountains. On the contrary, from the plains, the mountains look rather
insignificant; but once on them, and looking into the gorges below,
clothed with verdure, or on the broad plains far beyond, you are struck
with the magnificent scale on which Nature has worked in these solitudes.
Over all is a mantle of blue haze, which makes the whole effect most
striking, and has given to the range of hills visible from Sydney the
appropriate name of the Blue Mountains. However, there is nothing
equalling the view you get as you enter Sydney through Port Jackson. It
is needless to say a word of Sydney harbour. It holds the first place
amongst the harbours of the world for convenience of entrance, depth of
water, and natural shipping facilities. The area of water surface of the
harbour proper is 15 square miles, and the shore line is reckoned to
extend 165 miles. Along it are the homes of many of the well-to-do of
Sydney, which is the metropolis of New South Wales, and the mother city
of the Australians. The city and its suburbs occupy 100 square miles,
and accommodate about 350,000 people. I am agreeably disappointed with
Sydney. Its shops and public buildings and hotels are handsomer, and its
streets broader, than I had anticipated. I was frightened, I own, by
what Mr. Froude has written about its mosquitoes. Perhaps mosquitoes do
not like me; I am not sorry. Coming to Sydney by sea you feel, on the
whole, that Eden cannot be far off.
Nor is the climate so bad as some people fancy. In Naples, where so many
English go, the summer is warmer and the winter much colder than at
Sydney. The famed resorts on the Mediterranean seaboard, it is now
confessed, bear no comparison with the Pacific slope of New South Wales,
either for natural salubrity or the comparative mildness of the summer
and winter; while the epidemics and pestilences which have devastated the
regions of ancient civilization have never made their appearance on
Australian shores. The Hawkesbury formation over which the city of
Sydney is built provides it with an inexhaustive supply of sandstone of
the highest quality for building purposes. The beauty of Sydney street
architecture owes much to it, as it is a material admirably adapted for
architectural effect, being of a pleasant colour, fine grain, and easily
worked.
Sydney is not only the metropolis, but the chief shipping port of the
colony, its trade being larger than that of any city in the southern
hemisphere. All the necessary tools and appliances for the repairing of
ships are found in dockyards. The new graving dock, now being completed
by the Government, will be the largest single dock in the world, and
capable of receiving vessels drawing 32 feet of water. For natural
facilities for shipping Sydney stands unrivalled. The water deepens
abruptly from the shores, so that the largest vessels may be berthed
alongside the wharves and quays. The Sydneyites love their harbour, and
well may they do so, for none fairer is to be found under the sun. ‘What
do you think of our harbour?’ is the first question asked a stranger. A
tale is told of the captain of an English man-of-war which was at anchor
here, that he was so tired of the question being constantly put that he
had a blackboard hung over the side of his ship, on which he had chalked
up, with a view to save trouble and prevent further inquiries: ‘We admire
your harbour very much.’
It is a curious fact how little the cry of the ‘three acres and a cow’
seems to affect the people. They will flock to large towns. In England
they all go to London. It is the same in America. Land is to be had in
abundance, but, nevertheless, the town offers greater inducements than
the country. In New South Wales, as in Victoria, this is everywhere the
case. The increase of the population of Sydney during the seventeen
years which closed with 1887 has been 67 per cent., and that of the
suburbs 280 per cent., while that of the country districts amounted to 90
per cent. As usual in a dense city crowd, there are a good many black
sheep. A leading police official stated recently that he believed fully
70 per cent. of the inhabitants of the city were directly or indirectly
affected by the gambling clubs that obtained amongst them.
Public-houses, tobacconists’ shops, and clubs were in a vast number of
cases but gambling houses in disguise. In Sydney there is consequently a
good deal of poverty, and last winter relief works were established for
the benefit of some three thousand unemployed; yet the skilled artisan
gets good wages, and as I write the plasterers are out on strike for an
advance of 1s. per day as wages, the present rate being 10s.—not bad when
one remembers Sydney enjoys free-trade prices, and that there is no
protracted winter to interfere with building operations. These
unemployed had as rations ten pounds of flour, ten pounds of meat, two
pounds of sugar and a quarter of a pound of tea, with a minimum wage of
3s. per day, and that day, it must be remembered, is but eight hours’
work. The result of this kindness was that Sydney, as long as the work
lasted, was filled with idle loafers and vagabonds from all the country
round. Charity seems to do a deal of mischief abroad as well as at home.
Of the original inhabitants of the country you see few traces, either in
New South Wales or in Victoria. It is in Queensland and South Australia
that they most abound. They have been badly treated by the whites, and
in many cases they took a horrible revenge. They now give little
trouble, and work peacefully for their former enemies. Amongst their
good qualities are a love of religious mystery, a stoical contempt for
pain, and a deep reverence for their departed friends and ancestors. The
only unpleasant characteristic of the present inhabitants of New South
Wales is the broad line of demarcation between Churchmen and Dissenters.
Often the Church of England man in the colonies looks upon all Dissenters
with aversion. The other day I heard of a little girl who was forbidden
to play with the intelligent and pretty daughter of a wealthy colonist on
the plea that she was a Dissenter, and consequently not a fitting
associate for the daughter of a Church of England lady. Let me give
another illustration. I have just heard of a clergyman who told a mother
that it would be better to have her child baptized by a Roman priest than
by a Dissenting minister!
I am staying in a gentleman’s house. No sooner had the _Orizaba_ dropped
anchor than it was boarded by a gentleman, who kindly took me off, and
away to the railway station, and personally conducted me over the Blue
Mountains by the celebrated Zigzag Railway, which deserves all that can
be said in its favour. It is a wonderful achievement in the way of
engineering, as it climbs the Blue Mountains, that favourite health
resort of Sydney, on one side, and descends on the other. In one place
you catch sight of the track three times; you see the line you have left,
you see that on which you travel, and you see, lower down, that on which,
in another moment, you will be travelling. It is wonderful, but not
quite up to the trip over the Alleghanies, and I enjoyed it, though the
heat was great, and the rocks and valleys seemed as much burnt up as
those of Aden itself.
In due time we reached Bathurst, where I was met by a joyous party of
youngsters, who bundled me into a carriage drawn by a couple of handsome
horses, and in a little while I found myself seated in the charming
country residence of the Hon. E. Webb, a member of the Upper House, who
came from Saltash, and who has certainly gained here both fame and
fortune. Bathurst, I take it, may be considered a fair specimen of an
Australian county town, and the Bathurst people are certainly more
devoted to its welfare than are people at home to that of the localities
in which they reside. The place is laid out with an eye to the future,
and the streets are a great deal broader than our Portland Place. The
houses and shops are rather mixed, some of them being built of brick,
lofty and commodious, while others are wooden shanties which would not be
tolerated at home. The public buildings are fine. The town is governed
by a mayor and corporation. It has a very handsome court-house, a
magnificent hospital, which is not in debt, and has—how unlike our
English ones!—£3,000 to its credit in the treasurer’s hands. Its
churches of all kinds are good; and even the little churches in which the
Baptists and Independents meet are clean and comfortable. Out here one
would have thought the Baptists and Independents might have worshipped
together; but no, they must meet in separate bodies, as at home. The
Presbyterians have a fine church, which must have cost a good deal of
money, but when I looked in on Sunday evening the worshippers were a mere
handful. Surely some of these churches might unite, and be all the
stronger for so doing.
The only drawback here is the heat, which does terrible mischief. We are
2,000 feet above the level of the sea, and the people call it cool
because the thermometer is something under a hundred in the shade. The
clouds come up, but they bring no rain. At night we have a cool breeze,
but, unfortunately, just as one feels comfortable, and that life is worth
living, everyone goes to bed. Soon after my arrival I had a country
drive. There had been a bush fire, and my host sent me and one of his
nephews to see what amount of mischief had been done. Away we dashed
merrily, drawn by a pair of young horses that scarcely turned a hair,
along the sandy road, over the rolling downs. Leaving Bathurst behind,
we were soon in what in England we should call a waste, howling
wilderness, and yet a few days of rain would make all that plain a
monster park, where the sheep could graze, and everyone would rejoice.
For miles we saw no living thing, and no sign of civilization save the
fences—of rails, very high, as the cattle have a bad habit of jumping
them. We met a young lady riding into Bathurst, holding the horse’s
reins in one hand and her parasol in the other, a waggon drawn by ten
oxen coming into the town with wood, and a cart or two—that was all. We
passed over a fine bridge, but the bed of the river was dry. Far ahead
of us was a cloud of smoke from a bush-fire, a calamity of constant
occurrence in such warm weather. Soon we were in a forest ourselves,
ghastly with the withered grass and the stumps of old trees not yet
decayed, with the white trunks and grotesque branches twisted in all
directions, but leafless, and gum-trees that are ring-barked—the common
mode of destroying trees in this part of the country. Now and then I saw
an unfortunate cow, vainly seeking green grass, or cool water, or the
grateful shade, and half-starved all the while; or a hare, as big again
as that of England, and breeding much more rapidly in this precocious
clime. Presently a couple of magpies passed us, and they are much larger
than at home. But life of any kind is rare, and we got on to the
hillside where the fire had been, and saw everything black and charred,
trees fallen down, fences only a black line of charcoal. One could fancy
that everything living had fallen a prey to the devouring flame. Up in
the bush, on a hill on our left, there were kangaroos, but they
unfortunately did not put in an appearance; and if I saw three emus in
the course of my ride, candour compels me to own that they were tame, in
a gentleman’s grounds, and not in their native state. The great pests of
this part of the world are the flies. I don’t mind them on the table, if
they do make the white sugar apparently a heap of black, or if they do
darken the snow-white tablecloth; it is only when they proceed to attack
the company around that I think they carry their jokes too far. They are
a special torment to the bald-headed, but they disdain not the fairest of
the fair. The New South Wales flies are smaller than those of the mother
country, and twice as mischievous. To them there is nothing sacred; and
as to the forty winks grateful to many of us after luncheon or dinner,
they are quite out of the question.
The English fruit-grower complains of the wet and cold, the Australian of
the heat and drought. The Ex-Mayor of Sydney tells me he has lost
£10,000 worth of sheep this season in consequence of the heat; and the
charming daughter of my host, who resides with her husband at a station a
hundred and fifty miles further north—and in Australia the further you go
north the hotter it becomes—has been driven away from her husband, and
has to come here with her children because they have no water nearer than
eight miles. As I write I see the signs of a water famine everywhere, in
the dusty road, in the parched fields, in the distant hills far away.
The only exception is the garden, consisting of many acres beautifully
laid out and well shaded with trees of all kinds. Mr. Webb, my host, has
a tank which conveys the water everywhere, and even the lawn-tennis
ground beyond, to which the young men and maidens seem as devoted as they
are at home, abounds with verdure. The mansion, for such it is, rises
out of a garden of roses and dahlias, and luxurious flowers, blooming and
bright to look on; while behind are apple and plum and pear and greengage
and mulberry trees laden with luscious fruit to any amount. Some of the
flowers, the stocks, for instance, take far brighter colours than they do
at home; the greengages, too, are finer than ours, owing to the same
reason—the abundance of sun, a sun which makes the Australian hornet,
with its blue gauze wings, as black as a coal-heaver.
As to the servants in this house, I dare not say what wages they are
getting. All I know is, that if I were a lady-help, or even a servant of
all-work, it would not be long ere I booked my passage for New South
Wales. The coachman has a hundred a year and his house, and the gardener
not much less. It is needless to add that I find it good to be here: it
is hard that I must take up my bed and walk. Here no iron horse screams
as he urges on his wild career, no noisy screw perpetually churns up the
troubled sea; I hear no hoarse watchman, as the hour strikes, proclaiming
in the midnight air, ‘All’s well’: here no newsboy makes the land hideous
with his noise, nor does the gin-drinking tramp interfere with my
peaceful digestion. Most weary seems the sea—
‘Weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of foam.’
Yes, like the mild-eyed, melancholy Lotos Eaters, I feel it is sweet to
sit me down upon the yellow sand and
‘Dream of Fatherland,
Of child, and wife, and slave.’
But I am back in Sydney, and seek to study its ways. We hold the Church
of Rome, in all ages and in all countries, to be the foe of freedom,
civil and religious, the great obstacle in the way of progress, and the
worst enemy of God and man; it is but natural that its growth in New
South Wales and all Australia gives one alarm. It fights with an immense
advantage over its opponents by reason of its wealth, its effective
organization, and its Irish allies, who are banded together for its
support in every colony, and, I may add, in every land. The only priest
I have as yet met with was a model of good-temper and good-humour, and
had an enormous advantage in every way over his ritualistic ally, who
does his work unconsciously, and burns his fingers by pulling the
chestnuts out of the fire for him. In New South Wales it is understood
that the Romanists are discontented with the existing Education Act,
which is undenominational, and they have supported the Protectionists,
not out of love for them, but with the hope to get some of the public
money for their schools, or, at any rate, modifications, in the school
system which may be favourable to themselves. As it is, they do not fare
badly. The other day it was discovered that a school teacher had, in
spite of his duty to be neutral, gone out of his way to teach Romanist
doctrines to his pupils. A fuss was made about it, but he was only
removed to another school, that was all. Again, at a place called
Waratah, it has been decided that there shall be no intramural burials.
The principal of the monastery there writes to the Municipal Council for
the privilege to bury members of the monastery in their own grounds. The
Council are divided, and the Mayor gives the casting vote in favour of
the monastery, that is, in favour of breaking the laws of his borough.
Now, it is very evident that if any Protestant parson, any Baptist or
Wesleyan or Presbyterian, had pleaded for anything of the kind, that is,
for power to break the sanitary laws of the borough, and to have a
private burying-ground of their own, they would have pleaded in vain. In
Victoria, four or five years ago, there was such an uprising that there
has since been no Catholic party in the House of any size whatever. It
is well to note here that in the eyes of the State, all over Australia,
religions are on an equality. Under Sir Richard Bourke all religions
received State aid; but in 1862 this was put a stop to, and all that the
State now does is to pension off the survivors under the old _régime_.
In this way last year, in New South Wales, was divided between the Church
of England, the Roman Catholic Church, the Presbyterians and the
Methodists, about £10,000, the Church of England, as was to be expected,
taking the lion’s share. When the sparseness of the population is
considered, the church attendance will appear very large; and, though
apparently less than found in the colony of Victoria, it is,
proportionately, much larger than in England. In the Bush, the Church of
England parsons seem to be somewhat remiss in the performance of their
duties. A lady residing in the interior tells me that she went to the
Church of England preaching station frequently, but the parson never
turned up, and she had to return unblessed.
Yesterday I took the tramcar—a Government institution, by-the-bye—and had
a look at Botany Bay, a place of many evil memories, and whose
associations reach very far, even now that it has no terrors for the
criminal or reprobate. In reality, Botany Bay was not the penal
settlement; that was at Sydney; but the popular mind believed all the
convicts were sent to Botany Bay, and hence my use of the term. In a
recently published correspondence, a distinguished Victorian judge
asserts: ‘An uneasy and uninformed feeling of suspicious dislike of
England and her Government, which is not without a justifying cause,
undoubtedly exists, and is growing, in these communities. Its extent is
not ascertainable, but it may safely be affirmed that it will depend
largely upon the relations which yet remain to be acknowledged and to be
established between the Imperial and Colonial Governments of her Majesty
in the immediate future, whether this feeling will not soon expand among
native Australians into one of profound and general alienation.’ I think
the judge is right, and that this feeling is growing stronger, finding
expression, not in the old-established papers of the colony, such as _The
Melbourne Argus_ or _The Sydney Morning Herald_, papers of great wealth
and influence, but among their younger and less fortunate rivals. ‘It
was England,’ writes one of them, ‘that first seamed the white shoulder
of Australia with the livid mark of the lash. It is the people who
wielded that instrument of degradation, and their descendants, who wish
to draw the bonds of Empire closer to-day. The Imperial connection is,
therefore, a shameful one.’ Poor Captain Cook had a good deal to answer
for when, in an evil moment, he first dropped his anchor in Botany Bay.
It was quite a mistake to send out our criminals there; they should have
been allowed, says young Australia, to die of gaol-fever at home. But,
says young Australia, England in her wickedness did more—it colonized a
continent where the English spirit of the time was to be perpetuated by
the transmitted influence of the gaolers of these convicts long after a
new Liberalism had entered into British politics, and long after the
narrow spirit of a hundred years ago, with convictism itself, had passed
away. The contention of a growing class in Australia is that the
enduring effect of the convict system on the public spirit of the older
Australian colonies is traceable, not so much to the convicts themselves,
as to their gaolers. These are the mercenary wretches to be gibbeted for
the scorn of every honest man. These are the gods whom the Australians
ignorantly worship, whose spirit is still strong to deprive the
horny-handed of his rights; who were the founders of the vile system
which actually gives property an influence in making laws, and in
determining the political character of the country; men who made colossal
fortunes by the illegitimate sale of rum. The chief constable of Sydney
had actually a license to sell rum; and, as Dr. Laing puts it, ‘the chief
gaoler, though not exactly permitted to convert the gaol into a grog
shop, had a licensed house in which he sold rum publicly on his own
behalf right opposite the gaol door.’ The convicts, it is admitted, for
the sake of argument, were some of them bad; but as to their gaolers—the
gallant men of the New South Wales Corps, for instance—they were all
rascals; and they were the founders of Australia, and their spirit lives
and dominates in the political institutions of the country to this day.
It seems to me that this is a foul libel on the country, though it is the
indictment put forth by an Australian writer in an Australian newspaper.
Australians are not much given to the study of history, and perhaps it is
well. History is of little avail when it is treated in this way.
Australia was not all Botany Bay, and its leaders are men whose fathers,
by their character and enterprise and industry, distinguished themselves
in the fair land to which they had come penetrated with English ideas,
with English habits, with the English Bible, with Milton, and
Shakespeare, and Burns; and it is to them, rather than to Botany Bay,
that Australia owes its greatness and its power, its present flourishing
state, its capabilities—when its mines are developed, when its vast
continent has been opened up by settlement, and a general system of
irrigation—of a greater future. It is true, I read in some of the weekly
papers, that Australia is tyrannized over by wealthy imbeciles, while the
high-souled horny-handed is left out in the cold; that the present state
of things is infamous, and must be put an end to. So far as I can see,
the horny-handed is master of the situation. I admit that he is not a
bad fellow. I wish that he were a little more civil, a little more
patriotic, and that his women-folk were not so egregiously over-dressed.
For his own sake, also, I own that I wish his better-half knew how to
cook a steak and boil a potato. What I maintain—and what his admirers
will not admit—is that the capitalist, the successful working-man, who
has improved himself out of his original poverty, who has acquired
wealth, and all the good it brings with it, is at any rate his equal. To
talk of the taint of Botany Bay is the silliest of bunkum in the world.
There is no trace of it now. Young Australia knows nothing of
transportation. In Australia you face a new world, a world as new to the
writers filled with tales of the horrors of transportation and gaoler
officialism, and the cringing subservience which it engendered, as was
Botany Bay to Captain Cook, whose monument I see placed in the park
opposite the Sydney Museum. It could not but be so, when the gold
discoveries overran the country with a population at the rate of 90,000
arrivals in a year—a mixed population if you like, but mostly free, and
many of them as manly a set of fellows as any to be met with anywhere.
It is an ill bird that defiles its own nest, and the Australian who
endeavours to make political capital by dwelling on the blunders of the
old country in its efforts to colonize, and thereby creates an
antagonistic feeling to England, does injustice alike to his own colony
and the Fatherland.
But, after all, I have said little of Botany Bay itself, which remains
much the same in its natural features as when Cook landed there a century
ago. The tramway plants you on the shore—all white sand and dead
seaweed. Afar you see the narrow entrance into the Pacific, along which
Cook cautiously steered his ship, and opposite, on the wooded shore on
the other side, is a small black monument to denote where the great
circumnavigator landed. It is a peaceful spot: woods are all round, the
jerry-builder has neglected the spot altogether, and the Sydneyite comes
here, with his wife and family, for an occasional mouthful of sea air.
On one side of you is a pier, and in another spot I see an intimation
that boats are to be had for hire, but no boat disturbs the tranquil bay
as I wander alone by the sad sea-shore. To me, meditating, there comes a
vision of the old world, when George III. was living. I see the black
man watching sullenly the new arrivals, frightened by neither their
appearance nor their bullets—which they fire just to awaken the native,
who returns a shower of arrows. It is curious how the black has
disappeared, how firmly the white man has planted himself in his seat,
and with what bitterness he has come to regard as an interloper the
heathen Chinee—who seems to muster pretty strongly in the busy,
half-built territory that stretches from the bay to the capital. As I
get into the train I am sandwiched between two celestials, so I dream
visions. Is the world for the future to be given up to the Mongolian?
Is the Caucasian played out? Not exactly, I fancy; at any rate, as far
as Australia is concerned.
In South Wales nothing is more remarkable than the elevation—social,
political, and religious—of the people, within little more than a single
generation. In 1845 Dr. Darwin published his last edition of ‘The Voyage
of the _Beagle_.’ In the course of his voyage he landed at Sydney, and
writes: ‘On the whole, from what I have heard more than from what I saw,
I was disappointed with the state of society. The whole community is
rancorously divided into parties on almost every subject. Among those
who from their station in life ought to be the best, many live in such
open profligacy that respectable people cannot live with them. There is
much jealousy between the children of the rich emancipist and the free
settlers, the former being pleased to consider honest men as
interlopers.’ Darwin also refers to the mischief done to the children by
the degraded class of servants by whom they are surrounded. In the New
South Wales of to-day, not only do you see nothing of this, but quite the
reverse. It forms the grandest illustration the world has yet seen of
the tendency of human society to elevate and reform itself.
I would also say something of the country. New South Wales is not
dependent solely on its harbour nor its Blue Mountains for beauty. I
heard everywhere much of the beauty of the Hunter River district, and the
richness of its soil, but I regret I was unable to visit it. I did go,
however, to the Hawkesbury River, not a long ride by rail from Sydney—the
Rhine of New South Wales, as Mr. Trollope terms it. It is not the Rhine,
no more than is the Hudson River of New York. Both are charming rivers
for a day’s outing, but they are not the Rhine with its old castles, its
vine-clad hills, its legendary lore. There is but one Rhine in the
world, as there is but one Thames. However, on the Hawkesbury you have
lovely scenery, tranquil waters, wooded hills, a beauteous solitude, an
air of repose, which make one realize how divine is Nature and all her
works. It was good to be there. It was with regret that I tore myself
away.