THE CHRISTENING OF HEIDELBERG
When we came to Melbourne in 1840 we might have bought all the land
between Prince's Bridge and Upper Toorak for the merest trifle above
"upset price." As to Sandridge, St. Kilda, and Brighton, they might
almost have been "taken up," so low was the estimate of their value by
the colonists of the period. Mr. Dendy did pre-empt 5000 acres hard by
the city, at Brighton, under the special survey regulations which then
obtained, at £1 per acre. We certainly secured a trifle of seventy
acres, upon which the viceregal residence of Toorak was afterwards
erected. But some frivolous objection to the agricultural properties of
the soil weighed with the head of the family, who, after a few
unimportant purchases of town allotments--such as two acres in Flinders
Street running back to the lane so named and adjoining Degraves'
buildings, a half-acre near to the corner of Collins and Elizabeth
Streets, another in Bourke Street, besides a dozen more in various parts
of Melbourne--finally decided to build and permanently reside at
Heidelberg.
This romantically-named suburb was seven miles from Melbourne, with an
unmade road through black soil of considerable richness, and a tenacity,
when resolved into mud, which I have, during much after-experience,
rarely seen equalled. It might have appeared to some persons a matter of
supererogation this planting one's self so many miles away from an
infant settlement, such as Melbourne then was. A matter involving loss
of time, too, expense in transit, besides exile from whatever society
was then available. But these considerations availed not against the
charming prospect of a rural home, a country-house surrounded by an
estate of fertile land, bordered by the clear-flowing Yarra, and
glorified by a distant prospect of the Australian Alps. But chiefly
alluring were the persuasive tongue, the sanguine predictions, and the
enjoyable _al fresco_ entertainments of Mr. R. H. Brown, a social
celebrity of the day, fashionable and distinguished, generally known,
from his reminiscent enthusiasm on the subject of the grand European
tour, as Continental Brown.
This sentimental speculator, most refined of land agents, had, either
personally or as deputy for a firm of Sydney capitalists, purchased a
block of land extending nearly from the Darebin Creek to the village,
and comprising the estates of Chelsworth, Waverley, Hartlands, and
Leighton. There was also a section named Maltravers. I am not sure,
indeed, whether he did not christen the whole block "Maltravers," in
compliment to the Master upon whose melancholy, philosophical,
resistless hero so many of the _viveurs_ of the day fashioned
themselves.
Slight, vivacious, _soigné_ in dress and courteous of manner, a good
business man (was he not a bank director in his leisure moments, that
is, when he was not giving dinners and _déjeuners_, getting up picnics,
improvising balls and generally _faisant l'agréable_ all round?), he
managed to "place" Heidelberg at a considerable advance upon the
original purchase money.
I can see him now in the centre of a group of admiring friends, chiefly
of the fair sex, standing on one of the heights which overlooked the
meadows of the Yarra. "There, my dear madam, permit me to direct your
gaze. Do you not observe the silver thread of the river winding through
that exquisite green valley? It reminds me so vividly of the gliding
Neckar, and, alas! (here a most telling sigh) of scenes, of friends,
loved and lost. I can fancy that I look at my ever-remembered,
ever-regretted Heidelberg! Those slopes rising from the farther
river-shore will be terraced vineyards; and there, where you can faintly
discern the snow pinnacle on yon spur of the Australian Alps, I can
imagine the grand outline of the Hartz Mountains. It is, it shall be,
Heidelberg! Charles, open more champagne. We must christen this
thrice-favoured spot, on this trebly-auspicious day, worthily,
irrevocably!"
In some such fashion Heidelberg was named, and, what was more to the
purpose, sold. It is undeniably strong as to scenery, superior as to
soil; it has water privileges; but seeing that all this happened a
trifle over forty years agone, it may strike the original investors who
still hold a proportion of the ground, that they might have laid out
their cash to greater advantage, and that they have waited a good while
for that advance in prices which will recoup everything.
Heidelberg, thus sponsored, took rank as a fashionable suburb, and
divers personages, according to an inevitable natural law, were
attracted thereto. Captain George Brunswick Smyth, formerly of her
Majesty's 50th Regiment, purchased Chelsworth. Mr. David M'Arthur came
next to him. Then Waverley and Hartlands, the Rev. John Bolden, Mr.
Hawdon at Banyule, and later on Dr. Martin, beyond him again.
Still more distant, on the Rosanna estate, dwelt no less a potentate
than Mr. Justice Willis, the Supreme Court Rhadamanthus of the day, who
must have expended considerably more than half his time in driving in
his carriage and pair into Melbourne and back along the miry, almost
impassable track into which the winter rains invariably converted the
road.
This not undistinguished legal celebrity we had known in Sydney, and he
presented himself to my youthful intelligence as a good-natured,
mild-mannered old gentleman, with whom I used to go quail and duck
shooting in the meadows bordering the Yarra on Mr. Hawdon's and
neighbouring estates. On these occasions the late Mr. Archibald Thom,
who rented part of Banyule from Mr. Hawdon, often accompanied us. And a
very deadly shot he was.
The Judge shot fairly well, and after a decent morning's sport was
genial and gracious in a marked degree. But when he doffed the russet
tweeds and donned the ermine, he became utterly transformed. It was
averred, too, altogether for the worse. His impatience of contradiction,
his acerbity of manner, and his infirmity of temper, were painful to
witness, and dangerous to encounter. They landed him in contentions with
all sorts and conditions of men, and ultimately led to his suspension by
the Governor-General, a rare and exceptional proceeding.
I quote here verbatim from my journal, of date Wednesday, 3rd August
1841:--
Nothing particular happened on the farm to-day, but the whole of
Melbourne was in a commotion about His Honour Judge Willis. It
appears that His Honour having said that he would commit anybody
who offered to serve the order upon him to go to Sydney, signed by
the three judges there resident, as being illegal, was met by
Messrs. Carrington and Ebden, who tendered the order to him, and,
upon his refusing to take it, _actually threw it at him_, upon
which he immediately committed them to gaol. There was a great
crowd, many of whom supported the Judge, but others the prisoners.
Some gentlemen, however, were present and saw the insult offered.
On the following day's page I find further allusion to this "high-toned"
episode in Melbourne's early life.
THURSDAY, _4th August 1841_.
The gentlemen who insulted the Judge yesterday were brought up
before the Magistrates in order that they might be committed to
take their trial. However, strange to say, in spite of the evidence
of four or five respectable persons who swore to the outrage, the
worthy gentlemen were acquitted. There were, however, upon the
Bench several personal enemies of the Judge. Many persons are of
opinion that the decision is infamous.
It will be seen that we then distinctly sided with His Irascibility, and
would doubtless have been a vigorous partisan against the "personal
enemies" had we written for the press of the period. However, in spite
of our sympathies, and those of other well-meaning friends, His Honour
Mr. Justice Willis was compelled to go to Sydney, thence to England. It
was understood that he there gained a technical victory, but had a hint
to resign.
Mr. Thomas Wills owned "Lucerne," close by Alphington, the village on
the Darebin Creek since called into being and so named. He had a fancy
for the great fodder plant, and was the first proprietor in the
neighbourhood to lay down any considerable breadth of land with it. From
it, or as a _souvenir_ of the world-renowned lake, the estate was named.
I don't know that the Heidelberg proprietors could be called a fortunate
community. Something of the nature of disaster happened to all of them.
Possibly in the course of three or four decades an average of misfortune
occurs in most families. But our district was exceptional. The wreck of
the _London_ brought mourning and lifelong grief into one family.
Cheery, kindly Joe Hawdon, the pioneer, the explorer, the jolly squire
of Banyule, died when scarce over middle age. The Bolden family lost two
sons who had arrived at man's estate--one killed by a fall from his
horse; one, a young officer rising in the service, by a tiger in India.
Our house, endeared by many memories, was burned by an incendiary, still
undiscovered. A tree fell on our good friend and neighbour, Mr.
M'Arthur, and _very_ nearly crushed the life out of him. Captain Smyth
died young, and Lucerne has long been untenanted by any representative
of the Wills family.
Some of these fine days, they tell me, there will be a railway to
Heidelberg. Then the slopes will be cut up into building sites, the
river meadows irrigated, or turned into market gardens and creameries.
The Australian Alps will be more visible to the naked eye than ever.
Some squatter from Riverina or Queensland, who has just disposed of his
stations for half-a-million to a syndicate, will build an imitation of
the historic Castle, with the Great Tun, to be filled with White Yering.
Dances of vignerons or happy peasants will be frequent; and Mr. R. H.
Brown, if still in the flesh, may see his prophetic vision so nearly
fulfilled that it will hardly be worth his while to return to a
continental Elysium. But, sentiment apart, there was a flavour of real
country life about the district, protected as it was from intrusion on
the east and north-east by the deep unforded river, in which more than
one death took place from drowning. Heidelberg, apparently, always had
attractions for men whose sympathies lay in the direction of stud farms
and the improvement of stock. Chelsworth then, as later on, was the home
of pedigree shorthorns, Captain Brunswick Smyth having imported cows of
very blue blood, which passed into Mr. Bolden's possession, and were
incorporated with the Grasmere herd. Mahomet, Young Mussulman, Lady Vane
and her daughter were located at Leighton; whilst "Snoozer" by "Muley
Moloch," and other sires of high lineage, abode hard by. Yes; in some
respects the devoted admirer of Bulwer Lytton had not over-coloured the
landscape. Heidelberg was undeniably picturesque, and had climatic
advantages. It was cooler than the sand-dunes of Brighton and St. Kilda,
than the low hills of Toorak, than the river meadow upon which Melbourne
proper then chiefly stood. Waves of mountain air were wafted from the
Alps, on which, though many miles distant, the snow was clearly visible.
Those of us who, in after years, were members of the old Melbourne Club
in Lower Collins Street, often preferred a longish night ride for the
immunity from mosquitoes which Heidelberg then afforded.
The river meadows by the Yarra were composed of a deep, black, fertile
loam, eminently suited for orchards, cereals, and root crops. Taking
into consideration the quality of the soil, the proximity of the river,
the variety of the landscape, no suburb would have equalled Heidelberg
in attractiveness had it not been handicapped by distance from the
metropolis. Rail, road traffic, and settlement--all appeared to have
gone north, south, west; anywhere but towards Heidelberg.
Now that every foot of building land near Melbourne has been bought and
built upon--has become "terraced slopes," in the evil sense of modern
overcrowding, perhaps the beneficent Heidelberg and Alphington Railway
will open up the untouched glades which still silently overlook the
murmuring river, still lie hushed to sleep in the shadow of the great
Australian mountain chain.