Transcriber’s Note
In the following transcription, italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
Small capitals in the original text have been transcribed as ALL
CAPITALS.
See end of this document for details of corrections and other changes.
————————————— Start of Book —————————————
AUSTRALIA.
LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET
LETTERS
FROM
AUSTRALIA.
BY
JOHN MARTINEAU.
LONDON:
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1869.
PREFACE.
—♢—
The following Letters were most of them written in Australia in 1867,
and were published in the _Spectator_ in the course of that and the
following year. Some are reprinted without alteration, others have been
added to and altered, and others are new.
No attempt has been made to mould them into a continuous or complete
account either of the past history or present condition of the three
colonies which they endeavour to describe. Those of the colonies which
are old enough to possess a history have had it already written. And
as for their present state, it would be presumptuous to suppose that
fifteen months divided between them could have sufficed to enable
me, circumstanced as I was, to give anything like a complete account
of countries so large, or to obtain an accurate understanding of all
the various political questions and phenomena presented by them. The
organisation of school education, for instance, for which I am told
some of the Australian legislatures deserve credit, was a matter that
did not come under my notice, and important as this question is now
becoming, I am unable to import any evidence bearing upon it.
In the absence of any exciting personal adventures there was no excuse
for writing a diary or personal narrative. I was not even stopped
by bushrangers; though had I wished it, and made my wishes known,
‘Thunderbolt’ would doubtless have been delighted to ‘stick up’ the
Scone and Singleton Mail the day I was in it, instead of two or three
days later, and again about a fortnight afterwards.
But a single day, a single hour spent in a new-world colony dissipates
many delusions, and conveys many facts and ideas and impressions of it,
which no amount of reading or of second-hand information can altogether
supply, and which ought to confer the power of presenting a more vivid
and real picture than a mere compiler at a distance can give.
These letters are therefore published, fragmentary as they are, for
what they are worth. They aim at being accurate as far as they go, even
at the expense of being in the last degree dull.
I am afraid we English are indolent and apathetic upon political
questions, however important, unless there is the amusement and relish
of party-spirit or religious excitement to make them palatable.
Hitherto the want of interest taken by England in her colonies
has been as remarkable as it is unfortunate. Even the discovery of
gold, and all the strange and interesting scenes and events which it
produced, dispelled this want of interest only for a time. But some
day or other, it is to be hoped, we shall wake up to the significance
of the fact that tens of thousands of able-bodied paupers are being
supported in idleness, while _some_ at least of the colonies are, under
certain conditions, offering free passages to those who will go to
them. If we think about this fact and its surrounding circumstances, we
may reflect that to ignore such questions for the sake of discussing
a ‘free breakfast-table,’ or even an alteration of the franchise, is
rather like fiddling while Rome is burning.
Sooner or later England may be forced to take a keener interest in
these matters. Pressing as is the need for emigration, to carry it out
effectually is not so easy a matter as appears at first sight. Colonial
questions and difficulties of the utmost delicacy and importance may
arise at any time. There is a floating population of gold-diggers in
Australia with few or no permanent interests in any one colony or
country. The discovery of a rich gold field in any new locality would
attract them from all quarters and make them a majority for the time
being of the population of the colony in which they are, and as such
the dictators of the policy of its government. What that policy might
chance to be no one can say, or how it might bear upon immigration. In
Victoria there appears, unfortunately, to be a growing disposition to
discourage it. It is to be hoped that if any necessity for critical
action should arise we may have a Colonial Secretary competent and
willing to take the straight course and do the right thing, to the
extent of such power as still remains to him, without too much
deference to uninstructed public opinion.
I have seen more of Tasmania than of Victoria or New South Wales,
and have had access to more sources of information concerning it. On
account of its natural features it is the pleasantest, politically
it is at present the least important of the three. Victoria presents
the most characteristic example of the working of extreme democratic
institutions. There, if anywhere, owing to the exceptionally general
dispersion amongst all classes of men of intelligence, education, and
general experience, they have had a favourable field, and there, if one
may trust one’s eyes and ears and the opinion of those best qualified
to judge, they have produced the most deplorable results. Since
these letters were written, an article called ‘Democratic Government
in Victoria’ appeared in the _Westminster Review_ for April 1868,
evidently written by one who has a close acquaintance (to which I can
lay no claim) with the minutiæ of Victorian political life. That an
article so able, and describing a condition of things so startling and
so new to people in England, should not have attracted more attention
there, is a striking instance of our apathy to anything about the
colonies. In Melbourne it created such a sensation that there was a
rush to obtain the _Review_ at almost any price; it was reprinted, and
lectured upon, and became one of the chief topics of interest. Those
who care to know what the Legislature is like in Victoria, those who
would learn to what ultra-democratic institutions at any rate _may_
tend, should read this article. What little my observation had enabled
me to say on the same subject before its appearance is now scarcely
worth reprinting, except as corroborative testimony (so far as it goes)
of a wholly independent observer (for I am ignorant even of the name of
the writer). ‘One result of the system which in Victoria seems to be a
necessary outcome of manhood suffrage’ (says the writer)
‘is to exclude any man of inconveniently refined temperament, of a
too fastidious intellect, and an oppressively severe independence of
opinion, from any part in the representation of the colony. At the
present time, it may be said, without any exaggeration, that no such
man has the smallest chance of being elected, however liberal may be
his opinions, and though he may be a staunch democrat, as democracy
is understood in Europe, by any of the larger constituencies of
Victoria, outside of the metropolis itself. The candidate who is
preferred is the man who has nothing—who is not independent, who is
not fastidious, who is not in any way particular or remarkable. Upon
such a blank the democracy is able to impress its will most fully....
... ‘As a rule when two men are opposed to each other at an election,
in three out of four of the Victorian constituencies, the worse man,
the more ignorant, the less honest, and the more reckless is chosen.’
(Pp. 496, 498.)
That is to say, the system is not only the opposite of an aristocracy
of birth, wealth, talent, or merit, it is not only the repudiation
of hero-worship in any form—even of that lowest form of it, the
worship of the demagogue of the hour—but it is a deliberate attempt
to set up what the world has not yet had occasion even to coin a word
for—_Kakistocracy_, a Legislature composed of the meanest and worst,
chosen as such.
Bad legislation is not the sole or the worst consequence of all this.
Far worse is the demoralization with which political life is infected.
The very idea of right and wrong, true and untrue, in politics, is
in danger of being lost sight of. _L’État c’est moi_, said Louis
Quatorze, and acted accordingly. _Ego sum Imperator Romanus et super
grammaticam_,[1] said an old German Emperor, when an imperfection in
his Latinity was hinted at. ‘The majority of the Colony is on our
side, and the will of the people is above all rules of right and
wrong,’ said (in effect) the Administration of Victoria during the
late ‘Darling-grant’ crisis, being too obviously and palpably in the
wrong to use any other kind of argument. And for the time being Louis
Quatorze was for many purposes the State, Henry the Fowler’s Latin
went uncorrected, and Mr. Higinbotham still bears sway by virtue of
his majority. But the Bourbon _régime_ is no more, the principles
of Latin Grammar remain in spite of any German Emperor, and the
doctrine of the infallibility of majorities may likewise in its turn
pass away. Sooner or later a democracy is likely to get weary of its
puppet delegates, and to revert to the instinct which prompts men to
follow strength rather than to drive weakness. The real fear is not
so much lest democracy should become stereotyped and permanent in its
present condition, as that the legislature, demoralised and weakened by
corruption, should some day fall a too easy prey to despotism exercised
by some strong unscrupulous hand, and aided perhaps by some one of the
colossal fortunes, such as are being accumulated there, and which their
possessors have as yet found few opportunities of spending. What form
of government can be so unstable, so easily overturned as a corrupt
ptochocracy?
There are those who admitting all these evils refuse to connect them
essentially or in any degree with the extreme democratic nature of the
institutions of the colony. Political results are not traceable and
demonstrable like a proposition in Euclid; but it is useless to attempt
to ignore the broad fact pointed out in the review already quoted,
that legislation has become worse and corruption more rife as the
democratic element has been more and more developed. Objectionable as a
plutocracy is in theory, it is undeniable that the Legislative Council,
which is chosen by electors possessing freehold worth 1000_l._ or
100_l._ a year, or being lawyers, clergymen, &c., has been composed of
members superior beyond all comparison in character and ability to the
members of the House of Assembly which is chosen by manhood suffrage.
On the two most important questions of the day, the Darling grant
and protection, the Upper House has been steadily right—in Australia
outside the colony itself there is scarcely any difference of opinion
as to this—and the Lower House persistently wrong. Still less is it to
be denied that it is to the too great sensitiveness to public opinion,
to the ready and even avowed willingness of the administration to trim
its sails to every change of the popular wind, which is the direct
consequence of a democratic constitution without proper checks, that
many of the worst evils are attributable.
Others, again, there are who avowedly profess kakistocratical
principles (if I may be excused for using the word) and say that to
place men of superior virtue or talent in a position of authority
is to divert and control the natural tendency of the mass, which
they consider to be always in the right direction; therefore that
it is better that public men should be nonentities than guides or
patterns. It is impossible to argue against such a position. One
can only take issue upon it, and, pointing to facts, say that the
tyranny of majorities over minorities is the form of tyranny most to
be feared at the present time, one which may become very prevalent
and very galling. At the last election in Victoria the candidates on
the Opposition side polled 28,888 votes against 32,728 polled by the
Ministerialist and popular party, that is, in the proportion of a
little more than seven to eight; yet the result was only 17 Opposition,
against 54 Ministerialist members.[2] The large minority did not
obtain anything like an adequate representation, and but for the still
greater preponderance in the opposite direction in the Upper House,
which the popular party seek to abolish, it would have seemed to the
world outside as if Victoria were all but unanimous in approving the
extraordinary course which the Administration was pursuing.
Looking at these figures it is some small satisfaction to reflect that
there is a minority-clause in our English Reform Bill, which asserts,
however imperfectly, the principle of representation of minorities. But
however sound the principle may be, it will be hard to carry it out by
any mere electoral device. No one, for instance, can doubt that there
is a large and important and intelligent section of the community at
the present time which is really and not only in name Conservative,
and which sympathised with the seceders from the late Administration,
General Peel, Lord Carnarvon, and Lord Salisbury. Yet at the elections
just over not a single candidate raised his voice on their side, or
ventured to hint at an opinion that the suffrage might have been unduly
or unwisely extended. It is scarcely too much to say that the real
Conservatives are almost unrepresented in the present House of Commons.
It will be well if, as our constitution becomes more democratic, a
larger and larger proportion of those who are most disinterested and
best qualified to legislate or govern have not to make way, as has been
the case in Victoria, for those who are willing to accept the servitude
and the wages of the delegate.
Nor is there any security that democratic opinions will be the only
ones for which constituencies will exact pledges. We have just seen
the most disinterested and unselfish friend that the working-men of
London possess in Parliament, in spite of his ‘advanced’ opinions,
constrained to withdraw from contesting a large constituency mainly on
account of his undiplomatically expressed preference for a just balance
over a false one, and in the face of probable defeat to make way for
nonentities who would preserve a prudent silence on such unpleasant
topics.
All honour to those amongst our public men who hold popular opinions
honestly, and prove their honesty by the consistency of their private
lives. The danger is lest they should be swamped by those who having in
reality no such convictions profess them with the greater ostentation.
For the former are likely to be few in number. The genuine democrat,
the man who is readiest to sacrifice himself for the mass, does not in
general seek public life.
Those whose convictions are different, are none the less bound in
honour to cling to them, because they involve (as far as can be
foreseen) inevitable and perpetual political ostracism. It is indeed
said, that whether an unmixed democracy be a blessing or not matters
little; for it is ordained for us—as is plain enough—sooner or later,
and all efforts can but stave it off for a time. It may be so. And it
_may_ be, at the same time, that it is coming because we have brought
it down upon ourselves, invoked our own wholesome punishment, as the
Jews did when they asked for a king to reign over them. It may be
thus, and thus only, that the _vox populi_ which demands democracy,
and the _vox Dei_ which grants and ordains it, are in harmony.[3] If
Samuel was not ashamed to be so far ‘behind the age’ as to tremble at
the decree, and to shudder at the thought of the sons and daughters of
Israel becoming slaves to an oriental despot, may not some of us be
justified in seeking at least to stave off some of the changes that
seem to be in store for us, and in shrinking with abhorrence from the
Nessus-robe of corruption which seems to be a prominent characteristic
of ultra-democracy?
CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. A VOYAGE TO AUSTRALIA 1
II. MELBOURNE 13
III. BALLARAT 26
IV. SQUATTING IN VICTORIA 35
V. POLITICS IN VICTORIA 50
VI. TASMANIA 59
VII. TASMANIA (_continued_) 71
VIII. TASMANIA (_continued_) 85
IX. SYDNEY AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD 101
X. AN INSTITUTION OF NEW SOUTH WALES 115
XI. POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES OF NEW SOUTH WALES 121
XII. ARISTOCRACY AND KAKISTOCRACY 132
XIII. MOTHER AND DAUGHTER 149
XIV. HOME AGAIN 162
XV. CHANGE OF AIR 180
XVI. A PLEA FOR AUSTRALIAN LOYALTY 192
XVII. LOYALTY AND CYNICISM 200
I.
A VOYAGE TO AUSTRALIA.
Some people who have been to the Antipodes and back will tell you that
a voyage to Australia in a good sailing ship is a very pleasant way of
spending three months. Seen through the halo of distance it may seem
so; certainly it leaves pleasant and amusing reminiscences behind.
But I doubt if one person in twenty on board our excellent ship the
_Mercia_, provided as she was with every comfort, or on board any
other ship whatsoever, if cross-examined _during_ the voyage, would
have persisted that he was thoroughly enjoying it. From the first,
a resigned rather than a cheerful look is to be noticed among the
passengers. Even those who at starting were loudest in their praises of
a sea life spoke in the same breath of finding means, and slender means
they seemed, of relieving its tedium and monotony.
We left Plymouth in the fag end of a gale. The second day, just about
the place where the _London_ is supposed to have gone down, a large
piece of timber was floating high out of the water. We passed within
twenty yards of it, and I then saw it was the keel of a vessel, of
three or four hundred tons, capsized, and drifting bottom upwards.
There was still a good deal of swell, and it would have been dangerous
as well as useless to lower a boat; so we passed it almost in silence,
and in a few minutes it was out of sight astern.
For a week or so the cuddy and even the poop were almost deserted. By
degrees the population emerged from their cabins like rabbits from
their burrows, to the number of forty or more, so that there was
scarcely room to sit at table. Most of the passengers are Australians,
‘old chums,’ who have crossed the Line more than once, and are going
back, either because the east winds of the old country last too long
and are too keen after an Australian sun, or because they have come to
an end of their holiday. Even among second and third class passengers
this is so, for the attraction homewards is still strong, and it is
common enough, it seems, for clerks and persons holding mercantile
situations to get a year’s leave to go home. There are one or two
brides, and about a dozen others, not yet Australian, some of them
more or less invalids, taking the voyage for pure sea air’s sake, and
hoping by following the sun across the Line to enjoy three summers in
succession. Six children and a nurse abide in one stern-cabin; the
other has been fitted up luxuriously and artistically with cushions,
pictures, and loaded book-shelves, by a man who apparently intends
to pass the time in literary retirement in the bosom of his family.
Alas! in the stern there is motion on the calmest day. Not an hour
is it possible to write or read there without experiencing certain
premonitory symptoms necessitating an adjournment to the fresh air on
deck.
It is not easy to be alone or to be industrious at any time on board
ship. But it is not till you enter the tropics that exertion of body
or mind seems to become impossible. It is then that your limbs almost
refuse to move, your eyes to see, and your brains to think. The deck is
strewn all day with slumbering forms. No plank, no hen-coop redolent
of unpleasant odours, is so hard as to repel sleep. It is seldom that
a sail needs setting or taking in. Even the barometer almost refuses
to move, and influenced (it is said) only by the tide, sinks and rises
almost inappreciably with lazy regularity. Nor is there often any
excitement to arouse us. Twice only throughout the voyage is land seen:
the rough jagged outline of Madeira, and the Desertas, rising from a
smooth sheet of blue and purple water, and standing out against the
glowing colours of the setting sun; and a few days later Palma, hiding
the Peak of Teneriffe. We hope in vain to see, later on, Trinidad (the
southern, not the West Indian, Trinidad) and Tristan da Cunha. There
are two months in which the horizon is straight with a straightness
abhorred on land by nature, such as even the deserts of Africa do not
afford. Can it be that so much of the globe is always to be a dreary
waste of waters? Is it all needed to make wind and rain, and to be a
purifier of the land? Or when earth is overpeopled, will a new creation
spring out of the sea? At any rate, there is change of some kind going
on. We are unpleasantly made aware of this by a sudden cessation of
wind, with calms, squalls, and foul wind, off the Canaries, in what
should be the very heart of the trade-winds—the trades, whose blast
used to be as steady and uniform as the course of the sun itself. A
great change has occurred, says the captain ruefully, even in his time
(and he is not forty,) in their regularity. If they go on at this
rate, there may be none at all in a century, and not Maury himself can
foresee the consequences of that.
On the other hand, the luck is with us when we come to the much-dreaded
belt of calms, which lies near the equator, shifting north and south of
it, according to the time of year, but always more to the north than
to the south of it. Often are ships detained there for days, and even
weeks, drenched in tropical rain, which makes it necessary to keep the
skylights shut, to the great discomfort of everyone, except the ducks
and geese, which are for the only time during the voyage released
from their narrow coops, and put in possession of unlimited water
and free range of the poop. For two or three weeks the thermometer
stands at from 80° to 84°, not varying perceptibly day or night. In
the upper-deck cabins there is plenty of ventilation—you may make them
a race-course of draughts,—but below it is intolerable. It is unsafe
to sleep on deck at night, for the air is charged with moisture.
Portmanteaux, bags, hats, coats, and boots cover themselves with
furry coats of green and blue mould. It is not unhealthy, but it is
enervating and wearisome, except for five minutes soon after sunrise,
when in the intervals of washing the decks the hose is turned upon you,
as you stand thinking the warm air clothing enough. There is not much
to look at but the flying-fish, as they rise in flocks, frightened from
under the ship’s bows, and tumble in again with a splash a hundred
yards off; and at night the brilliant phosphorescence which lights up
the white foam in the vessel’s wake. For two days amongst the Madeiras
turtles floated by asleep, but they were too wary to be caught.
It was a relief when one day, south of Trinidad, the air grew suddenly
cooler, the flying-fish disappeared, and the first Cape-pigeon, and the
first albatross, then Cape-geese, Cape-hens, and I know not what other
birds, gave us hope that our voyage was half over, and that in ten days
we might be in the longitude of the Cape. From hence till land was
sighted some of these birds were always in sight of the ship. Sometimes
four and five albatrosses at once were swooping about astern, some of
them showing marks of having been struck with shot. It was useless to
shoot at them, for they would have been lost; but we caught two with
baited hooks, one measuring nine feet from wing to wing, and, unmindful
of the ‘Ancient Mariner,’ slew and stuffed them.
I paid my footing on the forecastle, and hoped to see something of the
crew. But one is apt to be in the way there, and it is difficult to
know much of the sailors. Few realise—though it is a trite saying—how
completely seafaring men are a race apart. Their habits, ideas, wants,
dangers, and hardships are almost unknown to landsmen. Seeing with
one’s own eyes how much hardship even now, and in the best appointed
ships, occasionally falls to the lot of sailors, makes one aghast
at the bare thought of what the miseries of a long voyage must have
been in the old days before lime-juice and ventilation, and when the
death or prostration of two-thirds of a crew from scurvy was quite a
common occurrence. One begins to comprehend with amazement how the old
discoverers must have had the souls of giants to sail month after month
over unknown oceans and along unmapped coasts. Nor do landsmen realise
how much loss of life there is at sea in merchant-ships, and how large
a proportion of it is from preventable causes: how ships sail and are
never heard of, and because there are no facts to make a story of,
the papers scarcely mention it. Few but those in the merchant-service
know how often, in order to save the expense of keeping ships idle
in harbour, they are, after being fully insured, hurried to sea in
utterly unseaworthy condition, with stores hastily put on board and so
ill stowed that nothing is to be found when it is wanted, with crews
engaged only the day before sailing, and consequently undisciplined,
unknown to their officers, and frequently ill and useless from the
effects of dissipation on shore, from the effects of which they have
not had time to recover.[4] If the _London_ belonged (as I believe it
did) to an exceptionally well-managed line of ships, how must it be
with ships on ill-managed lines? It is true that a merchant-captain has
it very much in its power to make his crew comfortable or miserable,
and may often be a tyrant if he chooses. But it is also true that
he is often very much at the mercy of his crew, amongst whom the
chances are that he has at least one or two unruly and perhaps almost
savage specimens. And with a new and strange crew every voyage, it
is extremely difficult for him to establish and maintain discipline.
He has very little power to punish, and in fact always does so at
the risk of an action for assault at the end of the voyage. He often
_dares_ not put a mutinous man in irons because he cannot spare him;
and it is sometimes only by sheer physical strength, by the knowledge
that he could and would, if necessary, knock down any man in the ship
who defied him, that he can maintain his authority. I have known a
sailor after being some days in irons for mutinous conduct, say by way
of an apology for his behaviour that hitherto he had always sailed
in small ships, and had been accustomed, if he had a difference with
his captain, to ‘have it out’ with him on the poop. A few days later
the same man when drunk flew at the captain like a tiger, and had
to be taken below and fastened to the main-deck like a wild beast,
spread-eagle fashion, to keep him quiet.
Of the captain and officers, on the other hand, we see a great deal.
Nothing can exceed their patience in listening to anything, reasonable
or unreasonable, which the passengers have to say or to complain of,
and in answering any questions, sensible or foolish. It is a hard,
wearing, anxious life for them, requiring nerve, temper, and power of
endurance. A ship often has only two responsible officers, so that
each has at least half of every night for his watch on deck (in all
weathers be it remembered) in addition to his work by day. Yet for
this a chief officer gets the miserable pittance of 7_l._ a month, and
a second mate and doctor 5_l._ a month, sometimes even less, ceasing
immediately at the end of the voyage. One could wish that the great
shipowners, wealthy as they must be, were a little more liberal in this
respect. The butcher, on the other hand, is a man of capital, and comes
furnished with a crowd of bulldogs, canary-birds, thrushes, and other
animals, which bring him in a handsome profit at the end of the voyage.
The _Mercia_ is a sailing-ship, as all but two of the Australian ships
are, and has no auxiliary screw. It is a real pleasure, for once, to
be out of the way of steam-power, to be entirely at the mercy of winds
and waves, and dependent on good old-fashioned seamanship. If a voyage
lasts longer without steam, it is far more interesting and pleasant.
There is an interest in seeing the sails worked, in pulling at a rope
now and then. There is a little excitement in watching for a change
of wind, in welcoming the moment in bad weather when the sensitive
aneroid ceases falling and takes a turn, in anticipating a good or a
bad day’s run, in tracing the sometimes tortuous course on the chart,
in speculating on the chance of an island being sighted or passed
three or four hundred miles off. And in the morning there is something
to be said about what the ship has done in the night; perhaps she has
unexpectedly been put on the other tack, whereby somebody who had gone
to sleep with his window open got a sea into his cabin. Or a sail has
been split, or a spar carried away by a squall. All this is better at
any rate than the everlasting monotonous throb of a steamer’s screw,
the uniform day’s run which you can predict within twenty knots, the
even sameness of the course drawn like a straight line across the
ocean, and the smoke and smells of steam and oil (it is castor-oil) of
the engines. And as for beauty, to stand by the wheel on the poop of
a large ship, when the wind is light and fair and the studding-sails
are set, projecting like wings over the ship’s sides, and to look up
amongst the towering curves of canvas and the maze of ropes and spars,
is a very beautiful sight, a sight which tourists do not often see
nowadays, and which in a generation or two, when the world is still
more stifled with smoke and steam, may not be to be seen by anyone.
It is well if a voyage passes without quarrels among the passengers. In
such close quarters, one must be inoffensive indeed to offend nobody.
If you are cordial friends with a fat or unwashed man who has sat next
you at three meals every day for three months, and with a loud voice
insisted on being helped first to everything, your disposition must
be amiable indeed. Except the relation between the two Lords Justices
of the Court of Chancery, compared with which the bond of matrimony
itself is a trifle, I know none so trying as close juxtaposition on
board ship. You are at the mercy of the noisiest, the least scrupulous,
and the most officious. If a man drinks, he will drink twice as much at
sea, where he has nothing else to do. And you are lucky if you escape
having one man at least among the passengers who drinks to excess.
However, eating, sleeping, or talking, we are always going; that is
the great satisfaction. The average daily run greatly increases as we
get south. Between 40° and 45° south latitude there are no more light
or foul winds for a ship sailing east, and the course is straight, at
the rate of about 250 knots a day. But it gets colder and colder, till
one day, just as we are considering the chances of being carried to the
south of Prince Edward’s and Kerguelen Islands, the wind changes from
north or north-west to south or south-west. It is equally fair for us,
but we suddenly experience what it is to have a temperature of 40°, or
lower, snow and hail falling, draughts as usual, and no possibility
of a fire. It generally blows half a gale, sometimes a whole one. You
cannot walk the deck to warm your feet, but must hold on fast, and take
your chance of a drenching from one of the heavy seas, which from time
to time strike the ship abeam, or on the quarter, with a noise like a
ten-pound shot out of a gun. I cannot pretend to guess the height of
the waves, but they are beyond comparison bigger than any I ever saw on
the English coast. Standing on the poop, eighteen or twenty feet above
the water, I have often seen the sun, when near its setting, _through_
the clear green crest of a wave. For four or five days it is so misty
and overcast that no observation of the sun can be obtained, and our
position can be inferred only by ‘dead reckoning.’ Some seaweed has
been seen. The currents are uncertain hereabouts, and even the position
of the islands has, till within the last few years, been incorrectly
laid down in the charts. So that the captain looks more harassed than
usual, and does not leave the deck for long at a time, till at last we
run into finer weather and see the sun again, and ascertain that we
have been making a straight course in exactly the right direction and
at a glorious rate.
And now the air gets daily clearer and drier; we are getting into the
Australian climate. At last the day comes for sighting land. For an
hour or more it is doubtful, then it is certain, that land is in sight.
I put the day down as a red-letter day in my life, as we pass within
a mile or two of Cape Otway, and see the red sandy cliffs, the pale
green grass close to the water’s edge, the lighthouse and telegraph
station above, and behind, the ranges of thick impenetrable bush, huge
forest trees, with their dark foliage standing out against the sky,
a landscape as wild and unsullied by the hand of man as though it
were a thousand miles from a settlement. One longs to be landed there
and then, but the breeze is fair and strong, and though at sunset we
take in all sail but topsails, we rush on, and are forced to heave-to
before midnight, pitching and rolling in the swell, lest we get beyond
Port Phillip Heads in the night. Soon after midnight all are astir,
for there is a rumour that the pilot is coming. A large star near the
horizon is to be seen. It moves, gets larger; it is not a star; the
moon’s rays fall upon something indistinct on the waves beneath it, and
shining white as silver a little schooner with a light at her mast-head
shoots under the stern. The pilot climbs on board. Three more hours’
pitching, and the long low Heads are left astern of us, and we are in
smooth water. As the Melbourne folk are sitting down to their Sunday’s
breakfast, and those in England are going to bed for their Saturday
night’s rest, our anchor drops in Hobson’s Bay, a mile or more from
the long, low, sandy coast. Fronting us is Sandridge, the port of
Melbourne; to the right, as far as the eye can see, dark green foliage,
broken by clusters of houses and bare spaces of sand; and to the left,
a marshy, sandy plain, bounded by the distant ranges, purple as the
hills of Gascony or the Campagna.
II.
MELBOURNE.
‘All I can see is my own, and all I can’t see is my son’s,’ was the
complacent remark, it is said, of John Batman, as he stood, some
thirty-two years ago, looking over a vast tract of country which he
thought he had bought as his own freehold from the aborigines for a
few blankets and tomahawks. That tract of country comprised the ground
whereon now stands Melbourne, nearly if not quite, the largest city in
the southern half of the globe; in importance, actual or prospective,
in the first rank of British cities.
Truly English it looks as yet, at first sight at any rate. After
a long, wearisome voyage, the first impression is almost one of
disappointment at having come so far only to see sights and hear sounds
so familiar. Long before you land, the familiar ugly staring letters,
with which the British shopkeeper delights to deface his dwelling, are
visible on the waterside houses. A commonplace railway-train, with two
classes to choose between, not one only, as might have been expected in
a land of democracy, receives you at the shore end of the long wooden
pier. You are set down in ten minutes in Melbourne itself, amongst
cars, shops, hotels, and all the external appliances of old-world
civilisation. But this first impression soon passes away. Already
before entering the city itself, a white plain, marshy in winter, dried
up and arid in summer, has been passed over. It is dotted over with
little one-storied wooden houses, of which the verandah seems to be the
most important part, and which are more like the mushroom erections
on the sand _dunes_ of Arcachon in the _landes_ of Gascony than any
habitation on English soil. And I suppose there is no spot in Melbourne
where a man waking up, as from an enchanted sleep, and ignorant where
he was, could for a moment fancy he was in England.
From the railway station you enter at once into the heart of the town.
You pass into fine, straight, generally sloping streets, which will
compare favourably with those of any English provincial town for width,
for the number of well-filled showy shop-windows, and for the ambitious
and costly architecture of the public buildings, hotels, and especially
banks, which last are always numerous and conspicuous in Australian
towns. First in importance among them is Collins Street, the Regent
Street of Melbourne. Parallel, and scarcely inferior in rank to it, is
Bourke Street, and at right angles to these are Elizabeth Street and
four or five more which may be said to come next in dignity. These and
several narrower ones, most of which are quiet and dignified and full
of merchants’ offices, make up the most important part of Melbourne
proper, as distinguished from the suburbs, each of which, though an
integral part of the capital, has a sort of separate existence of its
own, and bears a relation to it more resembling that of Kensington or
Hampstead to London, than that of Marylebone or Mayfair. This central
part of the town is the original and old part, if it may be so called
in comparison to the rest. It was planned out long before Melbourne
was a populous or important city, in the days when Governors ruled as
well as reigned, and was systematically laid out in alternately broad
and narrow roadways. It was intended that only the broad ones should
have houses built along them, the narrow ones being meant only for
back entrances to the gardens and outbuildings which were to occupy
the intervening space. But both have now long since been turned into
streets of contiguous houses.
The lowness of the houses strikes a new comer from England as a feature
which makes the general appearance of the city different from anything
at home. Even in the heart of it, where space is so valuable that
one might have expected it would be more economised, the houses have
generally only one story above the ground floor, and in the suburbs
often not even that. This is made all the more conspicuous by the width
of the streets. These are not paved but are well macadamized, and are
now in good order in all weathers; but on each side of them you have
to cross by little bridges, if you are on foot, or if you are driving,
to bump down into and through broad, deep, paved gutters, or rather
water-courses full of running water, which exhibit nature not yet quite
submissive to civilization. After heavy rain, torrents of water rush
down them to such an extent that boats are sometimes required in some
of the lower streets. There is a tradition that before Flinders Street
was macadamized the mud was so deep there that a baby jolted out of a
car was drowned in a rut before it could be picked up. In the principal
thoroughfares the traffic on the foot-pavement is considerable enough,
and indicates a large and busy population. But the roadway looks
rather empty. In an afternoon you may see a good many buggies and
a few English-looking carriages driving about; but there is never
anything approaching to a continuous string of vehicles of any kind in
motion. There are plenty of street-cars, or jingles as they are called,
which are like Irish cars with the seat turned breadthways instead of
lengthways, and with a covering to keep off sun and rain. Here and
there are to be seen stands of drays waiting to be hired, as if the
population were in a chronic state of change of domicile.
The wind and blinding sun make one wish that the streets were a
little less straight, both to add to their picturesqueness, and so as
to afford a little more shelter. Whether the keen wind in winter or
the hot wind of summer be blowing, the lee-side of a wall is equally
desirable. In summer after a day or two of parching hot wind from
the north, the south wind will suddenly come into conflict with it,
producing what is called a ‘Southerly Buster’—a whirlwind full of dust,
filling the air and darkening the sky, and resulting always in the
victory of the south wind, and in a fall of temperature of twenty or
thirty degrees in less than half an hour. But if curved streets are in
some respects desirable, it must not be at the expense of a peculiar
and most attractive feature in those of Melbourne, namely, that many of
them have at each end a vista of open sky or distant mountain ranges,
which in the clear dry air are always blue and distinct, and give a
sense of space and freedom not common in the midst of large cities.
The respectable Briton everywhere clings to his black hat and black
coat with tenacity. But the summer heat of Australia is too much for
him, and white hats, or felt ones with stiff falling brim, and thick
white pugrees give a semi-Indian look to the population. Those who have
to do with horses, whether stockmen from the bush or livery-stable
helpers, are particularly unlike their type in England. Instead of
being the neatest and most closely buttoned and closely shaved of men,
they will perhaps wear no coat or waistcoat, a purple flannel shirt,
white linen inexpressibles, dirty unpolished jack-boots, a cabbage-tree
hat, and a long beard. Follow one of them into the great horse-yard in
Bourke Street, the Melbourne Tattersall’s. The broken horses are first
sold, very much as they might be at Aldridge’s. Then the auctioneer
goes to an inner part of the yard, where in large pens, strongly built
of timber and six or seven feet high, is a ‘mob’ of a hundred or more
four-year-old unbroken colts huddled together and as wild as hawks.
Bidders climb up on to the railings and examine them as well as they
can from there, for it is no easy matter to go amongst them or to
distinguish one from the rest. The auctioneer puts them up for sale
separately, and somehow or other, with much cracking of whips, each
as his turn comes is driven out from among the rest into a separate
pen. Probably the best of the mob had been picked out previously, for
the commonest price at which I heard them knocked down was seventeen
shillings and sixpence a-piece, and it is difficult to believe that,
cheap as horses are in Australia, a good colt could be worth so little
as that.
The space covered by Melbourne and its suburbs is, compared with
an English or European town, out of all proportion large for the
population. Short suburban railways, running all through and about
it, make it easy for people to live at some distance from where their
work is. Between one suburb and another there are often dreary spaces
of bare ground, destitute of grass, and dusty or muddy according to
the season. The population in some places is so sparse that you may
have to wait some minutes if you want to ask your way of a passer-by.
There is a so-called street, quite unknown to fame, rejoicing in the
name of Hoddle Street (why Hoddle, and who or what Hoddle was, I have
no idea), which cannot be much less, I should think, than three miles
long. One end of it passes through a large, poorly-built suburb, called
Collingwood; it then emerges into open ground and passes through some
meadows by the river-side, which in a flood are sometimes many feet
deep in water. For want of a bridge it (or rather its continuity or
identity) crosses the river in a punt, and, still being Hoddle Street,
forms part of South Yarra, a locality which disputes with Toorak the
honour of being the Belgravia or Mayfair of Melbourne. Emerging from
South Yarra it enters a sandy flat near the sea-shore, and ends its
career (I believe, for I never followed it so far) somewhere in the
pleasant sea-side suburb of St. Kilda.
The foreign element in Melbourne is very small. There are few Germans
and fewer French. Only the Chinese are noticeable for their numbers.
One meets them in the streets looking quite at home there, not begging,
as in Europe, but prosperous and industrious. It is said that there are
twenty thousand Chinamen in Victoria alone. One narrow street in the
middle of Melbourne is inhabited almost exclusively by them, and is
conspicuous with quaint blue and gold signboards covered with Chinese
characters, looking like a large bit of tea-caddy, the proprietor’s
name being put up in English letters underneath, for the information
of outer barbarians. Sun-kum-on is a very conspicuous name on one of
the wharves at Sydney. Public opinion, which was very hostile to the
Chinese at one time, seems to have rather turned in their favour. In
New South Wales there was an Act of the Legislature excluding them, but
it has lately been repealed. They do work which other people despise,
and by their abstemious and parsimonious habits will slowly get rich
on gold-fields abandoned by other diggers as worked out. As market
gardeners, they have done a real service to the Melbourne people.
Formerly there were few if any vegetables to be had there in summer. It
was supposed to be too dry and too hot to raise them. But by elaborate
irrigation, unstinted spade labour, and abundant application of manure,
the Chinese raise crop after crop of vegetables at all seasons, and
in all soils. I saw two acres of ground in one of the suburbs which
had been left uncultivated, and was altogether unprofitable, till five
Chinamen rented it for 25_l._ a year, and now they contrive to raise
300_l._ worth of garden produce yearly. They are a race living quite
apart. They do not bring their wives with them from China; there are
not more than three or four Chinese women in all Victoria, it is said.
And the poorest of the poor of other races, probably with good reason
(as one’s nose suggests), will not live with them, much less intermarry
with them.
The great and ever-present charm of Melbourne consists in the
exceptionally vigorous and active appearance of its population. This
is due simply to the fact that the great bulk of it was formed by the
almost simultaneous immigration of men who are not yet grown old.
As yet there are comparatively few old people to be seen about; and
everybody seems hard at work and able to work. An immense majority of
the grown-up men and women were born and bred in England. Many whom one
meets about the streets look as if they might have a history of their
own, full of interest and strange adventure, none perhaps more than the
car-drivers, an occupation followed by some who have been used to a
very different position in life. I never drove in a car without asking
all I dared, and speculating as to what the reason was in each case
for wandering to the Antipodes. Physically the Melbourne people are
likely to be above the average; for, in the early days of the colony at
least, the sick and weakly in constitution did not think of committing
themselves to the then uncertain hardships and discomforts of a
voyage and a new country. A certain degree of force of character too
is probable in those who have had resolution enough to break through
home ties and cast their lot in another hemisphere. Hence also in some
respects the tie with the old country is a closer and firmer one than
in most of the other Australian colonies. There is quite a crowd and an
excitement about the post office for some time before the English mail
closes. Little stalls are erected by newspaper-sellers, provided with
pen, ink, and cover, to direct and despatch the newspapers to friends
at home, and a brisk trade they seem to do. Home associations and
reminiscences underlie and prevail over more recent ones. Even the word
‘colonial’ is often used to express disparagement; ‘colonial manners,’
for instance, is now and then employed as a synonym for roughness or
rudeness.