THE ROMANCE OF MELBOURNE
What the over-learned but fascinating Burton, in his “Anatomy of
Melancholy,” wrote of Australia, nearly three centuries ago, remains
true for vast numbers of people in the Old Country to-day--it is a
_terra Australis incognita_. It is not to the credit of Britons that
they know so little of the outlying parts of their great Empire.
Doubtless things have advanced since the day when a London lady said to
a prominent cleric who was leaving England for Melbourne, “So you are
going to preach to the aborigines!” (Poor aborigines--there are very
few of them left. Civilisation is killing them with its manners, as
formerly it murdered them with its guns.) In the remarkable official
“Commonwealth Year-Book” there is contained a series of maps showing
the progress of Australian exploration during the last century. It is
a suggestive study. In 1808 the map was one black mass, indicating
ignorance of the continent, with a white corner in Victoria, showing
the one place known to explorers. At the end of each decade the maps
grow lighter, until the final one published contains only a few black
patches indicating the unexplored country of the great central desert
and of the north-west territory. It is only by comparing the first and
the last maps that the marvellous advance in Australian exploration
becomes manifest. What will the next hundred years bring? The first
hundred years have seen the country opened up to knowledge. Will
the second hundred years see it filled with a happy and prosperous
population?
It seems hardly credible to one who gazes in admiration at the
beautiful modern buildings of Melbourne that less than eighty years ago
there was no vestige of a city there. And it is even more incredible,
in view of the ever-extending suburbs of the city, that sixty years ago
a plot of ground at the top of Collins Street was rejected by a church
on the ground that it was “too far in the bush.” What miracles in
stones and streets have been wrought since then!
At an anniversary dinner in Melbourne recently there was distributed,
as a precious souvenir of the growth of the city, a lithographed copy
of the first agreement made between John Batman and the native chiefs
as to the transfer of an enormous tract of land upon which the Port
Philip settlement was subsequently built. It was a bargain of the
rarest and keenest kind. Little did the chiefs dream, on that memorable
day, what their simple act would involve. For a quantity of knives,
scissors, mirrors, blankets, and other ordinary articles beloved of the
natives, the chiefs agreed to part with no less than 600,000 acres of
rich, grassy land. It was probably the cheapest bargain ever made in
the way of land purchase, if we except the sharp-witted gentlemen at
home who boldly seized common land as their own without so much as the
payment of a pocket-knife or a pair of scissors.
It was not Batman, however, despite his bargain, who was the real
founder of Melbourne. His cheap purchase was speedily disputed by other
Englishmen, who also had great dreams of property. When Pascoe Fawkner
sailed from Tasmania, and after various trials landed on the site where
Melbourne now stands, his fellow-colonists established themselves on
the vacant ground, and thus Melbourne was founded. Various relics of
wooden houses still exist to show what primitive colonial life was in
those days. There are many old folks residing in Melbourne who have
weird stories to tell of the life in that distant time. How they came
out sixty years ago in sailing vessels, the voyage occupying several
months; how they sat with their fathers and mothers on the ground, for
want of better accommodation; how they slept in the bush covered with
cloaks and skins, and surrounded by laughing jackasses, which seemed to
make merry over their misfortunes; how men rapidly rose to fortune, and
sank as rapidly as they had risen; how they have watched the growth of
the great city from a collection of huts and wooden shanties, until it
has become one of the fine cities of the world. Romance! It is not too
highly coloured a word by which to describe their experiences.
History does not record many more rapid developments than that of
Melbourne. In sixty years its population has grown from 11,000 to over
600,000, and the end is not yet. Like all growing children, it has had
its illnesses and set-backs. The “land boom” of 1892–3 ruined many men
who accounted their fortune as firmly settled. Some unfortunates, in
that dreadful crisis brought on by dishonest speculation, lost their
reason and went down to a suicide’s grave. On one black day men who
until that hour were sane and sober went mad and raved and cursed. Some
church folk said what they meant to be their farewell to God on that
mad day. But time is a wonderful healer, and the sun aids time. This
bright and cheerful atmosphere is inimical to pessimism. The laughing
sun and trees and flowers, and the song-filled air, made men forget
their failure. Melbourne has recovered from its stroke. Some of the
most optimistic and exhilarating men I have encountered in this city
are men who lost their all in the “crash.”
As a city Melbourne is a wonderfully attractive place. Its great and
unmistakable feature is airiness. Many of the streets are of a width
that would prepare for some English landowners a fit of apoplexy were
they compelled to build streets on their property upon such an ample
scale. Everything is light, bright, airy, ample. Few people live in
the city itself. Collins Street is the home of doctors, who congregate
together as do members of the same fraternity in Harley Street, London.
In the suburbs, near and distant--and residentially Melbourne is “going
out” farther and farther--all the houses are ample. The “villa” is
evidently the favourite type of house, and is affected by rich and
poor. A villa is the Melbourne name for a bungalow. All the rooms are
on one floor. Housework is reduced to the minimum. A villa of the
largest size is little less than a mansion, while the smallest villas
present an air of smartness and comfort which a basement house entirely
lacks. In fact, the “basement” house is unknown in Australia. It would
not be tolerated. The villa is ideal for a hot country, where people
are not inclined to waste energy on summer days in climbing flights
of unnecessary stairs. Nearly every house has its bit of sub-tropical
shrubbery, if nothing else. The nearer suburbs have none too much
garden attaching to the houses. This, for a new country, is a great
mistake. With ample land to spare, the State might have planned nearer
Melbourne on the garden city principle. Adelaide is a better city from
this point of view. In fact, Adelaide is the finest city, from the
garden point of view, I have ever seen. But in the farther suburbs
Melbourne is more rural. Kew, Armadale, Canterbury, and Surrey Hills
are delightful residential places. The spaces allotted to gardens are
there more ample, and the general effect is more pleasing.
The new-comer from the Old Land is struck by the way in which familiar
names reappear in the various localities. English names are duplicated
in a delightfully confusing manner. Thus, on one short railway run to
the suburbs we pass through Richmond, Windsor, Camberwell, Brighton,
Canterbury, Surrey Hills, Sandringham, Hampton, Kensington, and
Newmarket. It sounds so familiar, yet it is so odd that the names
appear in anything but their original order. It is not too much to say
that the suburbs of Melbourne are more attractive than the suburbs
of any English city of corresponding size. The absence of smoke, the
absolute clearness of the atmosphere, the ranges of mountains, the sea
in the distance, and the vast distances carpeted with green combine to
form a landscape second to none in the world. Melbourne seems to be
central for every kind of life. A threepenny ticket from the centre
brings one to the shore of St. Kilda. A shilling is the price of a
return ticket to Black Rock, a romantic seaside resort on the verge
of the bush, where laughing jackasses gather in threes and fours and
guffaw their loudest. All around is a vast dairying district, while at
Healesville and in the Buffalo Mountains there are pleasure centres
unapproachable for beauty and romance.
The city proper is a “chessboard city,” built on strict mathematical
lines. The streets intersect each other at right angles. There is
no place easier to traverse. Built as it is, however, many of the
streets have no shade whatever in the summer-time. That is their one
disadvantage. There are numerous magnificent buildings. The Houses of
Parliament, the General Post Office, the Exhibition Building and the
Town Hall are worthy of the best city in any country. Situated in such
a latitude, Melbourne lends itself admirably to boulevard life. A
touch of Paris would make of Melbourne the most attractive city in this
hemisphere. The streets and pavements are wide enough to allow of the
open-air café. But in its life Melbourne follows America rather than
Paris. The American hustling spirit is manifest in everything, religion
included. Already, in this new country, the trend of the people is
towards the city. Victoria has an area of 87,884 square miles; that is,
its territory is half as big again as England and Wales. Its population
is only 1,399,325--about one thirty-fifth that of Britain. Yet of that
population 600,000 people live in Melbourne and its suburbs.
One thing strangely fascinates a new-comer, and that is the question
of lung disease. It was to Australia that consumptive patients were
formerly sent; it is to Davos they now repair. Once it was thought
that a warm climate was better for the patients; now it is thought
that cold, dry air is the best for them. The last official figures are
significant. In the year 1906 the home death-rate from tuberculosis
of the respiratory system was 135.68 per 100,000 of the population.
In 1907 the death-rate for the whole Commonwealth of Australia was
86.29 per 100,000--little more than half. “The Commonwealth occupies,
therefore, a very enviable position in regard to tubercular diseases,
when compared with European countries.” Yet even this proportion is
too high. Consumptive parents who went out years ago are now living at
a good old age, but some of their children have been carried off by
the dread disease. One man, in a good position, buried his seventh
and last child a short time ago. He himself came out weak-lunged forty
years ago. Good luck to the physicians who are fighting the white
scourge! One day it ought to disappear entirely from a country so broad
and healthy as this.