 Section 1. Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and Victoria. This is a LibreVox recording. All LibreVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibreVox.org. This reading by Lucy Burgoyne. Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and Victoria by William Wesgarth. Section 1. Oh, call back yesterday, big time return. Richard II. A story of the mountain plain, the lake, the river and the sea. A voice that wakes to life again. An age-long slumbering melody. George Gordon McCrae. Ah, who has ever journeyed on a glorious summer night through the weird Australian bushland without feelings of delight. The dense, untrodden forest in the moonlight cold and pale brings before our wondering eyes again the dreams of fairy tale. A. Patchard Martin. The genius of Australia now uprears her youthful form like hope without hope's fears. While all her head outcrossed with loveliest rays heralds the brightness of her future years. R. H. Horne. An introductory medley. Pleasure and action make the hours seem short. Othelio. I had long looked forward to one more visit to Victoria, perhaps the last I should expect to make, and the opportunity of the opening of the Great Centenary Exhibition at Melbourne on 1st August of this year was too good to be lost. Accordingly, having been able to arrange business matters for so long a holiday, I took passage with my wife and daughter by the good steamship Coptic of the shore, Savile New Zealand Line, as it is curtly put. She was to land us at Hobart about 27th July in good time we hoped to get across by the Launceston boat for the exhibition opening and she bids farewell at this moment to keep her engagement. We would have taken the director route with its greater number and variety of objects, via Suez and Colombo, but we feared the sun blaze at the ill omen Red Sea in summer. We purpose, however, to return that way towards the coming winter. More than thirty-one years have elapsed since I left Melbourne, after a residence there of seventeen years, broken, however, by two intermediate visits home. I think with wondering enjoyment of what I am to see in the colony and its capital after such an interval. Previously, when I returned after only a year or two absence, I was want to mark with astonishment all that had been done in that comparatively brief time. I am thankful to Mr. Fraud, whose delighted work, Oceana, I could read to all full enjoyment during the leisure and quiet of the voyage, for somewhat preparing me for what I have to see, for I must infer from his graphic accounts, especially of interior progress, while already three more years have since elapsed that even my most sanguine anticipations will be exceeded. Our great Scottish poet and novelist has finally said, Live there a man with souls so dead, who never to himself have said, This is my own, my native land. But is there not a formidable rival to the force of this sentiment, in that with which one clings to the land where so many of the most vigorous years of life have been actively spent? And a land, besides, of surpassing sunny beauty and of rare romance. Business calls are usually held to be imperative, even if they send us, willing or unwilling, to ultimatheal all the pole. Accordingly, my later lot has been to return to the older and not to continue in the newer, part of the common empire, but at any rate, that rather enhances the enjoyment of this revisit. According to the usual custom, I now write my introduction last of all. I have most pleasantly occupied several hours of the complete leisure of each day in writing these recollections, and now, as we get within almost hours of our destination, I am putting this last hand to my labours. I cannot hope that their light sketchiness can go for much. Save with those who, familiar with the great Melbourne and Victoria of today, may endure the comparison of the small things of a retrospect extending to almost half a century, and all but to the birth of the colony. The voyage has been extremely pleasant, with a good and well-found vessel, fairly fast as the briskly competitive speed of these days goes, and above all with the head in Captain Burton, who has proved first-class in every requirement. He has just complimented us by saying that we are the best-behaved lot of passengers he ever took. That was due very greatly to himself, and I think that all of us are well able to reciprocate his compliment by regarding him as the best of captains. Officers and crew also have been, to our view at least, faultless, but then again, all that so much depends upon the captain. Touching the important matter of speed, let me say a little, all important it is indeed in this age of fast progress. When I first sailed for Australia in 1840, we were, I think, 141 days on the way, nor was that a very inordinate passage then. This time I expect within that interval to go and return, besides having nearly two and a half months to spare. A space of time which now, with rails and fast steamers everywhere, will enable me to visit all southeastern Australasia, including even New Zealand. Of course that means hardly more than to see, but still that is better than not to see at all those wonderful parts of our empire. But yet again, on this point of speed, our coptics daily run average, rather under 300 nautical miles. In justice to the good ship, we shall credit her with rather more, but during the latter half of the voyage, she was meeting or anticipating the sun by six or seven degrees of longitude daily, and thus clipping about half an hour off each day. But turn now to the latest like exploit between Liverpool and New York, the case I think of the SS Umbria, whose unprecedented record is of 455 to 503 miles daily, granting this to be subject to abatement for running this time away from the sun, and thus prolonging the day. There is enough of difference to give us at this speed, the hope of a three weeks Australian service by the straightest available line. It has already been affected to Adelaide in 29 days. We Australians must hope that Erlong Melbourne and Sydney, together with all about them, will weigh with ourselves at least as heavily as New York. The cold question is, of course, an awful difficulty for three weeks instead of five to six days, but not, we hope, insuperable. Our Coptic burns at 50 tonnes a day, but the New York liners require 300. When a man has passed 73 as I have done, he may be excused in doubting his chance of yet another Australian visit. But while he has been waiting these many years, he has seen such vast improvement in intercommunication facilities of every kind, as to establish, he might say, a complete counterbalance to the increasing infirmities of years. Imagine therefore the Australian liner at the next few years to be a great and comfortable hotel, as though one went for three weeks, freshly aired to Brighton or Bournemouth. With the additional charm that, on quitting your pleasant marine apartments, you stepped out upon Australia. This brings up yet another subject. When attending four years ago, the very successful and most interesting meeting of the British Association at Montreal, I was very curious as to the possible prospect, now that this body has made so good a first outside step of a life meeting in Australia. But not very long after, an invitation to the Association was actually sent from Melbourne. The year asked for had been pre-engaged for home. My distinguished friend, Mr. Service, told me when on his late home visit that no doubt the invitation would go again. I may usefully mention here that the Association is usually engaged, or as good as engaged, two clear years in advance, so that the third year at least in advance should be dealt with for Melbourne. This besides would afford sufficient notice for the busy men of all classes and all vacations at home to arrange conveniently for the necessarily long absence. I do not doubt a complete success. Indeed, it is such a further chance as that which might tempt even the oldest of us into visiting the far off, but bright and sunny south. End of Section 1. Section 2. Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and Victoria. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This reading by Lucy Burgoyne. Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and Victoria. By William Westgarth. Section 2. Mr. Proud's Oceana. I feel that my introductory medley would still be incomplete if I did not allude somewhat more than I have already done to Mr. Proud's recently published Oceana, a work which, in its bigger and high-literary style, marks quite an era in its Australian field. I had regretted before embarking that, from the pressure of other things, my acquaintance with it had been limited to the reading of many reviews and the hearing of much criticism. But I had been well compensated by a perusal during the peace and ample leisure of this long voyage. I must confine my remarks to two points only, which, however, are amongst the most prominent in the book. These are, first, the terms in which he has alluded to the present condition of New Zealand, and second, his ardently loyal remarks, so often repeated upon that rising question of the day, the political unity of the empire, a subject which had been advanced at the time into a most significant importance to the Australian colonies by the apparent imminence of war with Russia. New Zealand I am not inclined to repeat the scolding which it has understood my zealous friend, Sir Francis Bell, agent-general for New Zealand, under his high sense of duty, administered to the brilliant author of Oceana for this sole dark spot of his book. I see no sufficient cause. On the contrary, he has given us such a charming account of the aspects and prospects of this, the most magnificent of our colonies, for I agree with him in believing that it is to be the future home of the greatest nation of the Pacific, that certain loose or inaccurate words addressed to him about the finances, and which he had deemed worth reading, may well be expected to have, in comparison, the most evanescent effect. One gentleman, he says, amused me considerably with his views. The said views beamed to the effect that New Zealand would be ready when the final pressure came to repudiate her heavy public debt. Another equally vivacious informant stated that, besides the 32 million pounds of colonial borrowing, the municipal debts were at least as much more as the national debt. Now this is six times overstated for municipal and harbour debts together. No doubt the actual case is bad enough, for New Zealand has far over-borrowed. But as to repudiation, there is not a hint or notion of it in any responsible court or whatever, any more than with regard to our British consuls. Although the colony is, for the time, in the extremity of a depression, ever recurrent in such young, fast-going societies, caused by continuous subsiding of previous two speculative values. To this, I may add, in reference to the smaller issues of colonial municipalities, that of the very great number of these, New Zealand's included, brought for many years past upon the London market, there is not, in my recollection, as a matter of my own business, one single instance of deculp, as to either principle or interest, if we accept the sole and quiet special and temporary case above 30 years ago of the city of Hamilton in Upper Canada. Unity of the Empire This question has been in a course of rapid clearing during the last few years, and the successful establishment of the Imperial Federation League has given an orderly procedure of every way promising. The object aimed at is that the Empire shall have that political binding which will give to it the maximum of power and influence possible under all its circumstances. Above 15 years ago, some few of us, very few they then were, first seriously raised this question at home in the Royal Colonial Institute. We had the smallest of audiences then. It is marvellous to look back now upon that indifference. I recollect that about 10 years ago when the movement was just beginning to look serious to those outside of us, a leading Paris paper devoted an article to the subject, remarking that if Great Britain persevered so as to unite her empire as sword, the balance of the world's power would be so seriously disturbed as to call for an international reconsideration of that subject. The progress as yet has been chiefly negative, but it has been great. Modes entertained at first have been discarded. This may be said of superseding the present Imperial Parliament by a pro-Renata federal assembly, and it may be equally said of an influx of proportionate colonial representatives into the home house. Councils of colonial ambassadors, agents general, and so on have, I think, definitely gone the same way. These are chiefly home views. The home is at length aroused as well as the colonies to their common question, and the summons by the Secretary for the Colonies of the Colonial Conference, which sat in London two years ago, marks alike the most prominent and most promising feature in the movement. Mr. Freout has given, most usefully, the views of the colonists. Let us take Mr. Delies, which is also that of most others, namely that the nascent but increasing colonial navies should be all under one Imperial command, that is, be a part of the British Navy. There is one more step, namely, to dispose of all colonial military force in the same common-sense way, and then we have a politically united empire, that we are constitutional or representative in our polity so that something else is still wanted. In short, the unity of the empire requires two things. First, that all its force be under one executive, and next, that the colonies be proportionately represented in that executive. The cabinet seems to me the adaptable body we can operate upon to this end. That body would then be actually, as well as legally, the empire's executive. Nothing should, nothing need, prevent the attainment of this grand end. The tariff bugbear concerns only commerce, and need not arrest nor even interfere with the empire's political unity. All other matters of the common interest can be literally settled by mutual consent as the empire, in its united state, sails along the great ocean of the future. The mother will then, in emergency, have the sure call of her children, while every colony, even to the very smallest, will know that in case of need, the whole empire is at its back. When the rest of the world knows that fact, it will then spore, probably, not trouble our empire either about international rearrangements or anything else. Early Port Phillip should old acquaintance be forgot, and the days of Lang Syne burns. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, Haynes Bailey. Entering Port Phillip on the morning of the 13th December, 1840, we were wafted quickly up to the anchorage of Hobsons Bay, on the wings of a strong, southerly breeze, whose cool and even cold temperature was to most of us an unexpected enjoyment in the middle of an Australian summer. A small boat came to us at the anchorage containing Mr. and Mrs. D. C. Arthur and others who had friends or relations on board, and who told us that for some days there had been excessive heat and a hot wind, which had now reacted in this southerly blast to go on probably into heavy rain, the country being excessively dry. My first night ashore, the hut on the flat, James Henry. How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude, cow-pup. The rain did follow at night to the fall as predicted. I had engaged to accompany a young friend that evening to spend the next day, Sunday at his country's seat on Richmond flat, where he had constructed, mostly with his own hands, a sort of hut or wigwam under an unchallenged squat-age. Being engaged in a store for long hours on Saturday night, it was past 11 o'clock we started. The rain had begun to pour and the night was pitch dark. We got into Collins Street that had much difficulty in keeping its lines where there were not post-and-rail fences around the vacant allotments. Only three years had elapsed since Melbourne had been named and officially laid out and, accepting the very centre, there were still wide intervals between the houses on either side, even of Collins Street. After floundering helplessly about in the foundation cutting of a new house, which was already full of water, but happily only a few inches deep, we at length emerged upon the open of the present Fitzroy Gardens, where for a little time we could keep to the bush track only by trying the ground with our feet or our fingers. But in spite of all care we soon lost the road and wandered about in the pouring rain for the rest of the night. We were young and strong and as the rain did not chill us we were in but little discomfort. A beautyous sunny morning broke upon us with a delicious fragrance from the refreshed ground. We found ourselves near the yurra between the present busy Hawthorne and Studley Park. The solitude and quiet reigned around us accepting the enchanting Ting Ting at the Bellbird. We stripped ourselves, rung our drenched clothes and spread them to dry in the sun and then plunged into the dark, deep steel yurra for our morning bath, afterwards duly reaching my friend's country seat. End of Section 2 Section 3 Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and Victoria This is a Libra Box recording. All Libra Box recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibraBox.org. This reading by Lucy Burghorn. Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and Victoria by William Wesgarth. Section 3 Indigenous Features Around Melbourne There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy, Hamlet. These features form an interesting retrospect of Early Melbourne. They have nearly all disappeared since with the growth of town and population. Some who preceded me saw the kangaroos over the site of Melbourne, a pleasure I never enjoyed, as the timid creatures fled almost at once with the first colonising inroad. I have spoken of the little bellbird, which, piping its pretty monotone, flitted in those earlier years among the acacia's on the banks of the yurra, close to Melbourne, but which has taken its departure to far distances many a year ago. The gorgeous black cockatoo was another of our early company, now also long since departed. For a very few years after my arrival, they still hovered about Melbourne, and I recollect gazing in admiration at a cluster of six of them perched upon a large gum tree near the town, upon the Flemington Road. The platypus also was quite plentiful, especially in the Merry Creek. Visiting about 1843, my friend Dr Drummond, who had a house and garden at the nearest angle of the creek, about two miles from town, we adjourned to a waterhole at the foot of the garden, on the chance of seeing a platypus, and sure enough, after a few minutes, one rose before us in the middle of the pool. The Aboriginal natives in and about town. Oh, I see the monstroseness of man when he looks out in an ungrateful shape, timing of Athens. The natives still strolled into Melbourne at the time of my arrival, and for a couple of years or so after, but they were prohibited about the time of the institution of the corporation as their non-conformity in attire to speak in a decent way their temptations from offers of drink by thoughtless colonists and their inverterate begging began soon to make them a public nuisance. But Aboriginal ways did not die at once. The virtues or integrity of native life, as Trelechi would phrase it, struggled and survived for some few further years, the strong upsetting tide of colonial life. Returning one night, about 1843, from dining with Mr William Locke, an old colonial merchant, at his pretty cottage and gardens on the Merry Creek, between four and five miles out by the Sydney Road, I diverge westwards from the purely bush track, which is yet constituted that main highway of the future Victoria. My object was to escape the swampy vicinity of Brunswick, a village about three miles out of town, consisting for a number of years of three small brick cottages, adventurously rather than profitably, built by an early speculator. With firm footing and under a bright moon, I had a pleasant walk through what is now the beautiful Royal Park, when, judging that I must be nearing Melbourne, I perceived quite a number of lights ahead. There were as yet no public lights to scatter Little Melbourne in those early days, although the new corporation, elected the year before, had got to work by this time. So, what could it all be? I was not long in suspense, it could only be a native encampment, and I was soon in its midst. The natives at a distance, especially in the far western direction, were still at times hostile, but all those who lived near town were already quite peaceful, so that I had no hesitation in now entering their encampment. I was most cordially received and shown over the different wigwams, each of which had its fire burning. I was taken specially to one occupied by a poor fellow who, under native warlords, had had his kidney fat wrenched out and eaten by his foes. He showed me the wound, which, however, had now healed up, that he himself had never recovered, being sadly weak and death-like, as one who had but little more to do with this busy world. The last great native demonstration near Melbourne, and, indeed, so far as I can recollect, the last of its kind within the colony took place about a mile northeast of the town, in the middle of 1844. This was a grand corrobory, a range that amongst themselves by surrounding tribes, including the still considerable tribe of the River Galben. As it was, as it were, one last Aboriginal defiance hurled in despair from the expiring native cause against the two victorious colonial invasion. We of the town had heard of the proposed exhibition, and many, including myself, went out to see it. There were present 700 Aborigines of all ages and both sexes. The performances were cheaply by the younger men, in bands of fifties, for the respective tribes, while the females, in lines by themselves, beat the time and gave what they no doubt considered to be music. Early civilising difficulties. He loves his own barn better than he loves our house. First part, Henry IV. Up to that time, and for some time longer, the religious conversion of these natives was regarded as hopeless, so deeply bred in blood and bone was Aboriginal character. Consequently, all the early emissions were abandoned in utter despair, with only one exception, that of the Moravians, which, in faith and duty continuing the work, was at length rewarded with success. Naturally, some few, especially amongst the young, were less severely native than the rest, and these were more or less gained. But the change came with the next generation, born in the purple of surrounding colonial life. The blood and bone had been partially neutralised, and this is still more the result of yet another generation that has followed, in spite of the black skin, the missionary now deals with natures much more amenable to his teachings. A remarkable illustration of Aboriginal tenacity, which, however, I am quoting only from memory, occurred in South Australia. Two Aboriginal children separated from babyhood from Aboriginal life were trained and educated like colonists. For the early years, little difference was noticed, but as they advanced into boyhood some restlessness became evident. When, on one occasion, a native tribe, presumably their own, happened to be near Adelaide, these children, who had either seen them or heard of them, made their escape at the earliest opportunity, and having reached the native camp once throughout the habiliments of civilisation, and never after showed any disposition to return to the conditions they had so summarily rejected. End of Section 3 Section 4 Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and Victoria This is a Libra Box recording. All Libra Box recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibraVox.org This reading by Lucy Burgoyne Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and Victoria by William Westcarp Section 4 The Beach Now Port Melbourne Thinking of the days that are no more. Tennyson At the time of my arrival all Melbourne bound passengers were put out by their respective ships boats upon that part of the northern beach of Port Phillip that was nearest to Melbourne went in struggling lines as they best could in hot winds they trod a bush track of their own making which about a mile and a half long brought them to a punt or little boat just above the falls and a good living athroupans ahead for the half minutes passage this devocation place got to be called Par Excellence The Beach it consisted already of two public houses kept respectively by Liadette and Lingam both were respectable people in their way but the first was also a character of good family connection he had enjoyed a life of endless adventure which however had never seemed anymore to elevate him by fortune than to depress him by its reverse he was a kind of roving garibaldi minus indeed the hero's war paint and the Italian unity but with all his frankness and indomitable resource having a family he secured the boating of the beach as well as the other thing but his untold riches of experience seemed never to condescend to develop into riches of mere money and perhaps without one pang of regret to his versatile and resourceful mind this beach was a sterile spot afterwards pittingly called Sandridge with so little inducement to occupancy that these two public houses were the whole of it till well onto the days of gold then the beach awoke to its destinies when the Melbourne and Hobsons Bay railway was projected in 1852 there were already a good few houses mostly wooden struggling along either side of the original bush track then arose the respectable suburb of Sandridge to be finally superseded by the municipality of Port Melbourne which with its mayor and corporation can now enter the London market with its own loan issues the only other indigenous feature of this somewhat featureless beach which I recollect was the little virulently new situated in complete isolation near the bay and only some hundred yards on the right hand side of the track to Melbourne we all knew it was there but it had extremely few visitors owing to its unapproachable surrounding of bushes and its bad repute from a countless guard of huge and ferocious mosquitoes without outlet for its extra briny waters and in its desolate solitude it might have aspired to be a sort of tiny dead sea with the advance of Sandridge this evil omen southern Avernus came in for better consideration and by 1854 with the cutting into the bay it had become a ready made boat haven the Melbourne maps now show me is to have reached still higher destinies early Melbourne its ups and downs 1840 to 51 we will fortune never come with both hands full second part Henry IV the weakest goad to the wall Romeo and Juliet but it's better to scheme than to slumber Jay Brunton Stevens Queensland sweet are the uses of adversity as you like it when Faulkner in August 1835 following Batman's example of the previous May organised and sent forth his party from Launceston to explore and colonise Port Phillip his instruction was that they should squat down home only where there was adequate fresh water when in their cruising about to that end the party entered the Yarra at the bay's head ascended its roundabout course and found ample water to drink above the falls they had once disembarked there and there in consequence arose Melbourne Faulkner following in October confirmed the choice and with its characteristic energy commenced the work of colonisation the immediate needs decide many things for better for worse a good many have since thought that this has been a costly and inconvenient site for the colonies capital and that that of Williamstown with its helpful level like New York might have been better and still better than either Geelong with its beautiful ready made harbour its immediate background of rich soil and its direct access to all the superior capabilities of the west and northwest but there Melbourne is an in spite of all obstacles it is already the prominent city of the southern hemisphere and Faulkner is justly its father when Melbourne's father died now good many years ago and with not a few of the admitted honors and merits of a long, labourers and useful life I sent authority to friends there to subscribe for me to the Ineventable Monument that my offered money was never demanded and therefore I feared that the living busy tide of such a host of sons crowded out the memory of the dead parent a vision of the earliest Melbourne rises before me allotment speculators were bound within moderate time to construct a dwelling on their purchase and in some cases these were made with honest intention as in the two adjacent half acres of Mr. James Smith and Mr. Sken Craig in West but in most cases these coerced structures were only shams which disappeared right early the only buildings on a good many sections that are now central and almost priceless were post and rail fences somewhat deliberated at places by a license of jumping over them for a short diagonal to adjacent streets let me try to recall the Melbourne of 1840 as it looked in that year the year of my arrival in the first place I must protest against the meag view given some years ago in the illustrated London news from a sketch by Mosman an early colonist of my acquaintance and copied into the lively and pleasant volume of my esteemed friend Mrs. Isabella Bird now Mrs. Bishop it may be true as far as it goes but it is only the western market square which had hardly one 30th part of that year's Melbourne at the close of 1840 there were between three and four thousand of population although perhaps one fourth of these who had been recently shot out of immigrant ships were merely waiting for employment or settlement the whole district had about nine thousand curiously enough Melbourne including suburbs has always had about one third of the total colonial population while Sydney and Adelaide respectively had been much the same but this naturally comes of a vast interior behind which was practically only the one outlet in New Zealand on the other hand the long strip of land with the sea near to every part calls into being a number of small capitals the latter are the immediate facilities but in the other case the ultimate creation of a surpassingly great city with all its power for concentration of resource seems on the whole the more promising for a country's advance in all the interest of human life the latest returns for the end of last year 1887 give 392,000 people to Melbourne in a total for the colony of 133,000 taking Central Collins Street which was then and I suppose is still the chief seat of business and beginning with the Shakespeare at the market corner where originally Faulkner opened the first public house and proceeding eastwards to Swanson Street there was a good sprinkling of brick built offices stores and shops including car and homes in stationery wooden Turnbull Orr and Co Forsythe's Druggery the Imperial Inn Pittman Din Woodie's Saddlery Townern's Corner Wooden George James Wine Office and House and the ill fortune Port Phillip Bank returning by the other side were Hood Chemist J. M. Chisholm and the Benjamin's Sofgoods the hardware shop of William Witten a leading Wesleyan this Wesleyan church and the Bank of Australasia which towered up Prince of the Small Squad to the far east on the south side was our worthy Dr. Howard's Hood House and Garden on the other side were some few small brick dwellings one was occupied by Deputy Assistant Commissary General Erskine in another was Dr. Hobson whose untimely death was an early grief to our small society unable to spare such lives he was the friend and correspondent of Professor Owen and supplied the Prince of Science with curious data of the strange and then but scantily known Australian fauna from the platypus at the head of modern wonders back to the earliest marsupial doom of the fossil world the Reverend Alexander Morrison's independent church and adjacent mans came next the Scots church lower down of which the Reverend James Forbes was minister was then being built not till the next year was the creditably large mechanics institute begun a good story is told of it characteristic of the earlier flourish of the times Mr. P. W. Welsh then the leading merchant had offered to subscribe so largely that the committee took offence at such vain presumption and limited subscriptions to the modest sums returning to the marketplace and taking its eastern side was a small nest of early merchants E. M. Sayers who stores my firm bought eight years later Watson and White were brothers who senior the well-known Mr. Jonathan Benz were was always under all fortunes a prominent and influential merchant and citizen W. and H. Barnes and Co and perhaps one or two more but as the buildings are not given in Mosman's sketch they probably belong to the end of the year or possibly tied over into 1841 towards the foot of the market slope the first custom house was being built and of that dismal dark brown in durated sandstone of which other places St. James church the old jail etc were also built because it was so near at hand sweeping now around to the west side we come to the good store and residents belonging to J. F. Strackham of Geelong and managed by F. Noden who was quite a character at the time bustling form and face ever full of business where the business were full or not he would always accept his bills in red ink and as the joke goes the bills being good the Noden manner was supposed to help even the non-Noden bills through at the Australasia at the corner opposite the Shakespeare was the Melbourne auction company where I first met my most worthy old friend George Sinclair Brody so well known for 10 years after as the leading Melbourne auctioneer or rather broker for that is nearer the home equivalent he was the salesman while a genial and amusing good fellow John Kerry from Guernsey was manager Sinc Dividend the first as well as the last in that way in the jolly days up to that time every buyer got credit and there was plenty of business but when the times changed the credit bills were not met and so the poor MAC which had as usual guaranteed them got cleaned out down Collins Street once more the primitive wooden cottage residence of Mr. and Mrs. Smith whose family of thine daughters were already all married Mrs. DS Campbell Mrs. R. Russell Mrs. Martin Mrs. Hutton accepting the youngest then a schoolgirl afterwards married to Nantes of Geelong DS Campbell's partner then came Craig and Allison and Knights' flour mills at the end was pretty green Batman's Hill which has since been remorselessly sacrificed for the great railway terminus Batman's original wooden house on the southern slope was after his early death occupied as the government officers by Mr. La Trobe and this homely tenement did such high duties as a subsequent term down here about was also a conspicuous line of five little wooden cottages called Roach Terrace after Captain Roach another very early colonist which were each let at five pounds a week although they would not have brought half that money by the year at home returning on the other side was St. James Church in charge of the reverent Mr. Thompson of most sociable memory within its ample open area and further on the notorious Lamb Inn for the rest of Melbourne of 1840 I must be content with one general sketch Manton's mills had risen at the lower end of the wharf such as it then was Flinders Street had a jet but little in it James Jackson afterwards Jackson Ray and company was already there about the middle was the cottage of PW Welsh prior to his removing to South Yarra and there as the story goes again Mrs. Welsh gave her five hundred pound party but having unfortunately emitted Arden the editor of the Gazette in the invitations he was left free to denounce so bad an example of extravagance Burke Street had an incongruous grouping including the well known Kirk's Bazaar and the superb cottage for its time of Mr. Carrington the solicitor and in Little Burke Street was Mr. Condor's brewery and on our east end was Mr. Porter's Good Cottage and further on Mr. La Trobe's Baidu residence in its pretty grounds which although only of wood and of the smallest dimensions he stuck to until his final leave in 1854 the lanes or little Flinders and Collins streets were already fairly filled as the land there was much cheaper in the former were Heap and Grice's offices and the Adelphi Hotel approaching the Lamb Inn in noisy repute the latter had Bells and Buchanan the post office under D. Kelsch and where Elizabeth Street crossed G. Lovell and Company and Campbell and Woolly the Catholic Church in Lonsdale Street and on the western brow was Mr. Abraham's Good House with his two pretty girl children one of whom was in succession Mrs. Pike Mrs. Gray and Mrs. Williams and is still alive with a creditable total of family beyond was the trackless bush accepting the bush tracks to Sydney and in the Flemington and Keelaw direction but outside the town were already several suburbs of which Collingwood was the largest having the residences of John Hunter Patterson and other leading early colonists I used to traverse not a few dreary empty allotments in the hot summer sun to reach the stores of my friend the honourable James Graham whose dwelling and business place in Russell by Burke Street seem then quite far out of the village but is since in the very heart of the great city the course of values in the colony early and late is well illustrated by this example the allotment originally belonged to our friend in common S.A. Donaldson of Sydney who had bought for some nominal price at the government sale in 1837 he bought many other lots there about and towards Collingwood further east and north and after the gold discoveries he told me pathetically oftener than once that his impatience to sell had lost him the status and happiness whatever the latter might be of a millionaire Donaldson had let this place with its house stores etc could as these things went then to Graham at £500 a year this was about 1838 to 9 when everything in business ways was rolling jolly upwards but some few years afterwards the landlord's attorneys William Ryrie and myself had to reduce the rent to either 100 or 50 pounds I think the latter some years later Graham purchased at £2,000 and it is understood has lately resolved at something approaching a quarter of a million as these matters are all locally so well known I feel that as with wills at doctors commons I tread upon no toes in such useful illustrations I arrive just to witness the last glories of the famous champagne lunches which prefaced the auction sales of these early days and repeatedly I saw in his element Charles Williams the earliest of his trade if such lunches cost £40 which was given me as a moderate average who suffered argued their justifiers if the exhilaration they produced gave £400 more to the net proceeds the brisk liquor appreciably blew up the prices as the same lots cut up and rearranged would come again and yet again under the hammer many a bullet driver would pull up on passing the auction room or tent and clap a bottle to the good health of all concerned in such liberality one respectable old colonists was said to have almost lived on those lunches in the dear early times so regularly did he encourage and patronize them the bidding public were regaled before the sale but the auctioneer and his clients after a plan which made very much the better business as might have been seen by the effects in either case Williams begun with £4000 a year profits which I dare say went on to the rate of £10,000 for the brief term he was just finishing what for those times was the fine villa on the Yarra bank beyond Richmond when the rapidly receding tide reached him as well as many others stranded great gum tree stumps were grievously prevalent alike in Melbourne streets and allotments Swanson street was special in this way and they long flourished upon allotments about where the city hall at first stood one huge stump just touching the Collins street line where the criterion hotel was built long held defiant existence the wooden building of the time having deviated to go round it when at length the lock came to be sold by Mr James Purvis a well known early allotment monger whom I recollect on this occasion discounting on the future prospects of so central a sight the buyer had the too long endured enemy attacked an extra pated end of section 4 section 5 personal recollections of early Melbourne and Victoria this is a Librevox recording all Librevox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit Librevox.org this reading by Lucy Burgoyne personal recollections of early Melbourne and Victoria by William Wesker section 5 the Melbourne Corporation 1842 when 40 winters shall besiege thy brow and dig deep trenches in thy winters field Shakespeare Sonnet 2 the corporation arose towards the end of 1842 and then the anti-stump warfare begun my friend Henry Condall like so many other early birds a Tasmanian a Vandemonian was the ill omen name at that time was the first mayor the times were bad and the shilling rating caused a growl but the new body held its way John Charles King an Ulster man and good abilities was the first town clerk his successor William Kerr had greater abilities but not equal method and activity both were strong orange men a feeling however for which this colonial ground was not favourable the ban and bottomless deep for the corporation's narrow budget was Elizabeth Street where a little casual called the Williams of a miles length from the hardly perceptible hollows of the present royal park played sad havoc at times with the unmade street it had scooped out a course throughout almost warranting the title of a gully and at town and corner we needed a good long plank by way of a bridge at the upper end of the street was a nest of deep channels which damaged daily the years the springs and vehicles of the citizens the more knowing of us who lived northwards dodged these evils by a particular roundabout via Swanson Street up almost to Gold Diggings and Victorian Parliament did the Great Sydney Road begin thus inauspiciously and hardly less pertinaciously disconcerting was the Brunswick Swamp three miles further on Melbourne missed a great chance in filling up with the street this troublesome and as a street unhealthy hollow Dr. Howard used to tell me he never could cure a patient resident there who had become seriously unwell a reservation of the natural grass and trees between Queen and Swanson Streets would have redeemed Melbourne up to the first rank of urban scenic effect and the righteous Williams might with entire usefulness have subsided into a succession of ornamental lakes and fish ponds early suburban Melbourne oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness Calpa far from the madding crowds ignoble strife gray in 1844 I lived in a little cottage at South Yarra on the Dandenong or Gardeners Creek Road then only a bush track although considerably trodden I had not many neighbours Mr. Jackson at the far end had bought two rack but not yet built upon it was graced by Mr. R. H. Brown's Pretty Villa in its ample grounds sold shortly before to Major Davidson and constituting the palace of its time along the road there was a trackless forest opposite us and more than once I missed my way in trying to make a straight cut to the presence of Pilger one Sunday morning I made a discovery a small sheet of water glittering in the sunshine and I long gazed admirably on the countless insects and plants about its edges it was confessedly neither broad nor deep and a certain tag-rave indefiniteness of outline gave occasion afterwards to envious anti piranhas or about to make it out as only a swamp the little thing had much badgering to endure in this way in early progress later on I saw it as a sort of central reserve of the ever rising but still later it was drained off and turned about its business as either a profitless nuisance or a too costly ornamentation sick transit etc the following year 1845 in which my worthy old friend Alfred Ross joined me in business in the market square then a place of the very smallest pretensions compared to now I rented with him the allotment next beyond the maze it had been vacant since its previous occupancy three years before by Mr. P. W. Welsh already spoken of one of the earliest and largest best known and least fortunate of Melbourne's early merchants that the bad times that had brought many of us to the ground had been not quite past although they had by this time evidently bottomed maybe judged by the fact that we got a fairly habitable large cottage with 25 picturesque acres and the remains such as they were at the garden for 30 pounds a year five years earlier some thousands a year would have been needed to live in such a place eight years later it was worth the mere sight value probably 30,000 pounds I am afraid to say what it may not be worth probably most of it is long ago cut up into streets and town lots like Major Davidson's paddock alongside which, consisting of some 12 acres next to the Dandenong Road realised in 1854 under gold discovery stimulus no less than 17,000 pounds such are a few specimens of colonial ups and downs here too we made acquaintance pleasant and long protracted with our neighbours the Gallant Major since Colonel Davidson he's quite an amiable wife and Missy as she was called their only child then of seven years but in due time a surpassingly accomplished young lady who was married to the son of Colonel Anderson and still survives in London she has confessed to me since that she used then to look up to me with great awe and regard not merely I hope because I was so much the senior only one other incident here one dark night towards the fall of summer detained by a business along with a nuisance we lost our way as we walked home distance hardly two miles after some dandering about in order to strike the corner of Major Davidson's fence which was as good to us as at home we caught glimpse of a light which in that place we knew must be a stranger then as we approached there were figures and voices who should this be that old lie dead from the beach with a section of his family who having an outing in Melbourne themselves stayed too late and were now hopelessly at sea and far out of their track in groping their way back they offered us a share of quarters as it seemed useless to try the pathless forest any longer that we were too sure of our whereabouts to give up the game so easily and after some more perambulating we struck the fence and invited the attractions and economies of temp for that I think was the name it's ambituously held we quitted South Yarrow within the same year for a still greater bargain and temptation in the opposite direction where I had just then the chance of picking up at an old song the pretty cottage previously occupied by Mr. Locke miles north by the Sydney road besides the presented ball cottage there was a large well-stocked garden at an acre cultivation field and a small natural park vulgarly paddock in all 46 acres for 50 pounds plus 300 pounds of inevitable mortgage I called at Mirryfield after my parental home in Edinburgh and reveled in grapes plums and peaches and much other country happiness when a host of visitors on a bright summer day would rather strain the narrow ladder I used to divert the party into the garden where they could complete their meal although at times with inconvenient demand from the male section at least upon the brandy when in 1854 I resolved the lot to Mr. David Moore under the heavy temptation of 6,000 pounds he took the warrantable liberty of a slight nominal alteration to Moorefield while at the same time he erased poor old cottage for something more recording with great golden Victoria in this case I had a rather striking illustration of the old land transfer and other law costs in cumbers from which my late friend Sir R. R. Torrance has so effectively relieved these colonies and that too as I believe owing to the multiplied transactions without any real detriment to our many legal friends pounds with pounds in those economy-needing times and as the savings bank had after a thorough overhaul accepted the title before giving its loan I declared myself perfectly satisfied to proceed at once to the conveyance but no that was impossible the courtesies, the practice the established rights in short of ancient custom required all to be done over again in attested copies of title as to defects for council's opinion and so on even if all the paper and verbiage were to go straight to the waste basket and thus a not over convenient bill of about 70 pounds was rolled up but I must at the same time bear in mind that this heavy drag applied to all land property restricting business in it and reducing its value had torrents act been then in action I could not possibly with the resulting higher value of land have secured my bargain at the 50 pounds probably not even at 50 plus the 70 the early squatting times our life exempt from public haunt, thones tongues in trees, books in the running brooks sermons in stones and good in everything as you like it the title Victoria did not come to us until on 1st July 1851 we bloomed into an independent colony having succeeded after a good deal a struggle and contention in getting separated from our mother Wales who complimented us by being very low and even angry that so very promising a child should be detached from her we had begun as the southern or Port Phillip district of that spacious colony which had already dropped south Australia and eight years afterwards was to lose yet another arm in Queensland I recall with interest to measure some early trips into the interior when it was in a very different condition from now when the indigenous reigned almost uninvaded throughout and when Aboriginal natives were in many places as plentiful as colonists for some years squatting life was the predominant or rather all but the sole feature of the interior beyond Melbourne was at first always called the settlement a distinctive title however which was just expiring when I arrived but for some years after the term settler always meant a squatter and not a farmer as might be supposed with the settled or the simple home my first trip to the interior was towards the end of 1941 to the sheep station of my old friend Sam Jackson situated on the deep creek 17 miles northward from Melbourne there I first toasted damper and saw the novelties of squatting life Samuel and his brother William nicknamed for some reason the general were of the very earliest from over the straits one of the party organised and sent over in August 1835 by Faulkner Sam followed soon after and they took up this station on the deep creek under the natural impression that to be so near the settlement must be an advantage they soon found it otherwise for more than one reason the constant cramp of sheep over their run to go beyond them exposed their ground to infection especially from scab and they were exposed in another way hardly less costly and far more annoying for every traveller with a bonfire or not cloned quarters at the Jacksons and made the sheep disappear of a hungry morning with marvellous rapidity and at a time when for livestock to fill up the empty country their value had risen to 40 shillings each and upwards the general had mainly to sustain this attack as his brother was generally in Melbourne practising professionally as an architect and was engaged at that very time in building the Scots Church in Collins Street naturally enough he would faint have turned for this invading host but without being successful his efforts only got him the name of Hungry Jackson later on I met further variety of early squatting life in a trip to the Werribee Plains where some friends the Pinkatons from Glasgow and Mr James Skeels late merchant and chief magistrate of Leith had their respective stations on those vast plains extending westwards 30 to 40 miles from Melbourne to the Anakies or Station Peak the slight and scattered squatting invasion had hardly disturbed anywhere the indigenous features thus over a vast solitude we reveled in much of specially Australian scenery particularly that of tortious and deeply excavated creeks with their chains of ponds or waterholes the running stream mostly dried up indeed sometimes for whole years together but all characterised more or less by irresistible rushes after heavy rains sweeping all before them including not seldom the sheep and even the homestead of the unconscious or inexperienced settler I have a striking contrast in store when I revisit those plains which now resound to the traffic abroad and railway and to the busy hum of many towns and villages and of farming and gardening life as early as 1842 I paid a pleasant visit to Pretty Little Geelong and thence onto beautiful and diversified but then almost empty meeting at either one or other place Mr. Duncan Hoyle and his two sisters the messes Hardie of Leith who were then or after the husbands respectively of these ladies messes Hugh and Andrew Murray and Mr. Augustus Morris of Colac who entertained us hospitably at the huts as station homesteads were then humbly designated and who poured out upon us interminable colonial experiences in a clear penetrating voice from which there was no escape but we did not wish to escape and so we enjoyed everything Mr. Morris who is now a prominent and useful man in Sydney came early from across the straits with the tide and settled here and after some few years through rather trying times which were not perhaps quite so profitable as he expected he was induced to sail out to the famous Mr. Benjamin Boyd who arriving unexpectedly just before this time from London in his fine yacht had descended upon quiet Plotting Melbourne like a dives of unfathomable wealth he had made a hasty run after Colac seen and appreciated Morris bought him out and left him in charge of this first of many purchases of the great Australian wool company or whatever other title was to suit the great schemes of this busy head which had turned up amongst us Mr. Boyd's main idea of buying up squatting property during the reaction sure to follow the agreement of 1837 to 1840 was no bad business project or at all unskillfully formed he gave Morris seven shillings ahead for his sheep but the fall went on continuously into 1844 so that Boyd affected large purchases at rates as low in some cases in the Sydney District as even one shilling ahead besides cattle and horses at relatively the same the result however was sad and terrible it was confusion and failure and mainly for this simple reason that human nature left practically uncontrolled will never give the due care and attention to interests which are only those of other people he had got up a bank specially for the supply of all the needed funds for his grand schemes thus securing as he put it an independently large business for that institution the chief shareholders knew or might have known the character of their prospects they all expected unusual profits under the circumstances and might possibly have got them under this pleasant result they would have credited chiefly their own sagacious courage but instead they realised most severe loss and then with angry unanimity they condemned and would have prosecuted Boyd Wrath fell upon the younger brother Mark who had stayed at home and who I think had honestly but vainly striven intelligible reckoning out of the confusing advices of his seniors various and huge money absorbing speculations there was a sad uncertainty about Mr Boyd's ending the local representatives for the time of the royal bank of Australia had closed accounts with him in the best way they could allowing him to leave Sydney with his yacht and several friends he visited the Californian diggings and afterwards took a cruise among the Pacific islands he landed on one of them as though for some shooting but was never either seen or heard of more another pleasant trip about this time was Turing the Ryrie station situated nearly half way up the cool mountainous sources of the river Yarra this had already been made a charming home to any contented mind satisfied to fall back upon country resources it was a cattle station for in the thickly rooted hills hollows and flats about sheep could not live at least to any purpose and the homestead had the importance of a little straggling street with the main dwelling at the top at the end of the cul-de-sac and the dairy and whatnot in Marshall's line below we reveled in pastoral abundance I wandered into the adjacent woods experiencing the sense of overpowering grandeur amid their vast solitudes with the gum trees rising straight above me with colossal stems not seldom 300 feet and more in height or even much more from the ground without a branch when this red gum has elbow room it expands in all variety of form attaining in favouring circumstances vast dimensions as in one example met within the Dandenong ranges which measured 480 feet in height but in this urine case crowded as they were impoverishly together about flats of the river they did not bulk out into such dimensions but they shot up side by side straight as arrows rivals en route to the clouds sad changes came to your rings happy and hospitable owners since for like many others they had to realise in the bad times and to quit a most pleasant home but your ring itself has thriven and has since advanced into a great wine producing district whose wines Mr. D. Castella its later owner has made to carry prizes even at European exhibitions end of section 5 section 6 personal recollections of early Melbourne and Victoria this is a Libravox recording all Libravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit Libravox.org this reading by Lucy Burgoyne personal recollections of early Melbourne and Victoria by William Wesker section 6 early western Victoria Australia Felix oh, tis the sun that maketh all things shine loves labour loss he makes a July day short as December winter's tale but my chief excursions which have left a pleasantly vivid recollection of early colonising life were made to the far west the one in 1844 right through to Glenegg the other the year after to the newly founded township of Warnable the first of these was undertaken partly on business in the interests of the Boyd station's lately formed about Eumorella a place of evil repute then as to the native hostility I had previously chance to chum with Boyd's Port Phillip manager Mr Robert Fennell a younger fellow as well looked gentlemanly and pleasant as anyone could meet with and with whom I both ofist and housed to mutual satisfaction for two years until his marriage with the daughter of John Batman and thus I came in for some few of the many Boyd commissions that were flying freely about in those years not at all unacceptable to any of us in that time of small things I afterwards as I have pleasure in recording received the hospitality of the great commission maker in his generously open house at Sydney once more in passing westwards I was at Colac it was the month of June mid winter that the country with its lake was not the less beautiful in the universal green accepting the partial post and rail barricade of my friend William Robertson's 5000 acres of purchased land there was nothing all around but free and open squatting on every side was the hardly yet disturbed indigenous aspect pelicans flew aloft all adjutants stalked about here and there and cockatoo screeched everywhere one of the curious green novels so common there was so thickly covered with the yellow crested white cockatoo as to give the look of a cap of snow leaving Morris's huts I made for another Boyd station in the famous far west Eumerala district there were many beauties around for I had entered Mitchell's Australia Felix it's extreme borders to be sure but the most beautiful of it all my nag was more than ever in clover and we wandered on through marbles upon marbles of remarkable and richly fertile country the country was all but empty as I now course through it but no amount of colonization could much alter its most striking scenery geological and general I had some sense of all and mystery as I gazed down into a sort of dead sea depths at the southern end of the salt salt carangamite and then up at the abruptly towering stony rises capped by volcanic cordon in my near city I passed the manifolds where a sprinkling of fat cattle left hardly an impression on the super abounding grass Eumerala or rather the Boyd fragment of that large rich and varied cattle area was in charge of of the versatile youth of the name of Crawford of the good Scotch family whom to the great I rechristened a squire hopeless owing to his utter non-comfortability to the monotonies of civilized life I was sufficiently versed in geology to be aware of the wonders around me so we were soon off over the stony rises to Mount Eels only a few miles away which like another cordon raised it's not lofty but mysterious looking head to arouse our curiosity we were guided latterly by a well-beaten native trek for this seemed a favourite walk of the Aborigines our trip was not without danger for the Aboriginal relations had been anything but of the peacefulness which characterised the Melbourne vicinity but we had made up a station of attachment under a remarkably fine strong young fellow called Wells of Tasmanian Booth an equal in an emergency to six or a dozen natives for his own share we saw nothing of natives however and were rewarded with wonders of geology the little Mount Eels cone surmounted we looked far down to a vast crater of miles in circuit whose sharp ridged, angry unsettled looking sides could barely convince us that we looked upon an extinct volcano hardly did its aspect reach the solid quiet of the Vesuvian interior as described by some Scanty classic records prior to the grand sudden entirely unexpected outburst of the Pompeian eruption let the crowds of the future Pompeis and Herculaneums of Victoria look out for their Vesuvius may someday play havoc with similar treachery we were introduced early to Algorie and his nephew McGregor two dirty Scots famous and too famous in the native hostilities of the last year or two indeed ever since these fine runs were taken up the aboriginal of so finer country was at any rate a primus interpairs of his race and no way to be despised the white invaders suffered heavily in property at least if not much in their own lives at the hands of the invaded which side was in fault would have been a hard knot to unravel and probably few on either side troubled themselves much to undo it Algorie was ever in the thick of war and duty and inclination went cordially together he was a cool and terrible shot and had a terrible long and forcibly arguing rifle the story goes that when a couple of persuade marauders had escaped from one cupboard and in wild terror were making for another he quietly waited till they chance to come in line and then sent one bullet through both but he had his cautious and a droid way of telling his doings as he described to us how in the turmoil of pursuit and some pure crutches fell he had good need for the authorities had been thoroughly aroused by the occasional atrocities that were sure to arise out of the strong mutual antipathies of the case and on one occasion for what seemed a signal case of this kind involving the massacre of unresisting women as well as men who were arrested and brought to trial and would certainly have swung for it had there not been some inadequacy of direct evidence the next station, Dunmore was already quite famed for its pattern homestead I entered its hospitable doorway with a sense of comfort and of the climax of possible squatting attainments such as had never been approached before Campbell, McKnight and Irvine, Brother Scots all and all of them at home at the time were of the best company classic or otherwise alike to one another and to all visitors Janet from the kitchen too sent us the best oat cakes and other scotch fare I always fancy now that such cooks be called Janet from lively remembrance of the savory hot pot and sheep's head of another Janet at old Robert Sutherland's at Engham thence I reached Birchits of the emus less finished indeed but hardly less attractive they were business clients of my pleasant old friend Charles Barnes with however that little need in those opened all days this was a sheep's station as it was a drier locality the other stations haven't been more suited for cattle we sat joyously chatting in the bright midwinter sunshine the air was redolent a puma for which the Birchits had a name one of them was rather death indeed very death but when he did pick up the current subject he seldom failed to contribute good source with regret I remounted next morning for with business finished in this direction I was resolved to push on to the Glenham as I wished to see through Victoria Westwoods while I had the opportunity to go on and I struck a little southern tributary of the pretty grass bank river and saw a note worthy as well as a quite Australian site some recent slight rains had just set the tiny creek in motion and it was now in the act of filling up a previously quite dry water hole I watched the tiny stream till it filled up this hole before it duly into the next only a couple of hundred yards off there was a long succession of these holes before it generally so precisely rounded and scooped out as to give the idea of human intervention only that the human beings were nowhere visible there as yet then I came down upon the one in continuous of the rolling hills on either side grass covered to the very tops one part of the Wannan Bale here is remarkable for the deep almost blood redness of its rich soil a hue which seemed to come from the simile coloured stone and rock all about here I suddenly came upon a grand spectacle the falls of the Wannan Baleer's highly artistic brush has immortalised along with almost countless other Australian beauty the river plunges over a far projecting thaw direct into a volcanic crater which although very much less in its dimensions was as unmistakable in its character as that of Mount Eels anything I had to regret as absent from the scene but a most important factor was water for as far as I recollect not one drop was visible over the edge at flood seasons the spectacle must be grand indeed as the evening drew on causing me to be on the alert for quarters I aspired a rather pretentious homestead cosily placed in a natural shelter halfway up the hillside this proved to be Mr Edward Henty's he was not at home but Mrs Henty happily was young lady like beautiful she received me with that high courtesy which sets one at once at ease by the flattering impression that in these squatting solitudes I would rather be visited than the visitors who are the obliged parties 10 years later with my wife called upon her in Melbourne to renew this early acquaintance she was then of course 10 years older but hardly less charming 34 more years have since elapsed and yet I must still hope to meet her once more which has become so great and which is in so special a sense her own I reached the Glen Egg which however I found to be at or near the one on junction hardly better than a big irregular ugly ditch how curious the knot far off above or below I might have found great deep water holes and picturesque water stretches as sketched by Mitchell I took all for granted and turned back home woods I struck a little north towards Victoria Range and passed one of my nights with a solitary shepherd in an out hut so far away from all companionable life but that it is she that I could well realise in this extreme case the Dolores side of squatting my breakfast was a tin of tea without milk and a hunch of damper of my host's own baking not altogether rejectable in the keen fresh air when one had nothing else a sheep could not be killed for two even if the business could afford it on I went merrily with all for it was the heyday of youth and strength making steadily these woods for the southern extremity of the grapients which rose in grand outline before me 40 miles away neither station nor human being came in my road afterwards till I reached and was rounding Mount Sturgeon upon whose rocky summit the setting sun already glinted I was now upon a broad bush track which must lead to some station but when this small side track to the left looks as though a hut at least were nearer and so I diverged into it mile after mile I trotted as well as the rough track would permit and when night fell and for long after I still pegged away right up within the outer Sierra towards Mount William brought me at last to an open glade where some small piles of split stuff showed me at once my mistake dodging about till day thus giving rest to my horse I soon regained my road and after an hours further ride reached Dr Martin's sheep station where a pleasant young fellow bypassed by name who had lost an arm in wars of some kind was in then in charge ministered to my wants and allowed me to take well nigh the largest breakfast on record in those parts I must not continue in such detail with the rest of my western tours incidents especially as the second was mostly over the same ground as the first I dilly reached my last void station in the pretty and varied Pyrenees District a sheep station then under charge of my friend James M. Hamilton where the hospitalities were equal but all the rest sadly below the gums and an infinity underneath Dunmore but Hamilton promised us compensation in a visit to the more comfortable residents of a squatting neighbour Mr John Allen the master was not at home but the mistress received us with squatting welcome she was a young south Australian white charming alike in person and manners and surrounded by a little troop of children some with the stamp of her own beauty she died not long afterwards prematurely cut down alas like many another bright flower in the world's great garden next year 1845 I reached vulnerable just then commencing its urban life with a few straggling small white houses along the edge of its pretty semi-circular bay I had passed Mount Norrat and Shadwell occupied respectively by Mr Neil Black and Captain Webster both early colonists and was once more in raptures with the spectacle of almost continuously rich soil I also came upon several round deep and mysterious looking lakes one of which with its waters far below me I descended to examine with no slight sensation of awe I was told of beautiful and grand coast scenes towards the east and Cape Otway but the ways were of nature's uninviting hardness and I apprehended a main difficulty of the Glenmuchkin railway kind from one of house or human being to help dependent humanity I turned however the opposite way to rising Belfast and Port Ferry and wandered about through the Ellison and Knight and Rutledge and other acres amongst cockatoos as the small farmers were there called observing a soil of unsurpassable richness the potatoes and other products the former particularly being the finest in the world the striking new feature of this journey seemed to me the picturesque and beautiful River Hopkins beautiful in all but its name why give such starched hard dot and go one names when there are Umbrella Wanan, Dautagala Madwara, Yara Yara and countless other such natural and genial modulations to be had asking the year firing when my dear old friends Mr. and Mrs. A. M. McCray had be taken themselves from hard lines of law to the pleasant variety of an Arthur Seat cattle station pleasant to their town visitors at least I often them once looked in upon them from Melbourne they had the life and adornment of a large family headed young boys and girls some of them with their aristocratic fine black hair and cream white skin of their accomplished mother McCray and I galloped the 30 miles interval and while crossing and watering at the ever run Canon Nook half way and admiring the buried almost park like sisters among the three gentle hill rises at the bays and coasts we would marble at the stupidity of Collins in 1803 in abandoning such a country to be sure he chanced to squat on the least inviting of its varied areas and this benevolent excuse we confirm by a ride across country one day to inspect the spot all we could see was what seen the remnant of the small fireplace the cups and sources country we passed over on the way might be interesting biologically and even artistically but on any dry hot summer day the look around might not be enlivening to a new arrival nonetheless Serento has since arisen there a considerable lively and pretty watering place as I hear for which the colony's good friend Mr. George Coppin has provided amongst other benefits to it a regular steam communication this steam route includes another like wonder of progress Queenscliff which at the time I speak of only possessed a lighthouse but is now a breezy and lively crowded and fashionable retreat great dusty city of business and cares to the north end of section 6