William Westgarth

“ I am drawing near the end of what may be fairly considered as "Early Melbourne and Victoria." Indeed, I might be challenged in going beyond the memorable 1851, a year which ushers such momentous new features into the colony. But considerably more than a generation has since passed; and, writing as I do for those who occupy to-day the old scene, I may plead as my excuse their own view of the subject ”

“ Here I suddenly came upon a grand spectacle—the falls of the Wannon, which Chevalier's highly artistic brush has immortalized, along with almost countless other Australian beauty. The river plunges over a far-projecting floor direct into a volcanic crater, which, although very much less in its dimensions, was as unmistakable in its character as that of Mount Eeles. The only thing 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. ”

“ At the upper end of the street was a nest of deep channels which damaged daily for years the springs and vehicles of the citizens. The more knowing of us who lived northwards dodged these evils by a particular roundabout via Swanston-street. Up almost to gold diggings and Victorian Parliaments 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 a street this troublesome, and, as a street, unhealthy hollow. ”

“ As evening drew on, causing me to be on the alert for quarters, I espied a rather pretentious homestead, cosily placed in a natural shelter half-way up the hillside. This proved to be Mr. Edward Henty's. He was not at home, but Mrs. Henty happily was. Young, ladylike, beautiful, she received me with that high courtesy which sets one at once at ease by the flattering impression that in these squatting solitudes it is rather the visited than the visitors who are the obliged parties. Ten years later I, with my wife, called upon her in Melbourne to renew this early acquaintance. ”

“ Before endeavouring to give a sketch of our early society and its ways and means, I am fain to pick out a few prominent persons as they flitted before me at the time and have stuck to my recollection since. Although they might not all have been in an equal degree interesting, good or great in themselves, they were yet men of mark, closely associated in various ways with our early colonial life, and, like a busy dentist, much in the mouth of their public. ”

“ As we approached this already great and busy goldfield, when the hum of its business life was just breaking upon our ears, but without any other disturbing intrusion to interfere with the universally indigenous scene, a large kangaroo—the "old man," or largest species—started up amongst the gum-tree underwood a little ahead of us, and bounded away in magnificent style. But a day or two afterwards, as we were leaving Bendigo, another feature of the colony, not indigenous and by no means so pleasant was brought up to our minds to their considerable discomfort for the moment. ”

“ I have not yet seen South Australia or New Zealand, but, from what already reaches my ears, I have no reason to expect that my account of either colony is to differ materially, if at all, from that of the others. The ready facility to incur debt on behalf of colonial progress is due, as it seems to me, rather to consciousness of strength than to indifference about financial obligation. Each colony will "pay" with equal certainty and promptitude, although a New South Wales or a Victoria may do so with less strain than their sisters. ”

“ And there they are to this day, a thriving community. When, in company with Neuhauss, my wife and I visited them in 1857, just before finally quitting the colony, we found considerable progress in the form of a scattered village, with a little Lutheran church, and some show of gardening and cultivation. They seemed delighted to stick to their German speaking, and would not even try to speak English. One amusing feature in the scramble as to allotments was that each tried, in most cases, to get trees, stones, and rocks in preference to clear ground, as if so much additional wealth. ”

“ When "The Settlement" began, and when, like the pre-Judges time in Israel, every man did as he pleased, the inevitable inconvenience of that ultra-radical paradise led the small community to seek out a male Deborah, and, with one accord, they made choice of James Simpson, their early fellow-emigrant in the tide from Launceston. Had there been even a much larger society, the choice would probably have been as surely the same, for it would have been difficult indeed to find anyone, who, in the grace and command of natural presence, exceeded this inaugurator of authority in Victoria. ”

“ I have spoken of the little bell bird, which, piping its pretty monotone, flitted in those earlier years amongst the acacias on the banks of the Yarra 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. ”

“ Brisbane is to me not less astonishing than either Sydney or Melbourne. From the adjacent heights of Mount Coot-tha, I looked over several square miles, mostly of thickly compacted streets and dwellings, comprising a town and connected suburbs of 75,000 busy people. While the suburban houses are chiefly of wood, the town proper already, in some respects, fairly rivals its senior sisters of the South. Thus Queen-street, in its general architectural aspect, and in the tide of business life which it presents, is but little short of the chief streets of these other cities ”

“ Of course, outside the goldfields' limits there was drunken riot enough, intensified, no doubt, by the enforced sobriety within. Troops of diggers, or their employees, with their pockets full of gold, would start for town, or for the nearest "public," there to run up a score till the whole "pile" had vanished. We were told of one country hotel called "The Porcupine," whose keeper was making 40,000 pounds a year of net profit. These riotous crowds, at each public-house, indulged in such shocking excesses of language and conduct as to make mere drunkenness the very innocence of the case. ”

“ THE ABORIGINAL NATIVES IN AND ABOUT TOWN. "Oh I see the monstrousness of man
When he looks out in an ungrateful shape."
—Timon 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 inveterate begging, began soon to make them a public nuisance. But aboriginal ways did not die at once. ”

“ In the elective contests we saw some of the peculiar talent with which Lang fought his many political foes, when, with an inimitable blandness of address, and the softest of mellifluous language, he would build up a many-sided argument, patiently and leisurely, and at last, as with the bitterly biting end of a stockman's long whip, flay the Wentworths of opposition, who, with more noise than effect, were ever snapping at his heels. ”

“ Our ever-active colonist, Dr. Thomson, of Geelong, who took great interest in Germans, invited a party of them, just arrived, to Geelong, where he gave them a supper upon the grass around his pretty residence, killing and roasting a large fat sheep, and serving out chops, and all the rest of it, ad libitum. One man was noticed to have eaten a couple of pounds' weight right off, and no doubt he felt, in consequence, like the boy in "Punch", just as though his jacket were buttoned. ”

“ Lastly, there is the disputable question as to how the much wider area of New South Wales than Victoria bears upon the question. Is that a help to her or a drag? With the present scant population to either, the advantage seems to me with Victoria, compact as she is, and full of fertile land. Fifty years hence, when the population of each has passed from one million to ten millions, and when a system of irrigation has fertilized the large proportion of now sterile areas of the larger colony, the latter will assert her precedence and, perhaps, easily pass her rival. ”

“ The tide of general business in either city seemed to me equal, but the streets and the public and business buildings of Sydney were scarcely equal, either in number or style, to those of Melbourne, at least if the great edifices and other works of the latter, either just being finished or in progress of erection, be considered. The Melbourne Harbour is conspicuously one of these, and will surpass alike that of Sydney and those of most of the rest of the world. ”

“ Next morning accounts began to pour in from all quarters of an awful havoc, in which, sad to say, life to no small extent was lost, as well as very much property.
There has never been, throughout Australia, either before or since, such a day as Victoria's Black Thursday, and most likely, or rather most certainly, it will never, to its frightful extent, occur again; for every year, with the spread of occupation, brings its step in the accumulation of protectives. ”

“ Human nature, even the very best, can never be perfect. My old friend James Stewart Johnston challenged my right to appear in the grand procession, where he and a good half-dozen other "old colonists" had equal rights. I replied soothingly, regretting that so glorious a band of early warriors, who had borne nobly all the rough battle of early progress (how eloquent people can be in their own praise!) should not have been super-added to honour and adorn the procession. ”

“ But I have 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. ”

“ What a reality of voice has this hope when it comes thus from the brink of the grave! What a strength of resistance to that tendency of modern science, which, as interpreted by some even of its greatest chiefs, is to abolish the hope of the life beyond the grave, and to class us all with "the beasts that perish."
THE MELBOURNE RACES. Those who delight in contrasts may follow me now to the Melbourne Races. Although not, in any sense or degree, "a racing man," I could not forego this spectacle, so illustrative of the socialities and general progress of the colonists. ”

“ In business, in public speaking and debating, and in public life in general, he took successfully a first part; but when he had to condescend to such schooling products as writing and spelling, he made confessedly only a bad second. But, again, a defect of this kind is much less of an obstacle in new colonies than in old societies, because for generations in the former the hand is relatively more important to progress than the head, and the man of work than the man of thought. In colonies men of great natural parts, if ambitious, can usually take good positions even if but little educated. ”

“ Once, on a special occasion, I met the banker, Charles, who had stuck to his profession at Launceston, instead of adventuring across the Straits with his brothers. Besides his quiet banking vocation, he was, I think, the portliest of the family, which may be the explanation. The occasion was a public dinner to the Anti-Transportation League delegation, sent from Melbourne, in 1852, to stir up the cause at the Van Diemen's Land fountain head of the common evil, and of which delegation my lately deceased old friend Lauchlan Mackinnon and myself were regarded as the heads. ”

“ This means that the Victorian public are made to pay in the proportion of 125 pounds for a class of their daily requisites which the New South Wales public, by virtue of their freedom of exchange for all the products of their labour, can secure for 100 pounds; and that this very considerably enhanced cost affects as much as the one-fifth part of all those requisites. Victoria, and the vigorous life which peoples her, will in any case ever present a spectacle of surprising progress. ”

“ There was not a human being, not even a sheep in sight. Around this spot has since arisen the city of Ballarat, with fifty thousand people, with streets, buildings, institutions, business (including an extra busy Stock Exchange) , equal to those of, at least, twice its population at Home; while the lovely lake of that time has long been fringed with residences and gardens, and its waters been the scene of the regattas and other diversions of the leisure of the prosperous citizens. ”

“ Fawkner, following in October, confirmed the choice, and with his characteristic energy commenced the work of colonization. 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 colony's capital, and that that of Williamstown, with its healthful 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 north-west. ”

“ Then, again, we have this ever-recurring Australian drought, from which Victoria does not indeed always or altogether escape, but to which, with her cooler sea-girt shores, she is certainly less liable than her sister colonies, including New South Wales. Even now, as I sail along the northern shores of the latter and along Southern Queensland, the severe drought which has prevailed for the past six months is indicated by the ascending smoke of bush fires in every direction, while Victoria, as I left it, was in universal green from the sufficiency of rain. ”

“ For some years squatting life was the predominant or rather all but the sole feature of the interior beyond Melbourne. The little capital 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 his "settled" or fee-simple home.
My first trip to the interior was, towards the end of 1841, to the sheep station of my old friend Sam Jackson, situated on the Deep Creek, seventeen miles northward from Melbourne. ”

“ 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 kangaroo sporting over the site of Melbourne—a pleasure I never enjoyed, as the timid creatures fled almost at once with the first colonizing inroad. ”