Melbourne

“ These men were the makers of Victoria, the fathers of the proud and populous city which lay widespread about us. There is no need to be eloquent about Melbourne. Too many people have sung its praises already. But it is one of the cities of the world; it has a population of over half a million; it has its churches, its chapels, its synagogues, its theatres, its hotels; it is as well furnished in most respects as any other city of its size; and these grey men yet staunch in body, bronzed and bright-eyed, were among the beginners of it. ”

“ FRANK and Fred were impatient to see Melbourne, the city of which they had heard so much, and whose praises are loudly chanted by every resident of the colony of Victoria. As they rode from the railway-station to their hotel they could hardly believe that they were in a city where half a century ago there was little more than a clearing in the forest on the banks of the Yarra. ”

“ Melbourne and Port Phillip have not the picturesque appearance of Port Jackson and Sydney; the broad, lagoon-like harbour does not lend itself to scenic effects, and we have not the deep-water inlets penetrating the heart of the city which add so much to the beauty and utility of Sydney. Melbourne is built on the level, with broad, straight streets and fine buildings, modern and handsome, a typical Australian city. ”

“ Now that every foot of building land near Melbourne has been bought and built upon—has become "terraced slopes," in the evil sense of modern overcrowding, perhaps the beneficent Heidelberg and Alphington Railway will open up the untouched glades which still silently overlook the murmuring river, still lie hushed to sleep in the shadow of the great Australian mountain chain. ”

“ On these occasions Melbourne is incomparable. It has no need to be envious, because it is the admired of all admirers. When the cheering is over, and the crowds have departed, and the lights are being put out, Melbourne retires moodily into itself, goes about its daily business with an abstracted air, and consoles itself intermittently by talking of the long deferred prosperity which it insists must come. ”

“ Melbourne is the city of stew-pans and stockbrokers. They know how to make money, but not how to spend it. If they have pleasure, it borders on pain as lust does on love. All the beauty they know is the beauty of light; heat is a stranger to them. Their music lacks the minor keys. Years ago their one poet, Gordon, ran away from the city, and took refuge in the bush: if he were alive now, he would come to Sydney. No poet, no painter, no musician will be brought forth out of Melbourne.—You will make fine logicians, you Melbournians, and it does a man’s heart good to think of your cog-wheels ”

“ An extensive mud swamp and tea-tree scrub seem to surround you, till the fog, in which it is constantly enveloped during the early part of the day, has cleared away, and you see the very beautiful city of Melbourne, not two miles distant, built on a gentle acclivity, well relieved by the wooded backgrounds stretched out before you. You can trace the meanderings of the Yarra-yarra as it winds through the scrub, and partly encircles the city in a tortuous course, making six miles, which by railway is barely two. ”

“ Melbourne is not a cosmopolitan city. It neither lies in the direct route of globe-trotters, who will, indeed, often miss the whole of Australia and pass on to New Zealand or the Pacific Isles, nor does it possess many natural interests or curiosities. It is a level-headed place, too, and, though it amuses itself well enough, it does not cater for that class of people who will search the world over for a new sensation or exotic pleasure. ”

“ Melbourne is the commercial metropolis of Australia, as Sydney is the capital of the penal colony, and though both are large, well-built and thriving cities, they are strikingly in contrast with each [pg 293] other. One is the scion of a lordly house, "to the manner born"—the other, the parvenu of yesterday, whose gold makes his position. Melbourne is to all intents a European city, with its boulevards and regular streets, whole blocks of costly stores and princely dwellings, and environed by elegant villas and country-seats adorned with gardens, vineyards and choice shrubbery. ”

“ Melbourne is branching out upon every side. Townships spring up in localities where a short time ago there was not a single dwelling of any description; houses seem, in fact, to swarm like mushrooms from the ground in a single night. A little more than twelve months since, and North Melbourne was merely the site of a few scattered tents; it now contains a population of several thousands, with comfortable homes, shops, hotels, and schools to meet the wants of its inhabitants. ”

“ To the rear and on each side the wood-covered slopes rise above it, but in front there is a view along the gently descending plains to Melbourne and the ocean beyond. Though the city is nearly fifty miles away we can clearly make out its position on a fine day, so great is the purity of the atmosphere. When the air is a trifle murky we see in place of Melbourne a cloud of smoke, which the winds bear away, sometimes to the north and sometimes to the south or east. ”

“ The Melbourne suburbs were quite as surprising as the city itself. Almost countless miles of streets had taken the place of the country roads or mere bush tracks of my recollection. While I stood wondering at these changes, I had to regret that the old features had so completely disappeared that I was at home nowhere, save that in an otherwise entirely unrecognizable area there would still appear the old name, such as the Sydney, the Richmond, or the Toorak Road. ”

“ The suburbs of Melbourne are beautifully wooded. If you climb to any eminence of the city, such as the fire-station, and look down and around, it seems as if it were indeed built in a veritable forest of trees, while you imagine the most beautiful gardens luxuriating beneath their shade. ”

“ It is Melbourne money chiefly that opens up new tracts of land for settlement in the interior of the continent, and Melbourne brains that find the outlets for fresh commerce in every direction. There is a bustle and life about Melbourne which you altogether miss in Sydney. The Melbourne man is always on the look-out for business, the Sydney man waits for business to come to him. The one is always in a hurry, the other takes life more easily. ”

“ Standing in the gathering winterly twilight, at the intersection of Elizabeth and Flinders Streets, one instinctively remarks the long crowded suburban trains, laden with homeward-bound passengers, quitting the city and care for the night's charmed interval. All the streets of busy Melbourne are yet thronged, in spite of the apparently rapid diminution which is proceeding. The indefinable hum, noticeable in large urban populations at the close of the day, as the lamps are lit, which mark for most men the boundary between work and recreation, is increasingly audible. ”

“ Quite the most beautiful piece of country within easy reach of Melbourne is, to my mind, to be found along the Healesville line. By the time that Croydon is reached, one hour only from the city, the scenery becomes completely rural. Here at least there is not the faintest hint of melancholy to be seen. The lie of the land is delightfully undulating. At every turn of the line one catches sight of compact little orchards, and gardens, and prosperous homesteads. ”

“ One thing struck me especially—the very few old or grey-haired people one meets with in the streets of Melbourne. They are mostly young people; and there are comparatively few who have got beyond the middle stage of life. And no wonder. For how young a city Melbourne is! Forty years since there was not a house in the place.
Where the Melbourne University now stands, a few miserable Australian blacks would meet and hold a corroboree; but, except it might be a refugee bush-ranger from Sydney, there was not a white man in all Victoria. ”

“ Melbourne is built on two hills, and the view from the top of Collins Street East, is very striking on a fine day when well filled with passengers and vehicles. Down the eye passes till it reaches Elizabeth Street at the foot; then up again, and the moving mass seems like so many tiny black specks in the distance, and the country beyond looks but a little piece of green. ”

“ The senses of the musing spectator are filled to saturation with the sights and sounds proper to the largest, the most highly civilised, the most prosperous city in the world, for the years of its existence. Stranger than fiction does it not seem, that in the month of April, in the year of grace 1840, we should have migrated en famille from Sydney to assist in the colonisation of Port Phillip, in the founding of this city of Melbourne? ”

“ Then I realized for the first time that I could really like Melbourne; that it had long, broad, spacious streets with clean, fresh-looking office and department-store buildings, that even the narrower side streets were clean and inviting, and that the street cars were propelled by cables and not by trolley wires. So easy were these cars and so low that no one ever waited for them to stop, but hopped aboard anywhere along the street. Melbourne was to me a perfect bath in cleanliness and orderliness,—just what [Pg 145] a city ought to be. ”

“ And Melbourne, I say, Melbourne with her perception of movement, progress, conscious power, has out-stripped this Sydney, whose perception of her individual life is so weak that all she has to point to are her natural advantages, her age, and the meagre fact that her “business thoroughfares, as well as the shops themselves, have a far more English appearance than those of the capital of Victoria.” ”

“ Melbourne is rich in public gardens of rare beauty, while in the Botanical and Fitzroy Gardens there are kiosks where one may get a meal served in the open. But they are all too far from the centre of the city to be of much use during the short hour or half-hour allowed for lunch; while for all the tiny people whose fathers are caretakers, or whose mothers are charwomen, in the very heart of the town, they are indeed a far journey, fraught with untold dangers. ”

“ Let us sum up. “The Anglo-Saxon race, the Norman blood:” a colony made of this: a city into whose hands wealth and its power is suddenly phenomenally cast: a general sense of movement, of progress, of conscious power. This, I say, is Melbourne—Melbourne with its fine public buildings and tendency towards banality, with its hideous houses and tendency towards anarchy. And Melbourne is, after all, the Melbournians. Alas, then, how will this city and its civilization stand the test of a really fine city and fine civilization? how far will they answer the requirements of such a civilization? ”

“ But this appearance and mannerism of the Queen city—it clings to the name, though the boom era which gave the name a meaning has departed—must be lived through, and lived down. Presently the sun will shine again. Presently the holiday will be over; and the people who have been abroad in the suburbs, or cultivating their garden patches, or hiding themselves in their own houses, will be once more visible, and the pavement will once more echo to the sound of feet. By a seeming miracle the streets have become almost full. Melbourne has become an intelligible place to live in. ”

“ There is far more 'go' and far more 'life,' in every sense of these rather comprehensive words, to be found in Melbourne, and it is there that the visitor must come who wishes to see the fullest development of Australasian civilisation, whether in commerce or education, in wealth or intellect, in manners and customs--in short, in every department of life. ”

“ Large and massive stores of dark-blue stone arrest the gaze in every direction; they form a conspicuous part in a view of the city, and suggest, far more tellingly than words, the weight and importance of the great commercial interest of Victoria. These continue to be built, demonstrating the hope entertained, that Melbourne will maintain her position as the commercial metropolis of the south. Melbourne is tolerably supplied with places of public amusement, adapted for the tastes of all classes. The Theatre Royal, in Bourke-street, can vie in extent and interior arrangement with any in London. ”

“ Leaving the picture gallery, a long corridor leads to the free library, and Melbourne is justly proud of its beautiful and luxurious reading-room, in every way worthy of the chief city of a great democratic country. ”

“ It is more settled, more homogeneous,131 more cosmopolitan than elsewhere in Australia, so that here, if anywhere, one loses the sense of a new country, which is at the same time part of its charm. The women and girls in Melbourne are also prettier, and more prettily dressed than elsewhere, and it makes a cult of charming-looking, elderly, white-haired matrons, wearing the dignity of their years becomingly. Not that pretty women and girls are not to be found everywhere, but Melbourne has a colder, more bracing climate, and is more in touch with the outside world. ”

“ I have, however, arrived at Elizabeth Street, which runs at right angles to Bourke Street and only stops at the Yarra Bank or Flinders Street, and I am at once convinced of the growth and splendour of Melbourne. The shops are superb, the buildings are beautifully and splendidly built, and the crowds of people are immense. ”

“ The railway out of Melbourne runs through a picturesque country, as it ascends the slope of the dividing range of mountains in the neighborhood of the city. There are many country residences of gentlemen concerned in business in Melbourne, and the country has a prosperous appearance. Further away on the slope of the range, our friends passed through large wheat fields, sheep and cattle runs, occasional patches of forest, and not infrequently crossed small rivers flowing on their way to the sea. ”