Part 4

The rain did follow at night to the full as predicted. I had engaged to accompany a young friend that evening to spend the next day, Sunday, at his "country seat" on Richmond Flat, where he had constructed, mostly with his own hands, a sort of hut or wigwam, under an unchallenged squattage. Being engaged in a store for long hours on Saturday night, it was past eleven ere we started. The rain had begun to pour, and the night was pitch dark. We got into Collins-street, but had much difficulty in keeping its lines where there were not post-and-rail fences round the vacant allotments. Only three years had elapsed since Melbourne had been named and officially laid out, and, excepting 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 beauteous sunny morning broke upon us, with a delicious fragrance from the refreshed ground. We found ourselves near the Yarra, between the present busy Hawthorn and Studley Park. Solitude and quiet reigned around us, excepting the enchanting "ting ting" of the bell bird. We stripped ourselves, wrung our drenched clothes, and spread them to dry in the sun, and then plunged into the dark, deep still Yarra for our morning bath, afterwards duly reaching my friend's country seat.

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. 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. The platypus, also, was quite plentiful, especially in the Merri 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 very few minutes, one rose before us in the middle of the pool.

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. The virtues or integrity of native life, as Strzelecki 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 Merri Creek, between four and five miles out by the Sydney-road, I diverged westwards from the purely bush track which as yet constituted that main highway of the future Victoria. My object was to escape the swampy vicinities 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 scattered 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 war laws, had had his kidney-fat wrenched out and eaten by his foes. He showed me the wound, which, however, had now healed up. But 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 north-east of the town, in the middle of 1844. This was a grand corrobboree, arranged for amongst themselves by surrounding tribes, including the still considerable tribe of the River Goulburn. This was, as it were, one last aboriginal defiance, hurled in despair from the expiring native cause against the too-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 seven hundred aborigines of all ages and both sexes. The performances were chiefly 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 CIVILIZING 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 earlier missions 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 neutralized, and this is still more the result of yet another generation that has followed, so that, 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 earlier 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, at once threw off the habiliments of civilization, and never after showed any disposition to return to the conditions they had so summarily rejected.

"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, whence, in straggling 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," where the owner made a good living at 3 pence a head for the half-minute's passage. This debarkation place got to be called, par excellence, "The Beach." It consisted already of two public-houses, kept respectively by Liardet and Lingham. 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 any more 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 of active young sons, 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 fittingly called Sandridge, and presented so little inducement to occupancy that these two public-houses were the whole of it till well on to the days of gold. Then The Beach awoke to its destinies. When the Melbourne and Hobson's Bay railway was projected, in 1852, there were already a good few houses, mostly wooden, straggling 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 a little virulently salt lagoon, 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 mosquitos. 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-omened southern Avernus came in for better consideration, and by 1854, with a cutting into the Bay, it had become a ready-made boat haven. The Melbourne maps now show me that it must have reached still higher destinies.

EARLY MELBOURNE, ITS UPS AND DOWNS--1840-51.

"Will Fortune never come with both hands full?" --Second Part Henry IV.

"The weakest go to the wall." --Romeo and Juliet.

But "it's better to scheme than to slumber." --J. Brunton Stephens, Queensland.

"Sweet are the uses of adversity." --As You Like It.

When Fawkner, in August, 1835, following Batman's example of the previous May, organized and sent forth his party from Launceston to explore and colonize Port Phillip, his instruction was that they should squat down for a 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 at once disembarked there, and there in consequence arose Melbourne. 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. But there Melbourne is, and in spite of all obstacles it is already the prominent city of the Southern Hemisphere, and Fawkner is justly its father. When Melbourne's father died, now a good many years ago, and with not a few of the admitted honours and merits of a long, laborious, and useful life, I sent authority to friends there to subscribe for me to the inevitable monument. But my offered money was never demanded, and therefore I fear that the living busy tide of such a host of sons has crowded out the memory of the dead parent.

A vision of 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. Skene Craig in west Collins-street. 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 dilapidated at places by our 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 meagre view given some years ago in the "Illustrated London News", from a sketch by Mossman, an early colonist of my acquaintance, and copied into the lively and pleasant volume of my esteemed friend, Miss 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-thirtieth 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 emigrant 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 have been much the same. But this naturally comes of a vast interior behind, which has 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 powerful concentration of resource, seems on the whole the more promising for a country's advance in all the interests 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 1,033,000.

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 Fawkner opened the first public-house, and proceeding eastwards to Swanston-street, there was a good sprinkling of brick-built offices, stores, and shops, including Kerr and Holmes, in stationery; Drummond's grocery (wooden), Turnbull, Orr and Co., Forsyth's druggery, the Imperial Inn, Pittman, Dinwoodie's saddlery, Townend's corner (wooden), George James's wine office and house, and the ill-fortuned Port Phillip Bank. Returning by the other side were Hood, chemist; Cashmore, draper; Carson, shoemaker; J.M. Chisholm and the Benjamins, soft goods; the hardware shop of William Witton, a leading Wesleyan, his 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. Howitt's good 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 marsupialdom of the fossil world.

The Reverend Alexander Morison's Independent Church and adjacent manse 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 more modest sums.