Part 5

Returning to the market place, and taking its eastern side, was a small nest of early merchants--E.M. Sayers, whose stores my firm bought eight years later; Watson and Wight; Were Brothers, whose senior, the well-known Mr. Jonathan Binns 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 Mossman's sketch, they probably belong to the end of the year, or possibly tide over into 1841. Towards the foot of the market slope the first Custom House was being built, and of that dismal, dark-brown indurated sandstone, of which other places--St. James's Church, the old gaol, etc.--were also built, because it was so near at hand.

Sweeping now round to the west side we come to the good store and residence belonging to J.F. Strachan, of Geelong, and managed by F. Nodin, who was quite a character of the time, with his bustling form, and face ever full of business, whether business were full or not. He would always accept his bills in red ink, and, as the joke goes, the bills being good, the Nodin manner was supposed to help even the non-Nodin 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 Brodie, so well known for ten 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 Carey, from Guernsey, was manager. The company had just paid 20 per cent 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 M.A.C., which had as usual guaranteed them, got cleaned out.

Down Collins-street once more, we pass the primitive wooden cottage residence of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, whose family of fine daughters were already all married--Mrs. D.S. Campbell, Mrs. R. Russell, Mrs. Martin, Mrs. Hutton--excepting the youngest, then a school-girl, afterwards married to Nantes, of Geelong, D.S. Campbell's partner. Then came Craig and Broadfoot's stores, and Alison and Knight's 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 offices by Mr. La Trobe, and this homely tenement did such high duties for no small subsequent term. Down hereabout 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 5 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's Church, in charge of the Reverend Mr. Thomson, 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 arisen at the lower end of "the wharf," such as it then was. Flinders-street had as yet but little in it. James Jackson, afterwards Jackson, Rae and Company, was already there. About the middle was the cottage of P.W. 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 omitted Arden, the editor of the "Gazette", in the invitations, he was left free to denounce so bad an example of extravagance. Bourke-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 Bourke-street was Mr. Condell's brewery. At the far east end was Mr. Porter's good cottage, and further on, Mr. La Trobe's bijou 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. Kelsh, and, where Elizabeth-street crossed, G. Lovell and Company and Campbell and Woolley. The Catholic Church in Lonsdale-street was under construction, and on the western brow was Mr. Abrahams'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, excepting the bush tracks to Sydney, and in the Flemington and Keilor 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 Bourke street, seemed 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 thereabout, 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., good as these things went then, to Graham, at 500 pounds a year. This was about 1838-9, when everything in business ways was rolling jollily 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 pounds, and it is understood has lately resold at something approaching a quarter of a million. As these matters are all locally so well known, I feel that, as with wills at Doctor's Commons, I tread upon no toes in such useful illustrations.

I arrived 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 pounds, which was given me as a moderate average, who suffered, argued their justifiers, if the exhilaration they produced gave 400 pounds 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 bullock-drover would pull up on passing the auction room or tent, and quaff off half a bottle to the good health of all concerned in such liberality. One respectable old colonist 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 began with 4,000 pounds a year profits, which I dare say went on to the rate of 10,000 pounds for the brief term. He was just finishing what, for those times, was a fine villa on the Yarra-bank, beyond Richmond, when the rapidly receding tide left him, as well as many others, stranded.

Great gum-tree stumps were grievously prevalent, alike in Melbourne streets and allotments. Swanston-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 afterwards built, long held defiant existence, the wooden building of the time having deviated to go round it. When at length the lot came to be sold by Mr. James Purves, a well-known early allotment-monger, whom I recollect on this occasion descanting on the future prospects of so central a site, the buyer had the too long-endured enemy attacked and extirpated.

THE MELBOURNE CORPORATION, 1842.

"When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, And dig deep trenches in thy winter's field." --Shakespeare, Sonnet 2.

The corporation arose towards the end of 1842, and then the anti-stump warfare began. My friend Henry Condell, like so many other early birds a Tasmanian (a Vandemonian was the ill-omened 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 of good abilities, was the first town clerk. His successor, William Kerr, had greater abilities, but not equal method and activity. Both were strong Orangemen--a feeling, however, for which this colonial ground was not favourable.

The bane and bottomless deep for the corporation's narrow budget was Elizabeth-street, where a little "casual" called "The Williams," of a mile's 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 Townend's 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 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. Dr. Howitt used to tell me he never could cure a patient, resident there, who had become seriously unwell. A reservation of the natural grass and gum-trees between Queen and Swanston streets would have redeemed Melbourne up to the first rank of urban scenic effect, and the riotous 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." --Cowper.

"Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife." -Gray.

In 1844 I lived in a little cottage at South Yarra, on the Dandenong or Gardiner's Creek-road, then only a bush track, although considerably trodden. I had not many neighbours. Mr. Jackson, at the far end, had bought Toorak, but not yet built upon it; and the near end was graced by Mr. R.H. Browne'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 present St. Kilda. One Sunday morning I made a discovery--a small sheet of water, glittering in the sunshine, and I long gazed admiringly on the countless insects and plants about its edges. It was confessedly neither broad nor deep, and a certain tag-rag indefiniteness of outline gave occasion afterwards to envious anti-Prahraners all about to make it out as only a swamp. The little thing had much badgering to endure in this way in Prahran's early progress. Later on, I saw it as a sort of central reserve of the ever-rising Prahran. But still later it was drained off and turned about its business, as either a profitless nuisance, or a too costly ornamentation: sic 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 Major's. 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 then not quite passed, although they had by this time evidently "bottomed," may be judged by the fact that we got a fairly habitable large cottage, with twenty-five picturesque acres, and the remains, such as they were, of a 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, for mere site value, probably 30,000 pounds. I am afraid to say what it may now 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 twelve acres next the Dandenong-road, realized 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, his quiet and amiable wife, and "Missie," 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 business longer than usual, 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 but old Liardet from The Beach, with a section of his family, who, having an outing in Melbourne, had, like ourselves, 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. But we were too sure of our whereabouts to give up the game so easily, and after some more perambulating we struck the fence.

In spite of the attractions and economies of Tempe--for that, I think, was the name it ambitiously held--we quitted South Yarra 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, on the Merri Creek, four miles north by the Sydney-road. Besides the presentable cottage, there was a large, well-stocked garden, at enacre cultivation field, and a small natural park (vulgarly, paddock), in all 46 acres, for 50 pounds, plus 300 pounds of inevitable mortgage. I called it Maryfield, after my parental home in Edinburgh, and revelled 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 larder, 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 re-sold "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 the poor old cottage for something more accordant with great golden Victoria.

In this case I had a rather striking illustration of the old land-transfer and other law costs incubus from which my late friend Sir R.R. Torrens has so effectually relieved these colonies; and that, too, as I believe, owing to the multiplied transactions, without any real detriment to our many legal friends. Pounds were 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, draughts of title as to defects for counsel'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 landed property, restricting business in it and reducing its value. Had Torrens's Act been then in action, I could not possibly, with the resulting higher value of land, have secured my bargain at the fifty pounds, probably not even at fifty plus the seventy.

THE EARLY SQUATTING TIMES.

"Our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds 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 of struggle and contention, in getting separated from our mother, New South Wales, who complimented us by being very loath, 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 and pleasure 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. 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. There I first tasted 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," William having been one of the party organized and sent over in August, 1835, by Fawkner. 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 tramp of sheep passing 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," whether bond fide or not, claimed quarters at the Jacksons', and made the sheep disappear of a hungry morning with marvellous rapidity, and at a time when, with the demand for live stock 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 fain have turned somewhat the flank of 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 Pinkertons from Glasgow, and Mr. James Sceales, 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 revelled in much of specially Australian scenery, particularly that of tortuous 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 characterized, more or less, by irresistible rushes after heavy rains, sweeping all before them, including not seldom the sheep, and even the homestead, of the incautious or inexperienced settler. I have a striking contrast in store when I revisit those plains, which now resound to the traffic of road 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 on to beautiful and diversified, but then almost empty, Colac, meeting, at either one or other place, Mr. Duncan Hoyle and his two sisters; the Messrs. Hardie, of Leith, who were then or after the husbands respectively of these ladies; Messrs. 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, passed through rather trying times, which were not perhaps quite so profitable as he expected, he was induced to "sell out" to the famous Mr. Benjamin Boyd, who, arriving unexpectedly just before this time from London in his fine yacht, had descended upon quiet, plodding Melbourne like a Dives of unfathomable wealth. He had made a hasty run up to 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 early speculation excitement of 1837 to 1840 was no bad business project, or at all unskilfully formed. He gave Morris 7 shillings a head for his sheep. But the fall went on continuously into 1844, so that Boyd effected large purchases at rates as low, in some cases, in the Sydney district, as even one shilling a head, 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.