Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and Victoria

"A story of the mount and 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. PATCHETT MARTIN.

"The genius of Australia now uprears Her youthful form, like hope without hope's fears; While o'er her head our Cross, with loveliest rays, Heralds the brightness of her future years." --R.H. HORNE.

CONTENTS.

AN INTRODUCTORY MEDLEY.

MR. FROUDE'S "OCEANA".

NEW ZEALAND.

UNITY OF THE EMPIRE.

EARLY PORT PHILLIP.

MY FIRST NIGHT ASHORE.

INDIGENOUS FEATURES AROUND MELBOURNE.

THE ABORIGINAL NATIVES IN AND ABOUT TOWN.

EARLY CIVILIZING DIFFICULTIES.

"THE BEACH" (NOW PORT MELBOURNE).

EARLY MELBOURNE, ITS UPS AND DOWNS--1840-1851.

THE MELBOURNE CORPORATION, 1842.

EARLY SUBURBAN MELBOURNE.

THE EARLY SQUATTING TIMES.

EARLY WESTERN VICTORIA ("AUSTRALIA FELIX").

SOME NAMES OF MARK IN THE EARLY YEARS.

THE HENTY FAMILY, AND THE FOUNDATION OF VICTORIA.

SOME INTERJECTA IN RE BATMAN, PIONEER OF THE PORT PHILLIP SETTLEMENT.

JOHN PASCOE FAWKNER, FATHER OF MELBOURNE.

JAMES SIMPSON, FIRST MAGISTRATE OF "THE SETTLEMENT".

DAVID CHARTERIS McARTHUR, FATHER OF VICTORIAN BANKING.

CHARLES JOSEPH LA TROBE, C.B.

SIR JOHN O'SHANASSY.

WILLIAM KERR, FOUNDER OF "THE ARGUS".

WILLIAM NICHOLSON.

CHARLES HOTSON EBDEN, ESQUIRE.

EDWARD WILSON, CHIEF PROPRIETOR OF "THE ARGUS", "THE TIMES" OF THE SOUTH.

EARLY SOCIETY: WAYS, MEANS, AND MANNERS.

"GOVERNMENT HOUSE".

CHEAP LIVING.

RELIGIOUS INTERESTS.

THE GERMAN IMMIGRATION.

THE GERMAN PRINCE.

BLACK THURSDAY.

EARLY VICTORIA, FROM 1851.

EARLY BALLARAT.

MOUNT ALEXANDER AND BENDIGO.

EARLY VICTORIAN LEGISLATION.

POSTCRIPT.

MELBOURNE IN 1888.

ALBURY.

SYDNEY.

BRISBANE.

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY MELBOURNE AND VICTORIA.

AN INTRODUCTORY MEDLEY.

"Pleasure and action make the hours seem short."--Othello.

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 "Shaw, Savill 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 fair, at this moment, to keep her engagement. We would have taken the directer route, with its greater number and variety of objects, via Suez and Colombo, but we feared the sun-blaze of the ill-omened 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's absence, I was wont to mark with astonishment all that had been done in that comparatively brief time. I am thankful to Mr. Froude, whose delightful 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 finely said:--

"Lives there a man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath 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 "Ultima Thule or 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 re-visit.