A Melbourne Suburban House.
Melbourne streets are wide—a chain and a half or ninety-nine feet in all—and they are busy. The shops seem 'squat' to most visitors from the Old World, for two stories high was the rule until within the last few years; but as the price of land goes up, so does the height of the buildings. Nothing wouldbe built in the city now under four or five stories, and there are tradesmen's places and stores and 'coffee palaces' that run up to six and seven stories, and are more than a hundred feet above the level of the roadway. Thus the complaint of squatness will speedily disappear. Not only are the streets wide, but they are also regular. Some run north and south; others east and west. Thus the city is something of a gridiron, or rather, giants could play games of chess upon its plan. Usually towns have been built on the tracks of the cows of the first inhabitants, but Melbourne is a surveyor's city. All the streets are straight, and none would be narrow but that lanes intended by the original designers as back entrances for the residents of the main roads have been eagerly seized upon, and are utilised as business frontages. The importers of 'soft goods'—that is, of articles of apparel—have taken possession of one of these streets, Flinders Lane, and as 'the lane' it is known everywhere throughout Australia, without the need of any distinctive affix. Further north, dilapidated buildings in another 'lane,' with their shutters up and a profusedisplay of blue banners with golden hieroglyphics, proclaim that Little Bourke Street has been converted into a Chinese quarter. The main streets run their mile and more east and west. They are five in number, with four lanes, while nine broad streets run north and south. Of the five, Flinders Street is adjacent to the wharves and great warehouses, and is commercial in character.
Bird's-Eye View of Melbourne, Showing Public Offices and Gardens: St. Kilda in the Distance.Bird's-Eye View of Melbourne, Looking Southwards to the Sea.
Bird's-Eye View of Melbourne, Showing Public Offices and Gardens: St. Kilda in the Distance.
Bird's-Eye View of Melbourne, Looking Southwards to the Sea.
Collins Street runs from the public offices in the east to the country railway-station in the west. The one end is given up to the fashionable doctors and the favoured dentists, handsome churches and prosperous chemists filling in the interstices. From the Town Hall corner, Collins Street is gay with carriages and with pedestrians who come to see or to shop. Farther on we enter the region of the banks, the exchange, the offices of barristers and solicitors, and the rooms of the auctioneers. Here men of business are hurrying about. The flutter about the tall building on the left tells of some mining excitement. Farther on, a bearded, sun-burned, but well-dressed group will attract attention. 'Scott's' is the squatters' hotel, and it has been selected as the place for submitting to auction those 'well-known and extensive pastoral properties entitled the "Billabong Blocks," within easy distance of market (say eight hundred miles), together with all improvements and stock.' The conversation is whether the station will bring £300,000 or not—for it is a large property; whether a better sale could have been effected in Sydney, and so on; and next day you read in yourArgusthat 'the biddings reached £290,000, when the lot was passed in, and was subsequently sold at a satisfactory price, withheld.' Last of all, in Collins Street come Assurance Companies' offices, the buildings of merchants, and great wool stores.
In Bourke Street, commencing again at the west, where the new Houses of Parliament stand, we have first shops, hotels, and theatres, then hotels and mews, and finally a region of hotels (now less frequent), and of offices and stores. Lonsdale Street is in a transitive condition. La Trobe Street is not recognised. Standing on the midway flat you see two hills: the western hill is commercial, the eastern hill is social. After six o'clock Flinders Street and Collins Street are deserted. In place of busy scenes of life there is gloom and solitude, while Eastern Bourke Street, where the theatres and concert halls are, is lit up and is thronged. Leisured people who can promenade in the daytime use Collins Street as their lounge; the toiling multitude, who must promenade in the evening or not at all, patronise Bourke Street. On Saturday nights the Bourke Street block is great; the footways will not accommodate the crowds.
Another Melbourne feature is the rush from the city from four to six o'clockP.M., and the inrush from eight to ten o'clock in the morning. It is enormous, but it is easily met. There is an extensive suburban railway system, the property of the Government—as all railways in Victoria are. Omnibuses and waggonettes are numerous, the latter taking the place of the London cab; and now there are gliding through the streets the successful and popularcable trams, a company having obtained a concession to put down fifty miles of these costly roadways. Let a heavy shower of rain fall at or about sixP.M., however, and the rush is too great for the accommodation, and those 'too late' have to wait for return vehicles, and to bewail their misfortune.
Bird's-eye View of Central Melbourne.Bourke Street, Melbourne, looking East.
Bird's-eye View of Central Melbourne.
Bourke Street, Melbourne, looking East.
In public buildings Melbourne would be really great, if all that have been begun were finished. But few are. The citizens are not running up miserable flimsy structures, but are building for posterity. Final contracts have beentaken for the Houses of Parliament, which are to be finished with a newly-discovered stone of a beautiful whiteness, but expensive to work. From first to last half a million of money will be spent on these halls of legislation. They will crown the eastern hill. The Law Courts, which cost nearly £300,000, are finished, and constitute a handsome pile on the western hill. St. Patrick's Cathedral, on the eastern hill, will be a marvel, and it is slowly creeping on. The Anglican Cathedral, founded by Bishop Moorhouse, is in the heart of the city, and is making more rapid progress. The Public Library is a noble institution, containing 150,000 volumes, and is open without restraint to all comers. So is a National Picture Gallery which is attached, and which contains specimens of the work of many of the best modern masters. There is a National Museum, in which the Australian fauna is admirably represented,and the Melbourne University is near at hand. This institution, beautifully situated and handsomely endowed, grants degrees which are recognised throughout the Empire, and its doors are open to male and to female students alike. Ladies have taken B.A. and M.A. degrees already, and the number of the softer sex entering is on the increase. Not a ladies' school of repute but has its matriculation class. The Town Hall, where 2,000 people can sit to listen to the organ—one of the world's great organs—is not to be passed over. The Botanic Gardens are another show spot. They are well within the civic bounds, and by visiting them you obtain a series of lovely views, and become acquainted with the flora of the Australian continent, for everything that can be coaxed to grow here has been provided by the director, Mr. Guilfoyle, with a suitable home. There is a gully for the graceful Gippsland ferns, a spot for the gorgeous Illawarra flame-tree, a guarded receptacle for the great northern nettle-bush, which is here twelve or fifteen feet in height, and which no one would presume to handle. Cycads, palms, and palm lilies represent Queensland in one division; a mass of foliage of a bright metallic green speaks of New Zealand in another. Of no place is the Melbournite more proud than of the Gardens, which Mr. Guilfoyle has only had in hand about twelve years, but which he has transformed from a waste into a Paradise.
University, Melbourne.
Melbourne has a grand system of water supply. The river Plenty, a tributary of the Yarra, is dammed twenty miles away, and the huge reservoir when full contains nearly a two years' supply. The reticulation allows of asupply of eighty gallons per head to each consumer; but in hot days the demand for baths and for the Garden are so great that this quantity is not found to be half enough, and improvements are to be effected. The Yan Yean system has cost £2,000,000, and now the Watts River is to be brought in, and as the engineers speak of £750,000 being necessary, the presumption is that £1,000,000 will be required. It is a grand spectacle to see a full head of Yan Yean turned on to a fire, say at night, when there is no strain to abate the maximum pressure. The flames are not so much put out as they are smashed out of existence. On a wooden building the jet will act like a battering-ram, sending everything flying. No engine is required in these cases; the hose is wound on a light big-wheeled reel, and the instant an alarm is given a brigade can start off at racing speed and come into action on the moment of arrival.
The Fitzroy Gardens, Melbourne.
As to industries, a list would be wearisome. A hundred tall chimneys make known to the observer the fact that Melbourne is becoming a great manufacturing centre.
The reserves between the city and its suburbs must ever be the greatest charm of Melbourne. To leave Melbourne on the south, you must pass through the mile-long Albert Park, with its ornamental water and its handsome carriage drives, or you must saunter through Fawkner Park or the Domain. Yarra Park and the Botanic Gardens are to the south-east, and they link with the beautiful Fitzroy Gardens. Carlton Gardens crown thecity to the north, and communicate by smaller reserves, such as Lincoln Square, to the 1,000 acre Royal Park, in which, among other attractions, are the well-stocked gardens of the Zoological Society, open to the public on certain days, in consideration of a Government subsidy, free of cost.
The Yarra Park, lying between Melbourne and Richmond, contains the principal cricket grounds of the city. Here the Melbourne Cricket Club has its head-quarters, and much its sward and its grand stand and its pavilion are praised by our cricketing friends from the Old World. In the season the big matches, All Englandv.Australia, or New South Walesv.Victoria, will draw their tens of thousands of spectators, and on other occasions the area is utilised for moonlight concerts, for flower-shows, and for pyrotechnics.
A jealous eye is kept upon these reserves. Once or twice a minister, eager to increase the land revenue, has made a dash at a city park, and has essayed to sell a slice, but so great has been the uproar that no Government is likely to indulge in the effort again. Indeed, in almost all cases, the alienation has now been rendered impossible except by means of an Act of Parliament, which could never be obtained. The belt of reserves—5,000 acres in all—is secure, and it must grow in beauty yearly, continually adding to the attractions of the town. As it is within a stone's throw of city life, you can wander into cool glens and sequestered shades, and hear the thrush sing, or study the beauties of a fern gully. To the pedestrian the walk to business in the morning or from it in the evening is thus rendered delightful; but if the ordinary Australian can possibly avoid it he never does walk. You meet curious traces in these reserves of that former time when the eucalypts sheltered not the inevitable perambulator and nursemaid at noon, nor the equally inevitable 'young people' at the 'billing and cooing' stage in the evening, but rather the kangaroo and the black fellow. In the Yarra Park an inscription on a green tree calls attention to the fact that a bark canoe has been taken from the trunk. The canoe shape being evident in the stripped portion, and the marks of the stone hatchet being still visible on the stem. The blacks would find their way to the river impeded now by a treble-track railway that runs close to their old camp, carrying passengers to a station which three hundred trains enter and leave daily.
Melbourne has a river. One knows this mostly by crossing the bridges, as otherwise the Yarra plays but a small part in the social arrangements of the community. The lower portion of the stream is being greatly improved. It is to be straightened and deepened, so that the largest liners are to come up to the city, as already do 2000-ton intercolonial steamers. The works, which will cost millions, are now (1886) about half-way through. Near Melbourne the stream is muddy and nasty. Sluicers use the water for gold-washing purposes twenty miles away, and factories were allowed years back to be started upon its banks, and though new tanneries and new fellmongeries are forbidden, the old evil-smelling establishments remain. Few who look uponthe sluggish ditch at Melbourne would imagine that five and forty miles away it is a brisk and sparkling river, parrots and satin birds and kingfishers floating about it, ferns bending over and hiding its waters, and the giant gum rising from its banks to double the height of any city spire. The improvements will make the Yarra below the city a grand stream, bearing the commerce of the world on its bosom, and one may look forward to the time when the city portion itself will be purified, and the river made worthy of its romantic mountain home.
The Yarra Yarra, near Melbourne.
The city has its drawbacks. There is dust in the summer, which the water-carts seek in vain to control; and there is mud in winter, which no raving against the Corporation appears to affect; and the less said on the drainage question the better. Again, as to weather, there are people who protest against the suddenness of the change when the wind in January chops round from north to south, and after panting in the morning you begin tothink of a fire at night. But the three hundred delightful days of the year, when existence is a pleasure, are to be remembered, and not the odd sixty-five when ills have to be endured. A favourable impression is usually made upon visitors by the city with its charm of suburbs, its wealth and reserves, its crowds of well-dressed people, always busy about either their pleasure or their business, always obliging, the poorest showing no signs of poverty, nor yet the lowest of the influence of drink. And if a visitor had ideas of his own he would withhold any adverse dictum until he was away, and would not seek to wound the feelings of his hospitable hosts. With them, at any rate, it is a cardinal principle of faith that their much-loved home is entitled to the proud appellation of the 'Queen City of the South.'
An 'unearned increment,' such as would satisfy the most glowing dreams of the most ardent speculator, has occurred in the capital. One instance may be given. One of the few original half-acre blocks now in possession undisturbed—not cut up—of the family of the original purchaser is situated in a good part of Collins Street. The colonist whose executors are now holding the property gave £20 for it in 1837. To-day the sixty-six feet frontage to Collins Street is worth £1,150 per foot; the Flinders Lane frontage is worth £350 per foot. A little ciphering brings out a sum total of £99,000 as the present value of the original £20 investment. And for decades the income derived from the block has been counted by many thousands per annum. The £20 has by this time earned at least £200,000 in all. In many country places a £5 lot will bring £500 when a decade has passed. But then the place may not become a centre, and your 'unearned increment' will be no more substantial than the evening cloud. There is a reverse to this shield, as to all others.
Bird's-eye View of Sandhurst.
From Melbourne it is easy to journey to the two great gold-fields of Victoria—Ballarat and Sandhurst. The latter is due north, and is reached by a double-track railway, built in the early days at a cost of £40,000 per mile. Single-track railways, costing £4,000 per mile, are now the order of the day. Sandhurst is the Bendigo of old days. It has had many ups and downs; has been deserted, and has been ruined; but the result is the fine city of to-day, with its broad, tree-lined streets, its splendid buildings, and high degree of commercial activity. As a recent writer puts it: 'What vicissitudes has not the place undergone! From enormous wealth to the verge of bankruptcy, from the pinnacle of prosperity to the direst adversity; from financial soundness to commercial rottenness; and yet, with that wonderful elasticity and buoyancy which characterises our gold-fields, the falling ball has rebounded, the sunken cork has again come to the surface, and Sandhurst, after all her reverses, is perhaps now richer and on a safer basis than ever—a city whose wide, well-watered streets are perfect avenues of trees, bordered by handsome buildings and well-stocked shops, brilliantly lighted by gas; whose hotel accommodation is proverbially good, whosecivic affairs are admirably regulated, whose citizens are busy, hospitable, and prosperous.' There is no mistake about the character of the town. Miles and miles of country before you enter it have been excavated and upturned by the alluvial digger. And there are few more desolate sights to be met with than a worked-out and deserted diggings, for often Nature refuses to lend her assistance, and does not hide the violated tract with trees or verdure. Ugly gravel heaps, staring mounds of 'pipe-clay,' deposits of sludge, a surface filled with holes, broken windlasses, the wrecks of whims, all combine to make a hideous picture as they stand revealed in the pitiless sunshine. Alluvial digging of the shallow type is a curse to the unhappy country operated upon. But alluvial mining has long had its little day, and ceased to be in and about Sandhurst, and the town lives now by deep quartz mining. You come upon the 'poppet-heads' and the batteries everywhere, even in the beautiful reserve which is the centre of the city. Sandhurst contains 30,000 inhabitants, 8,000 of whom are miners, while the value of the mining machinery and plant is three-quarters of a million sterling.
Old Bendigo had busy scenes, but never did it witness such excitement as when a share mania broke out in 1871. Then it was that the richness of the so-called 'saddle reefs' was demonstrated. The old-established companies were paying well, and the Extended Hustlers exhibited one cake of 2,564 ozs. as the result of a crushing of 260 tons. This was just the spark wanted to set the market aflame. From being unduly neglected, Sandhurst was unduly exalted; new companies were projected in every direction where a line of reefs could be imagined; existing 'claims' were subdivided, and in a few months £500,000 was invested in Sandhurst mines. Of course there was a reaction; but though the speculators lost money to sharpers, there really were auriferous reefs in Sandhurst to be honestly worked, and no town seems more likely to hold its own in Victoria than the great quartz city. Foundries and potteries are springing up in its midst, or rather have sprung up; vineyards and orchards are found to be successes in its neighbourhood, and the visitor is grateful for the tree planting in the broad streets, appreciates the water supply, is duly dazed if he enters a battery chamber, and is delighted when 1,500 feet below the surface he is allowed to break off some fragment of glittering quartz.
Ballarat lies 100 miles to the north-east of Melbourne, or at least it is that distance by rail, viâ Geelong, but a direct line will soon reduce it to a distance of seventy miles. An upland plateau, with a fringe of hills all around, some of these now denuded of their timber, and glittering white, cold, and bare in the sun, the earth pitted with holes and gullies, scarified as if by some gigantic rooster, 'mullock'-heaps, 'poppet-heads,' and engine-stacks everywhere. This is one's first impression of Ballarat. Gold-fields are very much like each other all over the world. 'Substitute pines foreucalypti,' says Mr. Julian Thomas, 'and I could imagine this to be California. But when one first drives from the station and sees the magnificent width of Sturt Street, with the avenue of trees planted along the centre, the public buildings, banks, and churches—you are possessed with astonishment that this is a mining town. Ballarat is indeed a great inland capital. The difference between this and Sandhurst is that at the latter the mines obtrude themselves everywhere. One cannot go half a block but one has mullock-heaps and poppet-heads in view. There is a mine in every back-yard. At Sandhurst it is gold—nothing but gold! Small nuggets are occasionally, so say the truthful inhabitants, picked up by sharp-visioned pedestrians in the public streets. There is gold or evidences of it all around, even in the very bricks of the houses in which we live, for the old men tell that the first brick building ever erected in Sandhurst was pulled down and crushed, yielding three ounces to the ton! In Ballarat it is all different. Walk up Sturt Street, or along Lydiard Street, and one sees nothing but substantial buildings and avenues of trees. The mines are in the suburbs, and do not deface the town, as at Sandhurst. After an experience of the plains the city is a perfect Arcadia. Embowered in trees, the homes of the people are surrounded with gardens. There is verdure and vegetation in every street. One mentally associates an amount of roughness and coarseness with a mining town. Here it is quite other than so. There is everything to bring light and culture and sweetness home to the people. Sandhurst is superior in one respect—that its public gardens are right in the centre of the town, running by the side of old Bendigo Creek; but there is nothing in the colonies to surpass Wendouree Lake, the walks around it, and the adjacent reserves and Botanical Gardens. An easy walk from the town, and you embark on one of the fleet of elegant little steamers—perfect yachts—furnished with luxurious cushions and rugs as protection from the spray. Here everything is calm and peaceful. There is no dust, no noise, no smells. Sailing boats and rowing boats are plentiful; in little punts fishermen are bobbing for perch. This is a lung which gives health and happiness to the inhabitants of Ballarat. And when, after crossing the lake, you land under the shade of English oak trees, and the air is perfumed with the scent of new-mown hay, you feel that in no other mining community in the world have the people such privileges as here. The Botanical Gardens are always beautiful, and are a model to other establishments of the same kind in much larger communities.'
It was here, early in August 1851, that alluvial gold was discovered at a bend in the Yarrowee Creek, renamed Golden Point, where the toil of some of the earlier diggings yielded from twenty to fifty pounds weight of gold per day. In some spots, indeed, the gold lay almost on the surface, amidst the roots of the bush grass, to be turned up by the wheels of the passing bullock-drays, or picked out by hand after heavy showers. At first it was thoughtthat the auriferous deposit did not extend beyond the commencement of the pipe-clay stratum, and most of the diggers moved further afield as soon as they had turned over the bare skin, so to speak, of the ground; but one digger, more persistent than the rest, dug beyond the clay, and was richly rewarded by finding that here lay the true home of the precious metal, here were the 'pockets' so dear to the heart of the true digger. The deserted 'claims' were quickly reoccupied, fresh thousands of diggers poured to the locality, and in a couple of months Ballarat was more vigorous than ever.
Then for a time it was thought that the golden riches lay solely in the alluvial stratum; but more modern research led to the discovery of a number of quartz reefs, from which large quantities of gold have been taken. Amongst the leading mines at present being worked are the celebrated 'Block Hill,' the 'Band and Albion,' 'Redan,' 'Washington,' 'Koh-I-Noor,' 'Band of Hope,' 'Victoria United,' 'Llanberis,' 'Smith's Freehold,' 'Williams' Freehold,' together with scores of others, employing upwards of three hundred steam engines, with an aggregate of about ten thousand horse-power, besides numerous machines worked by horses. The total value of the plant and machinery in use is nearly a million sterling, and the number of miners engaged in active operations is returned as nine thousand, of whom nearly one-seventh are Chinese. The total number of quartz reefs proved to be auriferous is between 350 and 400, while the extent of auriferous ground worked upon in the district is 187 square miles.
But, in addition to its mines, Ballarat is renowned for its pastoral and agricultural advantages, the Ballarat farmers being always large prize-takers at the various annual shows. The town is delightfully situated at an elevation of 1,413 feet above the sea-level, and is correspondingly healthy for all rejoicing in fairly robust constitutions. In winter the weather is sometimes of an ultra-bracing quality with sharp frosts, and even an occasional fall of snow, but on the whole the climate is very good.
'The Corner' is a local institution. It was at the Corner in olden days that a sort of open-air Stock Exchange was established, and here do speculators of all degrees still delight to come. Many are the stories of the fortunes that have here changed hands at a word—of the Midas-like touch of some, the Claudian fatality of withering blight possessed by others. Here, in the maddest times of the gold fever, was a scene of gambling pure and simple, as reckless as ever broke a Homburg bank. Here was theauri sacra famesin its most maddening and tantalising intensity. And here, even in these more prosaic times, are sudden flashes of the old spirit, that keep gesticulating crowds surging over the pavement, and the busy wires working hence to Melbourne, Sandhurst, and other commerce-hives.
Now and again we read of half-a-ton or so of gold being sent by one or other of the Ballarat banks to its Melbourne head office, and then we may be sure, there is a bubbling over of excitement at the Corner. But itsoon calms down to the ordinary seething of the cauldron, to which the shares of the various mining companies bob up and down with a regularity that can be almost reduced to a certainty.
Anthony Trollope said of Ballarat: 'It struck me with more surprise than any other city in Australia. It is not only its youth, for Melbourne is also very young; nor is it the population of Ballarat which amazes, for it does not exceed a quarter of that of Melbourne; but that a town so well built, so well ordered, endowed with present advantages so great in the way of schools, hospitals, libraries, hotels, public gardens, and the like, should have sprung up so quickly with no internal advantages of its own other than that of gold. The town is very pleasant to the sight.' And with these pleasant words we may leave the great mining capital.
If cities, like men, could enforce their rights by suits of equity, Geelong would be the capital of the colony of Victoria, and many heartburnings, past and present, would have been avoided. But as matters stand, Geelong has to be content with third place in the list of Victorian extra-metropolitan cities, and with a population of about 21,000. The claims of the town to greater consideration lie in its situation on the shores of Corio Bay, thus nearer to the sea than Melbourne, its central position as regards the first cultivated and most fertile district of the colony, and its early settlement. John Bateman, the pioneer, with his party of three white men and four Sydney blacks, landed at Indented Head on May 29, 1835, and would have 'squatted' thereabouts permanently had it not been for the proceedings of the aboriginals. As it was, Geelong was really founded as far back as 1837, when its site was planned by the then Surveyor-General, Robert Hoddle, and in 1849, or before the golden days, it was incorporated into a town. But fine harbour, excellent geographical position, and rich country at its back, were not enough to enable Geelong to compete in the race with Melbourne, Ballarat, and Sandhurst. It has grown truly, and the growth has been of the steady nature which gives flavour and solidity; but lacking the fertilising medium of gold, there is no luxuriance, no profusion. In the glorious future—the good time coming—this may prove to have been an advantage. At present it is regarded as a drawback. The town is in almost hourly communication with Melbourne, both by rail and steamer, and presents many other features showing it to be instinct with vitality of the best sort, and ready at any time to forge its way to the front.
Geelong exports goods, principally wool and produce, to the value of three-quarters of a million sterling per annum, and sends cargoes direct to London and Liverpool. To accommodate shipping three substantial jetties have been built at an expenditure of nearly one hundred thousand pounds, and the bar at the entrance of the harbour is kept clear to the depth of twenty-two feet. Another feature which strikes the eye of the visitor as he glances admiringly round the beautiful bay, on the shores of which the town sits enthroned, is the number of bathing establishments. There are noless than four of these, all of large size and comfortable appointments.
On Lake Wellington.
Geelong tweed has achieved a high reputation in many markets, and the shawls and blankets made in the town are also widely known.
After inspecting the gold-fields there can be no greater change for the visitor than to proceed to that Western District, far famed in Australia for the richness of its soil, the fineness of its pasture, and the soft beauty of its scenery. It is easily reached, for the railway now runs into its heart at Colac and Camperdown. This is the lake country of Victoria. An easy climb takes you to the top of the mount at Colac,and once there you can appreciate the description which Mr. Julian Thomas, the most popular descriptive writer of the Australian press, gives of the scene:—
'This lake country of Victoria,' says Mr. Thomas, 'possesses distinct features, distinct beauties, as yet unsung and unheard of except by the few. As I sit on a fragment of igneous rock and look around me, I indeed feel that "the singer is less than his themes." I feel that I cannot do justice to this magnificent view, I cannot describe all the pleasure it gives me. My readers must come and judge for themselves. We are on the edge of the extinct crater of an enormous volcano. Below us a number of lakes. Fresh and salt, some fifteen can be counted from this spot. They vary in size from the little mountain tarn filling up one of the mouths of the crater to the great dead sea, Corangamite, more than 90 miles round, and covering 49,000 acres. This lake is salter than the sea—no fish will live in its waters. From the Stony Rises on the south to Foxhow on the north its shores are outlined with jutting promontories—quaint and picturesque rocky curves, which give it additional beauty. Corangamite Lake is studded with islands, which increase its attractions by the variety of their form. On these, I am told, the pelicans, so numerous here, build their nests. Light and shadow are depicted in the reflections of passing clouds. The shores are white with accumulations of salt. Away in the north-west the dim, blue line of the Grampians. All around, hills and mountains—the Otway Ranges, Noorat, Leura, Porndon—are clearly defined. The park-like plains stretching away to the horizon are dotted with trees, under which thousands of cattle and sheep are sheltering from the rays of the noonday sun. Here and there pleasant homesteads, green cultivation patches, and fields of golden grain. But the especial glory of the scene is in the variety and number of the smaller lakes filling the craters below us. The yellow tints of the bracken covering the slopes are varied with green glints from the foliage of choice ferns on the steep banks, other colours being supplied by the mosses on the rocks. We have here light and shade, form, outline, colour—everything which makes up beauty in a landscape. And beyond that there is the wonderful interest in thinking of the past. Of the age when the numerous volcanoes in the west blazed forth their liquid fire over the land. Of the succeeding ages, when the craters, cooled and filled by springs, for century after century, shone in all their glory of lake and tarn under the actinic rays of the morning sun, which darkened the skin of the few black fellows camped on their banks. Now Coc Coc Coine, last King of the Warrions, has gone. We possess the land, with none to dispute our right to this earthly paradise. But the track of the serpent is even here. The enemy of mankind has now taken the form of the rabbit, which swarms around the Red Rock by the thousand.
A Victorian Lake.
'A strange feature in the lakes here is that they are alternately freshand salt. Of five within gunshot of where we stand, three are salt and two fresh, yet they are separated only by narrow isthmuses. They vary also considerably in their height above sea-level. Corangamite is higher than Colac—these crater-tarns higher than Corangamite. There is a very high percentage of salt in some of these lakes. The saline properties are caused by the drainage from the basalt rocks, "the water being kept down by vaporisation, while the quantity of salt continually increases." In the summer the lakes fall by evaporation considerably below winter level, leaving on the banks large quantities of native salt in crystals, the gathering of which forms a remunerative occupation to many in the district. Cattle love this native salt, but Corangamite and its fellows are avoided by mankind. None bathe in their waters; no boats sail upon them. The large lake itself has not even been surveyed or sounded. I am surprised that this has not been used for navigation. In the United States there would be steamers towing flat-bottomed barges; live stock and fire and pit wood, as well as passengers, would be conveyed from north to south and east to west; for, although shallow in places, there is ample depth for boats built on the American model. There was a tradition amongst the blacks that Corangamite and Colac were once dry, and again that at one time the lakes were all connected in one running stream. But whether the water privileges are sufficiently utilised or not, the lake scenery remains unequalled by anything I have yet seen.
The Upper Goulbourn, Victoria.
The ports of this district are Warnambool and Belfast and Portland, and near the two first-named places is land of an exceptional richness that has gone far to make the locality wealthy. Here the potatoes of the continent are grown. Warnambool and Belfast supply the Melbourne, the Sydney, the Brisbane, and the Adelaide markets. There is no successful competition, for nowhere do quantity and quality go so well together. A maximum yield of twenty and thirty tons per acre has been obtained. The land has been sold at £80 per acre. One landowner lets 1200 acres at £5 10s. per acre per annum. These are the 'top' prices, but they establish the fact that the volcanic formation of the Western District gives patches with a marvellous producing power. A small estate inAustralia Felix—for it was this region which Mitchell so named—is a large fortune.
Portland Bay is the only harbour of refuge for hundreds of miles along the coast of Australia. As we steam in, Cape Grant shuts out the new lighthouse on Cape Nelson, the long swell is dashing with violence against the sides of Lawrence Rocks, whose peaks are the home of the gannet and other sea fowl. To the right at the extreme north is the flourishing rural township of Narrawong. Above this the green slopes of Mount Clay merge into the thickly-timbered forest land not yet cleared. Ahead there is a lighthouse, a signal post, a few houses embowered in trees, high cliffs of white limestone or dark basalt, and then, as we round the promontory into the harbour, the quaint yet lovely town is all before us, extending along the bluffs above the shore, the only natural depression being where a stream flows into the sea from a lagoon in a valley at the back of the town. The beauty of this crescent-shaped bay, with its outlines of bold headlands, is striking. As to the town, the white cliffs, the stone-built churches and houses, give it an English look. It recalls many spots on the Sussex coast. It is not Australian in any of its outer characteristics. The spirit of the English pioneer, Edward Henty, seems stamped upon it.
Victoria is traversed for its greater part from east to west by a mountain chain, which is lofty in the south-east corner. Gippsland, takes the form of mere high land at the back of Melbourne, rises again in the Pyrenees, and dies out in the Western District. Usually the chain is about seventy miles from the seaboard. From the Gippsland sea-coast it presents a grand sight, often of snow-topped summits. Going to the north from Melbourne, you pass over the crest, which is 1700 feet high, without being aware of the rise. But all the water on the one side flows to the sea, and on the other to the river Murray. Crossing the range from Melbourne to the north and the north-east, the country slopes to the level Murray plains. Here you enter upon the wheat-growing district. The level ground is fenced into fields which bear this one crop. Shepparton, the agricultural centre of the north-east, aspires to be the Australian Chicago, and may be mentioned as an instance of the rapid changes which are possible in Australia. In a pictorial work published seven years ago, Mr. E. C. Booth writes; 'The township of Shepparton lies on the east bank of the Goulbourn. It gains its chief importance from the pound of the district being within its borders, and it will be remembered for years to come on account of the long and weary journeys to it undertaken by bullock-drivers and carriers in search of their strayed cattle.' How far off are those days now! Shepparton is to-day a local capital, busy and self-important. Its streets are lined with shops and houses; there are five banks, several assurance agencies, a handsome town-hall, and a busy traffic.
What is said of Shepparton in the north-east applies to Horsham in the north-west. Horsham, the newly-created capital of the Wimmera District, is entitled 'the Prairie City.' The Wimmera climate is hot and dry, and therewere doubts as to whether the farmer would hold his own on these arid plains; but the settlement is now twelve years old, and is increasing mightily. This Wimmera District tapers off into the mallee scrub, the old desert of Victoria, which has lain neglected for years, while Victorians have opened up country 2000 miles away. Here the dingo found his last refuge, and to the infinite joy of the dingo, as it may be supposed, the rabbit appeared upon the scene. When the rabbit came, the few squatters who were trying to turn the mallee scrub to account gave up in despair, for first the rabbits devoured the scant grass on which the sheep fed, and then the dingoes feeding on the rabbits grew more numerous and strong. The mallee went begging in blocks of 100,000 acres, at an annual rental of £5 per block; and at last the district had to be specially taken in hand by the State, and long leases have been granted to tenants on favourable terms, on condition that they destroy the 'vermin,' for that is the title bestowed upon rabbits here. Several rivers strive to flow from the ranges through or by the mallee to the Murray, but none succeed. The Avon, the Richardson, and the Wimmera all collapse and disappear on their way. The Loddon has a watercourse for the whole distance, but at its best in summer it will be but a chain of water-holes. Yet crop after crop is taken off these plains; the farmers all appear to make money, and now that works for conserving water for irrigation are to be undertaken, the spirits of these sunburnt toilers are of the highest.
Waterfall in the Black Spur.
All this district is intersected by 'wheat lines' of railway, over which in December, January, and February the crop is rushed to the seaboard. Great are the blocks that occur, and indignant is the grumbling because the whole yield cannot be carried at once. Horsham is hot with anger, and Shepparton refuses to be satisfied, and the lot of the Chairman of the RailwayCommissioners is not at this period to be envied. The railways run also to the mountains of the east. One line will take the traveller to Beechworth, a charming town in the north-east; another line will convey him to Sale—and soon to Bairnsdale—right away in Gippsland. Beechworth should be visited because of the beauty of its surroundings. And if the visitor is apedestrian, he can accomplish a grand and quite a fashionable walking tour through the Alps into Gippsland, striking the railway either at Bairnsdale or Sale. He is in the neighbourhood of romantic ravines, picturesque waterfalls, and grand fern scenery. Lyre-birds, bower birds and parrots will be his companions, and if he chooses to diverge a little from the route, he may break into virgin solitudes, and may measure giant gums unheard of before.
A Victorian Forest.
One feature is common alike to all Victorian towns and the bush—the State school. In the towns the State school is a political structure. In the bush let there be twenty or thirty children in a three-mile radius, and there will be a wooden erection for the young people to attend. In some cases, where the children cannot be otherwise reached, the teacher will meet two or three families at intervals at certain houses. With a population of a million the State has 230,000 children on its school books. The instruction is 'free, compulsory, and secular,' and about this latter provision there is a great stir. It is not, however, advisable to stray into vexed issues here. Suffice it that there is no more general picture in Victoria, than that of the children trooping to and from their lessons, and that many a parent feels his existence brightened by the assurance that, come what may, 'schooling' is provided for.
Where there are no railways which the tourist can use, he may depend upon being able to proceed by 'Cobb.' 'Cobb' is the general name for the stage coach of the colonies, no matter who owns the vehicle, where it runs, what are its dimensions. Any one who has not travelled by Cobb has not properly 'done' Australia; and yet the fate of the black man and the marsupial will, one plainly sees, be the fate of Cobb. He will be improved out of existence, and thus another element of romance will fade away. Our illustrations tell their own tale of moving incidents by field and flood. Mr. Anthony Trollope wrote: 'A Victorian coach, with six or perhaps seven or eight horses, in the darkness of the night, making its way through a thickly timbered forest at the rate of nine miles an hour, with the horses frequently up to their bellies in mud, with the wheels running in and out of holes four or five feet deep, is a phenomenon which I should like to have shown to some of those very neat mail-coach drivers whom I used to know at home in the old days. I am sure that no description would make any one of them believe that such feats of driving were possible. I feel that nothing short of seeing it would have made me believe it. The passengers inside are shaken ruthlessly, and are horribly soiled by mud and dirt. Two sit upon the box outside, and undergo lesser evils. By the courtesy shown to strangers in the colonies I always got the box, and found myself fairly comfortable as soon as I overcame the idea that I must infallibly be dashed against the next gum-tree. I made many such journeys, and never suffered any serious misfortune.'
Staging Scenes.
Why 'Cobb'? it may be asked. Freeman Cobb was an American driver of some New York express company, who came to Victoria in 1853 or 1854, and, seeing his opportunity, sent for some brother drivers and started coaches to Castlemaine and Sandhurst. For the hundred miles the fare was £8, and the money was well earned. Other coachesfollowed in all directions. No Americans were needed to drive. It was found that the colonial-born youth had all the nerve and the spirit for dashing down the side of a gully, for steering along a siding, for fording a questionable creek, or for dodging fallen timber. Happily for the tourist, visits to some of the show places of Melbourne are still partly paid by coach. To see the romantic falls of the Stevenson and the silver eucalypts of the Black Spur, a partial coach journey is necessary. At Loutit Bay Waterfalls, the ocean and the big trees are all brought together, and to reach this favoured and favourite spot the coach must be utilised. It was well for the nerves of Mr. Anthony Trollope that he was not required to perform this particular journey, Lorne or Loutit Bay not having been opened up when he was on the land. The coaches cross a succession of ranges running up to 2000 feet in height, and they had to shave with remarkable closeness some of those gums whose nearness alarmed the English author. One rush down a steep siding was made between two giant eucalypts. There was just room to pass, but so little to spare that the axle on the off side had cut a track through the one tree by the process of frequent touching. If it had touched too hard the passengers would have picked themselves up after a drop of several hundred feet. Or they might have had a grand flight through the air into the midst of the fern jungle that hid a purling stream far, far below. The rush through the twin eucalypts was exhilarating; the steerer of Cobb, a native of the place, cool and confident, enjoyed it immensely.