II.
MELBOURNE.
‘All Ican see is my own, and all I can’t see is my son’s,’ was the complacent remark, it is said, of John Batman, as he stood, some thirty-two years ago, looking over a vast tract of country which he thought he had bought as his own freehold from the aborigines for a few blankets and tomahawks. That tract of country comprised the ground whereon now stands Melbourne, nearly if not quite, the largest city in the southern half of the globe; in importance, actual or prospective, in the first rank of British cities.
Truly English it looks as yet, at first sight at any rate. After a long, wearisome voyage, the first impression is almost one of disappointment at having come so far only to see sights and hear sounds so familiar. Long before you land, the familiar ugly staring letters, with which the British shopkeeper delights to deface his dwelling, are visible on the waterside houses. A commonplace railway-train, with two classes to choose between, not one only, as might have been expected in a land of democracy, receives you at the shore end of the long wooden pier. You are set down in ten minutes in Melbourne itself, amongst cars,shops, hotels, and all the external appliances of old-world civilisation. But this first impression soon passes away. Already before entering the city itself, a white plain, marshy in winter, dried up and arid in summer, has been passed over. It is dotted over with little one-storied wooden houses, of which the verandah seems to be the most important part, and which are more like the mushroom erections on the sanddunesof Arcachon in thelandesof Gascony than any habitation on English soil. And I suppose there is no spot in Melbourne where a man waking up, as from an enchanted sleep, and ignorant where he was, could for a moment fancy he was in England.
From the railway station you enter at once into the heart of the town. You pass into fine, straight, generally sloping streets, which will compare favourably with those of any English provincial town for width, for the number of well-filled showy shop-windows, and for the ambitious and costly architecture of the public buildings, hotels, and especially banks, which last are always numerous and conspicuous in Australian towns. First in importance among them is Collins Street, the Regent Street of Melbourne. Parallel, and scarcely inferior in rank to it, is Bourke Street, and at right angles to these are Elizabeth Street and four or five more which may be said to come next in dignity. These and several narrower ones, most of which are quiet and dignified and full of merchants’ offices, make up the most important part of Melbourne proper, as distinguished from the suburbs, each of which, thoughan integral part of the capital, has a sort of separate existence of its own, and bears a relation to it more resembling that of Kensington or Hampstead to London, than that of Marylebone or Mayfair. This central part of the town is the original and old part, if it may be so called in comparison to the rest. It was planned out long before Melbourne was a populous or important city, in the days when Governors ruled as well as reigned, and was systematically laid out in alternately broad and narrow roadways. It was intended that only the broad ones should have houses built along them, the narrow ones being meant only for back entrances to the gardens and outbuildings which were to occupy the intervening space. But both have now long since been turned into streets of contiguous houses.
The lowness of the houses strikes a new comer from England as a feature which makes the general appearance of the city different from anything at home. Even in the heart of it, where space is so valuable that one might have expected it would be more economised, the houses have generally only one story above the ground floor, and in the suburbs often not even that. This is made all the more conspicuous by the width of the streets. These are not paved but are well macadamized, and are now in good order in all weathers; but on each side of them you have to cross by little bridges, if you are on foot, or if you are driving, to bump down into and through broad, deep, paved gutters, or rather water-courses full of running water, which exhibit nature not yet quite submissive tocivilization. After heavy rain, torrents of water rush down them to such an extent that boats are sometimes required in some of the lower streets. There is a tradition that before Flinders Street was macadamized the mud was so deep there that a baby jolted out of a car was drowned in a rut before it could be picked up. In the principal thoroughfares the traffic on the foot-pavement is considerable enough, and indicates a large and busy population. But the roadway looks rather empty. In an afternoon you may see a good many buggies and a few English-looking carriages driving about; but there is never anything approaching to a continuous string of vehicles of any kind in motion. There are plenty of street-cars, or jingles as they are called, which are like Irish cars with the seat turned breadthways instead of lengthways, and with a covering to keep off sun and rain. Here and there are to be seen stands of drays waiting to be hired, as if the population were in a chronic state of change of domicile.
The wind and blinding sun make one wish that the streets were a little less straight, both to add to their picturesqueness, and so as to afford a little more shelter. Whether the keen wind in winter or the hot wind of summer be blowing, the lee-side of a wall is equally desirable. In summer after a day or two of parching hot wind from the north, the south wind will suddenly come into conflict with it, producing what is called a ‘Southerly Buster’—a whirlwind full of dust, filling the air and darkening the sky, and resultingalways in the victory of the south wind, and in a fall of temperature of twenty or thirty degrees in less than half an hour. But if curved streets are in some respects desirable, it must not be at the expense of a peculiar and most attractive feature in those of Melbourne, namely, that many of them have at each end a vista of open sky or distant mountain ranges, which in the clear dry air are always blue and distinct, and give a sense of space and freedom not common in the midst of large cities.
The respectable Briton everywhere clings to his black hat and black coat with tenacity. But the summer heat of Australia is too much for him, and white hats, or felt ones with stiff falling brim, and thick white pugrees give a semi-Indian look to the population. Those who have to do with horses, whether stockmen from the bush or livery-stable helpers, are particularly unlike their type in England. Instead of being the neatest and most closely buttoned and closely shaved of men, they will perhaps wear no coat or waistcoat, a purple flannel shirt, white linen inexpressibles, dirty unpolished jack-boots, a cabbage-tree hat, and a long beard. Follow one of them into the great horse-yard in Bourke Street, the Melbourne Tattersall’s. The broken horses are first sold, very much as they might be at Aldridge’s. Then the auctioneer goes to an inner part of the yard, where in large pens, strongly built of timber and six or seven feet high, is a ‘mob’ of a hundred or more four-year-old unbroken colts huddled together and as wild as hawks. Bidders climbup on to the railings and examine them as well as they can from there, for it is no easy matter to go amongst them or to distinguish one from the rest. The auctioneer puts them up for sale separately, and somehow or other, with much cracking of whips, each as his turn comes is driven out from among the rest into a separate pen. Probably the best of the mob had been picked out previously, for the commonest price at which I heard them knocked down was seventeen shillings and sixpence a-piece, and it is difficult to believe that, cheap as horses are in Australia, a good colt could be worth so little as that.
The space covered by Melbourne and its suburbs is, compared with an English or European town, out of all proportion large for the population. Short suburban railways, running all through and about it, make it easy for people to live at some distance from where their work is. Between one suburb and another there are often dreary spaces of bare ground, destitute of grass, and dusty or muddy according to the season. The population in some places is so sparse that you may have to wait some minutes if you want to ask your way of a passer-by. There is a so-called street, quite unknown to fame, rejoicing in the name of Hoddle Street (why Hoddle, and who or what Hoddle was, I have no idea), which cannot be much less, I should think, than three miles long. One end of it passes through a large, poorly-built suburb, called Collingwood; it then emerges into open ground and passes through some meadows by the river-side, which in a flood are sometimes manyfeet deep in water. For want of a bridge it (or rather its continuity or identity) crosses the river in a punt, and, still being Hoddle Street, forms part of South Yarra, a locality which disputes with Toorak the honour of being the Belgravia or Mayfair of Melbourne. Emerging from South Yarra it enters a sandy flat near the sea-shore, and ends its career (I believe, for I never followed it so far) somewhere in the pleasant sea-side suburb of St. Kilda.
The foreign element in Melbourne is very small. There are few Germans and fewer French. Only the Chinese are noticeable for their numbers. One meets them in the streets looking quite at home there, not begging, as in Europe, but prosperous and industrious. It is said that there are twenty thousand Chinamen in Victoria alone. One narrow street in the middle of Melbourne is inhabited almost exclusively by them, and is conspicuous with quaint blue and gold signboards covered with Chinese characters, looking like a large bit of tea-caddy, the proprietor’s name being put up in English letters underneath, for the information of outer barbarians. Sun-kum-on is a very conspicuous name on one of the wharves at Sydney. Public opinion, which was very hostile to the Chinese at one time, seems to have rather turned in their favour. In New South Wales there was an Act of the Legislature excluding them, but it has lately been repealed. They do work which other people despise, and by their abstemious and parsimonious habits will slowly get rich on gold-fields abandoned by other diggers as worked out. As marketgardeners, they have done a real service to the Melbourne people. Formerly there were few if any vegetables to be had there in summer. It was supposed to be too dry and too hot to raise them. But by elaborate irrigation, unstinted spade labour, and abundant application of manure, the Chinese raise crop after crop of vegetables at all seasons, and in all soils. I saw two acres of ground in one of the suburbs which had been left uncultivated, and was altogether unprofitable, till five Chinamen rented it for 25l.a year, and now they contrive to raise 300l.worth of garden produce yearly. They are a race living quite apart. They do not bring their wives with them from China; there are not more than three or four Chinese women in all Victoria, it is said. And the poorest of the poor of other races, probably with good reason (as one’s nose suggests), will not live with them, much less intermarry with them.
The great and ever-present charm of Melbourne consists in the exceptionally vigorous and active appearance of its population. This is due simply to the fact that the great bulk of it was formed by the almost simultaneous immigration of men who are not yet grown old. As yet there are comparatively few old people to be seen about; and everybody seems hard at work and able to work. An immense majority of the grown-up men and women were born and bred in England. Many whom one meets about the streets look as if they might have a history of their own, full of interest and strange adventure, none perhaps more than the car-drivers, an occupation followed by somewho have been used to a very different position in life. I never drove in a car without asking all I dared, and speculating as to what the reason was in each case for wandering to the Antipodes. Physically the Melbourne people are likely to be above the average; for, in the early days of the colony at least, the sick and weakly in constitution did not think of committing themselves to the then uncertain hardships and discomforts of a voyage and a new country. A certain degree of force of character too is probable in those who have had resolution enough to break through home ties and cast their lot in another hemisphere. Hence also in some respects the tie with the old country is a closer and firmer one than in most of the other Australian colonies. There is quite a crowd and an excitement about the post office for some time before the English mail closes. Little stalls are erected by newspaper-sellers, provided with pen, ink, and cover, to direct and despatch the newspapers to friends at home, and a brisk trade they seem to do. Home associations and reminiscences underlie and prevail over more recent ones. Even the word ‘colonial’ is often used to express disparagement; ‘colonial manners,’ for instance, is now and then employed as a synonym for roughness or rudeness.
In nothing is the energy and enterprise of the Melbourne people more conspicuous than in their public works. Lately, indeed, either money has not been so plentiful or else the desire of building has been less ardent, for many buildings have been left unfinishedand in very unsightly plight. But the Post-officeisfinished, and is a really magnificent building in its way. On the Legislative Council and Assembly Chambers an incredible amount of pains and money must have been expended, though perhaps with hardly adequate result. The architecture of the public buildings generally, if not always successful or in the best taste, is on the whole at least as good as in the average of public buildings at home; though it is disappointing to find that new requirements of climate have failed to inspire any originality of style or design, such as one sees growing up naturally and spontaneously in private houses, whether suburban villas or station-houses in the bush.
But the institutions of the Museum, the Public Library, the Acclimatisation Gardens, and the Botanical Gardens, are above all cavil and beyond all praise. The last two in particular, aided as they are by a favourable climate, promise before many years are over to equal anything of the kind anywhere. Last and greatest of all is the great Yan-Yean Reservoir, which from twenty miles off pours its streams into the baths, fountains, gardens, and dusty streets of the thirsty city. Every house has its water-meter, and the price is only a shilling for a thousand gallons. Without this generous supply the suburbs would in summer be a Sahara, with a few dismal, almost leafless, gum-trees, instead of being brightened by pleasant gardens, enriched with English as well as semi-tropical flowers and fruits. The stiff clay, which is a quagmire in winter, dries upin summer like a sun-baked brick. Garden lawns are with difficulty kept green by Yan-Yean water turned on, not at intervals, but continuously through a perforated pipe. Yet the grass two or three feet off is quite dry. The water escapes through the first crack and is gone.
On the other hand, one soon experiences that a Circumlocution-Office is a Victorian quite as much as a home institution. Goods of all kinds, including passengers’ luggage, are brought up by railway from each ship as it arrives, and discharged into a vast shed at the Melbourne railway station; and as there is now a tariff on most manufactured articles, nothing is allowed to leave the shed till it has been more or less inspected. Many hours did it take to select my various needles from this great bundle of hay, but it was not till my two saddles turned up that any difficulties were made about releasing them. On seeing them, a very young clerk in a cloth cap at a high desk referred me to a white-haired superior official, who shook his head and refused to let the saddles pass without an order from the commander-in-chief of the shed, who inhabits an office at its extreme end. Alas! the commander-in-chief, though the most courteous and obliging of men (as were indeed all the officials with whom I had to do that day), pronounced that I must ‘pass an entry’—I think that is the expression—at the Custom-house. So to the Custom-house, a quarter of a mile off—the ugliest erection that ever was built or left half-built—I trudged. Going into a large hall Iaddressed a clerk, who gave me into the care of another clerk, who took me downstairs, and introduced me to a Custom-house agent, and then the real business began. Dictating to him, I made an affirmation to the effect that the saddles were old and for my own personal use, which affirmation having been, after one or two unsuccessful attempts, made in precise accordance with the facts of the case and duly signed, Custom-house agent, affirmation, and I walked upstairs to the anteroom, and at length to the sanctum of some high official, who after gently cross-examining me vouchsafed to append his initials, whereupon Custom-house agent, affirmation, and I walked downstairs again to the place whence we had come. I suppose I looked a little weary—it was a piping hot day—at this stage of the proceedings, for the Custom-house agent reassuringly remarked that it would not take more than a quarter of an hour more, a statement hardly verified by the result. The next step was for the Custom-house agent to make a memorandum of the nature of my affirmation, to make a number of copies thereof (I did not count how many, but there must have been at least five), and to despatch them by messengers, whither or wherefore I know not, nor why so many, unless they were tentative, in hopes of procuring a favourable response from one out of many possible sources. Anyhow, a sealed letter did at last arrive from somewhere; it was handed to me; I left the building, made for the shed, and delivered it to the commander-in-chief, who wrote and gave me another missiveto the white-haired clerk, who made it all right with the young clerk in the cap, who gave me a pass-ticket, which I gave to my drayman, who gave it to the porter at the yard gate, who allowed the dray to pass, and I and my saddles were free.