CHAPTER XIVSYDNEY AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD
Theapproach to Sydney by rail lies through wooded hills with beautiful views of dark ranges in the distance. It had been raining overnight, and everything was glistening in the early morning sun that lighted up the red shoots of the gum trees. Along the line were small encampments of workmen, who have to live under canvas to be within reach of their employment on the railway.
We had been told that Sydney would be very hot, but our first impression was one of all-pervading moisture, for after the long spell of dusty, dry weather, the rain had caught us up at last; a fine driving rain that made everything sodden. Our host met us at the station, and took us to identify our luggage, which was lying in the mud on another platform. Our first view of Sydney was of tall houses crowded together in narrow streets, more like those of a European town; for the city has grown up anyhow, instead of being schemed on the rectangular,spacious plan of the newer capitals. We caught passing glimpses of fine buildings and open spaces, “Hyde Park,” and Macquarie Street, the Harley Street of Sydney, where all the doctors live, advertising their whereabouts with immense brass plates on the railings of their houses.
Descending this broad street, we were on the famous Sydney Harbour, the most beautiful in the world, Valparaiso its only rival. One always thinks of a harbour as a round place full of shipping, with crowded, dirty wharfs. Sydney Harbour is quite different from this; it is a series of creeks running up into the land, its different arms separated by wooded hills, whose trees are rapidly disappearing in a tide of villas. Wherever you are in Sydney, you are never far away from some fresh aspect of the harbour.
Our car ran on to a steam-ferry, already crowded with cars and carts, climbed the bank on the other side, and passing a terrace of houses, like an old-fashioned London suburb, drew up at a garden gate. We never saw anything prettier in Australia than that garden. A sloping tree-shaded lawn, bordered by grey, close-clipped salt bush, led down to an old house, chocolate-coloured, two-storied, gabled. On the right of the path was a large tree, still bare of leaves, but covered with long, scarlet blossoms. It was thecoral-tree (erythrina), common in the warm north-eastern latitudes of Australia. The house itself had an old-world charm, and a certain exquisite freshness that caused us some anxiety as to the effect of our very travel-stained luggage on its spotless interior; but the wise Australian hostess, whom long experience has acquainted with the treatment her guests’ trunks will have received at the hands of railway officials, sets an uncarpeted room apart for their reception. Here the muddy, battered things are deposited, and their owner can gingerly approach them there, for it is not usual in Australian households for the maids to unpack visitors’ luggage, and, generally speaking, one may say this is fortunate for the visitor.
The front of this charming old house was no less beautiful than the back. It had been built long ago by convict labour, and was heavily barred and shuttered against their possible depredations. The bedrooms looked out over the harbour, a beautiful view of never-ending kaleidoscopic fascination. Beneath the trees under the window large steamers came, and the busy traffic of smaller craft slipped soundlessly to and fro. It was a scene of continual colour, movement, and life, with its silent background of wooded hills.
Sydney, with the exception of two days ofheavenly blue skies, was unpropitious in its weather during our stay; when it wasn’t raining, which it did intermittently with great violence, it was blowing up clouds of dust, in preparation for the next shower, and no amount of rain seemed really effective in laying its stinging, swirling clouds. However, we set off after lunch to visit the University, and walked down a steep lane to the little pier where the steamers call for the Circular Quay, whence the different boats run to one and another point in the harbour. It is a charming little journey from Kirribilli Point, by which musical native name, with its characteristic reduplications of the vowel sounds, our temporary home was called; Old Admiralty House lies picturesquely among its high gardens, and on the opposite shore, on a green mound with two sentinel trees stands the little fortress-like building where the first governors of the colony lived.
A tram from the Circular Quay runs up the principal street of Sydney, past the Town Hall and the Cathedral to the University grounds. We made a dash through the pouring rain to the University buildings, which stand on high ground, overlooking the town. The University was founded in 1850, though its scope has since been greatly enlarged. It comprises faculties of arts,law, medicine, and science. As at Melbourne, denominational colleges, of which the principal ones are Church of England and Presbyterian, have been established and incorporated with it. A woman’s college, undenominational, has also been built within the University grounds, as well as a hospital, where medical students and nurses are trained. The fees for tuition are fifteen guineas a year in the Faculty of Arts, and twenty-seven guineas a year in the professorial schools; but though these fees are hardly more than nominal, pupils from the Government High Schools or Registered Schools, can be awarded exhibitions on the result of the Leaving Certificate Examination of the Department of Public Instruction, which give the privilege of free education during the University course. These exhibitions are, however, limited in number.
The handsome University main building will eventually form the front of a proposed quadrangle. There is a large hall for examinations and public meetings, and lecture-rooms for general subjects; but the Science and Medical Schools are separately housed. The general educational system of New South Wales, primary and secondary, is established on much the same lines as that already described in Western Australia. Only those children areadmitted to the secondary schools who have obtained a qualifying certificate. Every precaution has been taken to render the technical education of the colony as efficient as possible. Conferences, attended by both employers and workpeople, discussed and drew up a course of instruction. Trades schools were established that should lead up to the technical colleges, and by a wise provision, without which the whole fabric of technical education is rendered nugatory, an “entrance qualification” for the trades schools was made compulsory. In some trades, by arrangement with the employers, apprentices attend a trades school during working hours. Every precaution is taken that the children in scattered, outlying districts shall not elude the benefits the state provides. Wherever central schools are possible, children are taken to them free by coach, or in the coastal districts by launch. “Bush” children have “Provisional” or “Half-time” schools,17provided for them. “Caravan” schools visit scattered families. “Flying Camp” schools accompany railway construction.
CIRCULAR QUAY, SYDNEY.
CIRCULAR QUAY, SYDNEY.
CIRCULAR QUAY, SYDNEY.
It is claimed that New South Wales exhibits the most perfect existing system of centralised educational administration. All state educationis controlled by the Public Instruction Department, and the whole cost is paid out of consolidated revenue. There is no educational tax or local rate.
It seemed to us, as we assimilated all these facts, that first day in Sydney, that our colonies were doing things while we talk about them; but it must be remembered that they have to form, while we have to reform, and the first is much the easier task.
We got back to Kirribilli Point, eluding the heavy showers as far as possible, but Sydney looked as miserable as all towns on a thoroughly wet day, producing a confused impression of chilly damp, streaming shop windows, jostling umbrellas, and liquid mud. The next day was better, fortunately, as the Governor of New South Wales was giving a garden party.
Government House, itself an unimportant structure, is charmingly placed on a point of the harbour, with gardens sloping down to the water. Towards evening the sun shone out, and gave us the first impression of the real Sydney, and our host seized the opportunity to show us something of the place as it ought to look. We motored to South Head along a road, where verandahed and balconied houses clustered in gardens on the hills above the harbour, clinging, as it were, to therocks, which crop out everywhere among the short grass, smoothed and weathered by time. Graceful grey pepper trees grow in many of the gardens, drooping over the fences. The road, which ran up and down hill, ended abruptly in a boulder. We got out, and walked along to the edge of the South Head, the southern extremity of the entrance to the harbour, where the purple Pacific booms in the cavities of the high sandstone cliffs. This view from the South Head is one of the most beautiful in Australia. The blue waters of the harbour are guarded by sentinel cliffs, and misty range on range of low hills stretch away inland.
Here we saw growing for the first time the lantana, a hardy shrub, not unlike the “meal tree” of our hedges at home, but with pink and yellow flowers. It is a very decorative thing, but is regarded in Australia, and especially in Queensland, as a noxious weed.
We returned home by way of the Domain, or public park, adjoining the Botanical Gardens, along a road lined by the stately Morton Bay Pine.
SOUTH COAST, NEW SOUTH WALES.
SOUTH COAST, NEW SOUTH WALES.
SOUTH COAST, NEW SOUTH WALES.
One day in Sydney was devoted to an excursion by boat round the harbour. It is a curious fact that Captain Cook, in his careful survey of the east coast of Australia,should have missed Sydney Harbour. When exploring the east coast of Australia in the “Endeavour,” a ship of 368 tons, he spent some time in Botany Bay in the spring of 1770, where he buried one of his men, took in wood and water, and made some ineffectual attempts at friendly negotiation with the natives. He gave the bay the name by which it was afterwards known because of the “great quantity of plants, that Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander collected in this place.” He then sailed away to the North, passing Sydney Harbour at two or three miles’ distance; merely noting that “there was there a good bay or harbour, in which there appeared to be good anchorage,” which he called Port Jackson. Here, years later, after the revolt of the American colonies; when the English Government was faced with the difficulty of disposing of the convicts, who had been formerly shipped to America; a scheme was set on foot, partly through the initiation of Lord Sydney, for shipping them to Botany Bay, and founding a colony there. An expedition was sent out under Captain Philip, the first governor of the colony. The fleet sailed in May, seventeen years after Captain Cook’s exploration of the coast of New South Wales, as he had named it, and took thirty-six weeks to reach Botany Bay by way of the Cape and Brazil;but on his arrival Governor Philip came to the conclusion that Botany Bay was not suitable for a settlement, and, coasting north, entered the opening between the north and south heads of Port Jackson, and discovered the magnificent harbour inside.
He selected as a landing-place a bay four miles from the opening of the harbour, where there was a good spring of fresh water, and excellent anchorage for many of the largest ships of that day. He therefore made this his landing-place, and called it Sydney Cove, after the then Secretary of State for the Colonies. On January 26th, 1788, the date now commemorated as the anniversary day of the Foundation of the Colony, the rest of Captain Philip’s fleet sailed round from Botany Bay, and anchored in Sydney Cove, near what is now known as the Circular Quay, though at that time the cove ran a good deal farther inland. It was Governor Philip who planned the principal streets of the new township of Sydney with a width of 200 feet, which was instead unfortunately, reduced to sixty feet by his successors, producing a narrow, crowded effect, instead of the generous sense of space characteristic of cities in the new world.
The quay was a process of slow development. As late as 1803 Governor King issued a generalorder which stated that “The framing, lengthening, and planking of the wharf on the eastern side is complete, and the inhabitants are expected to cart material to fill it up and to make a way to it.” An admirably simple method of accomplishing public works; equally salutary with the measures then in vogue for dealing with loafers: “All persons loitering about the wharves will be put to hard labour for the rest of the day.” The wharves grew up, like the city, in gradual response to the needs of the increasing population.
But in 1900 an outbreak of plague produced stringent reforms. In order to prevent its recurrence the Government took over the whole of the wharves, regardless of cost, placing the business of their reconstruction in the hands of a Harbour Trust, who have swept away old wharves, provided new ones, and had the foreshores made rat-proof.
Sydney Harbour baffles description; pages would give no idea of its varied charm and beauty. It is difficult even to realise that its shores occupy a length of 188 miles, made up of innumerable bays and creeks running up among its wooded hills. Some of these, in the neighbourhood of the main centres of traffic, are fringed with busy wharves and lined with shipping.On the opposite side from them the hills are thickly dotted with villas, but in the more remote arms of the harbour the bush remains still untouched and primeval, hiding quiet sandy beaches in its recesses.
Roughly speaking, one may say the harbour divides itself into two main sections; that on the northern side of the entrance called Middle Harbour, and the more extensive southern portion which, with all its many ramifications, runs west and ends in the Parramatta River. It is on the southern shores of this side of the harbour that the commercial life of Sydney is centred, the great and busy city with all its thronging wharves. On the northern shores are the picturesque houses of the well-to-do residents; for Sydney is also a pleasure city, and the land-locked waters of the upper reaches of the harbour are delightful for sailing, rowing, fishing, and bathing, while in the immediate neighbourhood are the popular surf-bathing beaches of Manly and Coogee.
We had already visited some of the northern shores of the harbour, but we had not penetrated to the west. The day was fine, the weather propitious. Our steamer started from Fort Macquarie, and we sailed first to the outer harbour, gaining varied impressions of the serrated, undulating shores; past the old FederalGovernment House, and the beautiful Botanic Gardens, which adjoin the public park, known as the Domain, and run down to the shore; past Macquarie Point and Wooloomooloo; past Rushcutter’s Bay, and past the charming Rose Bay, to the steep escarpment of the North and South Heads, where the Pacific comes rolling up its breakers. On the return journey we went as far as Cockatoo Island in the Parramatta River, one of the most westerly of the many picturesque islands scattered within the harbour. Here are the Government docks, originally constructed by convicts; for Cockatoo Island was formerly a penal settlement. In the last year or two the docks have been very much extended, and shipbuilding is now carried on on a large scale.
At the colliery of Balmain coal-mining is carried on at a great depth below the harbour. It was growing late when we returned to our starting-point, but the evening light was loveliest of all on Kirribilli Point above which a crescent moon was hanging.