CHAPTER XSOCIAL LIFE IN MELBOURNE
Thecountry surrounding Melbourne was far more populous than anything we had yet seen. The land was very flat, and the plain was extremely bare, even denuded; there was hardly a tree to be seen on the great expanse; scattered over it were innumerable little yellow boulders, thousands of them. Sometimes they had been laboriously collected and heaped up to form walls. These are the recollections which the approach to the Victorian capital by railway from the west leaves in the mind. The entrance to Melbourne itself is much like that to any other great seaport. The masts of the ships showed above the houses, the air was cool and fresh, and invigorating after the night in the train. Melbourne was in fact the coldest place we visited in Australia, but even here heavy winter clothing such as one would wear in an English winter is unnecessary in that dry air and brilliant sunshine.
Our hosts had sent their car to meet us, and we spun out of the station yard into a city of immenselywide straight streets, sometimes rather sharply ascending and descending, with handsome tall buildings, some of which had a quite venerable air; the cathedral of St. Paul’s, for instance, is grimy with age. From a local station people from the suburbs were pouring out to their day’s business, as if it were a London terminus, and there was little to distinguish them in general appearance from the London morning throng. We gleaned a rapid impression of gardens and parks and open spaces, and after crossing the Yarra River, arrived in the pleasant green hilly suburb of South Yarra, where we were to stay. The car drew up at a large bungalow in a sloping street of bungalows each in its own garden. A broad verandah ran round the one-storied house; at the entrance to the garden a pepper tree had been cut back and a rose trained over it. These lovely trees, with their grey fern-like foliage and strings of red berries are very common in Australia, but they are untidy things in a garden, with obstreperous roots. Geraniums were in flower even here, and a pink camellia bush.
THE RIVER YARRA, 48 MILES FROM MELBOURNE.
THE RIVER YARRA, 48 MILES FROM MELBOURNE.
THE RIVER YARRA, 48 MILES FROM MELBOURNE.
The door was flung open by our hostess almost before we had had time to ring the bell. We had arrived unseasonably early in the morning, rather chilly, rather tired, with that uncomfortable,unkempt sensation attendant on a hurried toilet in a rocking train, breakfastless, very hungry, and it is only on such an occasion that the whole-hearted warmth of an Australian welcome can be appreciated at its true worth, a welcome no less generous to strangers than to recovered friends. Our host and hostess in Melbourne had never seen us before, yet not only were we made to feel as if we belonged there, as if their house was a home in which we had the claim of longstanding friendship or relationship, but though they were both very busy people of many engagements, their car was placed at our disposal during our visit, and they themselves made use of the very efficient Melbourne tram service. Perhaps this extraordinary and generous kindness, which we met everywhere, differing only in degree, not in kind, exists in Australia as nowhere else.
It is sometimes spoken of as Colonial; and so in the best sense it is. We had some foreshadowing of it at the Cape. Here certain of the passengers had a collective invitation to a motor drive round Table Mountain by the members of the local automobile club. A day’s entertainment was planned by them, but owing to contrary currents our boat was late. We only had a few hours to spend there. It was between sevenand eight o’clock in the morning when we went on deck, and our host for the moment, a boy of about seventeen, came up smiling and helped us into our fur coats. “Are you always as nice as this to strangers?” we asked. “You’renot strangers,” he said, with genuine surprise, and even a little hurt. And it is that feeling that makes colonial travelling such a delightful experience. Even the conductor on the train will bid you a cordial farewell and hope you will enjoy yourself. England must seem a cold place to Australians when they come to it on a visit. We once heard some travelled Australians discussing this very point. After lavishing hospitality on his English visitors the Australian comes to London, and perhaps meets his former guest at a club. After some few minutes’ conversation he says, “When are you going back?” and adds, “Ah, I hope I shall see you again before you go!” and that is all.
On the afternoon of our arrival in Melbourne, we went to a tea given by the Women’s Union at the University. Australian women are in a very superior position to their British sisters; they have the vote, and their share in political life takes place quite unobtrusively and as a matter of course. Women’s suffrage was adopted in Victoria comparatively recently, and the stateis now governed by the vote of all those over the age of twenty-one who have not been convicted of felony. Consequently there is no aggressive “Women’s Movement,” though women have their own separate clubs in all the large towns, and do useful and active work both in connection with public bodies concerned with their interests, and in political organisation. We were frequently asked with surprised incredulity if the newspaper reports of suffragette activities at home were not wholly untrue or at least greatly exaggerated. To women in peaceful possession of the vote, the exasperated fuss on both sides about conferring what seems to them so simple and obvious a benefit was wholly incomprehensible. It appears that in Australia it has had very little effect on the balance of parties except that of strengthening the Labour vote to some extent.
An active and experienced citizen of Melbourne has recorded his own conviction that the measure “has produced little or no change for better or worse in the general course of legislation. It has not purified public life in the sense in which the term is generally used; it has not enabled women to obtain adequate treatment in the subjects they are specially interested in. It has in my opinion made but one substantial alteration—the capacity of women to organise politicalassociations has been demonstrated repeatedly, and the interest of women in public affairs is in conspicuous evidence.”12Working women are, however, already in a better position in Victoria than in any other part of the world. As long ago as 1873 an Act was passed forbidding the employment of any female for more than eight hours in any day in a factory. Nowhere is the factory worker, whether man or woman, better looked after as to his wages, personal safety, health, and moral surroundings than in Victoria.13A little over 33% of all the women in the state are employed in factories, earning an average wage of 17s. 4d. a week.
In any comparison of labour conditions at home and in Australia it must be borne in mind that though foodstuffs cost about the same, imported manufactured goods of all kinds are dearer. The higher wages are not therefore proportionately greater in purchasing power. They have, however, been much affected by the institution of Wages Boards. These were first established in 1896 with the definite object ofraising the wages of women employed in the clothing trade, especially the sweated home workers. The measure had the immediate effect of raising wages in this trade. The Boards, which are composed of equal numbers of employers and employed, elect a neutral chairman, discuss all the aspects of the trade, and fix a minimum wage accordingly. The system has now been gradually extended to practically all urban industries, in which wages have in consequence steadily risen. The Wages Board, says the Chief Inspector of Factories, “has now come to be regarded pretty generally as the most nearly perfect system of fixing fair wages and conditions that has yet been devised.”14It is a cardinal principle of the Victorian system that, having provided the workers with the means of securing a fair living wage, it takes no cognisance of strikes. It is claimed that the Victorian method has had the result of preventing strikes.
But to return to the Women’s Union tea at the University. Our hostesses were representative of Melbourne’s social activities, and it was a pleasant and interesting festivity, as well as an introduction to the University, the centre of Australian intellectual life. The University has done much to leaven Melbourne society, and hasbeen fortunate in securing first-rate men, not merely in point of scholastic attainment, but in an equally invaluable social refinement. A splendid growing country like Australia should have only the best we have to send, whether as teachers or governors, nothing less is worthy of her deserts and importance as a factor in the empire. The University is the coping-stone of the educational machinery of Victoria, where the whole of the primary and secondary education is in the hands of the state, with the exception of certain schools owned by religious corporations. There is an admirable system of small rural schools, and teachers earn promotion by good work done in them. There are also a number of technical schools and Agricultural High Schools—an interesting development—one of which we visited.
The University Buildings stand in tree-planted grounds, with the imposing Wilson Hall in the foreground. It is used principally for social purposes and for examinations, and is an ecclesiastical building, like a large college chapel, spacious and well proportioned. In front of the open doors stands an immense Moreton Bay pine, one of the handsomest of Australian trees, evergreen, like all the native vegetation, large and shapely with glossy dark leaves. It is so called from the beautiful Queensland bay onwhich Brisbane stands, where it grows in great profusion. On the lawn beyond, two great black swans were feeding, looking oddly incongruous. The various schools have their main lecture rooms and laboratories grouped round an artificial lake in the middle of the grounds. Residential denominational colleges are erected on grants of land within the University precincts. One of them, the Methodist College, we visited through the kindness of the wife of the President, who showed us over the buildings.
It was vacation, and all was swept and garnished, but we saw the little chapel, the dining-hall, library, and the men’s rooms. All was very pleasant and comfortable, with fine views over Melbourne, and all was as unlike as possible from the dreamy, stately old halls where our English boys go and learn to be luxurious and extravagant at home, and also learn other things which after all cannot be learnt elsewhere. We were present at the conferring of some honorary degrees at the University. It was a gay and picturesque scene, with the doctors’ scarlet gowns on the platform; and what we missed in the ancient academic atmosphere that gives to such functions their impressiveness at home, was compensated for by the lively interest and enthusiasm of the visitors by whom the hall wasfilled. The ceremony was incidentally memorable from the fine enunciation and beautiful voice of the Professor who presented the candidates to the Chancellor.
After the degree ceremony we went on to the Town Hall, where the Lady Mayoress was giving a tea-party. Mayors and Mayoresses are very important people in Australia; they are lavish in their entertainment of strangers, and are the centre not only of the civic life of a town, but often of its social life as well, the two things being usually indistinguishable. The Melbourne Town Hall is worthy of a great city that is the seat of government, and the rallying point of all the different phases of life on the continent. One sumptuous council chamber is decorated with Australian woods, many of them very beautiful, the central panels of black wood especially, which were delicately variegated like the back of an old fiddle.
The same day we went to an evening party at Federal Government House. Melbourne is the seat of the Federal as well as of the State Government; and the balls or receptions at Government House bring together what in a less democratic country one would call the society of the state. Society in Melbourne is very cultivated and agreeable. It is more settled, more homogeneous,more cosmopolitan than elsewhere in Australia, so that here, if anywhere, one loses the sense of a new country, which is at the same time part of its charm. The women and girls in Melbourne are also prettier, and more prettily dressed than elsewhere, and it makes a cult of charming-looking, elderly, white-haired matrons, wearing the dignity of their years becomingly. Not that pretty women and girls are not to be found everywhere, but Melbourne has a colder, more bracing climate, and is more in touch with the outside world. Two facts that tell in complexions and clothes.