An Australian Ramble; Or, A Summer in Australia

Transcribed from the 1890 T. Fisher Unwin edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
A SUMMER IN AUSTRALIA
BY J. EWING RITCHIE ( CHRISTOPHER CRAYON )
LONDON T. FISHER UNWIN PATERNOSTER SQUARE 1890
TO THE HONOURABLE EDMUND WEBB , BATHURST , NEW SOUTH WALES , THE FOLLOWING PAGES , MANY OF THEM WRITTEN UNDER HIS HOSPITABLE ROOF , ARE GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR .
The Orizaba —Reasons for Travelling—The Bishop—Soda and Whisky—The Spanish Coast—Heroic Memories—Gibraltar—Wickedness of Naples—Port Said.
I send this from the Orizaba , one of the finest, if not the finest, of the fine steamers of the Orient Line that keep open the communication between this country and Australia; and this is how it came to pass. One day last summer I was standing on the deck of a steamer, when a gentleman remarked to me, ‘I come from a country where they have had no rain for nine months.’ ‘Where is that?’ said I. ‘Australia,’ was the reply; and immediately I made up my mind to go there. As is the custom of most of us, I talked the matter over with my friends, some of them in the first rank of the medical world. ‘You can’t do better,’ was the unanimous reply; ‘you will come back ten years younger,’ said they all. Well, surely it is worth taking a little trouble and incurring a little expense, for a man—not to put too fine a point on it—presenting daily a more venerable appearance, to put back the clock, as it were, and to regain somewhat of his manly prime. ‘What can I do for you?’ said the family doctor to the mother of the Rothschilds, when he was summoned to her side; ‘I cannot make you grow young again.’ ‘No,’ was her ladyship’s reply; ‘I know you can’t, doctor; but I wish to continue to grow old.’ And here, just by taking a trip to Australia, and escaping the hardships of an English winter and spring, actually I shall achieve what the mother of the Rothschilds did not dare to hope for. Surely the attempt is worth an effort, especially when, owing to the kindness of a certain firm of publishers who shall be nameless, the question of expense was satisfactorily solved.