CHAPTER XII
MELBOURNE
IT WOULD surprise many Americans who think theirs is the only real country on earth to come down to Australia. Take the city of Melbourne. It is not so old as Chicago, and it is younger than any town of its size in the United States. In 1837, when Chicago was incorporated, Melbourne contained five wooden shacks and eight turf huts. To-day it is a magnificent city almost as big as Detroit. There is not a country in Europe or a state of the Union but would be proud to own such a capital.
The city lies at the bottom of eastern Australia, on the banks of the River Yarra, near where it empties into the Bay of Port Phillip. One can walk for six miles along the wharves and count forty bridges crossing the Yarra and other streams in the city and suburbs. Steamers of eight thousand tons, drawing twenty-three feet of water, can come right into the town, but larger vessels anchor at Port Melbourne three miles below it.
In a bend of the river and close by the wharves is the million-dollar municipal market house. This is a three-story brick structure housing hundreds of stalls to which Melbourne housewives come to purchase their supplies. A part of the building is given up to storage rooms for butter, rabbits, chickens, and other things awaiting shipment overseas.
Melbourne is built on a flat plain. It covers many acres and is well laid out on the checkerboard plan. The principal streets are ninety-nine feet in width. The best business blocks and public buildings are on Collins Street, which is the main thoroughfare. St. Kilda’s Road, which runs from the centre of the town past the Botanical Gardens and the official residence of the Governor-General of Australia, is one of the finest boulevards in the world. It was built to honour King George V, then Duke of York, when he came out in 1901 to open the first Federal Parliament.
On all sides of the city are attractive suburbs, the most beautiful of which is Toorak, where the rich have their homes. Their handsome residences are set in large gardens and are generally hidden by high walls from the passerby. In the less pretentious suburbs the newcomer is struck by the number of one-story houses. The reason for this, as well as for the growing number of apartment houses in this and other Australian cities, is the difficulty of getting servants.
Although it was decided at the beginning of this century to build the federal capital on a new site, Melbourne has remained for more than twenty years the “temporary” capital of the Commonwealth. When the states were federated there was hot rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne. Neither was willing for the other to become the national capital, so it was provided in the Constitution that a new city should be built, at least one hundred miles from Sydney, and that, pending the erection of the necessary buildings, Melbourne should be the seat of government.
The site for the new capital was donated by the state of New South Wales. It is at Canberra, about two hundred miles southwest of Sydney. The architects of the world were invited to submit plans for the city, and the prize was won by Walter Burley Griffin, of Chicago.
The World War interfered with the construction of Canberra, and it has also been held back by much opposition to the great outlay of money involved. On his visit to Australia two years after the war was over, the Prince of Wales presided at the laying of the cornerstone of the Parliament buildings. Bridges and roads have been built, sewerage and water-supply systems have been installed, and a meeting place for the Parliament has been provided. Nevertheless, it will be some years yet before the Commonwealth’s made-to-order capital is completed.
As the capital of Victoria, Melbourne has the state offices. It has also city buildings and a town hall. These structures cost many millions of dollars. One of them houses the splendid public library containing a quarter of a million books, and under the same roof are the museums of sculpture, technology, and ethnology, and an art gallery. In connection with the art gallery there is a travelling scholarship for art students endowed by the state.
The town hall is a great structure of white freestone on the corner of Collins and Swanston streets in the very heart of the city. It is the home of the mayor and city officials, including the council, and it has also an amusement hall which will seat three thousand, where public entertainments are given at cost prices. For concerts, it has a thirty-five-thousand dollar organ, which, as I have said, was the largest south of the Equator until Sydney bought a bigger one. The city employs an organist to play it twice a week for the entertainment of the people, and any Thursday or Saturday one can drop in and listen to the music for an hour or so free of charge. Melbourne not only provides free concerts for its citizens, but reserves one section of its race track to which the public is admitted without having to buy tickets.
The Australians believe that their cities should be run for the benefit of the people and they do not overlook any opportunity to this end. Melbourne owns its tramways and maintains all sorts of public institutions, such as museums, picture galleries, and baths. It has numerous night schools and a working man’s college with several thousand students. The city keeps up an aquarium and a good zoölogical garden. It has about six thousand acres set aside for parks and pleasure grounds, and its citizens have many organizations and clubs for outdoor amusement. The Melbourne Cricket Club, which was founded about the time the city was begun, now numbers more than three thousand members. It keeps twenty men busy taking care of its property. Already more than half a million dollars has been spent on the nine-acre cricket ground, which is said to be the finest in the world.
I wish I could take you out to one of the great meetings at Flemington Lawn, the Melbourne race course, which the people here think is the finest on earth. It has an area of about three hundred acres, most of which is covered with a lawn of thick velvety green. There are really two courses, one for steeplechase events and the other for running and hurdle races. The track, grandstands, and stables are all well built and equipped with the latest improvements.
The inside of the ring, which is given up to the people who pay no admission, is usually crowded with workmen and their families. The grandstand, built on a hill at one side of the course, has the first-class seats, and directly behind it on the hill itself are equally good places, which can be had for lower prices. In any one of these situations the spectator has full view of the race from start to finish and need not lose sight of the horses for the tenth of a second.
I have several times gone out to the races, which are held every Saturday afternoon during the season. They are attended by thousands. Flemington Lawn is a good place to see the people of Melbourne at their best. Everyone goes to the races—business men, public officials, and even the preachers, though I would not say that I saw any of the clergy place any extravagant bets. The crowd in the grandstand has as well-dressed and fine-looking men and women as one can see at any similar show the world over.
People down here have a way of dating events by saying, “Oh, yes, that was the year So-and-So won the Cup.” They are referring to the Melbourne Cup Race, the chief sporting event of the South Pacific and one of the greatest of the whole world. Melbourne Cup Day, the first Tuesday in November, is a general holiday, and the city does little or no work during the week of this race. Flemington is crowded with a brilliant throng. Often one hundred and fifty thousand people attend, some coming from points three thousand miles distant. Nearly all bet, the women as well as the men. The bookmaker is in his element, and one hears many stories of crooked methods and thrown races, though how much truth there is in them I do not know. Clerks and shop girls go without lunches for weeks to save money to lay on the favourites. Office boys steal stamps and petty cash, and bank clerks are sometimes tempted beyond their strength to speculate with the funds under their hands so as to gamble on the great event.
An attorney general of New South Wales, speaking of the Melbourne Cup and the other races so frequent throughout the Commonwealth, once declared that
“... nine tenths of the embezzlements and the forgeries and the breaches of trust which come before the Australian courts are directly due to horse-racing and its concomitants.”
But editors and preachers, votes in the hands of women, and state and Commonwealth legislation have so far been powerless to stop betting on the races. The gambling spirit pervades all classes of Australians, from the farmer who stakes everything on the freaks of the climate, to the legislator who helps put a radical law on the statute books with the feeling that the chances are even that it will work out all right.
I should say that drinking is quite as much of a national vice of the Australians as gambling. I know of no country where it is more common. In many families it is usual to serve whisky and soda at afternoon teas, the men taking the whisky and the women the tea. Some of the people keep themselves “soaked” a good part of the time. Scotch whisky is the favourite tipple and the customary way of taking it is to mix it with water and sip it. Americans once prided themselves on drinking their whisky “straight,” swallowing it down in one gulp, but here the same amount mixed with water lasts for an hour. A great many have whisky with their meals, and treating, or, as they call it here, “shouting,” is common. The man who drinks alone is thought to be mean, and in the smoking rooms of the hotels one sees men sipping and talking together from dinner until bedtime.
There are no saloons here as we know them. To illustrate:
“Is that big building a hotel?” I asked a Melbourne man one afternoon as we were passing one of the finest structures of this city.
“No,” was the reply, “I don’t think it’s a hotel. I think it is a coffee palace. Still, I heard the other day that its owners had bought out the right to sell liquors and so it may be a hotel after all.”
“But what is a coffee palace?” I asked.
“A coffee palace,” my acquaintance replied, “is where they keep everything that belongs to a proper hotel except the bar. A hotel is a place where liquors are sold; without the liquors it can’t be a hotel, and a coffee palace can’t sell liquor.”
“What do you mean by the owners buying out the right to sell liquor?”
“That is a part of our liquor-option law. Only so many places are licensed, and if a new place wants to start up it has to buy an old license or wait until one is given up. Liquors can be sold only at public houses, or hotels, providing board and lodging. However, it is true that many of the hotels have only one or two bedrooms to rent. They make their money from the bar.”
Notwithstanding these restrictions, and the absence of the American type of saloon, I find that bars are even more frequent here than they used to be at home. The man who wants a drink can get it in any block, and if he is an Australian the chances are, nine out of ten, that he wants it.
The race horse is one of the national idols of Australia. Every one, from preacher to porter, goes to the races, nearly all bet, and the attendance at the Melbourne Cup sometimes numbers 150,000 people.
The great white stone town hall contains a room with three thousand seats for public entertainments. The city employs musicians to give free concerts twice a week on its $35,000 organ.
Until the completion of the made-to-order capital at Canberra, the seat of the Australian federal government, remains at Melbourne, where the Commonwealth House and Senate meet every year.
Alexandra Gardens in the centre of Melbourne remind one somewhat of Boston Common and Central Park. A shack village when Chicago was incorporated, the city is now one of the fine capitals of the world.
One of the surprising things is the little account taken of drunkenness or drinking. No one seems ashamed of having contracted the habit, and many men refer as nonchalantly to having been drunk as you would to having had your dinner.
Not long ago I was on a train in company with three Australians who were evidently old friends. One of the men said: “You see how much fatter I look. That fat comes from temperance. I have taken on flesh since I stopped drinking. I used to drink five bottles of gin every week right along and often much more. About six months ago I tapered off and at once began to gain weight. Since then I have gained two stone in a month.”
The other gentlemen contributed like stories of themselves and their friends. They kept up the conversation until the train stopped at a station, when all went out for a glass of whisky and soda.
To me one of the worst features of the liquor traffic in Melbourne and other Australian cities is the fact that the drinks are dispensed by women. The Melbourne girls are especially beautiful, and the town has the reputation of having the prettiest barmaids of Australia. Some of them are witty and nearly all are charming, so that it is no wonder that the men like to come in for a chat and a drink.