CHAPTER XIII
IN THE MARTS OF THE CITY
MELBOURNE is one of the best business cities of Australia, and to a large extent the money centre of the country. It has a number of rich men, its people are great spenders, and money is kept on the move most of the time. By no means all of it goes for good living. There are numbers of insurance companies, real-estate firms, and banking institutions. The chief banks have branches in the state of Victoria and in all parts of the continent.
Some of the stores are called universal providers, taking the place of our department stores. All have good window displays and they advertise in the spread-eagle American way. One man boasts of having one million books in his stock, and fills the newspapers with rhymed effusions about his goods. His shop is called the Book Arcade, and it is a sort of department store, in which books are featured. It sells also stationery, candy, and pictures, and in it you may get a tooth pulled or a photograph taken while you wait. As in Sydney, many of the big stores are in arcades from one principal street to another which protect the shoppers from the blazing sun in summer.
Among the most interesting shops are those selling jewellery, for they give an idea of the wealth and the tastes of the people. There are quarts of diamonds and pearls displayed in the cases, and the windows are filled with rings, brooches, and precious stones. Among the most common of the jewels are Australian opals. They may be seen everywhere. I verily believe I have handled a half bushel of them since I came to the country. They are sold set and unset, and are cheaper than with us, although the better stones bring good prices. An opal the size of a small pea costs three dollars, while for fifteen dollars you can get one full of fire and as big as your sweetheart’s thumb nail. Like diamonds, the stones are sold by weight, at so much a carat.
In walking through the business streets I see many curious signs. One reads: “John Jones, Fellmonger.” That is a fur store, as I can see from the ’possum, the platypus, and other skins in the window. The shop next door has the word “Draper” above it. That is a dry-goods store, while the sign “Ironmonger” on the building over the way shows that it is a place for selling hardware. In Australia the druggists are called chemists, and a drug store is a chemist shop. Lumber dealers are “timber merchants,” and the lumberman is a “timber getter.”
Besides what seems to an American their queer use of English, the Australians are even more addicted to slang than we are. Their most common ejaculation is “My word!” You hear this everywhere. It takes the place of “Mon Dieu!” in French, “Ach Gott!” in German, and “Oh, Lord!” in the United States. The Australian evidently thinks his word a better thing to swear by than the name of the Almighty. Among other slang phrases are the words “screw,” for salary or income; “narked,” for angry; “cush,” for comfortable, and “putting on side,” for putting on airs. If a man is assaulted by highwaymen and robbed he is “stuck up,” and if he has no money whatever, it is common to say he “has not a bean.” “Good iron” is an expression of incredulity at a preposterous story. People ask you to “hang up your horse” instead of hitching it. “To have” a man is to fool him or take him in. If a person fails “he has gone the bung,” and if he is well off “he is pretty well on.” We use the expressions “on the jump” or “on the go”; the Australian says he is “on the wallaby.” When a man acts foolishly we sometimes say “he is off his base”; with the Australian “he is off his pannikin.” An Australian girl does not primp, she “tittivates.” An Australian dude is a “toff,” a tramp is a “swagman,” “a humping bluey,” or a “sun-downer.” Luggage is always called “swag,” and the common word for food is “tucker.”
As to Melbourne’s business hours, the forty-four-hour week prevails generally. Most of the big stores are not open before half-past eight or nine; all except fruit and confectionery shops must close at six, and all are required to shut up for the half holiday every Saturday. Barbers and tobacconists may close half a day on Wednesday, instead of Saturday. Even the drug stores have to close on Saturday afternoons and on Sundays as well.
Melbourne is called the Yankee city of Australia and its people pride themselves on being like us. They are considered the most enterprising of any people south of the Equator. I have been frequently asked if Melbourne did not remind me of home, or whether we have anything better of the same kind in the United States.
Many Americans flocked here during the gold rushes of the early fifties and some of them stayed and bought property. Several of the finest business blocks are owned by Americans; for instance, the Equitable Life Insurance Company of New York has one of the best office buildings here. A great many fortunes have been made in Melbourne real estate. The romances of its land speculations are like those of New York and Chicago. The island of Manhattan was bought from the Indians for about a peck of beads, buttons, and trinkets; Chicago could once have been purchased for a pair of old boots. The Australian aborigines traded the site of Melbourne, including six hundred thousand acres surrounding it, for forty pairs of blankets, forty-two tomahawks, and a few knives, scissors, looking glasses, and shirts. The same ground is worth more than one hundred million dollars to-day. John Batman, the man who bought this tract, was not allowed to keep it. His claim was disputed by others, and a few months later the governor of Australia came down from Sydney, laid out the town, and sold off the lots at auction.
That auction made fortunes for the successful bidders. There were about two hundred men present, and nearly all bought city lots of half an acre each. The first sold for $150 and another for twice that. One block of ten acres netted $2500. That area is now worth at least $15,000,000 and the value of many of the other lots has increased in about the same ratio. The net proceeds of the day’s sale were less than $20,000, yet to-day the same land is worth at least $40,000,000; that is, its value has increased just about two thousandfold, which is certainly a fair profit. The auctioneer was a man named Hoddle, who worked on commission. His fees for the sale were about $285, and he took them in land. He was awarded two lots in Elizabeth Street, which he lived to see worth $1,250,000. That was certainly one occasion when talk was worth money, for Hoddle must have received in the end hundreds of dollars for every time he opened his mouth to cry, “Sold.”
This auction took place in 1837. From that time the town grew steadily. Within twelve months a hundred houses were built, and within five years it had six thousand inhabitants. It was incorporated in 1842. Ten years later nuggets of gold as big as your fist were discovered at Ballarat, some hundred miles back in the country, and Melbourne boomed as San Francisco did, and at just about the same time.
Hundreds of thousands of men passed through the city on their way to and from the goldfields, and within ten years more than four hundred million dollars’ worth of gold was sent into Melbourne for shipment to Europe. The town doubled and quadrupled in size. It soon reached the rank of a city, and kept growing until about 1890, when it had half a million people.
Then came a panic, which seemed for a time to be the ruin of Australia. But Melbourne was soon on its feet again and I agree with the people here who believe that their city is destined to become even greater as the Commonwealth grows.