EARLY SUBURBAN MELBOURNE.
"Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness."
—Cowper.
"Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife."
-Gray.
In 1844 I lived in a little cottage at South Yarra, on the Dandenong or Gardiner's Creek-road, then only a bush track, although considerably trodden. I had not many neighbours. Mr. Jackson, at the far end, had bought Toorak, but not yet built upon it; and the near end was graced by Mr. R.H. Browne's pretty villa, in its ample grounds, sold shortly before to Major Davidson, and constituting the palace of its time along the road. There was a trackless forest opposite us, and more than once I missed my way in trying to make a straight cut to the present St. Kilda. One Sunday morning I made a discovery—a small sheet of water, glittering in the sunshine, and I long gazed admiringly on the countless insects and plants about its edges. It was confessedly neither broad nor deep, and a certain tag-rag indefiniteness of outline gave occasion afterwards to envious anti-Prahraners all about to make it out as only a swamp. The little thing had much badgering to endure in this way in Prahran's early progress. Later on, I saw it as a sort of central reserve of the ever-rising Prahran. But still later it was drained off and turned about its business, as either a profitless nuisance, or a too costly ornamentation: sic transit, etc.
The following year, 1845, in which my worthy old friend Alfred Ross joined me in business in the Market-square, then a place of the very smallest pretensions compared to now, I rented, with him, the allotment next beyond the Major's. It had been vacant since its previous occupancy three years before by Mr. P.W. Welsh, already spoken of—one of the earliest and largest, best known, and least fortunate of Melbourne's early merchants. That the bad times that had brought many of us to the ground had then not quite passed, although they had by this time evidently "bottomed," may be judged by the fact that we got a fairly habitable large cottage, with twenty-five picturesque acres, and the remains, such as they were, of a garden, for 30 pounds a year. Five years earlier some thousands a year would have been needed to live in such a place. Eight years later it was worth, for mere site value, probably 30,000 pounds. I am afraid to say what it may now be worth. Probably most of it is long ago "cut up" into streets and town lots, like "Major Davidson's paddock" alongside, which, consisting of some twelve acres next the Dandenong-road, realized in 1854, under gold discovery stimulus, no less than 17,000 pounds. Such are a few specimens of colonial ups and downs!
Here, too, we made acquaintance, pleasant and long protracted, with our neighbours, the gallant Major—since Colonel—Davidson, his quiet and amiable wife, and "Missie," as she was called, their only child, then of seven years, but in due time a surpassingly accomplished young lady, who was married to the son of Colonel Anderson, and still survives in London. She has confessed to me since that she used then to look up to me with great awe and regard—not merely, I hope, because I was so much the senior.
Only one other incident here. One dark night, towards the fall of summer, detained by business longer than usual, we lost our way as we walked home, distance hardly two miles. After some "dandering" about, in order to strike the corner of Major Davidson's fence, which was as good to us as at home, we caught glimpse of a light, which in that place we knew must be a stranger. Then, as we approached, there were figures and voices. Who should this be but old Liardet from The Beach, with a section of his family, who, having an outing in Melbourne, had, like ourselves, stayed too late, and were now hopelessly at sea, and far out of their track in groping their way back. They offered us a share of quarters, as it seemed useless to try the pathless forest any longer. But we were too sure of our whereabouts to give up the game so easily, and after some more perambulating we struck the fence.
In spite of the attractions and economies of Tempe—for that, I think, was the name it ambitiously held—we quitted South Yarra within the same year for a still greater bargain and temptation in the opposite direction, where I had just then the chance of picking up, "at an old song," the pretty cottage previously occupied by Mr. Locke, on the Merri Creek, four miles north by the Sydney-road. Besides the presentable cottage, there was a large, well-stocked garden, at enacre cultivation field, and a small natural park (vulgarly, paddock), in all 46 acres, for 50 pounds, plus 300 pounds of inevitable mortgage. I called it Maryfield, after my parental home in Edinburgh, and revelled in grapes, plums, and peaches, and much other country happiness. When a host of visitors, on a bright summer day, would rather strain the narrow larder, I used to divert the party into the garden, where they could complete their meal, although at times with inconvenient demand, from the male section at least, upon the brandy. When, in 1854, I re-sold "the lot" to Mr. David Moore, under the heavy temptation of 6,000 pounds, he took the warrantable liberty of a slight nominal alteration to Moorefield, while at the same time he erased the poor old cottage for something more accordant with great golden Victoria.
In this case I had a rather striking illustration of the old land-transfer and other law costs incubus from which my late friend Sir R.R. Torrens has so effectually relieved these colonies; and that, too, as I believe, owing to the multiplied transactions, without any real detriment to our many legal friends. Pounds were pounds in those economy-needing times, and as the Savings Bank had, after a thorough overhaul, accepted the title before giving its loan, I declared myself perfectly satisfied to proceed at once to the conveyance. But no, that was impossible. The courtesies, the practice, the established rights, in short, of ancient custom required all to be done over again, in attested copies of title, draughts of title as to defects for counsel's opinion, and so on, even if all the paper and verbiage were to go straight to the waste-basket; and thus a not over convenient bill of about 70 pounds was rolled up. But I must at the same time bear in mind that this heavy drag applied to all landed property, restricting business in it and reducing its value. Had Torrens's Act been then in action, I could not possibly, with the resulting higher value of land, have secured my bargain at the fifty pounds, probably not even at fifty plus the seventy.