CHAPTER XVII[ToC]
OVER THE BORDER
My experiences of life in Australia, long in time, have been narrow in space. Of the thirty years of this chronicle, not six months were spent outside Victoria.
In earlier times I paid little visits to Albury, just over the border. We drove from Y—— in our first buggy, which was bought there, taking the babies to a house that was full of playmates for them, and where a couple more or less added nothing to the family cares. Looking out of my window one morning I realised why this was so. In a back-yard below, on a kitchen chair, sat the hostess's young widowed sister-in-law, who lived with her and was the mother of two; these two, my two, and the dozen or thereabouts of the family proper, sat or stood round her like a class in school, and from a huge basin on her lap she fed the lot, each in turn, a spoonful at a time, round and round, until the supplies were exhausted. The serious faces of the little ones as they opened their mouths wide one after the other showed they were not at games, but performing a duty they were accustomed to. When I went down to breakfast I was quietly informed that the children had had theirs and gone out to play. But I think my clearest memory of Albury is of the splendid Fallon vineyards and cellars, in which one morning a hospitable proprietor offered us tastes of his famous brands in innumerable little glasses, which politeness constrained me to "sample" at all costs. Taking but a sip of each, I reckoned that I must have swallowed a quantity fully equal to my daily allowance for a fortnight; and we drove home in the sun directly afterwards. I am proud to say that, although not a seasoned vessel, I passed the ordeal undisgraced even by a headache—my late host had confidently predicted it—otherwise I should not tell this tale.
Then I once went to Tasmania—for four hours. This was not very long ago, and I have ever since been awaiting opportunities to extend my acquaintance with that charming place—so green, so cool, so rich in the quality of its earth and all that springs from it, rightly entitled to its name of the "garden island" as far as my skimming eye could judge. Being out of health, I had taken one of those sudden longings for the sea which come over me at such times, an instinctive animal craving after the natural remedy for my complaint; and I had a friend in the captain of a smart steamer plying to Tasmanian ports. An invitation to a trip, as a privileged passenger, was too tempting to be refused. Thus I found myself one morning, tucked up in pillows and a 'possum rug in a long chair on the bridge, eating my breakfast of fried fish and coffee while I gazed at the Tasmanian shore, which we skirted between ports for several hours. We were near enough to discern the little farmhouses in the nooks of the hills, the little figures of milkers and carters, and housewives hanging the wash on the clothes line; and there was a beautiful coach-road running up and down and round the corners amongst the trees that I shall never be satisfied until I have driven over. I have spoken of it to those who have, and they tell me that imagination cannot conceive of it as more beautiful than it really is, given the right season and weather.
By-and-by we turned a corner ourselves and steered into a channel that presently opened out into a little inland bay, a little port, connected by a toy railway with Launceston. Its little town and wharves, where other ships were loading and unloading, occupied a section of the wooded hills enclosing it; elsewhere the green basin-rim was dotted with nestling homes, and their orchards and gardens. It was towards noon, and I was called to an early lunch, after which the captain appeared in mufti to take me for a walk. We were through the streets in a few minutes, and on a quiet road lined with great holly-hedges, a mighty tree of which, one blaze of scarlet, stood in a garden where the earliest spring flowers were sprouting from rich brown earth such as I had never seen on this side of the world. We followed the course of the bay as it narrowed in amongst the hills until it became a mere woodland brook burrowing under the bushes. The grass was lush and dewy, and the colour of the soil, where the path revealed it, as delightful to English eyes as the colour of flowers. It was too early for more than a sprinkling of these, but I filled my hands with ferns and other vernal treasures that told me what a Paradise the land would be in a few weeks if that was a fair sample of it. We "hustlers" of the mainland think it a fine place to visit in the hot weather, but far too dull and behind-the-times to live in; but to those who love Nature and a quiet home, and find their intellectual resources in themselves, what an ideal environment! "Here," said I to the captain, as we strolled back to the ship, "is where I should like to spend my last days—to rest when work is done." The idea obscured for a time the settled plan of my life, which is to get "Home" somehow before the final event. We sailed in the afternoon, and from the bridge I watched the fading of the green land as I had watched its unfolding, but feeling now that it was my friend for life. Now and then you look into a face which gives you the masonic sign of a natural affinity, absent in fifty faces that ought to be more dear; thus it was with Tasmania, which captured my heart at the first glance.
The furthest and the chiefest of my few jaunts abroad was to the mother-city of the mother-state—Sydney. And there is no place like Sydney. I am firm on that point, although I am a Victorian, in whom such an admission is rank heresy; and a son of mine who has spent several Long Vacs. there—in summer, when I would not go near it—is even more decidedly of the same mind. It was in the year following that of my illness in hospital, and while I was enjoying my fresh lease of life, that I took the journey after several false starts.