He returned triumphant with a joint. Meantime someone had produced a packet believed to contain Brand’s Essence. Lady Galloway claimed that she knew how to make soup, so it was handed over to her. She upset it all into a soup plate full of water, and then, and not till then, it was discovered to be tea! However, one way and another, we were provided with sufficient food, and duly inaugurated the caves.
They were beautiful, but never have I been so hard pressed for adjectives. The old guide whom we also met in the Jenolan Caves had been put on duty at the Yarrangobilly excavations for the occasion. He stopped our party of six or seven people before each particular stalagmite or stalactite, and would not move on till each of us in turn had ejaculated “beautiful,” “magnificent,” “stupendous,” or some other such laudatory word as suppressed laughter enabled us to utter, for it became a sort of game not to repeat what our companions had said.
The following day an early start took us to Tumut, where we had a great reception and excellent entertainment. We were, however, not allowed to enter the town for our first greetings. As we drew near it, about 9 a.m. we perceived a table with a white cloth and several men standing round it in a field (“paddock” is the correct term in Australia). The wagonette was stopped, we were requested to get out, and we found that the magistrates of the district were waiting there with champagne, forestalling the reception prepared for us by the Municipality!
Shortly after our return to Hill View, our summer’s home, Lady Galloway, my brother Rupert, and I set off on a trip to New Zealand. In the intervening time the whole of Australia was deeply moved by the terrible news of the death of the Duke of Clarence. The fact of his recent engagement brought home to every household the full force of the tragedy. Addresses of condolence poured in, and the staff was fully occupied in acknowledging them and forwarding them to England.
We sailed from Melbourne, staying for a day at Hobart in Tasmania, where Lady Hamilton, wife of Sir Robert Hamilton the Governor, who was then absent, took excellent care of us. Tasmania appeared to be a happy, friendly little place, but naturally we had no time to see much. The harbour is fine, and the vegetation in the neighbourhood of the city was rich and green with quite an English aspect.
We then took ship for Dunedin, quite in the south of the South Island. It took us about four days and the sea was by no means calm.
DUNEDIN
Dunedin is a very interesting place and quite lives up to its name, for it is a small edition of Edinburgh. Scotch names over most of the shops, and as we walked past the open door of a boys’ school we heard instructions being given in a very decided Scottish accent. There is a hill which recalls the Castle Hill, and even a manufacture of a very good woollen fabric with a distinctly plaid character. No doubt all this has greatly developed, but I trust it remains true to its Scottish origin. It was founded in 1848 by emigrants representing the Free Kirk of Scotland who left after the separation from the Established Church. There is a story that some of the first settlers put up a notice on their land to the effect that their co-religionists might help themselves to wood but that all others were to pay for it. True fraternal feeling, but it is hardly consonant with usual Scottish shrewdness that they should have expected the other wood-gatherers to volunteer payment.
From Dunedin we went on to Invercargill, the extreme southern point, where the Governor, Lord Onslow, had invited us to join him on the Government yacht, the Hinemoa, and there we found Lady Onslow awaiting us.
We were indeed fortunate in sharing in this expedition. The Onslows, who were on the point of returning to England, had arranged a trip to the Sounds for which they had not previously found time, and it was only in their yacht that we could have fully enjoyed the wonders of these fiords of the Southern Hemisphere. I do not know how it is now, but then excursion steamers only went about four times a year, were very crowded, and entered a limited number of Sounds. Lord Onslow took us into one after another, each more imposing than the last. I was particularly impressed by the desolate grandeur of one said not to have been entered for twenty-five years. The mountainous steeps which guarded it were in great part simply rocky slopes, and it seemed as if the spirits of the place resented our intrusion. In most of the other Sounds the precipitous mountain sides were clad with wildly luxuriant foliage, and land and water were alive with birds, particularly water-fowl. Amongst these were the lovely black-and-white Paradise ducks, which could be caught with long-handled nets something like gigantic butterfly nets.