Apart from the wattle, the most striking note of colour in these softly-tinted forest masses is afforded by the sarsaparilla, which creeps up the young trees or low-growing scrub, and hangs them with a mantle of imperial purple. In general, however, the country regions round Melbourne are not rich in wild flowers. There is a bluebell, more like the Scotch harebell; a wild scabious, very similar to the English one; little yellow bachelor-button-like flowers; and an infinite number of tiny little blossoms, exquisite in themselves, but in no way comparing with a field of poppies, or coppices carpeted with the true bluebell, such as are seen at home.
The woods and forests in Victoria are under the supervision of the Conservator of Forests, who has under him nine men on the office staff, and seventy-seven on the field staff, a meagre enough allowance, in all conscience, when one remembers the vast distances even in this, the smallest of all the States; and yet, more power to it, topping all the others in this matter, for in New South Wales the staff, including the Director, comprises only seventy-two persons; in South Australia, forty-four; in West Australia thirty; and in Queensland nine—Queensland! covering an area of 670,500 square miles as compared with Victoria’s 87,884, and holding, as it does, an untold mine of wealth in its vast forests. Queensland! the home of the red pine and the kauri-pine, the red cedar, the Moreton Bay pine, and black-bean; and nine men to guard the interests of all this wealth!
The Pyrenees, which, with the Bald Hills, are a continuation of Mount Macedon, are really all a part of the great dividing range which enters Victoria at Forest Hill, and in which is included all the most important mountain peaks in the State; those mountains which are not actually part of the main range being mostly offshoots from it, while not only in Victoria is this the case, for Australia, in fact, is federated by her mountains more completely than she is ever likely to be by her people.
The great main Dividing Range, indeed, can be traced from New Guinea across the Torres Straits to Cape York, and thence southward through Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria to Wilson’s Promontory, being from there continued by the Flinders group of islands to Tasmania, a second spur traversing Victoria in a westerly direction. South Australia and Western Australia alone lie out of touch of this great backbone of the continent, possessing a mountain system of their own. Thus, by the help of forests, and mountains, and streams, the continent does not, on the whole, present to its inhabitants such a flat desert waste as is popularly supposed. How oddly English it is, too, in parts! I know one place on the Dandenong line, not half an hour’s journey from Melbourne, where there is open waste land, broken by pine-trees and ablaze with yellow gorse in the autumn. I remember, the first time I saw it, getting out at the nearest station and hunting about till I found a decent lodging, then staying there for two months, and enduring all the disadvantages of a daily journey to town—a thing I abominate—merely for the sake of living within sight and scent of the gay homelike stuff, with its delicious perfume.
CHAPTER X
OF THE COUNTRY AND CLIMATE, AND OF MELBOURNE GARDENS
Victoria, and, indeed, Australia as a whole, has been spoken of as the “Paradise of the working-man”—a paradise in which Melbourne, as the busiest and richest city in the Commonwealth takes the foremost place, this according to its people. The inhabitants of Sydney think differently, so do those of Adelaide and Brisbane. Yet, on the whole, I think Melbourne has the best reason for her proud boast. Wages may not be higher than they are in Sydney, while they are certainly lower than they are in Brisbane or the West; but the disadvantages are far less. The heat is never really unendurable, while at the worst it is stimulating, instead of enervating as in Sydney, only coming in bursts, with constant cool intervals between in which to recoup. For two or three days it may perhaps be over 100 in the shade, when the asphalt in the street bubbles and the pavement feels red-hot beneath one’s feet; but after about three days comes a change, and only once during eight whole years have I known the thermometer remain for a whole week above 100° in the shade. That was, if I remember rightly, in 1907, when whole families turned out to sleep in the public parks and gardens. But usually at the end of about the third day of heat there comes a terrific scorching north wind, laden with thick yellow dust, a thousand times worse, if the Australian would but believe it, than any London fog. It whirls in through every crack of window or door, it fills eyes, and lungs, and mouth, and nose till one feels on the verge of choking, and one’s skin is so gritty that one could smooth a plank with it—a demon of a wind, making every woman it encounters look a hag, and every man a fiend. If the women of Melbourne would really put their brains to work in the matter of complexions, instead of supporting a whole army of skin specialists and spending incredible sums upon creams and washes, they would see to it—holding a vote as they do—that every member of the municipal council were hung, drawn, and quartered. Then they would pour all their messes upon the streets instead of upon their faces, and go on appointing fresh councillors and killing them off, till they lighted on even “one righteous man” of sufficient intelligence to grapple with that dust-fiend, which draws such heartrending lines round pretty eyes, and plays such hopeless havoc with even the freshest and most youthful of complexions.
I speak feelingly, because I love Melbourne; because I adore its sunshine and the crisp, light air that might be so clear; because I hate to have its most perfect days—days that in the country are a pure delight—absolutely spoilt by what, one can but believe, is a remediable evil.
But I have wandered away from the red-hot, north-wind days, which I believe are thoroughly intractable—save, perhaps, under some immense system of afforestation. The only possible good point about this north wind is that when it gets to its very worst it usually changes. But oh! with such a flame of fury! One can almost hear it stamp its foot as it flings round. There is a whirl of skirts, an inarticulate shriek of fury, and—bang goes the door of the north wind. The thermometer drops, perhaps as low as to 70° within the hour, and one hurries home, folding oneself upon oneself as well as possible—shivering and shaking in the thin clothes, which had seemed of a blanket weight when they had been donned that very morning—to spend the evening over a flaming wood-fire, listening to the lovely drip-drip of rain upon the leaves, picturing how the earth is palpitating into growth beneath its caress, hugging to oneself the thought of the cool restful night, the glorious sleep, and the enchanting air of spring that the whole world will wear on the morrow, for the spring in Australia seems veritably to arise afresh after every shower.
In Melbourne gardens there is no dead season. The borders and beds are for ever full of surprises. It seems sometimes as if, for no particular reason, the flowers have a fancy for coming out; and out they come. It is a country where people please themselves. So, all the year round, one may gather roses from some bush or other, a little hectic, perhaps, but none the less beautiful for that; while the autumn and spring literally run to meet one another in the gardens, overlapping winter in the most cavalier fashion. I have seen willows along the Yarra bank all dark tresses of drooping twig, and two days—only two days—later, thickly veiled in a vivid green, not a hint of brown bark visible.
During the winter, which is marked more by an unpleasant damp and chilliness than real cold, will come sudden, fervently warm days, which bring all sorts of unlikely flowers into bloom, so that one sees Oriental poppies flaunting among the primroses, and heliotrope, and carnations out with the first daffodils, while it is seldom indeed that there is not pink bloom on the ivy-leaf geraniums.