On the Wallaby Through Victoria

by Elinor Mordaunt

I shall never forget my first bewildering day in search for lodgings. As each front-door was opened I was met by the same mingled whiff of cabbage and linoleum, the same complete indifference as to whether I took the rooms or left them; the same superb air of merely letting rooms at all out of charity, or as a sort of careless hobby; also, incidentally, because, by some odd chance, the house happened to be too big for its occupants. Indeed, this reason was so inevitably offered to me that in time I found myself receiving the odd impression that all the lodging-houses had sprung up, gourdlike, to their present proportions the very night after the lease had been signed. The question of attendance, too, seemed to be always a vexed one, and, in most cases, even by extra payment, quite out of the question; while the very idea of separate meals was received with a sort of horror, as if anyone who wished to feed alone must contemplate awful orgies of an unutterable description. For the most part the beds were big, the charges bigger; the washing-basin and the slaveys who opened the door incredibly small—that is, with the professional boarding-house keeper. There seemed no possible reconciliation between the small maid and the small basin, for there the question of attendance came in—though one landlady did vouchsafe the information that her maid “slopped the room” every morning. But it seemed as if the relations between the big bed and the big rent might, and indeed were, expected to be equalized if I did not mind “sharing my room with another young lady,” in one case my possible hostess’s daughter.

I shall never forget my horror when this idea was first mooted to me, nor how, in my confusion, I protested that I “had never slept with another woman in my life.” On which the horror was transferred to the face of the prospective landlady, who retorted that—“if I was that sort, I might go elsewhere.”

These are the people who flood the daily papers with glowing advertisements—perhaps that landlady would say: “And these are the people who answer them.” But still I would have you beware, for they are false as their fringes—luckily, almost as palpably so. Once, I suppose, they held any temporary dweller in Melbourne irrevocably in their clutches, but since the Land Boom—“the Boom,” as it is always called—which, in spite of all its horrors, had a most potentially humanizing effect on the people, a few capable gentlewomen have taken the work of the landladies into their own hands, and comfortable, well-ordered, truly home-like boarding-houses are springing up, which threaten to oust these pre-historic harpies from their lairs.

The streets of Melbourne are, to my mind, the most tiring I have ever known. They are so straight, so uncompromising; Collins Street alone presents such an endless vista as one gazes up it that I remember, in those first days, feeling as if I would like to take it up in my hands and twist it into some unrecognizable form—warp it and bend it. Straight from west to east, side by side, run several such streets, the principal ones of the city, crossed again at right angles by others every bit as straight—all without a single saving grace of curve, of sheltering crescent, or tree-shaded square, so that when a hot north wind blows it rushes across the interstices of these streets like a hot blast from a furnace, eddying thick clouds of yellow dust—filled with the unutterable debris of the streets—furiously round each corner. There are some really most remarkably fine buildings, but the city is not yet sufficiently complete to show them to advantage or in any harmonious whole, and they look, on the whole, rather ungainly among their humble neighbours—squashed in, in an apologetic manner, between them. During those early days of my life in Melbourne, when the first fascination of newness had faded and I had not yet begun to know the true meaning of the city, the place impressed itself on my jaded mind, with photographic clearness, as an individual without eyelashes, staring unblinkingly, showing a face with no half-tints, no delicacy; and, though possessing a sort of humanity, as all big towns do, yet quite without a soul. Indeed, I believe that this is really the truth, and that the soul of the town is wanting because the hearts of the people, in spite of the manner in which they flock to the big cities, are really all the time in the open country, the strongest proof of this being perhaps found in the growth of the suburbs, which push their way ever further and further afield, and in the fact that very few people indeed—having no inborn love for the life of the town as so many of us have—live in the city itself if they can afford to do otherwise.

During the day, indeed, this absence of soul is but little realized, save when the hot winds and dust carve a heavy furrow down the centre of every brow and call into being a thousand criss-cross wrinkles. But at night, or on Sabbaths or holidays, the town is strangely empty, even more so spiritually than actually. On such days in old-world cities, it always seems to me as if the quiet dead were abroad, wandering lovingly round the shady squares—with their sober-faced houses—and the flagged paths of churchyards, the secluded seats, the ancient archways and narrow silent streets; articulate in the twittering of sparrows or the coo of pigeons, lost at other times in the roar of traffic.

But here it is different; the souls of the dead are all away in the primal forests or Bush that they loved, while the living are off to the mountains or sea—train-load upon train-load, many of them away at the first streak of dawn, leaving the parsons lamenting from their pulpits over an array of empty pews. I once went to Sunday morning service in St. James’s Church, which is known as the “Old Cathedral,” and found eleven fellow-worshippers there. And yet I believe the instincts of the people are true; that the sea, with its white sands, its cliffs, its rocks, and wonder of virgin Ti-tree, teach them more than any number of sermons could do. What thoughts the Ti-tree alone gives rise to! Pagan perhaps, yet all sublime. With the wild forest-myrtle it is the most human tree that could well be imagined. Such twisted trunks, such curious entwined limbs, such delicate flowing foliage! It is as if Pan, the great god Pan, still real and vital in this wide world, had chanced on a flock of nymphs at play along the shore, and embodied them thus as they turned to fly with outstretched arms and flowing tresses; or Neptune himself translated them to trees as they slipped from his embrace.

When the sea is so near and the wonder of the Ti-tree and the mountains, and the forests, with their giant gum-trees, and the deep gullies of ferns, cool and fragrant on the hottest days, perhaps, after all, one may consider that God has built temples to His own liking, and that the dreary little brick churches and tin tabernacles of the country districts are as little wanted as the more imposing structures of the town; while the crowds who flock each Sunday and holiday away from the dusty city into the open country have indeed chosen the better part.

That the young people make love openly and shamelessly in the railway-carriages or on the beach; that they are loud and larky and irreverent, does not matter at all; there is really less room for shame where there is shamelessness: and then as a living proof of what these rowdy boys and girls develop into there are the uncounted young families, father, mother and children, clean and smiling and prosperous, scattered in intimate little groups over every holiday resort within an hour’s reach of town. After all, in spite of “certain writers of our own day,” there is nothing very wrong with a country where the artisan—who, after all, is its backbone—can afford so much fresh air and freedom, so many health-giving holidays; and, in addition, can show such a cheerful helpmate, such a well-nourished, well-dressed little brood, as can the Australian artisan. There is rather an apt old saying, which it might not be amiss for some of us older people to lay to heart in discussing a State that is mainly the work of three generations, such as Victoria, and that is:—“They that can do, and they that can’t criticize.”