Sir John Robertson has very kindly asked us whilst here to make an expedition up the Hawkesbury, to stay with him, but the steamer for Brisbane is leaving to-morrow. C. was also very anxious to have made a trip from Sydney over to New Caledonia; but the twenty-one days of strictest quarantine imposed by the French Government on all vessels arriving at Noruma from Sydney, on account of the small-pox here, has rendered it impossible. He has been fortunate, however, in meeting French officers, who have given him all the necessary information, and he has obtained many official papers concerning the French penal settlement.
Tuesday, November 25th.—We bade farewell to Lord and Lady Augustus Loftus in the afternoon, and went down to the wharf, where lay the Ly-ee-moon, of the Australian Steam Navigation Company, with the "blue peter" flying. Mr. Loftus, Mr. Unwin, and Dr. Garran, the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, came to see us off. We went down the harbour, saying good-bye to Government House as we passed its windows, but seeing nothing, to our disappointment, of the race that was going on between boats' crews of H.M.S. Miranda and the American man-of-war. We passed out through "the Heads" into the open sea, which had a heavy swell on, the remains of a "southerly burster" of the previous night. The Ly-ee-moon is a dirty little steamer of 600 tons; she is fast, but rolls terribly. After it got dark and cold on deck nothing remained but to go below, and plunge, without asking questions, into the dusky recesses of the bunk in the cabin.
Wednesday, November 26th.—On board S.S. Ly-ee-moon, off the coast of Queensland. Coasting all day along a country covered as far the eye could see into the interior with gum-trees. It gives one some idea of the density of the forests before the country is opened up. Sea smooth, but many ill; cuisine disgusting, and passengers noisy and objectionable. I wrote letters for home all day.
Thursday, November 27th.—The stewardess came into my cabin at seven o'clock, to say that we had been at anchor for an hour or more in the River Brisbane, waiting for the doctor to come off and pass us. The ascent up the Brisbane for thirty miles took us nearly two hours. The river is so deep and broad that large vessels are able to come up to Brisbane, and anchor at the wharves. The banks are low and pretty, but little we saw of their beauty that morning for the dense mist caused by the downpour of rain.
Mr. Prichard, the Governor's aide-de-camp, was waiting for us on the wharf with the carriage, and we drove past the Government buildings, which are very fine, and the Club House, with its broad verandahs, to Government House. Here Sir Anthony and Lady Musgrave received us most kindly. Government House is a low, ugly stone building, with numberless verandahs, into which the rooms open out. The servants' quarters are quite separate, in a bungalow apart from the house. The house lies on a peninsula, surrounded on three sides by the river, and the road which leads past the houses ends at Government House as a cul de sac.
The deluge of rain lasted all the afternoon, but cleared up enough in the evening for Lady Musgrave and her three boys to take me into the adjoining Botanical Gardens. The climate at Brisbane is nearly tropical, and these gardens are proportionately more luxuriant than those of either Melbourne or Sydney. There is a beautiful avenue of bunyea-trees bordering the walk by the river. On the pond in the centre grow the most lovely blue and pink water-lilies; the latter is "the sacred lotus" of the Egyptians, a plant that, besides Australia, only inhabits China, Japan, Persia, the Malay Peninsula, and the Philippine Islands. The lawns feel short and springy to the tread from the crisp buffalo-grass. There is a grove of tall bamboo-trees, interspersed with palms, the bread-fruit tree, or the traveller's tree—a species of palm which gives water when tapped by the traveller in the desert; on some of these grow the stag-horn ferns, so called because it is a fern which branches out like the horns of a stag. There were thickets of mimosa; the common sensitive plant, whose leaves curl up at the touch; interspersed with the candlenut-tree, the castor-oil plant, Moreton Bay figs, or wattle-trees, and every one of the fifty-four species of eucalypti or blue gum that flourish in Queensland. In the borders grow ohias, and hibiscus, white or red, single or double; seringea, boronia, crimson pointsettias, red-purple bougainvillea; jackerandia, like our purple wisteria; and daturas, with their pure white blossom, growing amid a cluster of dark green leaves. There were all the commoner sorts of flowers, and hundreds of others of which I did not know or could not learn the names.
The suite of rooms we have are connected by a succession of verandahs. Doors and windows open to the ground, giving in the evening a terrible invitation to the mosquitoes to enter, of which they avail themselves freely, humming and buzzing round in a maddening dance. Fortunately we are too early for the sandflies, a tiny insect which hops like a flea, and whose bite is very vicious and painful; they have been known to worry a horse almost to death. The frogs, with their sometimes deafening chirping, are heard in the early morning or after sundown, the same as we used to hear the locusts at Sydney. The hoarse laugh of the "jackass" often rings out on the night air.
Friday, November 28th.—Lady Musgrave took me to the Museum in the morning, where they have a good collection of native birds. Following the example of hot climates, for the heat in Brisbane is intense, though we are early enough to escape the worst, which is between this month and April, we stayed quiet during the afternoon, and went out driving in the evening. We drove through the town and principal streets of George and Queen Streets to the Acclimatization Gardens, reserved solely for that purpose, and being so far removed from the town that they are little used. Thence to the Girls' High School, and the Grammar School; and afterwards coming down one of the fine "terraces" or roads overlooking the town, we drove out to Kangaroo Point. Then I was able to master and understand the difficult geography of Brisbane, caused by the windings in the river, which puzzle you as to which side of it you are on. The river winds round the town, so that in one street you can see it at the top and again at the bottom. Brisbane is a thoroughly uninteresting and ugly town. C. met the Premier, Mr. Griffiths; Sir Arthur Palmer, Speaker of the Legislative Council; Sir Thomas MacIlwraith and Mr. Morehead, Leaders of the Opposition, yesterday.
Saturday, November 29th.—We did some shopping in the town in the morning for the voyage, buying deck-chairs and table, &c., and a box to send home to England. C. had a long talk with the Premier, detailing his Massachusetts Probation Scheme, for the probation of prisoners who have been convicted of a first offence only. An article written by him on the subject has just appeared in the Melbourne Victorian Review; and the three other colonies that we have visited, New Zealand, Victoria, and New South Wales, are about to adopt it as being very economical, and advantageous in preventing the manufacture of habitual criminals.
Lady Musgrave held her weekly afternoon reception.