Of Melbourne, Victoria, mention has already been made. There are many cities with larger populations, but few have ever attained so great a size with such rapidity. Though it owes nothing to natural surroundings, “the internal appearance of the city is,” Mr. Trollope assures us, “certainly magnificent.” It is built on the Philadelphian rectangular plan; it is the width of the streets which give the city a fine appearance, together with the devotion of large spaces within the limits for public gardens. “One cannot walk about Melbourne without being struck by all that has been done for the welfare of the people generally. There is no squalor to be seen—though there are quarters of the town in which the people no doubt are squalid.... But he who would see such misery in Melbourne must search for it specially.” There are no workhouses; their place is supplied in the colony of Victoria generally by “Benevolent Asylums.” In Melbourne about 12,000 poor are relieved yearly, some using the institution there as a temporary, and others as a permanent place of refuge. These places are chiefly, but not entirely, supported by Government aid. “Could a pauper,” says Trollope, “be suddenly removed out of an English union workhouse into the Melbourne Benevolent Asylum, he might probably think that he had migrated to Buckingham Palace,” so well are the inmates fed and cared for. There are no workhouses proper in any part of Australia, and the charity bestowed on these asylums is not given painfully or sparingly.
The wideness of the streets, however, and grandeur of general dimensions, have their drawbacks, among which the time consumed in reaching distant parts of the city counts first. Melbourne has a fine and entirely free Public Library and a University, as, indeed, has Sydney. Melbourne is the centre of a system of railways, and the well-to-do people all live out of town; in the south and east of the city there are miles of villas and mansions.
Mr. Trollope says:—“There is perhaps no town in the world in which an ordinary working man can do better for himself and for his family with his work than he can at Melbourne.” The rates of wages for mechanics are slightly greater than at home, and all the necessaries of life are cheaper. With meat at 4d. per pound, butter from 6d. upwards, bread, tea, and coffee about the same prices or rather under, coals the same or a trifle higher, potatoes, vegetables, and fruits generally considerably cheaper, all can live well and plentifully. Meat three times a day is common all over Australia, and in some parts the price is as low as 1½d. or 2d. per pound. Wages for good mechanics and artisans average about 10s. a day; gardeners receive about 50s., and labourers about 30s. per week; men-servants, in the house, £40 to £50 per annum; cooks, £35 to £45 per year; girls, as housemaids, &c., 8s. or 10s. per week. It is usual to hire the last named by this [pg 55]short term. Some of these prices rule all over the country, but are liable to rule lower, rather than higher, outside of Melbourne.
In the country sheep-shearers can earn 7s. to 14s. per day for about four months in the year; shepherds, £30 to £40 per year, with rations. The common labourer can count on 15s. to 20s. per week, with rations: these consist generally of 14 lbs. meat (usually mutton), 8 lbs. flour, 2 lbs. sugar, and a quarter of a pound of tea. Of course, where fruit or vegetables are plentiful they would be added. The meat, bread, and tea diet, however, is that characteristic of the whole country. In the great sheep runs and cattle ranges[23] it would be the shepherd’s diet invariably.
Mr. Trollope advises the poor man to save for three or four years, and then invest in land, which in some places is to be had at 3s. 9d. an acre, payable to the Government in five instalments of ninepence per acre. Of course, he would require money for the erection of a house, farm implements, &c. The great trouble with most men working in the bush as shepherds or shearers, or at the mines, or elsewhere at distant points, is that the enforced absence from civilisation and social life makes them inclined for reckless living when they have accumulated a sum of money. The tavern-keepers of the nearest town or station reap all the benefit, and there are numbers of men who, for ten or eleven months of the year perfectly steady and sober, periodically give themselves up to drink until their earnings are melted, it is called “knocking down” one’s cheque, and it is a common practice for them to hand such cheque to the publican, who lets them run on recklessly in drink and food until he considers it exhausted. A good story is told by Mr. Trollope of a man who had been accustomed to do this at regular intervals, but who on one occasion, having some loose silver, “planted” his cheque in an old tree, and proceeded to the usual haunt, where he set to work deliberately to get drunk. The publican showed evident doubt as to the propriety of supplying him freely. Why had not the man brought his cheque as usual? The tavern-keeper at last put him to bed; but the man, though drugged and stupefied, had his wits about him sufficiently to observe and remember that the host had examined his clothes, his hat, and boots, for the lacking cheque. Next morning he was ignominiously expelled from the house, but he didn’t mind: the cheque was found by him safely in the tree by the roadside, and he surprised his master by returning to the station a week or two before he was expected richer than he had ever come home before. Let us hope he was cured of that form of folly for ever.
The gold yield of Australia for the twenty years between 1851 and 1871 was 50,750,000 ozs. But gold-fields die out sooner than most mines, and Australia has a more permanent source of prosperity for the future in its coal and iron-fields, which are in close proximity to each other. The coal is already worked to great profit, and is one of the principal steamship fuels of the Pacific.
The steamship route homeward from Australia is that by the Indian Ocean (usually touching at Ceylon), then reaching the Mediterranean viâ the Red Sea and Suez Canal. These points of interest have already been fully described in early chapters of this work.