On making a circuit around the town of Sydney, the metropolis of the Australian colony, the extent of ground it occupies, the number of buildings completed, as well as those erecting for the increased and still increasing population, the variety and neatness of the shops, excite the surprise of a stranger, and still more of a person who revisits the town after a brief absence, at the rapid improvements that have taken place in this distant colony in so short a period of time. The humble wooden dwellings are fast giving place to neat houses and cottages constructed of brick or sandstone; but, as may be expected in all recently established towns, there is much want of symmetry in the construction of the buildings; and on perambulating the streets, specimens of several unknown orders of architecture are seen; the cottage style, with neat verandas, is one much adopted for private dwellings, and has a neatness of external appearance, with which the interior usually corresponds. Many have neat gardens attached to them, in which, during the summer season, the blooming rose, as well as the pink, the stock, and other European flowers, impart a beauty, and remind one of home; or, in lieu of these gay vegetable productions, the industrious housekeeper has caused the plot of ground to be planted with peas, beans, cabbages, and other culinary vegetables. The tree cabbage, common on the European continent, but rarely seen in England, I observed introduced in the gardens; it thrives well in the colony.
House-rent is excessively high in the colony, being one of the greatest expenses to a resident in Sydney; it varies from sixty to two hundred and fifty pounds annually. The streets being of sandstone, the constant attrition of it by vehicles, &c. produces, from its friability, much dust, which occasions, during windy days, much annoyance; from the same cause, the streets are often out of repair, and the best material for repairing them is a kind of flinty stone, brought by ships from Hobart Town as ballast.
Parrots are, perhaps, of all the feathered tribe, the most numerous in the colony; and different species are lauded for speaking, whistling, and other noisy accomplishments. No one can walk the streets of Sydney or any of the villages of the colony, or enter an inn or dwelling-house, without seeing this class of birds hung about in cages, and having his ears assailed by the screeching, babbling, and whistling noises which issue from their vocal organs: it is the street music of the colony, and “pretty polly,” “sweet polly,” are tender sounds which issue from the exterior as well as interior of every dwelling. These birds are evidently gifted with the bump of talkativeness. It was once asserted, that ladies kept the birds to converse with when alone, which served a double purpose—that of being to them both practice and amusement.
The best view of the town, shipping, and adjacent country is that seen from the “rocks,” and the prospect afforded from this elevated situation is very fine. Shops of all kinds are rapidly multiplying; and lately there have been extensive emigrations of artisans of all descriptions from every part of the united kingdom; butchers, bakers, pastrycooks, provision merchants, shoemakers, apothecaries, fancy-bread bakers, booksellers, &c. &c. are numerous, and have neat, and some even elegant shops; the press sends forth their cards and circulars, and large posting bills, printed in a neat and even superior manner, equal to any similar production in our country towns in England. Circulating libraries and literary reading rooms are now becoming numerous, for the Australians are desirous of being a reading as well as a thinking people, and are anxious to have the permission of legislating for themselves; but whilst the free and emancipist parties are each desirous of gaining an ascendancy in colonial affairs, it would certainly not be advisable to grant the boon; both have their interests at home, and the emancipists are a wealthy and powerful body; and although I am not anxious to enter into the political affairs of the colony, I would, while on this subject, merely wish to suggest the expediency, from the wealth and importance of this part of the Australian colony, to no longer use it as a penal settlement, but encourage free emigration of labourers, and send the convicts to a new colony, which might be founded at the northern portion of the extensive Australian territory; then there can be no doubt that party spirit will in some degree subside, and the colony will increase still more in prosperity, being undivided by any party feeling.
It is well known that free emigration is detested by most of the convict party, and a wealthy individual of this class once remarked, “What have the free emigrants to do here? the colony was founded for us, they have no right here;” and that individual, from his wealth, would probably be elected a member of a future House of Assembly. The emigration of wealthy settlers has been much retarded by the government order, that no grants of land are to be given, but only purchased; until that order is repealed, no great increase of settlers for agricultural purposes will take place; one grant—but one grant only—ought to be given to the emigrant on his arrival in the colony as before; and those who may be desirous of having an additional grant, may then be able to effect it by purchase; the land sold since the new order has been in operation, has been principally, if not entirely, purchased by those among the settlers who were desirous of increasing the extent of their property, and from the vicinity of the “selection” to their former grant, can afford to give a higher price for it, than the newly arrived settler, ignorant of the quality of the land, and the district in which it may be situated.
A theatre having been licensed by the governor, and lately opened by a select company of performers, I visited it one night to ascertain the actual state of the drama in the colony, as also to see the mingled society which would be brought together by such a novel place of amusement. On the night mentioned, I visited it with a party of friends; the evening’s entertainment was the “Heir at Law,” and “Bombastes Furioso.” The interior of the theatre (which was fitted up as a temporary measure, in a large room of the Royal Hotel[24]) is small, and is used only until one more complete can be erected: considering the disadvantages under which theatrical exhibitions must labour in so young a colony, the “tout ensemble” far exceeded what I had expected. The pit and boxes (for there was no gallery) might probably contain one hundred and fifty persons. To speak of the performance of Colman’s celebrated comedy, would be to say it was beneath criticism; and the actors seemed determined to “play the comedy” after a manner of their own, substituting passages of their own for those of the author, in defiance of all dramatic rules.
The greatest novelty of the evening was a young Australian actress, to whom the drama was as much a novelty as she became to us this evening; and consequently she had no medium of comparison by which her judgment could be directed. Her predominant fault was a want of feeling. In the very affecting scene, where poor Henry, long supposed to be lost, returns to his beloved and disconsolate Caroline—he was in ranting raptures, while she received him in the most hard-hearted manner that can be conceived, uttered the expressions placed by the author into her mouth as a mere matter of course; and, as the unfeeling creature evidently showed that she neither felt nor understood the sentiments uttered, it proved no affecting scene either to actors or auditors. However, “Advance Australia;” the lady and the colony, we thought, are both young. As for the rest of the corps, they too often mistook indecency for wit, and probably by so doing they pleased the majority of their audience; if so, both parties would be satisfied. The pit contained those usually seen in the galleries of the theatre at home; and squabbles, threats, and actual combats, served to amuse some, and discipline others; and the various scenes and expressions in both pit and boxes excited in our minds any thing but an idea of the sublime and beautiful. It may also be worthy of remark, as a proof of the increasing morality of the colony, that no one was stationed at the doors, as in our depraved metropolis, warning you to “take care of your pockets;” and that neither myself, or any gentlemen in company, either in our ingress or egress, had our pockets picked.
The domain and country in the immediate vicinity of Sydney was assuming (in September) a gay and brilliant aspect from the profusion of flowering shrubs and plants strewed over the arid soil; there was, however, a peculiar character in the vegetation, the foliage of the trees having a dry appearance, and being destitute of the lustre so observable in those of other countries. This want of lustre is attributed by that justly celebrated botanist, Dr. Brown, to the equal existence of cutaneous glands on both surfaces of the leaf;[25] and another peculiarity is the trees attaining a great elevation, with branches only at the summit, and shedding their bark; some of the trees being seen perfectly decorticated and appearing in a smooth new bark, whilst others have the outer bark not yet quite thrown off, but hanging in long strips from the trunk. These peculiarities, in combination with others, convey to us different ideas from those formed from the vegetation of other countries.
Among the beauties of the kingdom of Flora, which are lavished so profusely in this colony, the different species of the Banksia[26] genus (or honeysuckle, as all the species are indiscriminately termed by the colonists) would arrest the attention of the stranger, by its peculiar growth as well as remarkable flowers; the species Banksia ericifolia was most profusely in bloom, its erect tufts of orange-coloured flowers imparting to it a lively appearance. That curious and interesting tree the Xanthorrhœa,—yellow gum or grass tree of the colonists,—would attract observation from its peculiar growth, the trunk being surmounted by long grassy foliage, from the centre of which arises a long scape terminated by a cylindrical spike, either crowded with its small white flowers of sickly odour, or with dark coloured angulated capsules, containing small black seeds. The flowers of the several species secrete a honey, which exudes at first like dew-drops, and afterwards concretes into an albumen, attracting multitudes of insects, which soon deface the purity the flowers before presented. The natives readily produce fire by rubbing two pieces of the trunk of this tree together.