My Life in Many States and in Foreign Lands, Dictated in My Seventy-Fourth Year

by George Francis Train

With a warehouse at each end of the line, with all the business credit that I could wish, and with the best connections in the world, we were prepared to do a big business in Melbourne. How far we succeeded may be inferred from the fact that my commissions the first year amounted to $95,000.

Melbourne was a small but promising city. It had some 20,000 population at the time of the gold-fever, and had grown tremendously in the last two or three years, so that, in '54, it must have had something like 30,000 or 40,000 inhabitants. It was, of course, a frontier town, crude and raw, with few of the advantages of civilization. The people were too busy with their search for gold and profits to think much of the conveniences or luxuries of life. The only good hotel, for instance, was the Squatters' Hotel, at Port Philip. There was not even a merchants' exchange, although one was greatly needed. The merchants had simply never heard of such a thing. I arranged with Salmi Morse, who afterward tried to introduce the Passion Play in this country, to assist him in putting up a building that could be used for a hotel, theater, and mercantile exchange. The hotel was the Criterion, and we had a hall in the building for the exchange. The latter was the means of bringing together ship captains, merchants, agents, and business men generally, and a great stimulus was given to business.

I was able to introduce into Australia a great many articles and ideas from America. I brought over from Boston a lot of "Concord" wagons, of the same type as the one that "Ben" Holliday drove across the continent, and I told Freeman Cobb, who was then with Adams & Co., that I wanted him to start a line of coaches between Melbourne and the gold-mines, a distance of about sixty miles. I advanced the money for the enterprise, and a line was established, the first in Australia, to Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo, and Castle Maine. These were the first coaches seen in that continent. The coaches cost in Australia $3,000 apiece.

I had a chaise brought from Boston for my own use. It was so light in comparison with the great, heavy, lumbering vehicles that were in use in all English countries, that the people there said it would break down immediately. They had not heard of Holmes's "Wonderful One-horse Shay that ran a hundred years to a day," and did not, of course, know the toughness of all "Yankee" things. It didn't break down, and its lightness and general serviceableness made it a big advertisement of American goods. People urged me to import a great many vehicles from America. Every ship brought out wagons of the Concord make, chaises, and vehicles of all sorts. Our carriages and buggies attracted much attention. They were the first vehicles of the sort that had ever been seen in the country. I sold these at a great profit.

A great disappointment and loss occurred, however, through the carelessness of the American shippers, on one occasion. They had sent a cargo of carriages, and I was certain of a large profit on the shipment. What was my surprise and horror, on the arrival of the cargo, to discover that the stupid shippers had sent only the tops of the carriages! The bodies of the vehicles had actually been shipped to San Francisco!

A thing that greatly surprised me, in a land of Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Irishmen, was that there were no sports in Australia. It seems more strange now, after Kipling's fierce denunciation of the "padded fools at the wickets and the muddied oafs at the goal." As I had always been fond of outdoor sport, I at once introduced bowling and ten-pins, opened an alley and organized a club which was composed of Australian bankers—Manager Blackwood of the Union Bank, MacArthur of the Bank of Australia, Badcock of the Bank of New South Wales, Bramhall of the London Chartered Bank, O'Shaughnessy of the Bank of Australasia, and Mathieson of the Bank of Victoria. I mention these names here merely for convenience, and to bring together some of the men with whom I was associated in social and in business life in Melbourne. They represented some $200,000,000 of capital. MacArthur had a beautiful bungalow four miles out of Melbourne, where he invited me to shoot.

I found living at a hotel very dreary and very inconvenient, and decided to have a home of my own. So I got a two-story house at Collingwood, near the residence of Governor Latrobe, just out of the city. Here I accommodated my clerks, also. I took the stewardess, Undine, and the steward from one of our ships, and was able to set up quite an establishment. The United States consul, J. M. Tarleton, and his wife, lived with us for a time.

After I had been in Melbourne nearly a year I was guilty of a small piece of patriotism that has ever since seemed very amusing to me. I had been reared in the belief that every American-born boy has a chance to become President of the United States. I had also the idea that a child born out of the United States was not, in this sense, American-born. My wife expected to give birth to a child in a few months, and, like most parents, we fully expected it would be a son. So what should I do, in order not to rob my son of the chance of becoming President of his country, but send the mother across the seas to Boston, that he might be born on the soil of the United States! It was not until some little time after this that I learned that nationality follows the parents, and that Presidents may be born anywhere, if they are careful in the matter of their parents. The expected boy was a girl—if I may be pardoned an Irish bull. This was my daughter Sue, who could never be President, unless the Woman's Suffrage movement moves along very much faster than it has up to this time.

I have not mentioned my partner in the Australian venture, since I said that he and our clerks sailed away from Boston for Melbourne on the Plymouth Rock—a curious reversal of history, for the West was going to exploit the East, and it was singular that a vessel with the historic name of Plymouth Rock should have been chosen to bear this new Argonautic expedition into the South Seas. Captain Caldwell, as I have said, was an elderly man, sober and conservative. He had been a sea-captain for many years, and was a man of considerable experience. It was the expectation of the Boston shippers that his conservatism would serve as a check upon my rashness and venturesomeness.

Captain Caldwell, however, did not like Australia, but his presence did not prevent my plunging into whatever speculation or enterprise seemed inviting. The country was full of chances, and I should have been stupid, indeed, not to have availed myself of them as far as possible. But the rough life did not suit Captain Caldwell, although he was accustomed to roughing it at sea; and he wanted to return to America. So I consented to his return. He went in the same ship with my wife, the Red Jacket, which, by the way, was then to make one of the record-breaking voyages of the world. Although he had been in Melbourne only a few months, I gave him $7,500, which was the share belonging to him of the estimated profit in our business.