"Yis. Maybe y'don't know as how the other two gintlemen got sintinced and were sent out here as convicts, and both of thim now are millionaires, and my poor man is still workin' hard for his livin' in the ould counthry."
Hydrophobia is unknown in Australia. A traveller on arrival has his pet dog taken from him and the poor animal is thrust into quarantine for six months. These four millions of inhabitants, spread over the largest colony in the world, consider themselves so precious they quarantine everything and everybody but lunatics. Why not quarantine lunatics? Are they not dangerous? Did not a whole city go mad? Stark, staring, raving mad—Mad Melbourne—and yet a Maltese terrier is quarantined in the same port for six months!
QUARANTINE ISLAND.
Yet lunatics arrive and make lunacy rampant, and a whole city is left after such a visitation an asylum of melancholia—Mad Melbourne. Lunacy frequently takes the form of egotism. Peasants imagine themselves princes; Calibans believe themselves to be Adonises; beggars imagine themselves millionaires. It is a harmless vanity and hurts no one, but a mad city may ruin thousands by suddenly imagining itself a gold mine. Melbourne a few years ago imagined it suddenly became the hub of the universe. The world and his wife had but one burning desire—that was to live in Melbourne. Some lunatic started this ridiculous idea, and the boom spread like lightning. Melbourne was by this magic boom turned into an Aladdin cave. No prairie fire ever started with such suddenness, with such fury, burning up, as it leapt and galloped along, all the reasoning powers and common sense of the people. Those who cleared a space around them to avoid destruction were tongued by the fire of speculation, and before they could move away were irreparably lost. Great and small, old and young, were carried away in the blaze of speculation. The frightened reptiles and beasts running in front to escape it were, it was thought, miserable fools who had not the pluck or sense to aid in setting speculation in Melbourne on fire. A fanciful picture on paper this? True, so was the great boom of 1887 merely a fanciful picture on paper. Had it been otherwise banks would not have failed, nor would families have been ruined wholesale, nor would trade and speculation have been left charred roots and stubble on the scene of folly—Mad Melbourne.
It is difficult to say how it began—it is unnecessary to say how it ended. I am told that at the height of the boom Melbourne went frantically and absolutely mad. Poor men and women rushed about fancying that they had suddenly become millionaires. In the few hours between breakfast and lunch they had bought a piece of land for £1,000, and in a few hours had sold the same block for £10,000—on paper. They then heard that the purchaser had re-sold it for £20,000 before dinner, they bought it back for £30,000, and re-sold it over supper again for £50,000, a good day's work—on paper. Everyone did the same—all were mad. Money flowed in from the Old Country in millions, champagne flowed freely all over Melbourne in gallons, everyone was intoxicated with joy and soused themselves and their friends in champagne to wash down success. Vehicles rushed speculators through the streets, trains whisked them to the land free, luncheons free awaited all at every turn, fortunes at every step. Melbourne was mad drunk—lost!
Buildings—comfortable, sensible buildings—were pulled down and "sky scrapers" and mansions were erected in their places. Bridges, good for a hundred years to come, were pulled down and millions spent in erecting in place of the old ones others not more serviceable or of more use. Huge docks, not wanted, were built at fabulous outlays—all these buildings stand as monuments of Melbourne's Madness.
The extraordinary good spirits of the Melbournites is a healthy sign. Those who not only lost all their money invested, chagrined by their folly and left with liabilities that will cripple them for life, smile and bear their fall right cheerily.
Some of these notes made by me whilst seeing the Kangarooists at home "in a hurry" may not be received in the proper spirit. All new countries are sensitive, and resent truths coming from a stranger, while at the same time their home critics, though far more severe, are tolerated and unchallenged. Now I met one of the most prominent Australians, a man of the world, a leading legal light and a Member of Parliament. It was in the Legislative Chamber I had a conversation with him on matters Australian. He led off: "This bit of a place here (Sydney), with a population less than that of a second-class provincial town in England, has in it people with more cheek than would be found in the capitals of London, Paris and St. Petersburg rolled into one. Why, these people have some ingrained vain idea that everything and everybody connected with them are the most important things and the most important people in the world. Small-minded people in a large country—that is what they are—a country the size of Europe with a population less than that of London with the intellect of a country village. That is Australia."