Collins Street runs from the public offices in the east to the country railway-station in the west. The one end is given up to the fashionable doctors and the favoured dentists, handsome churches and prosperous chemists filling in the interstices. From the Town Hall corner, Collins Street is gay with carriages and with pedestrians who come to see or to shop. Farther on we enter the region of the banks, the exchange, the offices of barristers and solicitors, and the rooms of the auctioneers. Here men of business are hurrying about. The flutter about the tall building on the left tells of some mining excitement. Farther on, a bearded, sun-burned, but well-dressed group will attract attention. 'Scott's' is the squatters' hotel, and it has been selected as the place for submitting to auction those 'well-known and extensive pastoral properties entitled the "Billabong Blocks," within easy distance of market (say eight hundred miles), together with all improvements and stock.' The conversation is whether the station will bring £300,000 or not—for it is a large property; whether a better sale could have been effected in Sydney, and so on; and next day you read in your Argus that 'the biddings reached £290,000, when the lot was passed in, and was subsequently sold at a satisfactory price, withheld.' Last of all, in Collins Street come Assurance Companies' offices, the buildings of merchants, and great wool stores.
In Bourke Street, commencing again at the west, where the new Houses of Parliament stand, we have first shops, hotels, and theatres, then hotels and mews, and finally a region of hotels (now less frequent), and of offices and stores. Lonsdale Street is in a transitive condition. La Trobe Street is not recognised. Standing on the midway flat you see two hills: the western hill is commercial, the eastern hill is social. After six o'clock Flinders Street and Collins Street are deserted. In place of busy scenes of life there is gloom and solitude, while Eastern Bourke Street, where the theatres and concert halls are, is lit up and is thronged. Leisured people who can promenade in the daytime use Collins Street as their lounge; the toiling multitude, who must promenade in the evening or not at all, patronise Bourke Street. On Saturday nights the Bourke Street block is great; the footways will not accommodate the crowds.
Another Melbourne feature is the rush from the city from four to six o'clock P.M., and the inrush from eight to ten o'clock in the morning. It is enormous, but it is easily met. There is an extensive suburban railway system, the property of the Government—as all railways in Victoria are. Omnibuses and waggonettes are numerous, the latter taking the place of the London cab; and now there are gliding through the streets the successful and popular cable trams, a company having obtained a concession to put down fifty miles of these costly roadways. Let a heavy shower of rain fall at or about six P.M., however, and the rush is too great for the accommodation, and those 'too late' have to wait for return vehicles, and to bewail their misfortune.
Bird's-eye View of Central Melbourne. | Bourke Street, Melbourne, looking East. |
In public buildings Melbourne would be really great, if all that have been begun were finished. But few are. The citizens are not running up miserable flimsy structures, but are building for posterity. Final contracts have been taken for the Houses of Parliament, which are to be finished with a newly-discovered stone of a beautiful whiteness, but expensive to work. From first to last half a million of money will be spent on these halls of legislation. They will crown the eastern hill. The Law Courts, which cost nearly £300,000, are finished, and constitute a handsome pile on the western hill. St. Patrick's Cathedral, on the eastern hill, will be a marvel, and it is slowly creeping on. The Anglican Cathedral, founded by Bishop Moorhouse, is in the heart of the city, and is making more rapid progress. The Public Library is a noble institution, containing 150,000 volumes, and is open without restraint to all comers. So is a National Picture Gallery which is attached, and which contains specimens of the work of many of the best modern masters. There is a National Museum, in which the Australian fauna is admirably represented, and the Melbourne University is near at hand. This institution, beautifully situated and handsomely endowed, grants degrees which are recognised throughout the Empire, and its doors are open to male and to female students alike. Ladies have taken B.A. and M.A. degrees already, and the number of the softer sex entering is on the increase. Not a ladies' school of repute but has its matriculation class. The Town Hall, where 2,000 people can sit to listen to the organ—one of the world's great organs—is not to be passed over. The Botanic Gardens are another show spot. They are well within the civic bounds, and by visiting them you obtain a series of lovely views, and become acquainted with the flora of the Australian continent, for everything that can be coaxed to grow here has been provided by the director, Mr. Guilfoyle, with a suitable home. There is a gully for the graceful Gippsland ferns, a spot for the gorgeous Illawarra flame-tree, a guarded receptacle for the great northern nettle-bush, which is here twelve or fifteen feet in height, and which no one would presume to handle. Cycads, palms, and palm lilies represent Queensland in one division; a mass of foliage of a bright metallic green speaks of New Zealand in another. Of no place is the Melbournite more proud than of the Gardens, which Mr. Guilfoyle has only had in hand about twelve years, but which he has transformed from a waste into a Paradise.
University, Melbourne.
Melbourne has a grand system of water supply. The river Plenty, a tributary of the Yarra, is dammed twenty miles away, and the huge reservoir when full contains nearly a two years' supply. The reticulation allows of a supply of eighty gallons per head to each consumer; but in hot days the demand for baths and for the Garden are so great that this quantity is not found to be half enough, and improvements are to be effected. The Yan Yean system has cost £2,000,000, and now the Watts River is to be brought in, and as the engineers speak of £750,000 being necessary, the presumption is that £1,000,000 will be required. It is a grand spectacle to see a full head of Yan Yean turned on to a fire, say at night, when there is no strain to abate the maximum pressure. The flames are not so much put out as they are smashed out of existence. On a wooden building the jet will act like a battering-ram, sending everything flying. No engine is required in these cases; the hose is wound on a light big-wheeled reel, and the instant an alarm is given a brigade can start off at racing speed and come into action on the moment of arrival.