If you feel disposed to have a look at Sydney, respected reader, do not go there when an election is on. Last night, till eleven, the street in which I have found a temporary residence was filled with an excited crowd, hooting and cheering, as from time to time great placards were posted up as to the result of the day’s elections. Wherever I have been, the talk has been of Free Trade or Protection. The farmers want Protection; the towns are averse to it. High railway charges deprive the farmer of his Sydney market, and he is undersold by the foreigner. The Free Traders are obliged to hedge to satisfy the workman. He can’t stand the Chinese, and more than one Free Trade candidate has had to promise to vote for prohibitory duties on articles of Chinese manufacture. Another one declared that he was against Protection, but would be quite ready to tax foreign goods for fiscal purposes—that is, for protection for the New South Wales manufacturer. The Free Traders have won, but they will go to Parliament with diminished force. There is a good deal of nonsense talked here as well as in England. One M.P. complained recently ‘about the absence of his name appearing in the Sydney morning papers.’ Said another, as he banged the balcony bar with his fist, ‘Don’t you think, gentlemen, that there was some grave misapprehension of the public money during the time that the Parkes party was in power.’ Another had the hardihood to venture on the use of a French term, as he dilated on what he called ‘the scandalis doin’s of the Parkes rejamey.’ But a certain candidate who shall be nameless heads the list (or, as they say out here, the ‘bunch’) of blundering orators when he remarked that ‘If the days of miracles were as common as in the days of Ananias, they might expect to see three of the finest pillars of salt that ever were on view.’ One lesson we may learn—that is, the advantage of having the elections all over on the same day, and that is how it is done in Victoria. Here the struggle continues for three weeks, and a good deal of bad feeling is engendered in consequence.
In spite of the dust and the heat—to change my theme—there is much to admire in Sydney, and I have had a fine look at the town from the lofty tower of the new Post Office, a tower some 260 feet above the level of George Street, where it stands. Afar off are the Heads, into which the great steamers come and go. At your feet lies the city, with its fine public buildings, all of yellow sandstone; its narrow streets, its busy crowds. Far as the eye can reach in every direction spread pretty suburbs, and there the foliage begins to mingle with the gray roofs and white chimneys of the suburban houses, and you realize the fact how great is the population outside the city itself. The harbour is a thing of beauty and a joy for ever; how Cook could have missed it seems a mystery. Over that harbour the fine river steamers—of American fashion, far superior to anything we have on the Thames—ferry backwards and forwards all day long. On a Saturday it is alive with yachts—little cockle-shells, with two great sails, that soon upset. I saw one capsize in a sudden squall as I was crossing to Manly Beach—the Brighton of Sydney, as they call it here, but it is no more like our Brighton than a rustic maiden resembles a society beauty. All along the harbour are fairy villas, green foliage, miniature bays, rivers, and all that can give life and warmth to the landscape in the shape of holiday-makers. That harbour, with its Botanical Gardens on one side, alone would compensate for a good deal, and reconcile one even to the crowds of Sydney who fill up the streets at night and prevent all enjoyment. Sunday is quite a relief. It is a day of rest indeed, far more so than in England. In the morning, instead of going to the noble cathedral, I turned into the Congregational Church in Pitt Street, but the minister was away, and so I fancy were his people, as the place was but half full; but I am told on a Sunday night there is a very fine congregation. Four or five hundred young men were met in the fine building known as the Y.M.C.A., where they listened with much interest to the address delivered by the Secretary, Mr. Walker, and at a temperance hall near there was a service fairly attended; while close by, the New Church were meeting for public worship. In the evening there was a good deal of open-air preaching. In one quarter I heard so much from a young man about the ‘’oly hangels’ that I was compelled to retreat. Christian effort is not out of place anywhere in Australia, and apparently in Sydney least of all. The churches have quite as much to contend against there as at home. Crime and pauperism and vice, strange as it may seem, are quite as plentiful in this land of gold and milk and honey as at home. Alas! you may change the climate, but the man remains the same.
One of the blots of Sydney is the street tramcar, drawn by a snorting engine, which makes night and day hideous. As a nuisance and a means of getting rid of the surplus population it seems an admirable contrivance. The cabs are not bad, and the drivers quite as civil as those at home, which, however, is not saying much; but the omnibuses are very old and shaky, and at times the noise they make is so great that conversation is quite out of the question. The Chinese are everywhere, and when they are driven away it is hard to see how the townspeople will get their fruit or their vegetables—as the Anglo-Saxons, whether native or Australian, seem to hold gardening in contempt, whereas the heathen Chinee will get hold of a bit of waste land which no one would ever think of tilling, and straightway it rejoices and blossoms as the rose. Many of them are tradesmen, and have shops in the best streets in the place. For cabinet-making of all kinds they have quite a talent, but they have few friends, although, as a tradesman in Sydney remarked to me, ‘They are a good deal better than the people who find fault with them.’
Sydney, like Melbourne and Adelaide, rejoices in a university based on the model of University College, London, and established by the State in 1850. Its buildings are magnificent, and a portion of them are set apart for the School of Medicine attached. The prospects of the university are excellent, and it cannot fail to exert a most beneficial influence on the future of Australia. The Australian Museum, which is the oldest institution of the kind in Australia, occupies a conspicuous site in Sydney, facing one of the principal parks; it is open on Sundays. One of the most popular institutions of the town is the Free Public Library, which, in 1877, had a lending branch attached to it to meet the wants of country residents. The National Art Gallery, established in 1880, is also open on Sundays. It contains an excellent collection of paintings and statuary, comprising some of the most famous works of the best modern artists of the old world, and includes several very valuable gifts from private persons. The extent of streets and lanes within the boundaries of the city is 105 miles, and they are mostly in good order, many of them being laid with wood blocks. Its new Town Hall, opened since I left, is the finest on the continent. The great difficulty in Sydney, and all over New South Wales, seems to be house accommodation. The poor have a hard time of it as regards sleeping apartments, and one does not envy the occupiers of the little corrugated iron-roofed shanties in which, as a rule, the workman hides his diminished head. In all our great towns the artisans have better homes than they have in Sydney and the other Australian towns. Then there is the drought to make everything in the shape of agricultural produce or garden stuff dear, with the exception of meat, which is about half the price that it is at home. Eggs are scarce, milk is fourpence a quart, and, as far as I can learn, other provisions are very little cheaper than in London. In sanitary arrangements the colonies are far behind the old country. In his retiring address, the President of the Victorian Branch of the Medical Association, Dr. Rowan, denounces the ‘infamous’ acts committed by land syndicates, who, in laying out their townships, acted as if they considered drainage a prejudice, sunlight a delusion, and ventilation a weakness to be treated with derision. If ever, said he, a city rendered itself liable to be plague-stricken, it was Melbourne. I don’t know whether a similar remark applies to Sydney, but I do know that there the rate of infant mortality is alarmingly high. In Australia, as in the old country, they have not yet learned what to do with their sewage. In Sydney they laid out a million of money, and then discovered that they had simply poured all their filth into the harbour; but Sydney has now seen the error of its ways, and at enormous expense constructed a tunnel many miles long to take the sewage right away to the sea. At Melbourne the smell from the Yarra river is overpowering. In Adelaide they have solved the difficulty, and have a sewage farm that pays well; but Adelaide is a small place when compared with Sydney or Melbourne. A good deal remains to be done if the health of the great colonial towns is to be preserved. Equally important is the water question. What is wanted are tanks that shall conserve the rainwater when it falls. I have ridden miles and miles and seen great rivers nothing but beds of sand, and creeks, where the winter torrents flow, nothing but great fissures in the parched plains, in which the cattle hide themselves from the blazing sun. New South Wales can never prosper till it has a proper water supply. To provide this should be the first duty of the Government. I suppose it is because people make their money quickly that the Government grant so many holidays. It is a great nuisance this to merchants and traders. You rush off to the bank, and find it shut up, and on the door a notice to the effect that it is Bank-holiday. The mass of the people work on all the same. A Bank-holiday in no way concerns them, and consequently a Bank-holiday here has little likeness to the similar function at home—when all our big cities empty their living crowds to be a wonder and a terror to all the country round. The public offices are always being closed on some pretence or another. Sometimes it is an agricultural show, sometimes it is a race; any excuse does. And the bankers’ clerks, as regards hours, are much better off than their brethren at home; in all parts of Australia the banks are closed at three.
It is a fair land, this new Australian continent, and well worthy to be inhabited by the energetic Anglo-Saxon race. The whole mountain system of New South Wales lies below the limit of perpetual snow. The grandeur of the scenery is not to be compared with that of the Alps or the Rocky Mountains. On the contrary, from the plains, the mountains look rather insignificant; but once on them, and looking into the gorges below, clothed with verdure, or on the broad plains far beyond, you are struck with the magnificent scale on which Nature has worked in these solitudes. Over all is a mantle of blue haze, which makes the whole effect most striking, and has given to the range of hills visible from Sydney the appropriate name of the Blue Mountains. However, there is nothing equalling the view you get as you enter Sydney through Port Jackson. It is needless to say a word of Sydney harbour. It holds the first place amongst the harbours of the world for convenience of entrance, depth of water, and natural shipping facilities. The area of water surface of the harbour proper is 15 square miles, and the shore line is reckoned to extend 165 miles. Along it are the homes of many of the well-to-do of Sydney, which is the metropolis of New South Wales, and the mother city of the Australians. The city and its suburbs occupy 100 square miles, and accommodate about 350,000 people. I am agreeably disappointed with Sydney. Its shops and public buildings and hotels are handsomer, and its streets broader, than I had anticipated. I was frightened, I own, by what Mr. Froude has written about its mosquitoes. Perhaps mosquitoes do not like me; I am not sorry. Coming to Sydney by sea you feel, on the whole, that Eden cannot be far off.
Nor is the climate so bad as some people fancy. In Naples, where so many English go, the summer is warmer and the winter much colder than at Sydney. The famed resorts on the Mediterranean seaboard, it is now confessed, bear no comparison with the Pacific slope of New South Wales, either for natural salubrity or the comparative mildness of the summer and winter; while the epidemics and pestilences which have devastated the regions of ancient civilization have never made their appearance on Australian shores. The Hawkesbury formation over which the city of Sydney is built provides it with an inexhaustive supply of sandstone of the highest quality for building purposes. The beauty of Sydney street architecture owes much to it, as it is a material admirably adapted for architectural effect, being of a pleasant colour, fine grain, and easily worked.
Sydney is not only the metropolis, but the chief shipping port of the colony, its trade being larger than that of any city in the southern hemisphere. All the necessary tools and appliances for the repairing of ships are found in dockyards. The new graving dock, now being completed by the Government, will be the largest single dock in the world, and capable of receiving vessels drawing 32 feet of water. For natural facilities for shipping Sydney stands unrivalled. The water deepens abruptly from the shores, so that the largest vessels may be berthed alongside the wharves and quays. The Sydneyites love their harbour, and well may they do so, for none fairer is to be found under the sun. ‘What do you think of our harbour?’ is the first question asked a stranger. A tale is told of the captain of an English man-of-war which was at anchor here, that he was so tired of the question being constantly put that he had a blackboard hung over the side of his ship, on which he had chalked up, with a view to save trouble and prevent further inquiries: ‘We admire your harbour very much.’
It is a curious fact how little the cry of the ‘three acres and a cow’ seems to affect the people. They will flock to large towns. In England they all go to London. It is the same in America. Land is to be had in abundance, but, nevertheless, the town offers greater inducements than the country. In New South Wales, as in Victoria, this is everywhere the case. The increase of the population of Sydney during the seventeen years which closed with 1887 has been 67 per cent., and that of the suburbs 280 per cent., while that of the country districts amounted to 90 per cent. As usual in a dense city crowd, there are a good many black sheep. A leading police official stated recently that he believed fully 70 per cent. of the inhabitants of the city were directly or indirectly affected by the gambling clubs that obtained amongst them. Public-houses, tobacconists’ shops, and clubs were in a vast number of cases but gambling houses in disguise. In Sydney there is consequently a good deal of poverty, and last winter relief works were established for the benefit of some three thousand unemployed; yet the skilled artisan gets good wages, and as I write the plasterers are out on strike for an advance of 1s. per day as wages, the present rate being 10s.—not bad when one remembers Sydney enjoys free-trade prices, and that there is no protracted winter to interfere with building operations. These unemployed had as rations ten pounds of flour, ten pounds of meat, two pounds of sugar and a quarter of a pound of tea, with a minimum wage of 3s. per day, and that day, it must be remembered, is but eight hours’ work. The result of this kindness was that Sydney, as long as the work lasted, was filled with idle loafers and vagabonds from all the country round. Charity seems to do a deal of mischief abroad as well as at home.
Of the original inhabitants of the country you see few traces, either in New South Wales or in Victoria. It is in Queensland and South Australia that they most abound. They have been badly treated by the whites, and in many cases they took a horrible revenge. They now give little trouble, and work peacefully for their former enemies. Amongst their good qualities are a love of religious mystery, a stoical contempt for pain, and a deep reverence for their departed friends and ancestors. The only unpleasant characteristic of the present inhabitants of New South Wales is the broad line of demarcation between Churchmen and Dissenters. Often the Church of England man in the colonies looks upon all Dissenters with aversion. The other day I heard of a little girl who was forbidden to play with the intelligent and pretty daughter of a wealthy colonist on the plea that she was a Dissenter, and consequently not a fitting associate for the daughter of a Church of England lady. Let me give another illustration. I have just heard of a clergyman who told a mother that it would be better to have her child baptized by a Roman priest than by a Dissenting minister!
I am staying in a gentleman’s house. No sooner had the Orizaba dropped anchor than it was boarded by a gentleman, who kindly took me off, and away to the railway station, and personally conducted me over the Blue Mountains by the celebrated Zigzag Railway, which deserves all that can be said in its favour. It is a wonderful achievement in the way of engineering, as it climbs the Blue Mountains, that favourite health resort of Sydney, on one side, and descends on the other. In one place you catch sight of the track three times; you see the line you have left, you see that on which you travel, and you see, lower down, that on which, in another moment, you will be travelling. It is wonderful, but not quite up to the trip over the Alleghanies, and I enjoyed it, though the heat was great, and the rocks and valleys seemed as much burnt up as those of Aden itself.