Round Ballarat the country is rather prettier than is the average of Australian scenery. All the way from Geelong, situated rather charmingly at the bend of a pretty bay, which is bound to become a fashionable watering-place, the land rises till you nearly reach Ballarat, when you go down a slight incline. The soil is good, and there are many twenty-acre farms, and the heat is not so great as in Melbourne. Out of the town there is a fine sheet of water, devoted to boating and black swans, and there is a botanical garden, in which I own I was somewhat disappointed, though everyone (perhaps it was for that very reason) said it was one of the places which I was bound to go and see, and which would delight me greatly. The Ballarat people, I was told in the train, were hospitable. It may be so, but I can bear no testimony on that point, as none of their hospitality was extended to me. My only experience of them was at an ordinary at the principal hotel, and there I was not particularly gratified, as conversation seemed quite out of the question. Now I come to think of it, that must have been through fear of the head waiter, who certainly was a very superior personage indeed, and was much better got up than any of his guests. Be this as it may, it was with little regret that I got on board the train and left the Golden City, with its green foliage, its red-brick houses, its white town-hall, its awful dust, its broad streets, and its rough pedestrians, far behind.
Anthony Trollope tells us that no one who has ever paid Sydney a visit will leave it without a tear or a regret. I confess I had no such feeling as I got into a hansom and drove down to the Liguria—a ship dear to many—which is to be known no more to Australian friends, as her destination henceforth is to be South America; but she took me safely to Melbourne, where I landed, to be more than ever charmed with the busy city and its people, a city and a people who believe themselves destined to the leadership of these sunny lands. Sydney is too old, they say, handsome as it is in parts, and Brisbane is too hot, to be in the running. As long as Sydney is faithful to Free Trade she will be a great emporium of commerce; but the democracy rule in Sydney, and the democracy all the world over have lost faith in Free Trade. Sydney has little to boast of besides its unrivalled harbour, lined with health resorts where wealth, and beauty, and fashion congregate, and where all the residences are of the most captivating character—white villas with verandas, rising out of green lawns shaded by tropical plants, and gorgeous with tropical flowers, in bloom, at any rate, the greater part of the year—where the blue waves ever murmur underneath. I must own, too, that some of the shops in Sydney are far finer than any to be seen in Melbourne; and the post-office at Sydney is, perhaps, the noblest building of the kind to be seen anywhere. A similar remark applies to the Town Hall, completed after I left. But Melbourne has, in Collins Street, a unique and stately thoroughfare, such as can be seen nowhere else—a street as gay of an afternoon as Regent Street, and as difficult in crossing, owing to its swarming traffic, almost as Cheapside. Sydney has no such show; and the Melbourne ladies tell me that it is to that place that the Sydney drapers come for the latest fashions. It seems to me that there is a great deal more drinking in Sydney than in Melbourne. Almost every other house you come to is an hotel, and it has its bar, where, under the presidency of two or three rather showy damsels, the drinking goes on all day. In both cities there is apparently more drinking than in London, except in the poorest quarters, affected by the beggar, and the pauper, and the tramp, by depraved men, and women infinitely worse. But for Melbourne and Sydney a defence may be made which is not available at home. The population in both cities is of a very migratory character; a large number of men spend their time in passing from one colony to another, and in this way they make many acquaintances, and when they meet they have a drink. In Sydney the fashion is to hand you the bottle and let you help yourself. The landlord finds it to his interest to do so. The customer takes less than the landlord would give him for his sixpence. The customer knows that he has the day before him, and that it will not do to get exhilarated too soon. There are drinks awaiting him with other friends at other bars and at other hours, and so he takes as little whisky as he can in his glass. Superficially, Melbourne seems the more moral town, but so far as my experience goes all cities are much alike. Chicago proudly boasts that it is the wickedest city in the world, but I much doubt its claim to that bad pre-eminence. I only met one shady character there, and he was an Englishman. That there are rogues in Melbourne I readily admit. As I was passing up Bourke Street looking for a place to rest in till my friend’s carriage, with his lady, was to call for me to take me to his handsome suburban residence, a well-dressed man accosted me with an inquiry as to how I had been enjoying myself since I landed from the Liguria. Having replied, I said I was going to have a cup of coffee and a cigar in a handsome café just opposite where we were standing. After I had been seated a few minutes he made his appearance to tell me that he was staying at the Melbourne Club, membership of which is the sign and seal of the most extreme respectability; that he was going to England in the Austral (I had told him I was going in that ship to Adelaide) in consequence of the delicacy of his wife’s health, and that he wished me to come along with him to introduce me to a few friends. I went with him, and in a few minutes was seated in the bar-room of an adjoining hotel, refusing every offer to have a drink. A man came up to my friend with a bill, requesting payment, as he was hard up. Accordingly my gentleman put his hand in his pocket, pulling out three or four sovereigns. Alas! he was a sovereign short. Could I lend him one? Unfortunately I could not. ‘Could I lend him half-a-sovereign?’ I again deplored my inability to do anything of the kind.
‘It does not matter,’ he said. Turning to the man he continued, ‘Come over the way and I will get the money,’ and away he went, telling me he would be back in five minutes. I waited ten, but it is needless to say I saw him no more. Leaving the pub, I met a policeman.
‘Have you any rogues about here?’ I asked.
‘I should say we had,’ replied the policeman, with a grin; ‘why, last month we had one out here from New York. He said he thought he knew the ropes pretty well, but he felt like a child out here.’
If this policeman’s tale be true, Melbourne must indeed be marvellous in more senses than one. To my mind the most marvellous part of Melbourne is to be found in its suburbs. Melbourne is fortunate in this respect. All along the seashore the coast is lined with handsome residences, quite equal in every respect to those of our London merchant princes. At one of them, where I spent a couple of happy days, I found residing in wealth and comfort a son of the well-known and still-lamented, in Nonconformist and Liberal circles, Mr. Grimwade, of Ipswich. He calls his place Harleston, the name of the little sleepy East Anglian town in which he was born. The colonists love the old English names. In the aristocratic quarter known as Toorak I spent a pleasant day with Mr. Murray Smith, the one man whom all the Victorians regard as the most refined of gentlemen, and most able of politicians. In London, as some of my readers may remember, Mr. Murray Smith, as Agent General, was quite as much a social success as he is at home. He calls his place Repton, in memory of his old Derbyshire Grammar School. I discovered the Rev. J. J. Halley, the energetic secretary of the Australian Congregational Union, living in a pretty villa at Camberwell, which he ventures to call Irwell, a stream to most Englishmen who have ever been at Manchester, somewhat dark and malodorous. It is thus the colonists keep up the tender memories of their far-off native land. As in New South Wales, so in Victoria, a good deal of attention is turned to politics. In the latter colony the Parliament lasts three years, and a general election was at hand; but the worst of it is, that while the people are in many quarters determined to have a fight, in reality there is nothing to fight about. I attended what was advertised as a monster meeting of the Liberal party, but the attendance did not consist of more than 400, and the speaking was, at any rate, not up to the English level, though one speaker did somehow manage to close with an irrelevant peroration, in which he invoked the spirit which in England had carried Catholic emancipation, had removed the Test and Corporation Acts, and was prepared to do justice to Ireland—and this was in connection with a meeting called to support the Liberal platform, the main article of which is protection to native industry and a stock tax for the farmer, who complains bitterly of the way in which New South Wales and Queensland beef is poured into the home market. It seems strange to read of a candidate appealing to the electors for support as ‘A Liberal and Protectionist.’ But the fact is, in Victoria everyone is a Protectionist, and on the vital issues of the past the community is now at one. A coalition Government is in office, and it is hard to see how any other can exist. A nationalist party is now in course of formation, which has for its object Australian unity, to be accomplished by free inter-colonial interchange. In the meanwhile the Liberals seem to have only, to fight about the constitution of the present Government—their chief complaint being that the Liberal element in it is not sufficiently strong.
Zeno tells us that a man has two ears and one mouth, that he may say little and hear much. Australian M.P.’s are quite of a different way of thinking. Of the late Victorian Parliament, a critic in The Melbourne Argus writes that during its existence ‘the worst elements in the Assembly have had sway instead of the better.’ Of all methods of blocking business, none is so plausible as that of moving the adjournment of the House. In nine cases out of ten, a review says, such motions result in a mere waste of time. Another nuisance is the habit of speaking often and long, as every member is entitled to speak once on every question before the House, and as often as he likes when in Committee. This kind of obstruction is raised into an art, and is called ‘stonewalling.’ As to indecent language, I find one M.P. calling a judge of a neighbouring colony ‘a ruffian and a scoundrel, and a bloody-minded man,’ referring to the Chief Secretary as being ‘as ignorant as a pig on the subject,’ and, in short, acting as much like an Irish patriotic M.P. at home as was possible. Again, I found a gentleman who was afflicted with heart disease, and whom nothing but a sense of duty kept at his post, is referred to by an honourable M.P. as follows: ‘But nobody takes any notice of a dying man. He is going to be wafted aloft.’ Again, a Mr. Jones, referring to a Mr. Reid, said: ‘The Hon. Member for Fitzroy with his cavernous mouth could laugh louder than the rest of the Assembly. That cavernous mouth of his was the only thing the hon. member had to connect him with other people. He had a mouth to laugh at a joke, but no brains to originate one.’ Again, another M.P. spoke of Sir Graham Berry as ‘that miserable old counterfeit, that white-haired political rogue, that bandy-legged old schemer.’ After this it is not surprising to read how the same orator, in the course of a scene which occurred on his being called to order, spoke of a fellow M.P. as one who had tried to diddle a barmaid out of threepence! It really seems as if Parliamentary institutions had become effete. In New South Wales the Dibbs Ministry has already been hurled from office. I have seen alike its rise and fall, and it is evident that at Sydney, as in Melbourne, the obstructionists will be strong enough, not to do any good themselves, but to interfere with anyone wishing to achieve any good for the colony whatever.
The Trades Political Platform made its appearance at Melbourne when I was there. It consists of fifteen planks, the chief of which are the maintenance and extension of protection to local industries, the extension of the same principle to the farming and grazing industry by an adequate increase in the duty on imported cereals and stock, the representation of labour on public boards and the commission of the peace, an Eight Hours Legislation Bill (in Victoria the shops are closed at an early hour by Act of Parliament), the abolition of plural voting, the introduction of a Bill to prevent criminal and pauper labour in the community—rather hard this, in a colony where the pauper desires to work, and, able-bodied as many of her paupers are, is really qualified for labour—the extension of the franchise to seamen. Women voters are favoured by the Liberals, though there is a good deal to be said on the other side of the question. As it is, the women do interfere. For instance, amongst the Melbourne candidates is a gentleman who has unfortunately acquired an undesirable reputation. The ladies have met, and resolved that he is not a fit and proper person to represent a respectable constituency. The gentleman in question sneers at the meeting as a hole-and-corner one, but I find several ministers of religion took part in it. Indeed, I think all denominations were represented with the exception of the clergy of the Church of England, who are as little inclined to co-operate with other bodies out here as they are at home. As a further indication of the political opinion forming in the Australian colonies, I note that many of the candidates for Parliamentary election are in favour of a tax on absentees, which, however, is but a small matter after all, as there is a growing tendency on the part of wealthy colonists to remain out here rather than settle in the old country. I question whether in the colonies there is much chance of the ‘One man one vote’ being carried. It finds no favour in the Second Chamber, to which here, as at home, many sober people look as the bulwark of constitutional freedom. The worst thing I know about Melbourne is its gambling. The Melbourne Daily Telegraph, writing of the last grand race—the race which the ladies make the occasion of the display of all that is novel or charming in toilettes, estimates the bets made with the bookmakers between Derby Day and Steeplechase Day as amounting to £700,000, and calculates that ‘the stakes, the cost and keep of the horses, the revenues of the five hundred racing clubs of the colony, the expenditure of its army of bookmakers, and other forms of expenditure,’ will bring the racing budget for the year up to £800,000 sterling. We in England are bad enough in this respect I admit, but there is no reason whatever why Australia should follow a bad example.
CHAPTER V.
A LITTLE ABOUT NEW SOUTH WALES.
Sunny Sydney—Public Buildings—Educational Establishments—Sanitary State—Its Climate—Bathurst—The Blue Mountains—Romish Aggression—Botany Bay—Old Days—A Wonderful Change—New South Wales Scenery.