Past experience, both in mining or land speculation, made me chary to enter into either. Still, it is not in my nature to remain idle, more particularly in the midst of such a lively community as that of Victoria.
Ere I had been in it three months I began to feel that bank interest was barely enough to get for my money. The marvellous and rapid fortunes made on the Stock or Land Exchange gradually thawed the frigidity of my first impressions.
I need not add that at almost every step I was button-holed by brokers, offering investments. Land increased in value from day to day. A block bought for £100 changed hands within a week for £1000, bought up by a syndicate, floated into a Company for £10,000, and cut up in allotments. Thus some property realised fabulous returns.
Still, I thought all this would come to an end. I could not be persuaded to venture in such risky speculations. I thought that city property would be best. I always had more faith in stone or brick. Consequently, I spotted a block of land in the very centre of Melbourne; half an acre at the corner of Exhibition Street and Little Bourke Street, a piece of land which for the last thirty years had a most wretched name—one that no one would tackle at any price, and which accordingly the owner, who derived no revenue from it, would sell or lease cheap.
Unfortunately, he declined selling, but after long haggling, I secured the place for thirty years at a very low rental. During the interval I had matured my plans, so that the day the lease was executed I commenced the erection of what is now known as the Alexandra Buildings (a block of thirteen three-storied houses with shop fronts), and in the centre of the block what is, and will be for a long time to come, the largest theatre in the Southern Hemisphere.
Alas! I had not reckoned on the many difficulties I would have to encounter. First of all, the City Surveyors, then the Board of Health, and ultimately the Local Option.
Buildings which I had reckoned would not exceed £25,000, owing to the rigidity of the bye-laws of the City Surveyors and Health Board, involved me in an outlay of £40,000, and after going to an enormous outlay for hotel, bars, and cafés, in connection with the theatre, the licence could not be obtained.
Coupled with such disastrous impediments, I had the ill-luck to open the theatre under very bad management, which almost gave the death-blow to my venture. I had hardly been back eighteen months in my Australian home when I had every reason to call it my “dear” home. Trouble, worry, and loss of money preyed on my mind to such an extent that my health failed me altogether. Struggle as I would, everything seemed to go crooked. Doctors and friends vainly tried their skill or kind words to rouse my fallen spirits and energies. I would have thrown up the sponge, when the Government initiated the Centennial Exhibition.
The word “Exhibition” sounded in my ears like the blast of the clarion to the war-horse. If an exhibition was on the tapis I must be in it. Naturally I endeavoured to have a “finger in the pie;” made application to the Victorian Government; laid a scheme before the Cabinet, showing how the great show could be carried on profitably. This, however, “did not suit.” The Exhibition, undertaken by a Ministry flushed with money, was made a political handle to secure popularity. Money was no object: popularity—favouritism—were. My prediction that instead of a surplus of at least £100,000, it would end in a deficit of a quarter of a million, has since been realised, almost to a fraction.
New South Wales needed a representative. My much esteemed and old friend, Mr. Burdett Smith, M.P., the Executive Commissioner for the mother colony, recommended my appointment, so that once again I put on the harness. The excitement of Exhibition work proved the best and only cure to my ailments. As my old friend and medical adviser, Dr. B. Fyffe, had often told my people, “Only take the Alexandra off his mind and he will soon be cured.” In the turmoil and hard work attending the Exhibition I forgot the Alexandra and my other troubles. The wheel of Fortune once more turned in the right direction. After many vicissitudes and many trials, Simonsen’s opera, Carrie Swain, and last of all, my old friend, Alfred Dampier, helped to put my theatre in the right groove. The two former lessees had a short but profitable season, whilst Dampier, with great wisdom, adopted a system of popular prices, coupled with excellence of acting and mise-en-scene, which has given him unabated success for the last two years—a success which there is every probability he will maintain to the end of his lease, which we have gladly extended for a long period.