‘Will it be much of a place?’ echoed Rockley in a half-amused, meditative way. ‘I am inclined to think it will. Let us ask this gentleman. How do you do, Mr. Fawkner?’ he said, shaking hands with a brisk, energetic personage, who came bustling along the river-bank. ‘Fine weather. Thriving settlement this of yours. My friend is doubting whether it will ever come to much. Thinks it too far from Sydney.’
‘What!’ said the little man, who, dressed in corduroy trousers, with a buff waistcoat and long-skirted coat, looked like an Australian edition of Cobbett. ‘Will it prosper? Why, sir, it will be the metropolis of the South—the London of this New Britain, sir! Nothing can stay its progress. Tasmania, where I came from, possesses a glorious climate and fine soil, but no extent, sir, no scope. New South Wales has fine soil, boundless territory, but eccentric climate. In Port Phillip, sir, below 35 south latitude, you have climate, soil, and extent of territory combined.’
Here the little man struck his stick into the damp, black soil with such energy that he could hardly pull it out again.
‘I agree with you,’ said Rockley good-humouredly, smiling at Fawkner’s vehemence as if he, personally, were the most imperturbable of men. ‘But you won’t get the Sydney officials to do much for you for years to come. Five hundred miles is a long way from the seat of Government.’
‘Cut the painter, sir, if they neglect us,’ said the pioneer democrat. ‘We shall soon be big enough to govern ourselves. Seen the first number of the Port Phillip Patriot? Here it is—printed with my own hands yesterday.’
Mr. Fawkner put his hand into a pocket of the long-skirted coat, and produced a very small, neatly printed broadsheet, in which the editorials and local news struggled amid a crowd of advertisements of auctions, notices of land sales, and other financial assignations.
‘And now, gentlemen, I must bid you good-bye,’ said the little man. ‘Canvassing for subscriptions to build a wooden bridge across the Yarra. Cost a lot of money, but must be done—must be done. Large trade with South Yarra—lime, timber, firewood—shortest way to the bay too.’
‘Put us down for five pounds,’ said Rockley. ‘It will improve the value of the corner allotments we intend to buy—won’t it, Wilfred? Good-bye.’
‘Wonderful man that,’ said Rockley; ‘shrewd, energetic, rather too fond of politics. Came over in the first vessel from Van Diemen’s Land. He and Batman thought they were going to divide all this country between them. You see that clear hill over there? They say that’s where Batman stood when he said, “All that I see is mine, and all that I don’t see.”’
‘Very good,’ said Wilfred. ‘Grand conception of the true adventurer. And were his aspirations fulfilled?’