In those days the old barrack-square was in existence, taking up many thousand feet of priceless frontage, at present value, in George Street. The military reviews and evolutions performed therein afforded unfailing interest to the schoolboy and nursery-maid of the period. Colonel Despard was the military commander of the day. His carriage and pair of chestnut horses, George and Charger, both nearly thoroughbreds, passed into our hands at the sale of his effects previous to his departure from the colony for New Zealand.
Racing matters, which have received of late years such astonishing development, were then in an infantile condition, it may be believed. Hyde Park was probably the first race-course. The next arena (literally) was the Old Sandy Course near Botany. To this unimproved tract I remember trudging with school comrades in 1836, when we witnessed a closely contested race, in heats too, between Traveller and Chester, the former winning. Frank Stephen rode a mule that day, who kicked all the way there and back. Lady Godiva and Lady Cordelia were the heroines of that meeting. Charles Smith and Charles Roberts were the principal supporters of the turf. This was near the proclamation of Her Gracious Majesty's accession to the throne at the age of eighteen years. Hugh Ranclaud and I attended the ceremony, and heard the proclamation read among the oak trees not far from the Lands Office.
The late Colonel Gibbes was a friend of the family. Edmund Gibbes was a schoolfellow, and many holiday visits were paid to Point Piper, their lovely residence. It was my ideal of perfection as a haven of bliss for boys, far removed from lessons and other drawbacks of youth. Many a happy day I spent there, though nearly coming to premature grief in the fair (and false) harbour. A large, well-ordered mansion, sufficiently removed from town to have country privileges, Point Piper contained all the requirements for youthful enjoyment. The kindest hostess, the nicest girls, a picturesque old-fashioned garden with fruit and flowers in profusion, fishing, bathing, boating to any extent, books, and music,—all the refinements and elegancies then procurable in Australia. As to the course of everyday life, it did not differ noticeably, as I can aver from after-experience, from that of country-house life in England. The stables were well ordered, grooms and coachman being assigned servants of course. Perhaps a stricter supervision was necessary for some reasons. At a stated hour one of the sons of the house was expected to walk down to the stables, which were half a mile distant, to perform the regulation inspection, to see the evening corn given, the horses bedded down for the night.
We boys (Edmund, his younger brother Gussie, and myself) used to fish and bathe nearly all day long, continuing indeed the latter recreation in the summer afternoons till the sun scorched our backs. Then, after a joyous evening, how sweet to fall asleep, lulled by the surges, which ever, even in calmest weather, made mournful music on rock or silver-sanded shore the long night through!
About this time a certain adventure befell our party, which might have ended tragically. One fine morning Gussie and I, with a kinsman about the same age, went fishing in the bay. Our 'kellick' was down, and the sport had been good. The provisional anchor was lifted at length, as the wind, having shifted, began to blow off the land. We had delayed too long, and found it hard work to make headway against it. Pulling with unusual determination, one oar snapped. The blade floated away. The gale was rising fast. Moving broadside on meant being blown out to sea. An interval of uncertainty ensued. Gussie, who was a little fellow, began to cry as we rapidly receded from the Point and the waves rose higher.
I took the command—my first salt-water commission. It was no use letting matters (and the boat) drift. To this day I wonder at the inventiveness which the emergency developed. Taking off Gussie's pinafore, a brown holland garment of sufficient length, I caused him to stand up and hold it like a sail. Wallace, the other boy, was to act as look-out man. I took the tiller and steered towards Shark Island, which lay between Point Piper and the Heads. Our spread of canvas was just sufficient to keep steerage way on. The wind was right aft. And in a comparatively short time we jammed the boat's bow between two rocks, where there was just beach enough to haul her up safe on our desert island.
We knew, of course, that they would see us from the house, and judging that we were cast away, send for us. Soon we discerned a boat coming to our rescue manned by the groom and the gardener—both fair oarsmen. The wind was a good capful by this time, and it took two hours' hard pulling to land us at the Point Piper jetty. 'Oh, you naughty boys!' I can hear the mild châtelaine saying in simulated wrath as we marched up, extremely glad to be so well out of it; and as they were very glad too, no serious consequences tending to moral improvement ensued.
At the Sydney College half-yearly examination Archbishop Polding was always among the examiners—a gentle, if dignified, old man, whom all of us revered. Our own Bishop and clergy attended on these occasions, but I have a more distinct impression of the Prelate first mentioned than of any other clergyman of the day. St. Mary's Cathedral was building then—it is building now—a monument of the persistent progress of the Church of Rome. What she begins she always ends, rarely relinquishing an undertaking or a stronghold. My reason for mentioning the religious aspect of the question is that, save for the morning and evening prayer and Mr. Cape's regular church-going, our school, though strictly denominational in theory, was virtually national and secular; chiefly, as I said before, because we of the different sects and persuasions agreed to respect each other's religious opinions and beliefs.
Whether this practical Christianity made us the worse churchmen in after-life I leave others to judge. When my father deserted salt water for the land permanently, he did not fix on one of the charming nooks embosomed in sea-woods which lay so temptingly between Hyde Park and the South Head road. Like most sailors, he had had enough of 'the sad sea waves,' whether in play or in earnest, and was relieved to be out of sound of them. Glenrock was, I believe, offered to him at a temptingly low rate, but he preferred to buy a tract of wild land at Newtown, as the suburban hamlet was then called, there to build and improve.
Beginning in good earnest, the walls of a large two-storeyed house soon arose—something between a bungalow and a section of a terrace. One Indian feature of the place was a verandah fully a hundred feet in length, and twelve feet in breadth, running across the façade and turning the ends of the house. This was flagged with the cream-coloured Sydney sandstone. Well do I remember its refreshing coolness of touch and appearance in our first summer. The house being built, the garden planted, and the whole purchase substantially fenced, the property was christened 'Enmore,' the name borne by the suburb into which it has grown to this day. East Saxon originally, it may be quoted as an instance of the evolution even of names. From one of the eastern counties of England it emigrated to Barbadoes, where it served to distinguish the plantation of an intimate friend of my father, the late James Cavan, a wealthy mercantile celebrity of Barbadoes in the good old days—the days of slavery and splendour, of princely magnificence and gorgeous profits, whereof the author of Tom Cringle's Log has left such picturesque descriptions. Hence to an Australian suburb, and going further afield, still following the course of colonisation, the homely name has travelled into the far interior. There are now the Enmore Blocks, an Enmore sheep station, and possibly in the future there will arise an Enmore inland town, with railway terminus, town hall, and municipality complete.