'The bush'—a vast and trackless wilderness—was gradually being occupied and reclaimed by that strange lover of the waste places of the earth, the wilful, wicked, wandering Anglo-Saxon. Tragedies from time to time doubtless occurred. Bushrangers were not unknown, but what were they to the Kellys, the Halls and Gilbert, the Clarks and Morgans? Aboriginal blacks were shot occasionally; more than one cruel murder was brought home to the perpetrators, for which they justly atoned. At the same time a lonely hut-keeper or shepherd was often found prone and motionless, speared or clubbed as the case might be; many a stock-rider's horse came home without him. Yet, in a general way, life and property were far more secure under the modified martial law of the period than they have been known to be under a constitutional Government and quasi-democratic rule. When it is considered that for half a century the worst criminals of the old country, as well as the more ordinary rogues, had been sent to Australia, it says much for the management or for the material that so orderly and improvable a society was evolved.
If there were occasional crimes of deepest dye, who could feel surprise? The wonder was that they were so few in comparison to the population. Captain Knatchbull, ex-post-captain R.N., knocks out the brains of a poor washerwoman for the sake of eight pounds sterling, ending on the gallows a life of curiously varied villainy, which had included attempted poisoning, mutiny, and betrayal of comrades. There was the memorable 'Fisher's Ghost' tragedy, in which a supernatural agent was alleged to have led to the discovery of a deed of blood. There were crimes, doubtless, that cried aloud to heaven for vengeance, but which never will be fully known till the Great Day. But discovery, arraignment, and trial followed close on the heels of wrongdoers. In a general way—I assert it unhesitatingly—Sydney was as quiet, as peaceful and orderly in appearance as any town in Britain, save in the purlieus of that half-recognised Alsatia, 'The Rocks'; more decent, sober, and outwardly well-behaved than George Street and Pitt Street in 1887.
It may truly be suggested that one of the great dangers of modern civilisation—certainly of Australian national life—would appear to be the crowding of an unreasonable proportion of the inhabitants into the cities and larger towns.
An increasingly dangerous class is there encouraged to grow and multiply, averse to the honest and well-paid toil of the country, preferring to it a precarious employment in a city, with the accompaniment of the baser pleasures; clamouring at every interval of employment for relief works, subsisting but for panem et circenses, like the profligate populace of old Rome, the pandering to which eventually sapped the grandeur and glory of the Mistress of the World. Absit omen!
At the corner of Elizabeth and King Streets might have been seen a provisional lock-up, used for the temporary detention of criminals about to be tried at the adjoining courts. A rudely-hewn pillar of sandstone had been deposited there, and served as a seat for wayfarers or persons more immediately concerned. We schoolboys were chiefly interested in the stocks, that old-fashioned detainer in which drunken and disorderly persons were securely placed for such periods—a portion of a day—as the magistrates might consider expedient. In such fashion was Hudibras fast imprisoned when the lady and her steward coming by gazed on him bowed to the earth with shame. In this ancient engine of distraint upon the human property, in default of other, did the malcontents of the day sit, stolid and defiant, upon a more or less uncomfortable seat, 'fast bound in misery and iron.' One doubts whether it would not be more effectual now than the short sentence served in a comfortable, secluded establishment, which the modern offender boasts that 'he can do on his head.'
During the whole period of the time embraced in my reminiscence, I cannot recall a week while we lived in Sydney or near to it, that the Domain and Botanical Gardens were not a joy, a solace, a luxury to us and to the society with which we were acquainted. What a priceless boon was thus bestowed upon the inhabitants of Sydney then and for all time by the dedication of this lovely natural park to the public! What walks—what drives—what merry bathing parties—what lingering in summer eves—what early morning saunters has not this precious primeval fragment, this art-adorned yet beauteous wilderness, witnessed? The pleasure then enjoyed by the toil-worn citizen, the stranger, or the invalid was more exquisite and intense, from an assured freedom from that modern pest, the larrikin. All who were met with in the gardens were courteous and well-mannered persons for the most part; for whomsoever conducted themselves otherwise there was a short shrift, and if not a ready gallows, an effectively deterrent punishment.
The early formation of William Street, now the great arterial highway to Darlinghurst and the aristocratic suburbs, was then progressing. In its straight course it carved away a few acres of the Rosebank suburban property then owned by Mr. Laidley. On the triangular portion so excised were three white cedars, the most graceful of our shade trees. No doubt the proprietor was compensated for the severance and resumption, though not at the prices ruling in favour of latter-day claimants.
What fortunes might have been made by judicious, or even injudicious, purchasers of suburban land in those days! No one foresaw that any notable rise in value would take place in less than a century or two. That land purchased by the acre would sell for such prices in the life of the buyer, by the foot, entered not into the mind of man. Wharves, street frontages, building sites, allotments all passed under the hammer of the Government auctioneer of the day at curiously low prices. Who was to foresee that gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, and tin were all to make their appearance in peaceful, pastoral New South Wales and her erstwhile appanage the Port Phillip District, afterwards the Colony of Victoria?
The great public schools of that day were our College, the King's School at Parramatta, and the Normal Institution, this last organised by Dr. Lang—that eminent colonising clergyman. The Reverend Robert Forrest was the Principal of the King's School. He was understood to have been a strict disciplinarian, as indeed he needed to be. We of the Sydney College thought ourselves superior in scholarship; but doubtless good work was done then as now at the Parramatta school.
Mr. Carmichael—Scottish, of course—presided at the Normal Institution, which was situated on the northern side of the Racecourse, or Hyde Park as at present named. We were near enough to play cricket together sometimes; also to fight, indeed, as occasions of strife will arise among schoolboys. Roland Cameron, a boy by nature warlike in the earlier stages of life, had then his celebrated combat, having challenged an oldster of the Normal, a head taller than himself. He didn't come off victorious, but he walked forth with an apparently calm consciousness that he couldn't be really conquered, which I have rarely seen paralleled among later and more tragic experiences.