Captain John Mills, afterwards harbour-master of the port of Belfast, and long a master mariner in the trade between Belfast and Sydney, was the elder of these two brothers. In his way, also, a grand personage. Not quite so tall as his younger brother, he was fully six feet in height, powerfully built, and a very handsome man to boot. There was an expression of calm courage about his face and general bearing which always reminded one of a lion. He had had, doubtless, as a whaler and voyager to New Zealand and the islands, scores of hairbreadth escapes. After such a stormy life it must have been a wondrous change to settle down, as he did, quietly for the rest of his days in the little village as harbour-master. He is gone to his rest, I think, as well as the grand, stalwart boat-steerer. They will always live in men's minds, I doubt not, on the west coast of Victoria, among the heroes of the storied past. I remember once, indeed, at a great public dinner, when a popular squatter, whose health had been drunk, declared with post-prandial fervour that he regarded all the inhabitants of old Port Fairy as his brothers. During a lull in the cheering, a humorous mercantile celebrity placed his hand on Charles Mills's shoulder, and cried aloud, "This is my brother Charley"—a practical application which brought down the house.
Ah! those were indeed the good old days. How free and fresh was the ocean's breath as one looked westward over the limitless Pacific, where nothing broke the line of vision nearer than Lady Julia Percy Island! How green was the turf! How blue the sky! How strong and unquestioning was friendship! How divine was love "in that lost land, in that lost clime"—in the realm of poesy and the kingdom of youth!
Port Fairy certainly had the start in life, and Belfast was, as I have narrated, a townlet before an acre of land was sold in Warrnambool. But it turned out that Warrnambool was situated in nearer vicinity to the wonderfully rich lands of Farnham and Purnim. The great wheat and potato yields began to affect shipments, and at this day I rather fancy nearly all the mercantile prosperity has taken lodgings with Warrnambool, while the broad, limestone-metalled streets of Belfast are less lively than they were wont to be a score of years agone.
To the Johnny Griffiths dynasty succeeded that of Mr. John Cox, the younger, of Clarendon, Tasmania, a worthy scion of a family which had furnished, perhaps, more pattern country gentlemen to Australia than any other. He had quitted Tasmania for the western portion of the new colony, which promised wider scope for energy and enterprise. His earlier investments were a trading station at Port Fairy, the purchase of such town allotments and buildings as seemed to him likely bargains, and the first occupation of the Mount Rouse station, long afterwards known as perhaps the choicest, richest run of a crack district.
Mr. Cox, however, relinquished his not wholly congenial mercantile task to the late Mr. William Rutledge, of Farnham Park, whose commercial talent and business energy soon made quite another place of Belfast. Mr. Cox from that time forth devoted himself wholly to pastoral pursuits, and having been unhandsomely evicted from Mount Rouse, which the Governor, without much practical wisdom, wished to turn into an aboriginal reservation, he retired to Mount Napier, a run only second in extent and quality.
I may mention that some years after, the Government, finding that the aboriginal protectorate system merely served to localise gangs of lazy and mischievous savages without any sort of benefit to themselves or others, revoked the reserve. But instead of handing back the land to those from whom it had been taken unjustly, they had the meanness to let it by tender. This run of Mount Rouse brought a rental of £900 per annum, a price altogether unprecedented in the history of pastoral leases.
After I had been a dweller on the banks of the Merai for a few months, I resolved to move farther westward, where there was country to spare and a more favourable opportunity of getting an extensive run than in my present picturesque but restricted locality. I was grieved to lose my pretty and pleasant home just as I had begun to get attached to it, but I judged rightly that to the westward lay the more profitable pastures, and I adhered to my resolution.
A few days' muster saw us once more on the road. Our herd was increased and complicated by the presence of many small calves, of ages varying from a week to three months. These tender travellers would have much retarded our march under other circumstances. But we had not, as luck would have it, much more than fifty miles to move, and for that short distance we could afford to travel easily, and give time to the weaker ones. All our worldly goods were packed upon the dray, which, as before, sufficed to carry them.