Mr. Thomas Wills owned "Lucerne," close by Alphington, the village on the Darebin Creek since called into being and so named. He had a fancy for the great fodder plant, and was the first proprietor in the neighbourhood to lay down any considerable breadth of land with it. From it, or as a souvenir of the world-renowned lake, the estate was named.
I don't know that the Heidelberg proprietors could be called a fortunate community. Something of the nature of disaster happened to all of them. Possibly in the course of three or four decades an average of misfortune occurs in most families. But our district was exceptional. The wreck of the London brought mourning and lifelong grief into one family. Cheery, kindly Joe Hawdon, the pioneer, the explorer, the jolly squire of Banyule, died when scarce over middle age. The Bolden family lost two sons who had arrived at man's estate—one killed by a fall from his horse; one, a young officer rising in the service, by a tiger in India. Our house, endeared by many memories, was burned by an incendiary, still undiscovered. A tree fell on our good friend and neighbour, Mr. M'Arthur, and very nearly crushed the life out of him. Captain Smyth died young, and Lucerne has long been untenanted by any representative of the Wills family.
Some of these fine days, they tell me, there will be a railway to Heidelberg. Then the slopes will be cut up into building sites, the river meadows irrigated, or turned into market gardens and creameries. The Australian Alps will be more visible to the naked eye than ever. Some squatter from Riverina or Queensland, who has just disposed of his stations for half-a-million to a syndicate, will build an imitation of the historic Castle, with the Great Tun, to be filled with White Yering. Dances of vignerons or happy peasants will be frequent; and Mr. R. H. Brown, if still in the flesh, may see his prophetic vision so nearly fulfilled that it will hardly be worth his while to return to a continental Elysium. But, sentiment apart, there was a flavour of real country life about the district, protected as it was from intrusion on the east and north-east by the deep unforded river, in which more than one death took place from drowning. Heidelberg, apparently, always had attractions for men whose sympathies lay in the direction of stud farms and the improvement of stock. Chelsworth then, as later on, was the home of pedigree shorthorns, Captain Brunswick Smyth having imported cows of very blue blood, which passed into Mr. Bolden's possession, and were incorporated with the Grasmere herd. Mahomet, Young Mussulman, Lady Vane and her daughter were located at Leighton; whilst "Snoozer" by "Muley Moloch," and other sires of high lineage, abode hard by. Yes; in some respects the devoted admirer of Bulwer Lytton had not over-coloured the landscape. Heidelberg was undeniably picturesque, and had climatic advantages. It was cooler than the sand-dunes of Brighton and St. Kilda, than the low hills of Toorak, than the river meadow upon which Melbourne proper then chiefly stood. Waves of mountain air were wafted from the Alps, on which, though many miles distant, the snow was clearly visible. Those of us who, in after years, were members of the old Melbourne Club in Lower Collins Street, often preferred a longish night ride for the immunity from mosquitoes which Heidelberg then afforded.
The river meadows by the Yarra were composed of a deep, black, fertile loam, eminently suited for orchards, cereals, and root crops. Taking into consideration the quality of the soil, the proximity of the river, the variety of the landscape, no suburb would have equalled Heidelberg in attractiveness had it not been handicapped by distance from the metropolis. Rail, road traffic, and settlement—all appeared to have gone north, south, west; anywhere but towards Heidelberg.
Now that every foot of building land near Melbourne has been bought and built upon—has become "terraced slopes," in the evil sense of modern overcrowding, perhaps the beneficent Heidelberg and Alphington Railway will open up the untouched glades which still silently overlook the murmuring river, still lie hushed to sleep in the shadow of the great Australian mountain chain.
CHAPTER XIX THE WOODLANDS STEEPLECHASE
Oh! the merry days,
The merry days, when we were young!