Sydney, Port Jackson.
CHAPTER XVIII.
ROUND TO SYDNEY.
Last Christmas in Australia—Start by Steamer for Sydney—The 'Great Britain'—Cheap Trips to Queenscliffe—Rough Weather at Sea—Mr. and Mrs. C. Mathews—Botany Bay—Outer South Head—Port Jackson—Sydney Cove—Description of Sydney—Government House and Domain—Great Future Empire of the South.
I spent my last Australian Christmas with my kind entertainers in Melbourne. Christmas scarcely looks like Christmas with the thermometer at 90° in the shade. But there is the same roast beef and plum-pudding nevertheless, reminding one of home. The immense garnishing of strawberries, however, now in season—though extremely agreeable—reminds us that Christmas at the Antipodes must necessarily differ in many respects from Christmas in England.
The morning after Christmas Day saw me on board the steamer 'Raugatira,' advertised to start for Sydney at eleven. Casting off from our moorings at the Sandridge pier, the ship got gradually under weigh; and, waving my last adieu to friends on shore, I was again at sea.
We steamed close alongside the 'Great Britain'—which has for some time been the crack ship between Australia and England. She had just arrived from Liverpool with a great freight of goods and passengers, and was lying at her moorings—a splendid ship. As we steamed out into Hobson's Bay, Melbourne rose up across the flats, and loomed large in the distance. All the summits seemed covered with houses—the towers of the fine Roman Catholic Cathedral, standing on the top of a hill to the right, being the last building to be seen distinctly from the bay.
In about two hours we were at Queenscliffe, inside the Heads—at present the fashionable watering place of Melbourne. Several excursion steamers had preceded us, taking down great numbers of passengers, to enjoy Boxing Day by the sea-side. The place looked very pretty indeed from our ship's deck. Some of the passengers, who had taken places for Sydney, were landed here, fearing lest the sea should be found too rough outside the Heads.