There had been very little wind when we left Sandridge, and the waters of Port Phillip were comparatively smooth. But as we proceeded, the wind began to rise, and our weather-wise friends feared lest they should have to encounter a gale outside. We were now in sight of the white line of breakers running across the Heads. There was still a short distance of smooth water before us; but that was soon passed; and then our ship dashed her prow into the waves and had to fight her way as for very life against the heavy sea that rolled in through Bass's Straits from the South Pacific.
The only distinguished passengers on board are Mr. and Mrs. Charles Mathews, who have been "starring" it in Victoria to some purpose. A few nights ago, Mr. Mathews took his leave in a characteristic speech, partly humorous and partly serious; but the enthusiastic audience laughed and cheered him all the way through; and it was rather comic to read the newspaper report of next morning, and to find that the actor's passages of the softest pathos had been received with "roars of laughter."
Mr. Mathews seems to be one of the most perennially juvenile of men. When he came on board at Sandridge, he looked as frisky and larky as a boy. He skipped up and down the deck, and took an interest in everything. This lasted so long as the water was smooth. When he came in sight of the broken water at the Heads, I fancy his spirit barometer went down a little. But when the ship began to put her nose into the waves freely, a total change seemed to pass over him. I very soon saw his retreating skirts. For the next three days—three long, rough, wave-tossing days—very little was seen of him, and when he at length did make his appearance on deck, alas! he seemed no longer the brisk and juvenile passenger that had come on board at Sandridge only a few days before.
Indeed, it was a very rough and "dirty" passage. The passengers were mostly prostrate during the whole of the voyage. The sea was rolling in from the east in great billows, which our little boat breasted gallantly; but it was tossed about like a cork, inclining at all sorts of angles by turns. It was not much that I could see of the coast, though at some places it is bold, at others beautiful. We passed very near to it at Ram Head and Cape Howe—a grand promontory forming the south-west point of Australia.
On the third day from Melbourne, about daybreak, I found we were steaming close along shore, under dark brown cliffs, not very high, topped with verdure. The wind had gone down, but the boat was pitching in the heavy sea as much as ever. The waves were breaking with fury and noise along the beach under the cliffs. At 9 a.m. we passed Botany Bay—the first part of New South Wales sighted by Captain Cook just a hundred years ago. It was here that he first landed, and erected a mound of stones and a flag to commemorate the event.[14] Banks and Solander, who were with him, found the land covered with new and beautiful flowers, and hence the name which was given it, of "Botany Bay"—afterwards a name of terror, associated only with crime and convict life.
We steamed across the entrance to the bay, until we were close under the cliffs of the outer South Head, guarding the entrance to Port Jackson. The white Macquarie lighthouse on the summit of the Head is seen plainly at a great distance. Steaming on, we were soon under the inner South Head, and at the entrance to the famous harbour, said to be the finest in the world.
The opening into Port Jackson is comparatively narrow,—so much so, that when Captain Cook first sailed past it, he considered it to be merely a boat entrance, and did not examine it. While he was at breakfast, the look-out man at the mast-head—a man named Jackson—reported that he saw the entrance to what seemed a good anchorage; and so the captain, half in derision, named it "Port Jackson." The Heads seemed to me only about four hundred feet apart from each other, the North Head somewhat overlapping the South. The rocks appear to have broken off abruptly, and stand up perpendicularly over against each other, about three hundred feet high, leaving a chasm or passage between them which forms the entrance to Port Jackson. When the Pacific rolls in full force against the Heads, the waves break with great violence on the cliffs, and the spray is flung right over the lighthouse on the South Head. Now that the sea has gone somewhat down, the waves are not so furious, and yet the dash of the spray half-way up the perpendicular cliffs is a grand sight.
Once inside the Heads, the water becomes almost perfectly calm; the scenery suddenly changes; the cliffs subside into a prettily-wooded country, undulating and sloping gently to the water's edge. Immediately within the entrance, on the south side, is a pretty little village—the pilot station in Watson's Bay. After a few minutes' more steaming, the ship rounds a corner, the open sea is quite shut out from view, and neither Heads nor pilot station are to be seen.
My attention is next drawn to a charming view on the north shore—a delicious little inlet, beautifully wooded, and surrounded by a background of hills, rising gradually to their highest height behind the centre of the little bay. There, right in amongst the bright green trees, I observe a gem of a house, with a broad terrace in front, and steps leading down to the clear blue water. A few minutes more, and we have lost sight of the charming nook, having rounded the headland of the inlet—a rocky promontory covered with ferns and mosses.
But our attention is soon absorbed by other beauties of the scene. Before us lies a lovely island prettily wooded, with some three or four fine mansions and their green lawns sloping down to the water's edge; while on the left, the hills are constantly varying in aspect as we steam along. At length, some seven miles up Port Jackson, the spires and towers and buildings of Sydney come into sight; at first Wooloomooloo, and then in ten minutes more, on rounding another point, we find ourselves in Sydney Cove, alongside the wharf. Here we are in the midst of an amphitheatre of beauty,—a wooded island opposite covered with villas and cottages; with headlands, coves and bays, and beautiful undulations of lovely country as far as the eye can reach. Altogether, I think Port Jackson is one of the most charming pieces of water and landscape that I have ever seen.