If Geelong be standing still, which in a colony is the same as rapid decline would be with us, the famed wheat country around it seems as inexhaustible as it ever was. The whole of the Barrabool range, from Ceres to Mount Moriac, is one great golden waving sheet, save where it is broken by the stunted claret-vineyards. Here and there I came upon a group of the little daughters of the German vine-dressers, tending and trenching the plants, with the round eyes, rosy cheeks, and shiny pigtails of their native Rudesheim all flourishing beneath the Southern Cross.
The colonial vines are excellent; better, indeed, than the growths of California, which, however, they resemble in general character. The wines are naturally all Burgundies, and colonial imitations of claret, port, and sherry are detestable, and the hocks but little better. The Albury hermitage is a better wine than can be bought in Europe at its price, but in some places this wine is sold as Murray Burgundy, while the dealers foist horrible stuff upon you under the name of hermitage. Of the wines of New South Wales, White Dallwood is a fair Sauterne, and White Cawarra a good Chablis, while for sweet wines the Chasselas is singularly cheap; and the Tokay, the Shiraz, and the still Muscat are remarkable.
Northwest of Geelong, upon the summit of the foot-hills of the dividing range, lies Ballarat, the headquarters of deep quartz mining, and now no longer a diggers’ camp, but a graceful city, full of shady boulevards and noble buildings, and with a stationary population of thirty thousand. My first visit was made in the company of the prime ministers of all the colonies, who were at Melbourne nominally for a conference, but really to enjoy a holiday and the International Exhibition. With that extraordinary generosity in the spending of other people‘s money which distinguishes colonial cabinets, the Victorian government placed special trains, horses, carriages, and hotels at our disposal, the result of which was that, fêted everywhere, we saw nothing, and I had to return to Ballarat in order even to go through the mines.
In visiting Lake Learmouth and Clunes, and the mining district on each side of Ballarat, I found myself able to discover the date of settlement by the names of places, as one finds the age of a London suburb by the titles of its terraces. The dates run in a wave across the country. St. Arnaud is a town between Ballarat and Castlemaine, and Alma lies near to it, while Balaklava Hill is near Ballarat, where also are Raglan and Sebastopol. Inkerman lies close to Castlemaine, and Mount Cathcart bears the name of the general killed at the Two Gun battery, while the Malakhoff diggings, discovered doubtless toward the end of the war, lie to the northward, in the Wimmera.
Everywhere I found the interior far hotter than the coast, but free from the sudden changes of temperature that occur in Melbourne twice or thrice a week throughout the summer, and are dangerous to children and to persons of weak health. After two or three days of the hot wind, then comes a night, breathless, heavy, still. In the morning the sun rises, once more fierce and red. After such a night and dawn, I have seen the shade thermometer in the cool verandas of the Melbourne Club standing at 95° before ten o‘clock, when suddenly the sun and sky would change from red and brown to gold and blue, and a merry breeze, dancing up from the ice-packs of the South Pole and across the Antarctic seas, would lower the temperature in an hour to 60° or 65°. After a few days of cold and rain, a quiet English morning would be cut in half about eleven by a sudden slamming of doors and whirling of dust from the north across the town, while darkness came upon the streets. Then was heard the cry of “Shut the windows; here‘s a hot wind,” and down would go every window, barred and bolted, while the oldest colonists walked out to enjoy the dry air and healthy heat. The thick walls of the clubs and private houses will keep out the heat for about three days, but if, as sometimes happens, the hot wind lasts longer, then the walls are heated through, and the nights are hardly to be borne. Up country the settlers know nothing of these changes. The regular irregularity is peculiar to the Melbourne summer.
CHAPTER X.
TASMANIA.
AFTER the parching heat of Australia, a visit to Tasmania was a grateful change. Steaming along Port Dalrymple and up the Tamar in the soft sunlight of an English afternoon, we were able to look upward, and enjoy the charming views of wood and river, instead of having to stand with downcast head, as in the blaze of the Victorian sun.
The beauty of the Tamar is of a quiet kind: its scenery like that of the non-Alpine districts of the west coast of New Zealand, but softer and more habitable than is that of even the least rude portions of these islands. To one fresh from the baked Australian plains, there is likeness between any green and humid land and the last unparched country that he may have seen. Still, New Zealand cannot show fresher cheeks nor homes more cosy than those of the Tamar valley. Somersetshire cannot surpass the orchards of Tasmania, nor Devon match its flowers.
The natural resemblance of Maria Van Dieman‘s Land (as Tasman called it after his betrothed) to England seems to have struck the early settlers. In sailing up the Tamar, we had on one bank the County of Dorset, with its villages touchingly named after those at home, according to their situations, from its Lulworth Cove, Corfe Castle, and St. Alban‘s Head, round to Abbotsbury, and, on our right hand, Devon, with its Sidmouth, Exeter, and Torquay.
Hurrying through Launceston—a pretty little town, of which the banks and post-office are models of simple architecture—I passed at once across the island southward to Hobarton, the capital. The scenery on the great convict road is not impressive. The Tasmanian Mountains—detached and rugged masses of basaltic rock, from four to five thousand feet in height—are wanting in grandeur when seen from a distance, with a foreground of flat corn-land. It is disheartening, too, in an English colony, to see half the houses shut up and deserted, and acre upon acre of old wheat-land abandoned to mimosa scrub. The people in these older portions of the island have worked their lands to death, and even guano seems but to galvanize them into a momentary life. Since leaving Virginia, I had seen no such melancholy sight.