In the fireplace of our sitting room we found a “gin” set for rats, which during the night were quite lively. One morning we observed that our waiter seemed to be very anxious for us to finish our breakfast. Presently he asked if we had finished with the coffee-pot, saying that all the others had been sent to be mended, and as he had a rather particular couple in the next room, he did not like to take in the coffee in a tea-pot!
At Mount Victoria, the highest village on the mountain, there are good State schools, to which the children come for twenty-five miles round from the villages along the railway. Both schools and railways in New South Wales belong to the State, and the schoolchildren are allowed to ride free by all trains. Even the goods trains have carriages attached for the use of the children, and the school hours are arranged to enable them to take advantage of the trains. Mount Victoria is a beautiful village, where many of the wealthy citizens of Sydney have charming residences. It has quite an alpine appearance with its wooden houses and tree-clad hills. In the neighbourhood are many delightful places, to which excursions are made; one of the most interesting is to a waterfall called “Govett’s Leap.” The road is a very rough one, and goes through the forest, in which are numbers of large ant-hills more than 5ft. in height, and formed of clay, which has become so hard that a stick makes no impression upon them. The entrances for the little creatures are very narrow cracks, too narrow for any of their enemies to get through. Sometimes, however, a creature called the “iguana” manages to make its way inside, when he always clears the entire colony out.
After a few miles’ drive along an almost level road, we come suddenly upon the edge of a precipice nearly 1,000 feet deep, down which the stream falls forming the waterfall. The “leap” is about 500 feet, and almost all the water becomes spray before it reaches the bottom, its appearance reminding us of the Staubbach Falls at Lauterbrunnen.
From the precipice a fine view is obtained for many miles round. The country is broken up into deep ravines or wide gullies, stretching as far as the eye can reach, and all wooded, while, except the little waterfall, not a drop of water is to be seen.
On the other side of Mount Victoria, towards Bathurst, is another curious zigzag railway, at the foot of which is the village of Lithgow, the seat of iron and coal industries. At present the works are of a very primitive character, but I have no doubt that at no distant date they will assume important proportions.
Outside our hotel door the landlord kept his talking parrot, which was always saying to the passers-by, “a bucket of beer, a bucket of beer.” There was a retired missionary staying at the hotel with his wife, and one day the old lady told me that she thought they might have taught the poor thing something “more Christian.”
One evening some drovers from Bathurst camped for the night near to the hotel; they put their cattle into a field, and having taken their tents from the packhorses, soon made themselves comfortable round their camp-fires, the whole scene being very picturesque and gipsy-like.