"Evidently Melbourne knew that we had been treated to a brickfielder in Sydney, and was therefore determined to give us a taste of its climatic peculiarities before our departure. To offset the hot wind of Sydney we had a 'southerly burster' in Melbourne, and also two or three showers of rain that came down with such vigor as to fill the gutters of the lower streets to a depth of two or three feet. Most of the crossings are bridged, so that one can walk over the temporary rivers in safety, but in former times accidents were not infrequent. 'Another Child Drowned in the Gutters Yesterday' was by no means an unusual heading in the Melbourne papers, and sometimes full-grown men fell victims to the streams that flowed like mill-races while they lasted.
"A gentleman says that quite recently he saw a man try to jump across a gutter, but he made a miscalculation and fell into it. Instantly the stream took him off his feet and carried him partly under a low bridge, where he would have been drowned had not the spectators pulled him out by the heels. Melbourne streets are very muddy in wet weather and very dusty in dry times. The mud in winter is said to be something almost surpassing belief, unless one has actually seen and tested it. Most of the streets are macadamized with a basaltic rock which breaks up into a very irritating and disagreeable dust that is said to be trying to the eyes of a good many people.
"But about the burster, which I had forgotten for the moment. The weather was fine and warm, with a north-east breeze and not a cloud in the sky. In the morning Doctor Bronson remarked that the barometer was falling, and during the forenoon it continued to go down with considerable rapidity.
"We were going on an excursion, but the gentleman who had invited us came around to suggest a postponement, as we were about to have a burster. 'We always expect it,' said he, 'when the barometer falls rapidly in the forenoon, as it is doing now.'
"So we stayed in and watched for the storm. There was an appearance as if a thin sheet of cloud was being rolled up before the advancing wind; in fact it was not unlike the beginning of the brickfielder in Sydney. Then came a high wind which brought clouds of dust, and then the breeze chopped suddenly to the south and blew with great violence. It was thirty miles an hour at the start, but before it got through with its performance it was sixty or seventy miles. It has been known to go to ninety or a hundred miles, and on one occasion it reached one hundred and fifty miles an hour, and did a great deal of damage.
CAUGHT IN A "BURSTER" ON THE AUSTRALIAN COAST.
"The thermometer fell more rapidly than the barometer had done. In the morning about nine o'clock the mercury was at 89° Fahrenheit, and it remained about that figure until the wind went around to the south a little past noon. In less than an hour it had fallen twenty degrees, and in another hour twenty more. These sudden changes are the trying features of the Australian climate, but the people say nobody suffers from them except in discomfort.
"They tell us that the mercury has been known to drop thirty degrees in half an hour, and the readings of the thermometer at noon and midnight sometimes show a variation of ninety-nine degrees. William Howitt mentions experiencing a temperature of 139° in the shade, and it is no uncommon thing for the mercury to mount to 130°. There is an official record of 179° in the sun and 111° in the shade in South Melbourne, and at the inland town of Deniliquin of 121° in the shade.