THE HARBOR OF MELBOURNE—CONVICT HULKS AND BUSHRANGERS.
In the afternoon the party visited Port Melbourne, formerly known as Sandridge. Properly speaking, this is the harbor of Melbourne, and it is situated near the mouth of the Yarra, where that stream enters Hobson’s Bay, the latter being an arm of Port Philip Bay. It is a busy place and contains the usual sights of a harbor. Ships were discharging or receiving their cargoes, some at the piers which jut out into the water, while some were anchored away from the shore and were performing the same work by means of lighters. On the other side of Hobson’s Bay is Williamstown, which is a sort of rival of Sandridge. A great deal of shipping business is done there, and Williamstown contains, also, graving docks and building yards where many vessels engaged in local trade along the coast have been constructed. The gentleman who accompanied our friends called their attention to the railways which connect Williamstown and Sandridge with the city, and remarked that times had changed since the gold rush in the early fifties.
“At the present time,” said he, “you can go between Sandridge and Melbourne for threepence or sixpence, according to the class you select, but in the time of the gold rush prices were very much higher. If you wanted a carriage from here to the city, you would be lucky to escape for a sovereign, and a dray load of baggage drawn by a single horse would cost fifteen dollars. There used to be an omnibus line that carried passengers for two shillings and sixpence, but it was somewhat irregular in its movements, and could not be relied on. Nowadays the omnibus will carry you for threepence.
“When a ship arrived and anchored in the bay the passengers had to pay three shillings each to be put on shore, and very often the boatman raised the tariff to five shillings whenever he thought he could induce or compel the passengers to pay it. The charge for baggage was a separate one, and sometimes it cost more to take a quantity of baggage from Sandridge to Melbourne than it had cost to bring it all the way from London to Sandridge, a distance of thirteen thousand miles.”
“It was a golden harvest for the boatmen and everybody else engaged in the transportation business,” Harry remarked.
“Indeed, it was,” said the gentleman; “and a great many people had the sense to perceive that they had a better chance for a fortune by remaining right here than by going to the mines, where everything was uncertain.”
“I suppose everything else was in proportion, was it not?” queried Ned.
“That was exactly the case,” was the reply. “When goods were brought on shore they were loaded into carts for transportation to Melbourne, and the cart was not allowed to move out of the yard until three pounds sterling had been paid for taking the load to the city. The travelers protested and said they would not pay, but they generally did, as there was no other alternative. When they got to the city they found the same scale of prices.
“The poorest kind of a room without any furniture would bring ten dollars a week, and a stall in the stable of a hotel which would accommodate two men rented readily for ten shillings a night. Hotel-keepers made fortunes, or at least some of them did, and others might have done so if they had taken care of their money. I have heard of one hotel-keeper who had his house crammed full of patrons, none of them paying less than ten shillings a night for their lodging, while he had seventy-five lodgers in his stables, each of them paying five shillings apiece.
“A great many people spread tents on the waste ground outside of the city to save the expense of lodgings. They did not succeed altogether in doing so, as the government required them to pay at the rate of sixty dollars a year for the privilege of putting up a tent. Everybody was anxious to get away from Melbourne as quickly as possible, but they underwent great delays in getting their goods out of the ships.”