I arrived just to witness the last glories of the famous champagne lunches, which prefaced the auction sales of these early days, and repeatedly I saw in his element Charles Williams, the earliest of his trade. If such lunches cost 40 pounds, which was given me as a moderate average, who suffered, argued their justifiers, if the exhilaration they produced gave 400 pounds more to the net proceeds? The brisk liquor appreciably blew up the prices, as the same lots, cut up and rearranged, would come again and yet again under the hammer. Many a bullock-drover would pull up on passing the auction room or tent, and quaff off half a bottle to the good health of all concerned in such liberality. One respectable old colonist was said to have almost lived on those lunches in the dear early times, so regularly did he encourage and patronize them. The bidding public were regaled before the sale, but the auctioneer and his clients after—a plan which made very much the better business, as might have been seen by the effects in either case. Williams began with 4,000 pounds a year profits, which I dare say went on to the rate of 10,000 pounds for the brief term. He was just finishing what, for those times, was a fine villa on the Yarra-bank, beyond Richmond, when the rapidly receding tide left him, as well as many others, stranded.
Great gum-tree stumps were grievously prevalent, alike in Melbourne streets and allotments. Swanston-street was special in this way, and they long flourished upon allotments about where the city hall at first stood. One huge stump, just touching the Collins-street line where the Criterion Hotel was afterwards built, long held defiant existence, the wooden building of the time having deviated to go round it. When at length the lot came to be sold by Mr. James Purves, a well-known early allotment-monger, whom I recollect on this occasion descanting on the future prospects of so central a site, the buyer had the too long-endured enemy attacked and extirpated.
THE MELBOURNE CORPORATION, 1842.
"When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy winter's field."
—Shakespeare, Sonnet 2.
The corporation arose towards the end of 1842, and then the anti-stump warfare began. My friend Henry Condell, like so many other early birds a Tasmanian (a Vandemonian was the ill-omened name at that time), was the first mayor. The times were bad, and the shilling rating caused a growl, but the new body held its way. John Charles King, an Ulster man, and of good abilities, was the first town clerk. His successor, William Kerr, had greater abilities, but not equal method and activity. Both were strong Orangemen—a feeling, however, for which this colonial ground was not favourable.
The bane and bottomless deep for the corporation's narrow budget was Elizabeth-street, where a little "casual" called "The Williams," of a mile's length, from the hardly perceptible hollows of the present Royal Park, played sad havoc at times with the unmade street. It had scooped out a course throughout, almost warranting the title of a gully, and at Townend's corner we needed a good long plank by way of a bridge. At the upper end of the street was a nest of deep channels which damaged daily for years the springs and vehicles of the citizens. The more knowing of us who lived northwards dodged these evils by a particular roundabout via Swanston-street. Up almost to gold diggings and Victorian Parliaments did the great Sydney-road begin thus inauspiciously, and hardly less pertinaciously disconcerting was the Brunswick swamp, three miles further on. Melbourne missed a great chance in filling up with a street this troublesome, and, as a street, unhealthy hollow. Dr. Howitt used to tell me he never could cure a patient, resident there, who had become seriously unwell. A reservation of the natural grass and gum-trees between Queen and Swanston streets would have redeemed Melbourne up to the first rank of urban scenic effect, and the riotous Williams might, with entire usefulness, have subsided into a succession of ornamental lakes and fish ponds.
EARLY SUBURBAN MELBOURNE.
"Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness."
—Cowper.
"Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife."
-Gray.
In 1844 I lived in a little cottage at South Yarra, on the Dandenong or Gardiner's Creek-road, then only a bush track, although considerably trodden. I had not many neighbours. Mr. Jackson, at the far end, had bought Toorak, but not yet built upon it; and the near end was graced by Mr. R.H. Browne's pretty villa, in its ample grounds, sold shortly before to Major Davidson, and constituting the palace of its time along the road. There was a trackless forest opposite us, and more than once I missed my way in trying to make a straight cut to the present St. Kilda. One Sunday morning I made a discovery—a small sheet of water, glittering in the sunshine, and I long gazed admiringly on the countless insects and plants about its edges. It was confessedly neither broad nor deep, and a certain tag-rag indefiniteness of outline gave occasion afterwards to envious anti-Prahraners all about to make it out as only a swamp. The little thing had much badgering to endure in this way in Prahran's early progress. Later on, I saw it as a sort of central reserve of the ever-rising Prahran. But still later it was drained off and turned about its business, as either a profitless nuisance, or a too costly ornamentation: sic transit, etc.