Later on, I met further variety of early squatting life in a trip to the Werribee Plains, where some friends, the Pinkertons from Glasgow, and Mr. James Sceales, late merchant and Chief Magistrate of Leith, had their respective stations. On those vast plains, extending westwards 30 to 40 miles, from Melbourne to the Anakies, or Station Peak, the slight and scattered squatting invasion had hardly disturbed anywhere the indigenous features. Thus over a vast solitude we revelled in much of specially Australian scenery, particularly that of tortuous and deeply excavated "creeks," with their chains of ponds or waterholes, the running stream mostly dried up—indeed sometimes for whole years together—but all characterized, more or less, by irresistible rushes after heavy rains, sweeping all before them, including not seldom the sheep, and even the homestead, of the incautious or inexperienced settler. I have a striking contrast in store when I revisit those plains, which now resound to the traffic of road and railway, and to the busy hum of many towns and villages and of farming and gardening life.
As early as 1842, I paid a pleasant visit to pretty little Geelong, and thence on to beautiful and diversified, but then almost empty, Colac, meeting, at either one or other place, Mr. Duncan Hoyle and his two sisters; the Messrs. Hardie, of Leith, who were then or after the husbands respectively of these ladies; Messrs. Hugh and Andrew Murray, and Mr. Augustus Morris, of Colac, who entertained us hospitably at "the huts"—as station homesteads were then humbly designated—and who poured out upon us interminable colonial experiences in a clear, penetrating voice from which there was no escape. But we did not wish to escape, and so we enjoyed everything.
Mr. Morris, who is now a prominent and useful man in Sydney, came early from "across the Straits" with the tide, and settled here, and after some few years, passed through rather trying times, which were not perhaps quite so profitable as he expected, he was induced to "sell out" to the famous Mr. Benjamin Boyd, who, arriving unexpectedly just before this time from London in his fine yacht, had descended upon quiet, plodding Melbourne like a Dives of unfathomable wealth. He had made a hasty run up to Colac, seen and appreciated Morris, bought him out, and left him in charge of this first of many purchases of the great "Australian Wool Company," or whatever other title was to suit the great schemes of this busy head which had turned up amongst us. Mr. Boyd's main idea of buying up squatting property during the reaction sure to follow the early speculation excitement of 1837 to 1840 was no bad business project, or at all unskilfully formed. He gave Morris 7 shillings a head for his sheep. But the fall went on continuously into 1844, so that Boyd effected large purchases at rates as low, in some cases, in the Sydney district, as even one shilling a head, besides cattle and horses at relatively the same. The result, however, was sad and terrible. It was confusion and failure, and mainly for this simple reason—that human nature, left practically uncontrolled, will never give the due care and attention to interests which are only those of other people.
He had got up a bank specially for the supply of all the needed funds for his grand schemes, thus securing, as he put it, an independently large business for that institution. The chief shareholders knew, or might have known, the character of their prospects. They all expected unusual profits under the circumstances, and might possibly have got them. Under this pleasant result they would have credited chiefly their own sagacious courage. But instead they realized most severe loss, and then, with angry unanimity, they condemned, and would have prosecuted, Boyd. Wrath fell upon the younger brother, Mark, who had stayed at home, and who, I think, had honestly but vainly striven to keep an intelligible reckoning out of the confusing advices of his senior's various and huge money-absorbing speculations. There was a sad uncertainty about Mr. Boyd's ending. The local representatives, for the time, of the Royal Bank of Australia had closed accounts with him in the best way they could, allowing him to leave Sydney with his yacht and several friends. He visited the Californian diggings, and afterwards took a cruise among the Pacific Islands. He landed on one of them, as though for some shooting, but was never either seen or heard of more.
Another pleasant trip about this time was to Yering, the Ryries' station, situated nearly half-way up to the cool mountainous sources of the River Yarra. This had already been made a charming home to any contented mind, satisfied to fall back upon country resources. It was a cattle station, for, in the thickly wooded hills, hollows, and flats about sheep could not live—at least, to any purpose—and the homestead had the importance of a little straggling street, with the main dwelling at the top, as the end of a cul-de-sac, and the dairy and what not in marshalled line below. We revelled in pastoral abundance. I wandered into the adjacent woods, experiencing the sense of overpowering grandeur amidst their vast solitudes, with the gum-trees rising straight above me with colossal stems, not seldom 300 feet and more in height, and 100 feet, or even much more, from the ground without a branch. When this "redgum" has elbow room, it expands in all variety of form, attaining in favouring circumstances vast dimensions, as in one example met with in the Dandenong Ranges, which measured 480 feet in height. But in this Yering case, crowded as they were impoverishingly together upon flats of the river, they did not bulk out into such dimensions, but they shot up side by side, straight as arrows, rivals en route to the clouds. Sad changes came to Yering's happy and hospitable owners since, for, like many others, they had to "realize" in the bad times, and to quit a most pleasant home. But Yering itself has thriven, and has since advanced into a great wine-producing district, whose wines Mr. De Castella, its later owner, has made to carry prizes even at European Exhibitions.
EARLY WESTERN VICTORIA ("AUSTRALIA FELIX").
"Oh! 'tis the sun that maketh all things shine."
—Love's Labour Lost.
"He makes a July day short as December."
—Winter's Tale.
But my chief excursions, which have left a pleasantly vivid recollection of early colonizing life, were made to the far west—the one in 1844, right through to the Glenelg; the other the year after, to the newly-founded township of Warrnambool. The first of these was undertaken partly on business in the interests of the Boyd stations lately formed about Eumerella, a place of evil repute then as to the native hostility. I had previously chanced to "chum" with Boyd's Port Phillip manager, Mr. Robert Fennell, a young fellow as well-looked, gentlemanly, and pleasant as anyone could meet with, and with whom I both officed and housed to mutual satisfaction for two years, until his marriage with a daughter of John Batman. And thus I came in for some few of the many Boyd commissions that were flying freely about in those years, and which were not at all unacceptable to any of us in that time of small things. I afterwards, as I have pleasure in recording, received the hospitalities of the great commission-maker in his generously open house at Sydney.
Once more, in passing westwards, I was at Colac. It was the month of June (midwinter), but the country, with its lake, was not the less beautiful in the universal green. Excepting the partial post-and-rail barricade of my friend William Robertson's 5,000 acres of purchased land, there was nothing all around but free and open squatting. On every side was the hardly yet disturbed indigenous aspect. Pelicans flew aloft, tall "adjutants" stalked about here and there, and cockatoos screeched everywhere. One of the curious green knolls, so common there, was so thickly covered with the yellow-crested white cockatoo as to give the look of a cap of snow.