Sixteen days of Melbourne life had pleasantly glided away, and we must needs be off, because we had the rest of Australasia to see, and a very brief term for accomplishing so great a business. Honours had been heaped upon us. How we are to take it when we tumble once more to the common level at Home I hardly know or like to think about. One of the most gratifying of these honours was the railway free pass, which Tasmania first sent us, followed by Victoria, South Australia, New South Wales, and Queensland. Later on I was accorded, through Mr. Labertouche's kind agency, the golden key or pass over the Victorian lines for life, which I was assured was my due as one of the original members of the first Victorian Parliament. From my old friend of nearly forty years standing, Sir Henry Parkes, I had a courteous note to the effect that our railway comfort should be looked after so soon as we crossed the frontier. The honour of these things is, by infinity, greater than the mere saving of money. This is to be literally the case, for our daughter is already counting up these savings, with the intention of claiming them for kangaroo and opossum cloaks and rugs.
ALBURY.
We took the day train to Albury instead of the through night mail, so as to see Victoria, and have a few hours to spare to see Albury and its great wine business. We paid our respects to the Mayor of Albury, Mr. Mate, who, with Mr. Thompson, his son-in-law, showed us much attention; and we also inspected Mr. Fallon's great wine vaults, and tasted some excellent wine, including the pale, delicate tokay. Albury, with its population of 8,000, reminded me of Melbourne about 1845. There was an air of comfort and prosperity all about, and a leisurely way of it, which contrasted pleasantly with the hurry and bustle of larger places.
THE BRACING COLD ONCE MORE.
Transferring ourselves now to the night mail, and awaking with the broad daylight of a sunny morning between Yass and Goulburn, we looked out upon a country all white with hoar frost, while our carriage windows had an inside coating of ice. This recalled an inspiring discussion at the Chamber of Commerce dinner a fortnight before, on my introducing the question of the snow and the highest civilization it symbolized. I had said that Victoria as well as Tasmania presented the significant snow. Mr. Service, the leader of the federation movement, alike intercolonial and imperial, corrected me by substituting Australian for Victorian snow. But Mr. Macdonald Patterson, of Queensland, extended the snow line well over even northern New South Wales, as he told us of a heavy snowstorm he had encountered when travelling south from Brisbane, and which lay so thickly upon the ground as to tempt the passengers to a vigorous snowballing, which latterly concentrated upon the railway guard for his grudging attempt to end the sport by ringing his signal bell. But this snow and cold, however favourable to ultimate civilization, were by no means a pleasure just at the moment, and I had to put on the very warmest clothing I ever heaped upon me in an English or Scotch winter. Nor did I escape a severe cold withal, which is only now disappearing under the genial influence of the balmy air of Queensland, which, now as I write, comes to us off the land towards the end of our voyage from Sydney to Brisbane (19th-21st August). We are just passing the South Queensland boundary of 30 degrees latitude, and as a few more hours will land us amidst troops of new friends at Brisbane, I expedite my work, fearing that, as at Melbourne, our brief space of time will be otherwise occupied.
MELBOURNE AND SYDNEY.
Having just seen Sydney as well as Melbourne, I feel bound to give my impressions of both, which will, I think, be best and most briefly done in the form of a comparative sketch. I must premise with the remark that the great extent of both cities, the great and solid basis of trade on which they appear to rest, and above all the quick and ready step with which they apply to practical purposes the progress, mechanical or scientific, of our age, are beyond anything I had expected to meet with, well prepared as I had previously been upon the subject. Thus the electric light, electric bells, and other electric uses, the telephone, and the lift system, all seem to me in more general use than in London and our larger Home cities. The lift, for instance, is, as the rule, in every bank or other large institution for the use of the staff or customers or visitors. It is certainly as yet the rare exception in such cases in London.
THE SYDNEY PRESS.
In Sydney I was first met by my old and esteemed friend the Honourable George Alfred Lloyd, who, besides many other attentions, took me to Sir Henry Parkes, with whom I enjoyed some interesting political and financial conversation. I afterwards met the Honourable Mr. Burns, the Treasurer, and discussed with him the prospects for consolidated Australasian three per cents—a prospect which, as he said, he feared might be still far off; owing to the perverse fancy of the other colonies to enter upon special protective systems of their own, which, after being established, they, or the interests protected, might not be disposed to give up even for the sake of a federated Australasia; next we called for one of our fellow-passengers per "Coptic", Mr. Sidman, at the grand offices of the "Evening News" and the "Town and Country Journal", for one or other of which he had been editorially engaged. This happily led to our introduction to the proprietor, Mr. Bennett, and to our being shown the wonders of the Press of our Southern Empire. And, here, again, I had to notice that all the latest steps of progress are taken up so promptly and so thoroughly. The time of our visit was between one and two o'clock, and the work of throwing off the "Evening News" of that day had begun. The machines, we were told, embodied the very latest improvements, and when we alluded to that of "The Argus", just then being fitted up, with every latest appliance, at the Melbourne Exhibition, Mr. Bennett assured us that the machinery before us comprised them all. We saw first the stereotyping process, by which copies of the one type-setting of the paper can be multiplied indefinitely. Then three machines were set in action, delivering 10,000 copies each per hour. A fourth machine was added shortly after, which delivered somewhat more; and this latter appeared to us the exact counterpart of "The Argus" machine, as already seen by us in London.
I recall a joke of many years back when mechanical contrivance was attracting much general attention, and arousing great hopes, to the effect that a sheep would some day enter the machine of the future at one end, and be delivered at the other as ready cooked food and broad cloth. What we saw was not a whit less wonderful. The great roll of paper unrolled itself into one end of the machine, and, even more quickly than one could walk the half-dozen yards of distance, it emerged in separate papers, dropped, as I said, at ten to twelve thousand an hour, printed, folded, cut, and numbered to the dispersing hand which received them. The circulation of the "Evening News" is 60,000 daily. That of "The Age", as I learnt on arrival at Melbourne, has now advanced in its inspiring career to 76,000. These are the papers of greatest circulation in the Southern Hemisphere. Such is already the Press of the infant Hercules of Australasia.