THE LAND OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE.

Otago Witness, Issue 1765, 19 September 1885, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE LAND OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE.

By George Augustus Sala.

MELBOURNE TO ADELAIDE.— I.

So farewell Melbourne the Marvellous, city of Immense edifices, Parliament Houses— the new

ones as yet unfinished, Law Courts, free libraries, a colossal post-office, a towering town lull, colleges, cathedrals, churches and chapels Innumerable, stately Government offices, multitudinous drinking bars— of which the barmaids •are threatened with extinction under the clauses of Mr Service's new Licensing Bill. ' Farewel 1 .Melbourne, city of haudsome, elegant, and comfortable theatres. At the Opera-house just now -that approved actor Mr George Rignold is, with Miss Kate Bishop, delighting the lieges in M Called Back." At the Theatre Royal the evergreen and always-fascinating Mr Dion Boucicaxdt is drawing crowded houses nightly to see,

now " The Jilt," now " The Shaughraua," now *' Arrah-na-Pogue," assisted by his son and daughter and a gifted young American actress. Miss Thorndyke. At the Bijou— be not deceived by its name, the prettily decorated

"house is as big as our Gaiety— Miss Gene•vieve Ward and Mr W. H. Veruon are playing to houses full to repletion a. farewell engagement, with a repertoire comprising Mr Sydney Grundy's "Mammon," and the never-to-be-forgotten "Forget Me Not." To the Theatre another class of the pleasureloving Melbournians rush to see " Oliver Twist," Trad at St. George's Hall delighted crowds gather to witness the' variety performance of the "Red Stockings" company in the "Muldoon's Picnic." The Australians in general uure deliriously fond of variety shows. They

-like opera-bouffe well enough. They will .patronise a highly-spiced sensational melodrama of the " World " or "In the Ranks " type ; but doat on circuses, and regard the buffooneries of a nigger entertainment as sweet morsels to be rolled beneath the tongue. And Shakespeare ! Well, such tragedians as Charles Kean, Gustavus V. Brooke, Barry Sullivan, Creswick, and Walter Montgomery— the effigy

•of the last-named gentleman as Hamlet is to be

found in all thG Australian wax-work exhibitions —have gathered both fame and money in the southern hemisphere ; but that was in days gone s>y. What the present generation of Australians ■would say to ' Shakespeare without a star actor or actress of the very first water in the leading

characters, I am sure that Ido not know. On the other hand, thousands who knew not a word .©f Tuscan rushed to hear Ristori; and thousands more unfamiliar even with the French

of Stratford-atte-Bowe, would rush to hear Sarah Bernhardt. Farewell, then, Melbourne, city of clubs that are solemn and clubs that arc sprightly, but all overflowing with thoughtful courtesy and gener.ous hospitality all ready to be extended — from the puissant Melbourne Club, the resort of the tproudest merchants and bankers and the most patrician squatters, to the genial Yorick, the chosen haunt of the wits and scholars of Mel-' ■bourne. Farewell, cheery and fraternal Masonic Club ; farewell " Mutual Imps," although cir--cumstances over which I had no control prevented me from participating in your innocent diablerie ; farewell to all the doctors, and especially farewell to all the Brobdiugnagian banks in Collins street. I cannot help it. I have fceen mildly accused by friends here of having "bank on the brain"; and such, perhaps, may be the case. But,' I repeat, I cannot help it. When you first visit Venice, do not the palaces on the Grand Canal take your breath away ? At Pisa are you not continually haunted by the leaning Tower ? At Moscow is not the image M)f the Kremlin ever before you? In Australia "generally, and in Melbourne iv particular, it fs the banks that haunt you, and subuuo your sense to one absorbing feeling of wonder and reverence for the power of Mammon. The Bank of Australasia, a massive pile of the Doric order; the London -Chartered Bank in the Grseco-Italian style, the Bank of Victoria, the Bank of New South Wales, the Commercial Bank of Australia — how many more banks there may be in Collins street lam incompetent to tall ; for these palaces of -finance now of marble, now of bluestone, now of Kangaroo Point stone, beset me on every side. Lombard street, Lothbury, King William street, London, E.C. — they mu&t all hide their diminished heads before the banks of Collins street, Melbourne. The Colonna and the Orsini, the Frangipanon and the Saville, the Doria and the Odesalchi, built no doubt very grand palaces at Rome. There are some very sumptuous palaces, too, at Florence and at Genoa ; but these big buildings do not mean money. The banking palaces of Melbourne do. They are so many cash castles. They smell of riches. As you pass, it seems as though you heard the fingering by deft tellers of ihe crisp bank notes within — a Bound, to money-loving ears, more musical than *he rustling of Frou-frou's robe of silk : till you xemember that the certificate of indebtedness, payable on demand, of the Australian banks are not always crisp. In-

deed they are, in the remote " back blocks," after much bandying about among squatters, *•• free selectors," drovers, and storekeepers, very

soft, greasy, and dirty indeed. But they are always sweet to look upon. Farewell notes of -the Brobdignagian Melbourne banks. I must not, in worldly wisdom, take any of you to • Adelaide ; for in the neighbour ng Colony of South Australia the paper currency of Victoria and other Colonies can only be cashed subject 3fco a discount of sixpence in the pound. I shall

find another custom-house, too, in Adelaide, another tariff, and another postage stamp — and the Federation Enabling Bill has just passed through the_ Imperial Parliament. I wonder how many wiseacres there are at Home who are cherishing the illusion that the Australian Colonies intend, in red-hot haste, to federate. Meanwhile, farewell Melbourne — would, at least, I return to survey thy marvels again, including thy big butchers' shops, thy brilliant suburbs, thy crowded omnibuses, and Mr Cole's book arcade in Bourke street. A big steamer awaits me at the wharf, and I am bound for Adelaide.

The passage from Melbourne to the sea is — I am afraid to the chuckling delight of the worthy people of Sydney — neither imposing nor dignified. In might not be so very calumnious to call the waterway to the astounding metropolis of Victoria " right mean." That is an American locution, but it is expressive, with tolerable terseness, of the general aspect of the river Yarra Yarra. Did not Richard Oobden once place on contemptuous record the fact that he had cleared, at a single bound, one of the most famous of the classical rivers of Attica ? I should say that an old man kangaroo of ordinary capacity might be warranted to clear the Yarra Yarra, at Melbourne, in one hop. But what the stream lacks in breadth it makes up for in depth, for the Adelaide, which is to convey me to the fair city of that name, is a big ship, and she, with craft as huge, come right up to Melbourne wharf. On the other hand, the immense steam galleons of the Peninsular and Oriental, the Orient, and the French Messagerios Maritimes lines come no nearer Melbourne than Williamstown, on bhe south point of the estuary of the Yarra, on the south-west shore of Hobson's Bay, and distant some eight miles from Melbourne, with which it is connected by railway. Opposite Williamstown, on the other side of the bay, is Sandridge, now called Port Melbourne, which is situate only two miles and a half by rail from the city. The Sydney people, justifiably proud of their enchanting harbour, do not fail to rub their hands with glee, figuratively speaking, when they recall the iniquity of the Yarra; while the peaceful inhabitants of the smiling shores of Corio Bay, the extensive west arm of Port Phillip, are ever fond of telling you that, if all towns had their rights, and justice were done where justice was due, the metropolis' of Victoria would not be at Melbourne at all, but at Geelong. I have been to Geelong, and like it much. Including its outlying suburbs, it may have at the present time a population of twenty thousand. It will have a population of fifty or a hundred thousand some of these days — say when its local manufactures have bean developed, when the transcontinental railway is milt, and' coolie labour, or some other labour, is orought in to render fruitful the almost unparalleled resources of this vast and, comparatively speaking, uninhabited continent. Then there will be plenty of mechanics and labourers and domestic servants obtainable for moderate wages. Then good cooks will abound, and your wealthy friends will be able to ask you to dinner at their own houses ; then there will be a little less cricket and football, a little less racing and rowing, and a little more culture of art and letters ; and then there will be the millennium, and the banks will all gratify their shareholders with a dividend of a thousand per cent, per annum. Alanschar, itinerant dealer in glass and crockeryware, you are dreaming again over your basket. But Geelong, on the pleasant shores of Corio Bay, is certainly somewhat of a dreamy place.

The steamer Adelaide is a noble vessel, wellbuilt — at Glasgow ; and, of course, one may almost say, well-manned, well-found, and wellappointed in every way. In Captain Loekyer she has a gallant and efficient commander. Likewise are her saloons and state-rooms illuminated by the ' electric liatht. The Adelaide is also excellently well ventilated, and her 'twecndecks must be in summer fane deliciously cool. The dining-saloon is far down below, with a lofty coved ceiling, and here, in the scorching •months of January and February, the atmosphere must t>e so -delightfully tempered as to render punkahs and windsails all but unnecessary accessories to ventilation. Yes ; her saloon, prettily painted, and decorated with panels of fancy woods, curiously inlaid and brilliantly polished, with her airy little smoking-rocm with its tesselated flooring, displaying tho motto "Advance, Australia!" and the antipodean heraldic devices of the emu, ft* kangaroo, and the golden fleece-we shall \ mv& au Australian h^ S , aiU \ ," J° - on R °y " should be his title '.—with her well-fitted bathrooms, her piauorortes, and the CPJaaries warbling in their cages Aii "\ tb - cove above the saloon table— the Adelaide. Vs altogether a summer ship, "and a i delightful one in which to spend the 40 hours or so hi which, when the weather is fair, the sea trip from Melbourne to Adelaide should |be accomplished. But the railway between the capitals of Victoria and South Australia is beinp actively pushed forward ; and ere long, it is to be hoped, there will be uninterrupted railway communication between Adelaide, Melbourne, and Sydney, ;md ultimately Brisbane and Northern Queensland. At present it can scarcely fail to strike the traveller from Home that, ludicrously ignorant as vast numbers of English people are of things Australian, the colonists themselves do not know nearly so much about one another as they should do. They are too far apart, viatorially speaking. ! They have too few interests in common ; at least, they erroneously imagine that they have too few. The great Australian newspapers publish daily a few snappy telegraphic items of intelligence, and a, Melbourne journal has its periodical Adelaide letter a Sydney paper its periodical Brisbane one, and a Hobart paper its Sydney or Melbourne one, aud vice versa all round ; and still, save' at the clubs and at the mechanics' institutes and schools of arts libraries, there seem to be only a very slight exchange of intercolonial journalism, and the politics, the social economy, the literary and artistic progress of one Colony appear to excite only a very languid amount of interest in the others. I can well rpmemfcer when a similar condition of apathetic indifference among sister Colonies existed in the British possessions in North America. Montreal knew nothing, or professed to know nothing, about Quebec ; while Toronto

expressed profound contempt for the "two French towns," as the go-ahead western city disdainfully dubbed the capitals of Lower Canada. As for Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, the Canadians were socially and politically unanimous in agreeing that the Colonies inhabited by the "Blue Noses " were not worth talking about, or thinking about, at all. I was in Canada when the scheme of federation was being hotly aud acrimoniously discussed, and in many instances held up in unmeasured terms to obloquy and ridicule as a wholly impracticable and illusory idea. Yet the Dominion of Canada has been for a considerable number of years an accomplished fact. Of .whether that magnificent federation is a success or the contrary the Canadians should be the best judges. As for Australian federation, the plan for making it a reality is as yet in a very shadowy and nebulous condition. When it is to come and in what form — its latest phase of discussion being a "chippy," half-querulous correspondence between Mr Service, the Premier of Victoria, and Sir Alexander Stuart, the Premier of New South Wales — how am I, a stranger and a novice in the land, to tell ? The gentlemen who live at home at ease in England, who have never visited the Australian Colonies, or, having visited them, have just scampered through the land, sojourning it may be, just 40 hours in one capital and 30 hours in another, have quite made up their minds on the subject of federation, imperial and intercolonial. I can only vouch for the things which I have seen, and argue from experience of other lands. In unfederated. Australia there seems to be too wido a gulf between the Colonies. They are all justifiably proud of their .relations to England ; but they are not, so it strikes me, sufficiently proud of their relations to each other. Beyond the droll jealousy which is s. id to exist between the two magnificent cities rf Sydney and Melbourne — the New South We'shnaen declare that it is the Melbournians who rre jealous of Sydney, while the Victorians as vehemently assert that it is the New South We'shmen who are jealous of Melbourne, — there wtuldnot appear to be theslightost reason for any ri\ airy, save one of the most amicable nature, amoi g this beauteous band of Colonial sisters. But that such a rivalry — taking, as it very frequently does, the form of cross-grained disparagement — does, to a certain degree, exist in the Australian Colonies seems to me palpable. Still, one need not be a fanatical believer iv nostiums, political, social, and otherwise. Federated Columbia is not exempt from inter-state and inter-civic rivalries of the disparaging kind. Chronic jealousy, quite as comical as that which is said to exist— mind / do not say that it does exist — between Sydney and Melbourne, has long prevailed between Boston and New York and between Chicago and St. Louis ; while, complacently impartial, California derides the whole of the communities on the other side of the Rocky Mountains as " those eastern folk." It is the way of the world and of human nature. Perhaps Bath does not think so much of Cheltenham, or Scarborough of either. Edinburgh may love Glasgow only as a stepsister, and Liverpool may secretly think Manchester a vastly overrated town. The rivalry between Dover aud Polkesstone is as old as the Saxon Heptarchy, and many centuries haye passed since the people of Dover have claimed intellectual supremacy, hotly contested by their rivals, over the people of Folkestone. The claim in question does not appear to have any basis more substantial than the tradition that the body of a drowned man was, once upon a time, washed on shore between Dover and Folkestone. On one of the fingers of the corpse there was a diamond ring. " Run for a kuife," cried the Dover people. The simple-minded Folkestonians ran for a knife, but ere they returned the astute Doverians had bitten off the dead man's finger, diamond ring and all. Should a similarly grim contingency arise on tho Pacific shore, I wonder whether Sydney or Melbourne would get the best of it.

Among the things which the wise man of old declared to be utterly incomprehensible to him was the way of a ship on the sea. The way of a big steamer working her way clown the winding course of the Yarra Yarra into Hobson's Bay iss to the unteehnical mind equally inscrutable. A snakier stream I never saw. It turns and turns, it wriggles and twists, in seemingly Sndless sinuosity. It has been said in humorous paradox that that famous example of engineering, the "corkscrew" railway through, or rather around, the Simmoring Pass between Vienna and 'jMeste is the only railway in Europe in which a passeiitfe* 1 t;an see — so continuously does the train tvtsf and twirl — the nape of his own netlU. The " zigzag " lines in the mountain ranges of New South Wales are also sufficiently astounding in their aberrations from rectitude, but surely the crookedest line, so far rts a waterway is concerned, is that of the Yarra. It has been most discourteously and calumniously styled by those who ought to know better a ditch. It is not one ; it is a very river. Even as things stand ai present, vessels drawing 15Jf t of water can get up to the Melbourne wharves at ordinary tides, and 16ft at high tide, and this depth is to be augmented. Within the last eight years the depth has been increased more than 2ft, and ere long the serpentine course of the Yarra may be obviated by the construction of a canal to Sandridge. The deepening of the.entiro channel would only cost between a million and a million and a half sterling — a mere fleabite for Mavvelloi s Melbourne. Pending the cutting of the canal or the widening and deepening of the Yai ra Yarra, the noble steamer Adelaide crept and crawled along her tortuous course as though, like James 11, she had an incurable propensity for dark and crooked ways. Ever and anon there seemed the highest probability of her plunging her stem into this or that bank of the river. Over and over again the prospect of her sticking in the mud became imminent; but she passed through all her ordeals triumphantly. I am growing caseharfened in the matter of ascending Australian rivers. You follow the course of a nobly broad stream up to Brisbane, and of a tolerably spacious waterway, the Fitzroy River, to Rockhampton in Queensland ; but 1 have harl sore travail in getting up and down the Rivoi Mary — prettiest of names! — to Maryborough. Thftfl. more than once, our steamer has

literally stuck in the mud, and we have had to wait till the next tide to get off again. The brave Adelaide, skilfully conned, stuck not ■in any mud. Grandly did she shave Fisherman's Bend, and emerge into the open of Hobson's Bay, and so, leaving the wharves and warehouses and the forests of masts behind her, bid adieu to Sandridge and Williamstown, and began, like a thing of life, to walk the waters of the Pacific Ocean. That is to say, at about half-past 4in the afternoon — we had left the wharf at Melbourne soon after 3 — we begin to roll consumedly. Not so severely, however, as we were destined to roll on our return, for the Adelaide, outward bound, had a large cargo, and was deep in the water. On the return trip she brought home only a very small cargo, and rolled incessantly. Well, it is better perhaps to roll than to pitch, and better for a ship to do both than to bo wrecked.

Whatever may be the state of the weather, there is, in the calmly-constituted mind, happily situated in a body not subject to sea-sick-ness, a condition of feeling which very often borders upon unmingled felicity. No newspapers, save, perchance, on a long ocean voyage, the little gossiping gazette printed on board, and in which you may pen with impunity — should you be privileged to contribute to it — the merest rubbish. No post, and consequently no letters. Oh, the joy of nobody writing to you ! The faculty of being lazy without exposing yourself to rebuke for your indolence, for all your fellow passengers are as lazy as you are. All these things you .should be grateful for on the free and nnconfined ocean ; but both sea and land have for me another and the strangest of attractions — a charm almost — in Australia. There conies over you from time to time, suddenly, involuntarily — now on shipboard, now in a railway train, now in the weird and ghastly bush and bhe jungle-like mallee scrub, now in a cosy club smoking-room or a brilliantly-lit theatre, the illusion that you are dead — that you have had at least a foretaste of death without its bitterness. Were you alone on a desert island, the feeling •might be of a different nature. You would be only alone, and nothing more. But here, in this newest of new worlds, in these crowded cities, or in these wilds full of skeleton trees, you are impressed somehow or another with the conviction that you have done for good and and all with the world in which you used to dwell, and with the life which you once led. You seem to be conversing all day long with ghosts. They may be friendly ghosts, affable ghosts, hospitable ghosts ; but they all seem to have abandoned their corporeal existence a very long time ago. The dead past seems to be all at once revived, but in a fugitive, shadowy, ephemeral manner. One day a very ancient lady, stately in black silk and lace, calls on you and tells you she used to dandle you in her arms when you were a baby 56 years ago. On the morrow a very old gentleman pays you a visit. He describes a namesake of yours with whom he was acquainted in London in the year 1822 ; and mentally comparing the description with a certain miniature which you have at home, 13,000 mijes away, you arrive at the conclusion that your namesake was your own father, who died in the year 1828, and whom you never saw, But the old lady and old gentleman never oomo again. Disembodied spirits) clearly. A reverend gentleman drops in, Ha was a Grecian at Christ's Hospital when a dead brother of yours, who has been dead close upon 30 years, was in "Great Erasmus." Were you or another brother of yours fellow-clerk of a stipendiary magistrate who accosts you — a fellow clerk in the office of the Tithes Commissioners in Somerset place, in the year 1339. You must remember, the magistrate adds, Mr George Routledge was a clerk in the same Government office. Then the stipendiary magistrate vanishes into thin air. You will never see him again. Here is the polite landlord of an hotel up country in New South Wales. He played clown in the very fir?t pantomime that you'll remember having seen, and laudibly proud of still keeping up his annual subscription to the Royal General Theatrical Fund. All ghosts; that is, they come like shadows and so depart. There is, I have heard, a social body of bibliopoles in London of whom Mr Bernhard Quaritch or Mr Wyman may be aware, and wh,o are called " The Odd "Volumes." Australia ia the country where you fall across the odd volumes of humanity. Anybody's brother. Everybody's nephew. The sweethearts whom you have talked so much pleasant nonsense to, now grown to be austere dames and grandmothers. The scapegraces and ne'er-do-weels whom you thought to be dead at least a generation since have become persons of authority — potent, grave, and reverend seignors. But surely they cannot be alive. Surely you are dead, and these are but phantoms. But you awake from the illusion when you find yourself anxiously consulting the shipping advertisements in the newspapers to make sure of the day when the Orient steamship Potosi will leave Williamstown for London, or when the P. and O. steamship Valetta will arrive out from Home, both noble vessels carrying her Majesty's mails; you are pleasantly convinced that you see when you read in the Argus or the Sydney Morning Herald that consols in London have risen to 99£. Excelsior ! as to consols. Rcsurgam ! as to yourself. Australia is no sdadowy land with -Necropolis for its capital. It is a country full of man and maid — teeming with very live flesh and blood folk. It is only you who have grown old, and who, in vn'ir timp. hnvp known so many sorts and conditions of people*.

So the wild waves of the Pacific — the sea was at first somewhat ferocious, but it calmed down by noon on the morrow — bore me from the harbour's mouth to find a warmer sky. But I did not exult in the thought that ere -I died I should see " the palms raid temples of the south." These palms and temples I have been permitted to see over and over again. Life is tolerable without cither palms or temples. But lam very anxious to visit South Australia, tho more so for the reason that many persons at Melbourne have amicably counselled me to abstain from visiting South Australia just at present. Great depression prevails there, I have been gravely informed. There is absolutely 110 money in Adelaide, I have learned from at

least -half a dozen trustworthy sources. We shall see. What is money after all but so much "bullion dross"? So while the noble steamship Adelaide ploughs her 40 hours* way through the rolling main, I read up a little about the land to which I am bound in the admirably compendious and in some respects invaluable Australian Handbook, published by Gordon and Gotch. I shall see Adelaide, Mount Lofty, Mount Barker, Glenelg, Gawler, Kapunda, and Port Augusta, haply. But am I destined, I wonder, to behold Humbug Scrub, in the hundred of Parra Wirr, and the electorate of Gumeracha. Thanks, Gordon and Gotch, for Humbug Scrub. It is only 25 miles north-east of Adelaide, and it has gold and copper mines. Where are ye now, Woolloomooloo, and Vegetable Creek, and Dirty Mary's Gully ? Ye little people of the stews of Australian nomenclature, what are you when the sun of Humbug Scrub, in the hundred of Parra Wirr, and the electorate of Gumeracha, shall rise ?