A Lady's View on Adelaide.

Clutha Leader, Volume I, Issue 21, 3 December 1874, Page 7

A Lady's View on Adelaide.

. «- — . The ' Pastoral Times' states that a lady, writing from Adelaide to a lady friend in Riverina, thus speaks : — " We dislike this place most cordially, and look forward with anxious longing to the day when we shall be off Cape . Leuwin, never to return. We have been a good deal about the world, but I never saw a place that I would not gladly see again until I came here ; but I am sure nothing would ever induce us to return here. Everything is so excessively new ! Not an old building — not even a decent tree, nothing but these old gum trees, which are half dead, and stretch out their great bare skeleton arms in the most lamentable way. The tone of mind which all this newness engenders among 'the '.-colonials'is as evident as it is disagreeable : they are insolent, and wanting in everything like courtesy, deference, or reverence, or anything noble, beyond belief. The place is America, without the glorious Puritan ancestry and heroism which the Americans have to elevate the national character (not that it has done much to elevate it, I must say). The place is just a horrid little republic, governed by the most successful butchers, ironmongers, and publichousekeepers. Our Governor is a mere automaton, who does nothing but play ad royal cy, with a somewhat ludicrous effect, when one remembers thatthe • population of the whole Colony is not more than half that of Glasgow, or any bio: town at home. It is, indeed, ridiculous to hear the talk about the Upper House and the Lower House, . and to see the Governor drive down to open Parliamp.nt with half a dozen policemen behind him, and to hear people talk about the - debates ' — discussions which might be fairly classed with the ■debates' of a small provincial town council at home. The place ought to be a Crown Colony, and governed absolutely by one man, with a head on his shoulders; it is utterly unfiVto govern itself As for its much-boasted climate, we were never in a place where we suffered so much from the bad effects of climate. The heat is terrible for six months, and the sudden changes most trying*. The thermometer was often ' over 100 in our drawing-room, and imagine that, without punkahs, and with bad ice, and colonial servants." If this lady is- married, the poor husband must have a pleasant? time of it. , ?