CANBERRA AND DUNTROON.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 23, 28 January 1911, Page 12

CANBERRA AND DUNTROON.

9 A REMINISCENCE. The other day t lit upon a scrap Containing the reproduction of a photograph of Canberra Post Office, in whose near vicinity the capital city of the Commonwealth is soon to make some show of coming into existence. At once I saw sheer through the texture of the i paper and beyond the markings, away behind the years, another picture of my own arrival at the same post office shortly after daylight on a thoroughly | up-to-date winter's morning, in company with the driver of the mail. The old mailman, " Billy " Roohan by name, had I died suddenly, and on his bondsman had devolved the responsibility of completing his contract with the Postal Department. The said bondsman being a friend of my father, I waß very naturally hit upon, as a youngster having nothing better and wanting nothing better to do, to go with a young fellow in his employ in the regulation "spider" buggy, in whicb country mails of, the period were so often run, behind a spanking mare, for the purpose of riding ncr back from the end. of the first stage at Gininderra, sixteen miles out from the starting-point at Queanbeyau. Canberra lay on the way, some six miles out from town. It was just one of those undertakings for which Kindly nature seems to have specially designed a boy. Few days have approached its level of rich enjoyment f The impressions of youth are prejudiced, no doubt, having had the advantage of an inside running. Yet even tbe soberer judgment of after years, supplemented by a personal knowledge of most other places of interest in New South Wales, could not lead to any other opinion than that for climate and bracing atmosphere, beauty of landscape, the feel of homeliness, and most if not all of the "emaining desirable qualifications, New South Wales holds no more eligible site for a Federal capital, if there is one anywhere within its bounds approaching it. Its wooded hills and sloping ridges; its wide-stretching plain, grassed in a good year to a horse's flank ; its trailing creeks ; its meandering Molonglo River, functioning with the river skirting the town of Queanbeyan and sharing its name ; its ribboning roadways running by farms that speak of a calm content — all make a picture to linger fondly in the mind. In its general characteristics Yass-Can-berra country has no dealings with the Australia of Henry Lawson or "Banjo Paterson. It carries no faintest suggestion of the "Never Never" or the "Wild Barcoo." Though an Australian, and going upon only a hearing and reading knowledge for my impression, I should call it "English" in flavour. I never knew of the flat monotonies of the interior of the choppy brokenhess of the coast Country till I had wandered far from the scenes of my rural upbringing. Of myall and mallee Canberra is sweetly innocent; yet to follow down the long and winding waterway would bring you to something of that sort, no doubt ; | for there is, in a sense, water communij cation from Canberra to Lake Alexandrina. That is to say, ~a leaf thrown into th© Molonglo River, rising not far from the picturesque Lake George, might, if all went well, float down that stream, into and along the Queanbeyan Kiver, i on over the Murrumbidgee, away down I the long winding Murray, across Victoria, reaching the ocean at last at the Lake, and passing all kinds of country en route. And these, mind you, are rivers, and not mere strings 6f waterholes in a dry summer. But to all that it is a far cry. Yass-Cahberra country j is a thing apart, and should certainly be seen by those whose impressions of rural Austrr lia nave been gathered from the cynical literature of the bush so much in vogue. No doubt many of our men drank, and no-licehse propaganda might have found a mild sphere in our community ; but no drink-sodden tramp, out Our way, ever lay down to die on drought-withered, dust-browned plains, or poured his ( cynical curses into the face of the blistering sunset. For one thihg, our distances were not big enough and for another neighbours were plentiful ; and they wero the very soul of hospitality. A dot in the distance might be a traveller crossing th© plain our way ; and on would go the kettle in anticipation. That it was all so stu-

pidly old-fashioned did hot occur to us> and would not have "troubled us,-any-way. Whether the style of the country aug gested it or not, I could not say, but Canberra witnessed in those days an experiment destined to not long succeed, and never to be seriously repeated ih Australian soil. The late Mr. George Campbell was iv all but name a village j squire, surrounded by his rural tenantry. Duntroon — for its owner was a fine j type of Anglicised Scoi- — was the name i of his lordly homestead ; and it is this \ very building that has just been leased i with its environs by the Federal Government for military college purposes. | Its grounds were spacious and beautiful, and- its well-tended gardens were a sort of resuscitated paradise in miniature, dotted on either side by the respective lodges of porter and gardener. Near by was the quaint old parish church, of which the late Rev. P. Gk Smith, whose death occiirred some two years ago, was for 50 years th 6 honoured rector. Of course, there were the rectory, with the schoolhouse^ beautiful in its Way, ahd the teacher's residence nestling near. The remainder of the hamlet was made up of the neat and comfortable residences of the storekeeper, horse-breaker, and others of that ilk, with those of the numerous tradesfolk— brickmaker, bricklayer, carpenter, and the rest of a fairly long list, for whom there was always something to do; for the Unemployed question, along with other more modern and up-to-date developments, I had not as yet come our way. We | hardly lived the strenuous life; but we were a happy people, and the deficiency I m that particular never occurred to our^ simple i imagination. No description of DuntroOh. would bd worthy of the name that omitted mention of the quaint old woolsked, kept conveniently out of eight of the village, ahd nestling by the creeksidej with iU long, lank terrace of shearers' huts running parallel with the Creek bank, and formihg between the two a kind of rural esplanade. Close by were the brickyard , creek, and clay-coil, conspiring ih the play. Near here lived for come yea«s an auht of mine, and when my visits fell in ehearing-time, what a new world opened before my boyish vkion I What live, flesh-and-blood characters those ehearera were, to be cure! Things industrial, a* they viewed and conducted them, would be voted a hopeless back-number from the standpoint of to-day. The Labour Party was ac yet Unborn, md tradeßiinionsj in Australian soil, were not bo much as thought of. Shearers' strikes, of the perfected modern type, were non existent; while for the security of Duhtroon svookhed no one feared, or, in truth, had cause to. Troubles cam*}, and disputes arose j but they settled them in their own way> with never a thought of referring matters "to th<j , tribunal of public opinion," When shearers' countenances fell, "Squire" Campbell would :ome to the shed and talk to the men as a reasoning mad should, and they ac behoved reastwuhg jien, would weigh his words. Before half a day had passed, eheane— machines being unknown-s-would be glancing and cutting right merrily, and the "phger," pipe in mouth would go on putting Up his tally of 9U or more fleeces for the day. As compared with modern methods, it was altogether unscientific, but it somemhow answered the purpose admirably. The entire rouhd of life in the Canberra of those days — 1 write of the latei 'sixties and early seventies — proceeded on the same Arcadian scale. One thing that we town youngsters used to look for and live up to was the weekly descent of the splendid "Duhtroon*' carriage^ — a. wondrous equippage of Wickerwork and varnished leather, rolling grahdly behind two spanking bays, afihine with good living and the friction of Well-groomed coats — upon the quiet, but really picturesque town of Queanbeyan. A still greater sight was the master of it all, emerging from the main box-seat beside the liveried coachman. Tall, erect, and spare of build, in frock suit of immaculate broad-cloth, with stout malacca caile poised nobly in the ungloved right hand, and stepping with an active, yet easy,' dignity, in which" assertion and reserve were accurately blended ; such was the "George Campbell" of those halycon, half-romantic times. To-day w© bump »lohg in sulkies ; and life is drab ahd frowsy by reason of it-a up-to-date contrast). The same primitive, homely conditions everywhere prevailed. No wire fences bounded Canberra, Estate, and no boundary riders' huts dotted the lone/Some distances. Sheep were "shepherded' 1 in the old Arcadian style. How the ap- j bearance in town of ohe of thd shepherds, in for his periodical spree, awakened our juvenile interest. — sometimes, in truth, our childish alarm. Additional picturesqueness was lent to the time by the blacks, who migrated periodically over the neighbourhood, giving Canberra its duo turn. *What aristocrats they looked in their brand-new blankets, bestowed upon them by the Government on \ what was then, and up till nlany yeaa-s after, "Queen's Birthday," but destined soon to look soiled and bedraggled, or to be sold for drink. How they fought when in their cup 6; how truly awful, in such circumstances, their command of "language."