A CENTURY OF PROGRESS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22398, 20 October 1934, Page 4

A CENTURY OF PROGRESS

SKETCH HISTORY OF VICTORIA " Hail . Victoria I " By Kathleen Usaher. Illustrated. London: Hodder and Stoughton. (65.) " Centenary Gift Book.” Compiled by Prances Fraser, Edited by Nettle Palmer. Melbourne: Robertson and Mullens. (55.) ' ‘ The brief - but progressive history of Victoria differs from that of many New World chronicles in that it commences more or less informally, and was not originated in violence. While the other Australian colonies, as Kathleen Ussher remarks in “Hail Victoria!” were established owing to official inspiration, Victoria “came into being, primarily, because a few settlers in Tasmania needed more land for grazing their stock, and had vision and enterprise enough to look for it across the Straits.” Indeed, officialdom had previously rejected Port Phillip even as the site of a penal settlement, Colonel Collins, after inspecting it in 1803, reporting: “Every day’s experience convinces me that it cannot nor ever will be resorted to by speculative men,” and adding that when the disadvantages of the bay became known “ it cannot be supposed that commercial people will be very desirous of visiting Port Phillip.” Edward Henty and John Batman were unimpressed by Collins’s strictures —if indeed they had ever heard of them —and it is due to the initiative of these men that Victoria’s history as an English colony properly commenced, in 1834. Henty installed himself, with his livestock and chattels, at Portland Bay, and was later joined by land-hungry members of his family, and by other settlers. Almost simultaneously John Batman led a small group of settlers to Port Phillip, and from this settlement Melbourne has sprung. But if the genesis of Victoria was not sensational —a record of plodding work and quiet courage—Miss Ussher is not deprived of lively material _in describing the subsequent stages in its evolution. Aboriginal attacks, led by such picturesquely-named characters as Ogleeyed Jimmy, Brandy, and Jimmy the Blanket, led to gruesome incidents; the official inauguration of the new colony in 1851 was contemporary with a gold rush which, ns in the somewhat parallel case of Dunedin, crammed into the space of a. few years developments which might otherwise have taken a quarter of a century; soon Victoria, now the richest colony of all, was embracing civilisation with a capital C, while Burke and Wills made their tragic expedition into the interior; and then came a tardy recrudescence of violence when Captain Moonlight, and the now almost fabulous Kelly gang, plied their murderous trade. But in devoting more space than perhaps is warranted in so brief a book to the exploits of the bushrangers, Miss Ussher does not neglect entirely the steady progress in building, irrigation, planned settlement, railway construction, which coincided with their period of freebooting, and’in a surprisingly short space of time we find ourselves called on to express our admiration —which should be ungrudgingly Victoria the State,-Melbourne the city, which are now welcoming visitors to share in their birthday anniversary. “Hail Victoria!” cannot be regarded as a contribution to the historical of Australia, and it is somewhat scrappily compiled, but it forms an acceptable volume for the centenary visitor to read on the boat, and will enable him to understand what Melbourne is celebrating—and why. The Pioneer Women The “ Centenary Gift Book," a publication most handsomely produced in Melbourne, gives striking earnest of the part which the women of Victoria have played —and are continuing to take—in the development of the State. This book contains recollections of the early days Pf • Victoria and the courageous women who assisted their menfolk in settling the territory; short stories, plays, poems, and articles by prominent Victorian authors, including Henry Handel Richardhon, Mary Grant Bruce, and Katherine Pritchard, which evidence at once the literary consciousness of the writers and their knowledge of the background and personalities of their homeland; and many illustrations that do credit to the artists of Victoria. These include three full-colour reproductions. The profits from the publication will go towards a fund for a memorial to the pioneer women of Victoria. A. L. F.